Knees V & VI.

After the larger pieces that I worked on, I decided to try out a couple of other surfaces. The first being 'oil paint' paper as well as cardboard, albeit small practices. I took a piece of the paper from good old, Uncle Clive, instead of buying a pad of my own, because I wasn't sure if oil painting was something I would carry on with after this project was over. The paper gave the painting a nice shine compared the cartridge paper I used before. I tried to keep it to natural colours, even more so than my first attempts. Unfortunately, I don't like this as much, it doesn't feel like 'me'. Although, I do like the little ray of sunshine coming through and 'lighting' up my painting from the back gap between the studio walls. I could possibly do something with that idea... Then my attempt on the scrap piece of cardboard, came about simply due to an excess of paint out of the tubes. I didn't want to waste it, I just wanted to use them up and decided to keep it quite simple.

Bruise Art.

My brain has had an off day... I apologise. Don't judge me. This is nothing important, just an idea (I think that's what to call it).

I got this sexy big bruise last week and each day it's more or less been a different colour. Today, for some strange reason, I have been looking at it a lot and a thought came to me. I should have documented it from the beginning; when it first began to appear. Then I could've made some sort of art from it...

Or would that be too weird? I reckon I've seen worse, although, I guess it would depend what the art looked like. It could be beautiful... But it's not like anything I've 'recently' worked on. I don't know. It's a stupid idea. I'll shh now.

(I'll update this with more images if I take anymore and let you know).

Herts Headlines.

Last night I helped at the Private View for University of Hertfordshires Creative Arts Degree Show. It was interesting, definitely a learning experience and the atmosphere was great. Now we have an idea of what our show will be like in a couple of years. I am glad Tez roped me in to it and that we suffered together haha! My feet were killing me and I don’t think I have ever smiled so much in such a short space of time before. But people were lovely and the works were amazing! My favourite being the model of an orangutan. It was unbelievably lifelike and cute.

To end, I just wanted to thank everyone for making it brilliant, well done, and for letting me be a part of it, (not that’ll probably even see this post haha).

Below are images of the main entrance, a model of an orangutan and a chicken from the Model & Special Effects area, as well as the t-shirt and bag for the newspapers we wore.

Long Time No Work.

Hello, nice to talk to you all again. I am pleased to announce that I have been back in the studios today and a painting has been accomplished. I shall hopefully put up pictures of it tomorrow (do no hold me to that though). I must apologise for having created nothing over the Easter holidays, home life just got in the way, but that is going to change now that I am back at uni (fingers crossed). So as I said before, I achieved some work today, it was a painting in the style of my previous ones. It was strange picking up a brush after what seems like forever. I was a bit rusty and am not totally happy with the result. Half way through creating the piece I came to the decision that I do not want to paint anymore, I want draw… This is a bit of a dilemma because there is only a few weeks left. Maybe it is because I haven’t got back into a routine yet and I will feel differently by the end of the week. We shall see. I should probably leave drawing for another time. It could be something to do over the Summer, a little project I set myself. You may notice that I have had a name change, not a massive one, I only added ‘Art’ to the end, I have done this so people will know that it is about art. I felt before that it sounded more like a business. Anyway, that is it for now. I will try my best to get back into blogging again!

Lost In Collaboration.

This semester we all had to work collaboratively in some way. I chose to create a video with Clive Matthews. It’s called ‘LOST’ and not very long so take a peek! I shot the clips using my mobile phone and Clive helped to edit them together on iMovie. What would we do without good ol’ Clive? He’s a life saver to one and all. I must apologise to him for being so demanding but we had a laugh. We had to present what we created today and it went well. I got praised for having taken the camera to its limits and ‘glitching’ it. I got given the idea that it would be interesting to sit in a room with speakers, eyes closed and just have the soundtrack from this film playing (sensory deprivation / hightened senses). I also just wanted to say well done to everyone, there was some really great and memorable pieces shown. They looked better being projected large on the wall, compared to a computer screen. Any feedback is welcome.

Mini Me.

Acrylic on wood, size unknown.

‘Totem Cityscape I’. I had a little piece of a wood laying around, that a friend gave me and I thought it would be interesting to paint on it, seeing as it’s a strange shape. I started off by doing the usual multi-coloured waves with white paint added in and then a thought occurred to me. I needed to add something other than the coloured lines, because it would not look right by itself, but I could not focus on a figure like I used to before. I decided to include the silhouette of a totem pole, so the piece would not be completely out of place from my project and there would be less concentration on it due to there being no detail. I placed it to the bottom/side so again less focus on it and I saw that it slightly looked like a cityscape, that’s where the name came from. Making this little piece helped me get an idea for a larger work that I wanted to paint ready for the exhibition/review. The picture above is the way which the work is meant to go and the one below is just so you can see the totem pole the right was up.

Peek - A - Boo.

Arylic paint on acrylic paper, A3.

This definitely is not a great photo, sorry! I thought I would try a different arrangement, you know mix it up a bit, so therefore, he is now playing peek-a-boo. It is not one of my better pieces of work though, I know, unfortunately. Well, I do not think so anyway, however the teacher thought it was, which really surprised me! She asked me which I chose to put the white paint over the plain black and my only answer was "Because I didn't like the black on its own"... Yes, lame reason alert! She suggested that I could possibly make it into a collage and use a shape of card over the top or something. I'm not sure about this idea. I may keep in my imaginary cupboard hidden away with all the other suggested ideas that may be used one day. Hmm, we shall see.

Below are photos of stages to get to the final piece: