Tuesday 3 December 2013

A-Level Art & Design (Yr 12-13)

YEAR 12 ART & DESIGN COURSEWORK UNIT
This is my first response I did during my first week at St. Leonards-Mayfield in Art.  The picture above is a mixed media response using watercolour, HB pencils and fineliner pen.  These are the types of media which I work very well with.  The two photos of bunches of garlic below are manipulated using photoshop.  I adjusted the brightness and contrast, played with the filters and colour tonality.  The photo on the right I enhanced the colours to a warm filter so that the garlics would stand out against the steel scratched table.  The photo on the left is total opposite from the right.  I made the colours to a cool filter, used the pencil sketch filter to play with detail and adjusted the shadow.



This is a photography response to whom I refer as the Fleur photographer.  I took a photo of a flesh coloured rose against a black backdrop.  I then photoshop manipulated the photo by adjusting the hue and saturation, brightness and contrast, and the colour tonality.  I also darkened the backdrop so that the rose would stand out more.  I liked the tint of blue at the bottom of the rose and how it blends with its flesh colour.



These are more photoshop manipulated photos of the same flesh coloured roses, but some are in different shapes and sizes.



This is a response to flower and landscape artist, Georgia O'Keefe.  The media I used was coloured powder which I mixed with water to get a watery paint.  This didn't really turn out well as I didn't get the colours I wanted and it was hard to paint with this type of media.



This is the same painting by Georgia O'Keefe that I responded to with the powder paint (right).  I tried again this time using watercolour.  I found it so much easier as I was able to mix and produce the colours that I wanted according to the original.  The painting on the left is a zoom in of a section of O'Keefe's work.  I was interested in the contours and flow within the photo and the contrast between the dark and light colours.



This is another Georgia O'Keefe painting which I responded to using acrylic paint.  Acrylic paint is another media which I work well with.  I like the way how she uses bright and vibrant colours to create such curves and misty swirls.  My response on the right is a zoom in section of the branches and parts of the misty background.  There is a contrast between the warm and cool colours creating balance within the piece.



This is a coloured pencil response to another photograph from the Fleur photographer.  This is one of my best responses as I was able to use a variety of different shades of purple, pink and red to create the colour of the petals.  The drawing is on the top with the original photo on the bottom.  The original has a lot of shadows casted on the stems of the flowers and the green stem with a tint of red.



This is another response to the Fleur photographer.  This time, I combined the coloured pencils with fineliner pen.  The fineliner pen outlines the dark and vast shadows which the flower itself casts.  The bright vibrant colours also stand out along with the fineliner pens.  I used the cross-hatching technique to give the flower more curved shapes and to make it more 3-Dimensional.



This is a plan for manipulating layers from scraps of newspaper clippings, bits of old map, and two of my earlier works.  I chose to use the Fleur photographer's orchid drawing as my base.



Here is the finished piece of the layer manipulation of my orchid.  I sent the picture four times through the printer and printed the four photos one on top of the other.  I drew a template of the orchid study on tracing paper, placed it over the layer manipulation and used a sewing machine to cut out the shape.  I stuck the orchids on a plain white piece of paper and added strips of the remaining layer manipulation as the borders.



These are my developement of my final coursework piece.  I have used a background which I have worked on in my earlier coursework and layered it with some of my roses which I have manipulated using photoshop earlier.  The background and the roses have been photoshop manipulated.  I adjusted the opacity of the roses so that the background can also share the spotlight of the picture.


This is my further planning of my final coursework piece.  The top photo shows my photoshop manipulation of my earlier and recent drawings.  The photos below show my selected images, the watercolour response to Georgia O'Keefe, a charcoal thistle drawing, a photoshop manipulated rose and a colour pencil drawing using warm colours of a rose head.


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This is an acrylic paint response to one of my photoshop manipulated photos.  I selected an area and zoomed into the photo and painted it from that section.  I have balanced out the warm and cool colours within the painting.


I made a series of photoshop manipulated photos and arranged them into a grid format.  I have repeated some of the photos to create a sequence.



 More photoshop manipulated images of roses.



More photoshop manipulated images of roses





The three photos above are my final coursework outcome.  They were my top three favourite out of all the photo manipulations that I have done.  I was able to control the balance between the brightness and contrast, and the warm and cool colours.



YEAR 12 EXAM UNIT

For my Year 12 Exam Unit, the titular theme was Covert & Obscure.  This was a theme which I particularly liked as mystery and secrecy is what I enjoy most.  I chose to focus on graveyards for my exam project as I was intrigued by the fact that the dead are left forgotten and the gravestones to mark where the person is buried erodes away as though it it turning into ruins.



I started off by going to Highgate Cemetery where I took photos of various gravestones and dead plants surrounding it.  The weathering, eroding and aging of the gravestones were great inspiration for surface and texture.  Thick vines, roots and dead organisms cluttering up obscures the mark of the dead person as they are left unattended.



This is a primary drawing in fineliner pen of a rotting branch.  I liked the way how the branch entwines itself around each other and the frightening impact as they look like claws reaching out to grab you.  I used the cross-hatching method to make the branches more three dimensional and bold.



This is a secondary drawing also in fineliner pen of a study of a bunch of seeds or fruits.  I photocopied the drawing and coloured the copy in colours using watercolour.  The coloured drawing is more sharp and noticeable than the plain black and white drawing.



This is a planning to my final exam piece.  I divided an A4 size paper into fours and used cool colours such as purple, pink, blue and grey.  I was responding to a background on a mixed media artist, Ann Baldwin who likes to distress her surfaces when painting.  For some of the rectangles, I used acetate, fineliner pen drawing and colour pencil drawing to see what media works best on distressed surfaces.




This is a direct response to one of Ann Baldwin's works.  I used mainly cool colours with tints of warm colours.  I added acetate text to see what effect it would have on the piece itself.  I also did two fineliner pen drawings of two rotting leaves.  The leaf above the leaf at the bottom is incomplete as if I were to finish it, there would be too much commotion going on within the piece.  I left a large section of the painting black so I would have balance between light and dark colours.




These are calligraphy secondary drawings of a wilting rose, one in black and white and the other in colour.  I enjoy showing off my draftsmanship with such intricate and fine details.  These are also one of the best drawings I that I have done within this exam unit.  



This is my final piece for my exam unit.  The background is distressed and collaged just like Ann Baldwin with eroding lettering from a gravestone, an angel, a gothic archway, and a group of gravestones from Highgate cemetery and a wilted rose drooping it's head with grief and sorrow.  I also added several lines from a ballad by Emily Dickinson, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, which I wrote in calligraphy in gothic lettering.  This is one of the best pieces I have ever done in Art and was happy and content when it was completed.



YEAR 13 ART & DESIGN COURSEWORK UNIT (CURRENT)

For this year, I have decided to do something rather dark, frightening and gothic.  I chose to do broken dolls and antiquity as I like the idea of expressing abandonment, aging, horror, disfiguring, discomfort and fear.


This is a charcoal secondary drawing of a broken doll I found on a site called Pinterest.  Charcoal is also one of the medias that I work well with and I think that I have improved a bit while drawing this doll.  I enjoy playing with contrast as the blackness engulfs most of the doll's face.


This is another secondary drawing of a doll, also from Pinterest.  I collaged a background and painted it with acrylic, distressing it's surface.  That time, I had realized that I was very good at collaging.  I painted the doll's face using acrylic.  The text emerging from the collage creates an obscure feeling within the painting.


This is a photographic response to a photographer, Isadore Seltzer.  He took several pictures of dolls against black backdrops and manipulated the photos using a dark room.  I have responded to this by taking photos of dolls against a black backdrop in a dark room with a lamp shining on their faces, then photoshop manipulated them to create a spooky atmosphere.


These four photos are my top favourite out of my Isadore Seltzer response.  I really like the way I have accomplished the contrast of the doll's face being engulfed by the shadows.


This is a photographic response to another photographer, Christian Boltanski.  Using the photos I have manipulated for Isadore Seltzer, I selected sixteen photos and changed their filter to a dark sepia and deducted 10% off each photo I manipulated.


This is a direct response to a collage and mixed media artist, Sabrina Ward Harrison.  I incorporated one of my dolls into the collage, in place of the child in Sabrina Ward Harrison's original painting.  I liked the sense of abandonment and distress within the painting.



These are collages which I have done earlier within my coursework and distressed them using acrylic paint.  I made several collages in response of an Unknown artist and later added acrylic paint to make it more atmospheric and emotional.



This is one of my original drawings of a doll I selected from my Isadore Seltzer responses.  I created a collaged background and distressed it with extremely dark and gothic colours such as black, red, pink, purple and blue.  I then painted the doll's face straight on top of the collage.  This was one of the most dramatic and achieving pieces I have done within this coursework.


I decided to add skulls into my doll theme as if I were to continue doing dolls within this progressing coursework, it would eventually get boring.  I did primary drawings of a bird's skull using coloured pencils for the first one and fineliner pen for the second.  I like showing off my draftsmanship skills with these kinds of medias as they are my strongest.



I did more distressing with surfaces.  I created a coffee and white emulsion background which created a mysterious atmospheric mood.  I used HB pencils and did direct secondary drawings of skulls from photos I took, one facing sideways and the other propped up against a white backdrop.



I got interested in the idea of dollhouses on a hill, having been inspired by some of Tim Burton's gothic films such as Coraline and The Corpse Bride.  I placed a minature dollhouse on a plinth and projected dolls using a projector on screen and zooming into their faces.  This gave it a more frightening and disturbing feeling, for as you zoom in, their faces get distorted as it moves upwards and downwards like a jigsaw puzzle. 



I photoshop manipulated the photos in the style of old gothic films such as Frankenstein.  I filtered the photo to black and white and added brown tint to change the atmosphere and mood of the photo.  I then filtered the photo more by using film grain effect to make it look like an old movie.  I also made a copy and cropped out the dollhouse and the plinth, making the photo even creepier.



This is an idea to which I am starting to develop into my final piece.  I was recently intrigued by the dollhouse and how I could leave it in an abandoned or scary state.  I scanned a frame from a canvas, blanked out some squares and painted over them, distressing several with my collages and doing some writing using gothic calligraphy.  The words are quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley describing the horror and disturbing image of the monster Frankenstein.  The other boxes include doll's eyes, a mysterious box and a skull.

What I plan to do for my final coursework...

I am in the process of planning how to represent the theme of broken dolls, antiquity gothic.  So far, I am thinking of creating a plinth with collages and drawings of dolls from my coursework unit and frames filled with dollhouse and doll related items, and at the very top of the plinth, is a cut out of a dollhouse to project a silhouette...