Tag: Studio Work

Of the paintings I started last week, I decided to experiment with different colour combinations to see what works well. I was particularly fond of using lighter colours and trying to avoid harsh black outlines as I didn’t want to take away from the scenes of Leicester of architecture I was captivating. I took inspiration for some of the colours used from the artists I have researched over this project. I am still happy with doing a black and white piece to demonstrate how colour can have a big impact on compositions, yet I feel the black and white piece is still very effective.

To continue with this project, I am hoping to do more paintings with successful colour schemes. I am happy with the scale I am working at as A4 pieces allow me to add enough detail without it taking too much time and as I have still been working at home, I feel this is necessary with my conditions, and goes well with my initial work plan.

As well as this, I am hoping to use some of my initial paintings from the sketchbook and bring them out of the sketchbook using photocopies to join buildings together to create hybrid buildings as this could help with compositions and could take my project to another level. This experimentation may work out, it may not but at least I will demonstrate risk taking which I think is essential in projects.

These are some paintings which I have started to apply paint to. I am hoping that these paintings will be very colourful like the pieces I did last term as I need to develop my uses of colour outside of my sketchbook. I have been busy focusing on my other modules recently as I had deadlines for those but now I am finished with that, I am focusing my full attention on getting paintings done and I hope to have a full body of work by the time it comes for my painting hand in.

I began some paintings and starts of paintings with coloured pencil backgrounds to lay down pieces to work on. I photocopied sketches from my sketchbook onto thick fabriano paper and then used coloured pencils to plan out which colours of paint I was going to apply to each area. I have started to paint some of them but most of them are incomplete and so I am going to work on getting them finished. I decided to do a black and white piece as well as colourful pieces to see how this affected the compositions and to show a development of ideas. I am looking forward to seeing how my project develops in the upcoming weeks.

After the Crit I felt very happy with the work I’ve produced and the ways that people interpreted my work. I got a lot of helpful advice and areas of research to look into which I felt was missing before. I am happy to start working out of the sketchbook now and am looking forward to doing more colour explorations of architecture. I have a lot of positivity now and am looking forward to seeing how my project develops in the upcoming weeks.

It was great to be able to see what everyone else has been up to and offer them advice too. I have missed the interaction with people a lot this term.

Statement:

In my project I am focusing on architecture in Leicester and how different factors affect elements such as windows and doors including age, personal preferences, and modernity. I have been working at quite a small scale using acrylic paints on paper and cardboard. Using acrylics has been effective as they dry quickly and are easy to layer. I have combined block colours with textured brushstrokes to give a worn look to my paintings. I have experimented with the colours I have used by making use of a colour wheel and doing different versions of the same painting to see how colours affect the overall outcome. I began primary research by going into different areas of Leicester to take photographs and do quick drawings of buildings and houses. I am hoping that my work demonstrates to the viewer that Leicester has a lot of history and that things are constantly changing architecturally as new needs need to be met. I made sure to do research into the history of architecture and architecture in Leicester to explain why certain decisions were made about different architectural elements. I felt intrigued by the fact that streets in Leicester, particularly housing, were originally designed to have the same style of features yet now as I walk around Leicester this has changed for several reasons. The changes, though sometimes subtle, take away from the history of the place and make it more modern. With the compositions and angles used in some of my work, I have created a feeling of claustrophobia which I feel could relate to the lockdown and is something I am hoping to investigate further. By using drastically different colour palettes, I manage to demonstrate different times of day which is important as features such as windows will have different reflections depending upon how much light there is. In my work I enjoy using bright colours with large areas of contrast as I feel this really draws the viewer in and it includes a lot of layering which I enjoy. In this project I have learned that it is important to consider colour palettes without rushing into them as colours used can easily affect the mood of the images, creating a different effect altogether. The strengths of my work is how confident and bold I’ve been with composition and shape but to improve, I need to move away from working in the sketchbook and use grid paper to create more accurate drawings. I have found it interesting to find influences that create films involving architecture rather than art including Sean Meadows as this generated more ideas involving council estates and ways to portray architecture in my work. I am hoping to continue to develop a body of work in the upcoming weeks making improvements on the areas I am lacking in.

I had a tutorial with my tutor which opened my eyes to different areas of research I can do to develop my work. To improve the accuracy of my work, I was advised to try using square paper so that the lines of my paintings and drawings were more straight. I felt this was a good idea and have ordered some. I am happy that the tutorial gave me a lot of ideas to go on and am looking forward to seeing how my project develops further.

During enhancement week, I continued to develop my primary research by foing nore drawings of buildings in Leicester and applying colour and texture in experimental ways. I enjoyed the paintings where I layered colours and was quite free with my brushstrokes as this created a very sketchy look which worked well with the blocks of colour used.

This is an interesting composition of housing I found in my backgarden which includes a small portion of my house on the right and the views of my neighbours houses in the rest of the view. I like the ways the colours used work together. I would have liked to use more interesting colour schemes but I wanted to build up a good amount of realistic paintings (in terms of colour) to show how I developed my work and the thought processes behind it.

These pages in my sketchbook demonstrate two different streets, the bottom one being Brazil Street. Again I like the simplicity of these paintings and how the colours of the brick backgrounds are quite muted. I feel that the pure black windows add a creepy vibe to my work and a nice contrast with the other areas.

In these paintings I was focusing on the different styles of windows but I also like capturing the chimney silhouette in the sky. I feel that I need to work more on the sky element in the right painting to build up interesting layers as the sky isn’t just a bold colour.

These paintings aren’t yet finished but I am enjoying the simplicity of these paintings yet they still manage to capture the brushstrokes which I like. I am excited to see the final outcome of these paintings.

I feel that these paintings are really effective due to the layering and obvious brushstrokes which give them quite an old, worn appearance. I love the sketchiness of them and how they have developed from the previous block colour paintings.

In this painting, I decided to use pinks for the colour scheme to try and give my paintings the same effect that they had last term. I like the fact that I have combined the block colour look with the sketchy obvious brushstrokes as this created a nice contrast.

In this painting, I used a blue colour palette and again combined the block colour effect with sketchy brushstroke areas as I feel it works well. I love how the different tones of blue work together.

Here are some more window explorations I have started to do in which I am trying to use more experimental colour schemes. I am looking forward to seeing how these come together.

I decided to do some small scale paintings on cardboard of the windows I sketched last week to make the differences more noticeable. I found this to be an easy process but I needed to apply several layers of paint to make them opaque enough.

During week 2 of my primary research, I walked up to the Leicester City ground and went down different streets capturing the differences of windows, some due to natural wear and others due to people’s specific preferences after they bought their houses. I did these quite simplistic and made a note of the colours so I could add paint to some of the drawings later. I also painted on the drawings from last week, both the photocopy of the detailed drawings and the more simplistic versions I left in my sketchbook.

I like both versions of these paintings for different reasons. I feel that the brickwork elements are a key factor in the historical aspects of Leicester architecture but I do see how the use of brickwork in this manner can be too overwhelming. I need to add more layers onto the first simplistic version but I like where it’s headed.

Sketchbook work:

I started to do some sketches of architecture in Leicester beginning with the view from my bedroom as that gave some interesting angles and compositions which I liked. I like the idea of capturing different segments of buildings in areas rather than just one building as this could show how old architecture has collided with new architecture.

This is the first drawing I did capturing my next door neighbours house. I added a lot of detailed brick work which took a while but I feel it really paid off. I believe this piece will look great when I add some colour and I’d like to explore different ways of portraying brickwork as there could be simplistic ways that are still very effective.

This is another sketch of the view from my bedroom window from another angle so that I captured a view of the house I live in as well as houses in the background. I like the zoomed in area of the house as this could allow me to add a lot of detail when it comes to adding paints.

I would like to continue sketching views from my bedroom window as well as physically going to the different areas of Leicester and capturing different architecture. This will be easy since I have lived in Leicester my whole life and am very used to the area.

Tutorial:

I had a tutorial with my tutors which allowed me to see that I was producing drawings that weren’t fully representing my full potential. It was made clear that the addition of detailed brickwork in the above drawings were ‘interesting motifs’ but took away from the drawing and the place as one of my tutors said I was drawing what I thought I saw rather than what I was actually seeing. I also realised that I need to start motivating myself to produce more work at a higher quality to allow myself to gain the best result at the end of this project.

After my tutorial, I went back to the drawings I had done and photocopied them so that I could explore the brickwork separately. I then erased the brickwork from the sketchbook drawings to leave a simplified drawing that I am planning on adding colour to next week. I feel that doing the simplified paintings in the sketchbook as well as working on the more detailed photocopies will allow me to see which is more effective and how I could proceed, possibly by combining elements of the two?

These were the simplified drawings which I am going to continue to work on. I am also going to work on the photocopies and do more drawings of Leicester from real life. I intend on creating some paintings in the upcoming weeks exploring how different places in Leicester have different features such as windows and doorways, even the quality of the bricks and how these differences can be quite subtle yet still make a big comparison.