Experimenting

 As part of my photography project, we have to make greetings cards using only natural materials. Our tutor told us we could make our own natural glitter using pure maple syrup and water. I gathered some leaves from college earlier, collecting the most vibrant yellow ones I could find, and after cleaning them up a little, I've sprayed them with the mixture. I'll be leaving them over night and see how they go work out tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Life Drawing

Quick drawing with pencil of top of the skeletons torso. 10 minute drawing. Not as pleased with this as others, I think I've made it more illustrative than life drawing. It looks more like a cartoon. With more time I could define the shadowing and close in on smaller details.

Life Drawing

An Ox's heart, drawn with charcoal. Not as detailed as I'd hoped it would be, as it was a warm day and the smell of the heart was getting too much so had to be done as soon as the class could draw it.

Life Drawing

Part of the pelvic and femur bone. Drawn with charcoal, primary research from a skeleton based on the works of Da Vinci. I was very pleased with this, as charcoal is one of my stronger techniques when drawing with light and dark. 

Life Drawing

Charcoal drawing of a pigs spleen. This is one of my most detailed drawings as you can see texture in the bone and bone marrow. What I should have done to define it further was to tidy up around the edge of the drawing.

Abstract Photography - Favourite Image

This is my favourite image of all my film. I rushed to do it as I was working through lunch (I'd much prefer to have a 3 hour photography session than 2 hours as I feel we don't have enough time), and did not set the exposure long enough. I have every intention of developing an improvement of this photo, and to develop more from this particular film.
 For this particular image, I gathered as many fallen apples as I could find. When I had a few dozen, I selected one that had barely any damage, one with a little bruising, one with a little decomposition, and one that had nearly decomposed completely. I set them in a row and awaited the sun to set just enough to allow the shadowing in the decomposing apples to show depth in the apples.

Abstract Photography - Final Print Improved

I set my final print for a longer exposure, and I'm a lot happier with the outcome. Just to clarify, I blurred the focus on a muddy puddle, and I feel it is one of the most abstract things I've done through this project.

Abstract Photography - Final Print

I'm not happy with how my final print turned out. When thinking about the exposure time, I feel it should have been longer. To make certain I have the detail I want, I will also give more contrast. Putting the contrast up should improve the light and dark areas without effecting each other.

Photography - Final Print Tests

The same thing happened here as the contact sheet tests. I must remember to open the aperture before exposing. The lines where the second image gradually gets lighter shows the estimated exposure time. The darkest is at 20 seconds, counting down in 2 second bursts to 4 seconds being the lightest.

Contact Sheet Tests

 

These were the two tests I had done before my final contact sheet. The first contact sheet test was much too dark. I set my aperture on the exposure unit to 5.6, and the second time round it was successful. The exposure times ranged between 4 and 16 seconds, 2 seconds added per interval. I chose the time that looked right, being 8 seconds, and exposed my final contact sheet at 8 seconds.

Abstract Photography - Contact Sheet

The most successful of my films for Photography. Each image represents abstract whether it is a pattern, shape, use of tone or shadowing. Every image was closely thought about before taking, and there are some that are better than others. I've developed of a few of the images I thought to be best, and will post/write about them in the upcoming months when I have completed my photography brief.

Unmatching Jigsaw

These are the small squared I used in my last post to create the open spaces. I felt that together they created an intricate image. This has given me ideas to create more just like this using different colour palettes. 

Reply to Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm

Here I used the same colour palette that Jackson Pollock used in Autumn Rhythm. The spaces of no lines are where I placed small squares of paper. I will combine the smaller pieces together to create a small image, and then convert it to a larger painting.

Soft Pastel Spherical Shapes

A repeat of my last two posts, only these were done with soft pastels on an A3 scale. I would be pleased with this if I had managed to keep my paper clean. I feel the patches of unwanted colours at the bottom of the drawing ruin the whole thing. 

Monochrome Spherical Shapes

Using the same technique as my last post, I changed my material. Instead of using water colour paints, I used charcoal. This gave the image a monochrome effect. This worked better in comparison to my other spherical shapes. I was disappointed that colours from the opposite page had rubbed off on to this drawing. 

Painted Spherical Shapes

More from my Abstraction project. I aimed to create coloured bubbles, but found that making 3D effects of sphere's worked better.

Abstracted Hand 3D

I saw something similar to this on the internet and decided to make my own. I lightly drew around my hand with a pencil, then using a ruler and a fine liner, I drew multiple lines. I arched the lines as the made contact with the outline. The result was this 3D effect of my hand.

Abstract Plate

For this my idea came from a mounted square plate on my wall. I used the same technique from my Floral Abstraction piece, and I used the shadowing on the background instead of the plate.

Floral Abstraction

This is an A5 drawing from my Abstraction sketchbook. I focused on the middle of a Begonia and created a shaded effect using pointillism. The Begonia's I studied were red, so I used the colour palette in the background to give the drawing more volume.

2D Sculpture (2)

Another sculpture from the Barbara Hepworth Gallery, only this time I used the mosaic effect in Photoshop.

Rose Pattern

I drew around an image of a rose in Photoshop, just keeping to an outline. I then copied and repeated that rose to make this pattern.

Digitally Drawn Peach Rose

I coloured this in Photoshop with a basic paintbrush. I had drawn on a new layer over an image I uploaded, and after finishing I deleted the background, leaving only the painted image. 

2D Sculpture

A sculpture from the Barbara Hepworth Gallery in Yorkshire, outlined with basic paintbrush and background patterned with a simple photoshop background.

Abstracted Ballet Shoes

For this I was simply playing around with photoshop. It started as an image of ballet shoes, but I had removed the background and edited the hue. Using a smudge tool, I pulled at the edges. I was left with this abstracted image of ballet shoes.

Critique on Sophie Ryder's Sitting

                                         

Sophie Ryder
Sitting
2007

              

My attention was drawn to Sophie Ryder’s sculpture, Sitting. What had caught my eye was the detail in the muscle form of the back. I was fascinated with the figurative shape the artist had achieved considering the large size. Although I could not find exact dimensions of it, I would guess it to be around 15ft high. After working with wire myself during 3D classes, I feel I appreciate the sculpture more as I understand the difficulty of wire work. It is by far the most impressive sculpture I have seen in person because of this.
               I found it to be very similar to Sophie Ryder’s Crawling, a bronze sculpture created in 1999. The main difference being that this particular art work was sculpted to look as though it was made from machinery, almost robotic.
               The body of the sculpture was fully covered in these machinesque parts. As impressive as Crawling is, I find the anatomy of Sitting to be more accurate. The curvature of what represents bone and muscle structure certainly assumes the role of a human body.
   I sculpt characters and beings – the dogs, the hares, the Minotaur’s – are all characters beyond animal form. I am not interested in making a replica. If you would put a real hare next to one of mine you would see great differences  – Sophie Ryder, www.sophieryder.net/

  The only thing I disliked about Sitting was that it was split in two. I suppose most people find that to be the alluring thing about it, but personally I feel it down grades the beauty of the sculpture. When viewing from the side, I feel it pulls the attention away from the detail of the form.

Sophie Ryder’s most famous art works are that of the lady-hare. She began the Lady-hare when looking for a partner for the Minotaur’s she would sculpt. She wanted to use the body of a female, and when choosing what head would suit best she decided the hare was most fitting. The bodies of these hare’s were based on the body of Sophie Ryder herself, so it could be argued that the lady-hare is partly a self-portrait. The more developed the sculptures became, the more the artist made the head appear to be a mask, so that it was more clear the body was that of a human underneath.
   I will consider Sophie Ryder’s sculptures for influence in my own abstraction work. I may reverse the role and use a human head with an animals body. I will try to focus my attention to the anatomy of the body as closely as possible in the style of Sophie Ryder. 

Slab Building

A tester from Ceramics using the slab building process. It is linked to my Abstraction Project, hence the use of shapes. After it has been fired I will stick to a colour theme of blues when glazing. More information to come when I have finished the piece.

Life

A poor fly awaits its fate as a spider lowers itself towards it. I took this shortly after I had my new DSLR as a test of how detailed its zoom could be. It took a few shots to get the image perfect. I knew I wanted the spider to be just close enough to the fly to give a feeling of solicitude. I feel what really sells this image is the that the two life forms appear as silhouettes apart from the small amount of transparency through the flies wings and the spiders legs. I named the image Life as it is the perfect example; You don't always win, you don't always lose.

Shadowed

Personal photography from the nature reserve I live by. An image I favour taking is views where the sun is behind the object/area of interest. When taking images, most books or tips advise you to have the sun behind you at all times. I personally prefer the sun to be in view of a photo.

Peach Rose

Personal photography. I edited this image in photoshop so that the attention would be completely drawn to the strong colour of the rose. This is my favourite effect when using photoshop.

Station Twilight

Cardiff Station, late evening. There was no editing in this image. The sun setting left a pink tone, and the glare through the camera lens enhanced it. I feel the composition worked well to my advantage. The small handful of people, waiting and reading, I find it makes the viewer feel peaceful and relaxed. The only thing that ruins it for me us the lights in the shelter. I think without those, the image would be perfect.

A Day in Venice

A bright day in Venice, photographed from water taxi. I enhanced the blue in this image in photoshop. I feel the bright colour brings it to life. My favourite thing about this image is the small border of Venice. 

If You Need It

Love; take it if you need it. Venice, Italy. For this image I increased the contrast but lowered the vibrancy a touch. I wanted the bricks to be just as part of the picture as the note, so instead of making it black and white like I had originally planned, I raised the vibrancy and lowered the contrast. This gives the bricks a hint of colour and a soft tone.

Venetian Sun Set

Sun set in Venice, photographed from water taxi. This image was very difficult to capture, and I had managed to take it just in time. I think the whole image gives a peaceful atmosphere, which is very deceiving, as when I took the photo I was far from peaceful. The thunder from the water taxi's engine was loud enough to block out thought, and the temperature felt below freezing. A deceitful image that seems serene, that was taken in a form of chaos.

Chocolate in Chocolate

Smarties emptied in to an Italian hot chocolate. I did the same thing with this image I had done in the previous post. I was much happier with this outcome as opposed to the Venetian Mask, in this image, to me it feels as though you can reach in and grab the beverage. 

Venetian Mask

 Venetian Mask purchased from Venice, Italy. I wanted focus to be set on my eyes, but instead of enhancing the colour, I copied the image in to a layer on top of the original. I set the new layer to black and white, and then I used the rubber tool to erase around the eyes. This revealed the coloured image underneath, leaving the final outcome above.