Working with decorative filler

For my final piece in the GCSE surrealism project, I am producing a painting on an a1 canvas board. In order to create a texture and add depth to my piece, i used decorative filler. This is a fairly cheap, easy, mess free way of getting a textured finish to paintings, and her are the results! By using a paintbrush i spread the filler over the desired areas to the right thickness, left it to dry overnight and painted over it when it was ready. Obviously, this piece is half done, so make sure you stay online for when i post the finish piece! I hope you like my work, and stay creative :) 

Painting with acrylics, ink and drawing in biro

Surrealist morph

For the final piece in this surrealism project, we are required to produce a morphing piece. My ideas were inspired by Jim Warrens work, a famous American surrealist artist.

Some of his work:

I decided to create my piece inspired by his work because i loved the combination of faces and other backgrounds. Here is my planning and media tests so far:

Acrylic painting

Acrylic and ink painting

Biro pen sketch

stay online for my next post of the final piece ! I will also be using decorative filler underneath my acrylic painting when i paint it on canvas board to give it texture and a 3D look, so I will also create a post on how to use that technique.

I hope you liked my paintings, and as always, stay creative :) 

Surrealism project research

The layout and theme in my sketchbook and portfolio is always something i try to match to the project. When recieving this assignment, I knew alot of research would be needed to understand some of the key artists, the Dada art movement and some history. This gave me a great base to produce my own work inspired by some of these artists; look out for this in my next post!

Firstly, i composed a list of artists i wanted research and then colected images and facts about them to help give me an understanding of this vast and confusing topic. Here are some of the artists i choose to look at, and some annotations about them. I hope this helps to give you some information about surrealism, about a key artist or some inspiration for colour and texture when creating a layout. Enjoy! 

Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War 1. I mainly focused on the collages and one 3-D piece in my research, as these show the mechanical vs human interpration in 1920. The right hand collage also represents the shell shock of the soldiers after world war 1.

 

Salvador Dali, probably one of the most well known surrealist artists, is one of my favourites. His use of exploring the unconcious and sleeping mind intrigues me, particularly in his most famous piece ' the persistence of memory'. His work is difficult to interprate, which makes his paintings interesting to decifer and the colours and shapes use always work well and are phenomonaly painted! 

René Magritte is another one of my favourites, because of his backgrounds and common themes. He often uses brick walls, or curtains in his backgrounds, and his famous piece 'c'est n'est pas une pipe' (it is not a pipe) is a definate favourite due to the simplicity and literal meaning of the painting. 

Roberto Matta's work is very interesting. Matta broke with the conventions of the surrealist movement by adding a dimension of social and political awareness to his artwork, and quickly became one of Chile's best known painters and an important figure in 20th century abstract, expressionist and surrealist art.

Lucas Samaras began making boxes out of found objects in the early 1960's. I dont want to give away to much as tomorrows post will be about him and my work inspired by his... So come back tomorrow for more on Samaras!!!

I hope you enjoyed this post, sorry it was longer than usual but i had alot to say! Stay tuned for tomorrows 'Samaras' inspired post, and as always, stay creative guys! :) 

Painting on slate

The best thing about finishing a painting youve worked on for days is being able to share it, and hear other peoples opinions.  I loved painting this favourite scene of where I spend alot of time in Wales, but decided to change from painting on canvas. I picked up a beautiful peace of slate from a pretty little beach in west wales, Pembrokeshire, called aberfforest.

aberfforest beach, Newport, Pembrokeshire

The slate I choose was  very textured and had visible layers and cracks, which worked extremely well with the scene of beaches and cliffs i was painting. This is a iconic scene for me, taken from Newport Parrog, looking out across the picturesque estuary dotted with boats. Here is the image that i painted from.

Newport Parrog

So here is some snaps of the painting in progress, and finally complete!

I hope you emjoy and like my work, and, as always, stay creative! :) 

GCSE sketchbook mono prints

Mono-printing is a form of printmaking that has images or lines that can only be made once, unlike most printmaking, where there are multiple originals. This was my first attempt at this technique, and I enjoyed creating these prints as it was fairly easy and gave great results.  I used a black water based paint for these images to create sharp outlines and contrasts between dark and light, as well as still being able to add areas of shading. Here are the results of my first attempts! 

This tiger print was my favourite out of the two images, as I love the variation between the ideas and the macro face gave great outlines to work with. 

This technique can be fairly messy with paint, especially using black, so always remember to use a water based paint that will wash out of clothes or off surfaces.

This elephant was my second attempt, and I love the bold outlines and detail on the trunk. 

Always use spread the paint thin enough over your surface, and make sure it is applied evenly or your print will be ruined by blobs of paint. 

I hope you enjoyed these images, and i would definitely recommend this way of printing as you can use any image and will always get great results.