Evaluation of Studio 2B

Friday 5^th May 2017

Evaluation of Studio 2B

At the start of the semester, I was unsure as to what type of art I wanted to create. Last semester I created work that was very autobiographical but I felt like this was a dead end artistically for me. When talking to Steve he told me to create the art that I would enjoy doing at home, outside of university. I underpinned my work with the words distortion and perception, I lead on from these words to look at the objects around me and distort them. I draw quick sketches of objects in a space or a scene and then distorted them on a canvas or board.

I firstly painted as normal but I did not like the finished painting. It was too colourful and was not abstracted enough from the original scene. I then tried outlining the objects with masking tape so it would leave a white line and this was a turning point for my work. I haven’t strayed from this technique because it works so well for my work and is really effective at distorting the scene sketches. I have been greatly influenced by the geometric shapes in Kandinsky’s work so I wanted to create work with sharp edges and geometric images. The masking tape creates bold and strong lines through each piece. I originally used very bold and bright colours mixed with white and then sponged onto the canvas. this is how I carried on applying the paint but the bold colours were too disorientating so I began to experiment with much subtler colours and different colour combinations.

I experimented with how the painting would look if the colour behind the paint was a different colour. I painted the board black before taping on the line pattern and sponging a bronze colour on top. The piece was very dark and looked decadent. Although i liked the colour combination, I decided I wanted my paintings to be much lighter. I then experimented with having a pattern on the board and then painting over it so it was reversed to my previous paintings. Because the planes of white are so big you can’t see the pattern underneath which diminishes the purpose of the pattern so I stuck to having the colour on top of the white.

After looking at Mondrian and Van Doesburg, I recognised a large similarity between my work and theirs. I recognised that my use of line is very similar in that I am ditatching colours using lines. Following their inspiration, I only used a few colours in any of my works or stuck to a very minimal colour palette.

The paintings I produced using very subtle colours were my most successful however I had made them all on quite a small scale. I bought a large piece of MDF and painted it white and then sponged on a very subtle grey pallet. This piece was more successful then the previous ones because the scale meant you could really get an impact from the subtle colours. The grey and the sharp lines and edges gave the over-all piece an industrial feeling, with grey being such a dim colour. On a larger scale, the subtle grey gave the piece a calming impact to the viewer.

For assessment, I thought it would be best to display a final piece instead of a collection of pieces to show the evolvement of my painting. I wanted to carry on using this colour pallet because I liked its effect so much. I still wanted to create large-scale paintings but in something other than a rectangular shape. I chose to experiment with octagon shaped boards for my first non-rectangular piece because it is a much more interesting shape with more dimensions to it. I then applied the pattern flowing throughout the boards so that your eye would follow the lines through each board placed closely together. I placed them together to make a structure on the wall suggesting that it could carry on through the floor or ceiling.

I am very pleased with my final piece but next semester I would like to make even larger paintings with influence from Yayoi Kusama, with her paintings spreading across the entire landscape. I want to create paintings that make you feel a certain way using colour and line and I think this will be achievable by going even larger with my painting.

‘Final Piece’

Tuesday 2^nd May, 2017.

‘Final Piece’

I thought it would be best fitting to present a final piece instead of a collective of pieces to show my progression this semester. I wanted to create a piece that showed the elements of my work that have worked best. I chose to work with pieces of board that I had cut into an octagonal shape to get away from the rectangle board I had been sticking to. The different shape is more engaging than my other pieces and looks like a construction, adding to the industrial-looking colour tones.

The octagon shape is similar to that of a honeycomb (although that is a hexagon) to represent the structure that the pattern represents. The pattern is taken from the lines I found in Meadowhall’s construction. The ceiling was revealed to show the pipes and structure underneath. The straight and intertwined lines were perfect to focus on for my final piece without too much abstraction and change.

I wanted the pattern to carry on through the whole piece as it made the tiles tie in to each other smoothly. It was successful on my previous piece where I’d made the pattern go throughout both canvases so I was confident that it would work and look professional. The pattern and shape of the boards make your eye start at the top of the piece and leads your eye down, connecting through the lines.

The colours were in keeping with the rest of my work, they are subtle and cool. I have found that cool colours are the most effective at bringing a calm feeling to a piece, which is what I wanted for this. When I had finished the painting and hung it, I had many people saying just how nice and calming it was to look at. These comments are the main reason I think this painting was a success because I want my work to have a positive and calming reaction.

If I were to do this piece again (or even what I want to do next term) I would make it even bigger so it was covering the entire wall. This way the calming effect would be much more intense. I would experiment with different moods to colours and try brighter colours to intensify the piece.