Just Moving on

I have been working on some other things recently and will be posting these from now on as I have now completed the OCA CDA1 course - At last!  I am now just waiting to get the final report from my tutor and decide then whether or not to go for assessment. 

This is a bit of pure abstract digital art I have been having fun with.  I hope to be taking this a bit further and produce a painting or print based on this abstract image.

Modern British Sculpture Exhibition

I went to the Royal Academy yesterday to see the Modern British Sculpture Exhibition.  I had heard very varied and mostly negative comments about it from people who had been to see it and was not expecting to like it a great deal.  It goes to show you should never take any notice of anyone else's opinions and you should always go to see something and form your own. 

This was a great exhibition of sculpture from 1900 to the present day. It was very well curated; in the second room they showed ancient art in juxtaposition to contemporarty work in order to show where inspiration had come from for various pieces;.  It was in near enough chronological in order, thus emphasizing the temporal development of abstraction in sculpture.  It was not comprehensive in that there was limited space and there were mainly small works, with a few exceptions.  Some foreign artists who had spent time in Britain were shown where they were relevant to the development of British sculpture. 

I loved the more contemporary works but I couldn't really sketch them.  I would need to go back and spend more time there; I may if I can find the time before it closes on April 7th.

A great piece which I could not have sketched was Environmental Construction by Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton as exhibited in 1957.  A wonderful piece of perspex sheets coloured and clear hanging vertically and horizontally from fine steel wires.  This gives a real feeling of contained space; you just have to experience it to appreciate it fully.

Another piece I loved was "Stack" (2011) by Tony Cragg.  This was a huge cube of layers of "stuff" inculding matress, cardboard, cards of threads, old bowls and all sorts of waste and rubbish; the detritus of living sandwiched very neatly between, what appeared to be pieces of wooden pallet. It was like a piece of archaeology.

I did some very quick sketches of some pieces I particularly liked to remind me when I returned home.  I sometimes work these up from memory, by referring to these, in a larger sketchbook if I feel like it, or if they are relevant to work I am doing.

 



Assignment 5 CDA1 part 2

I have now just about finished the writing up on development of my ideas, which includes my second image of entitled Vases the first image being called Ghosts.  the first image was created from a number of scanned objects which were then manipulated and changed; whereas the second image was derived from a photograph from which I made a more abstract painting.  I developed the painting further into a more absract image and used photographs of this to create an abstract digital art image for this project.

Thi initial photograph was one of chimneypots taken in France last year.

This is the first painting made from this image but with one degree of abstraction.

The painting was inspired the Italian atist Giorgio Morandi who painted mainly still lifes in a limited pallet of indigo, yellow ochre, Naples yellow, burnt Sienna and white. 

The second painting with a second degree of abstraction with the same pallet as used above.

This is the digitized image derived from this painting and the third degree of abstraction along with the black and white image required for completion of the assignment.





The tonal contrast is evident in the greyscale version as well as the color version the difference in tone is graded from the background to the foreground giving an impression of depth.  This is aided by the framing of the objects with a darker tone on the left hand side and bottom third of the image behind the "objects".

Assignment 5 CDA1

I am just about ready to submit the fifth and final Assignment.

The brief was to create an image for a magazine using (Photoshop Elements techniques) that works in colour and black and white on the theme of Metamorphosis.  In addition to this, research into metamorphosis in historical terms was required as well ascarrying out research  into the theme in visual terms using drawings / sketches and other visual methods to develop ideas.



Ghosts - Final Version







Ghosts - Final Version B/W



I have written an essay on the history of metamorphois in art covering Cubism , Surrealism, Dada, Futurism and Bauhaus movement and placed these in a wider historical context.  I have researched the theme in visual terms giving examples of how I developed my ideas. And I have written up the way I developed my image and looked people's work who have completed the same course.