Artist of the Month: Gerhard Richter

I would be surprised if you're an art lover and haven't already heard of Gerhard Richter. He is a German artist who done just about everything from portraits to abstract paintings. He is a recognized contributor to pop art, minimalism, neo-expressionism, photo-realism, and abstraction. I love his blurred portraits. I studied these last year in my art exam because they related to my 'time' theme in the way that they portray the fading and the passing of time and snapshot moments and memories. I also saw in the paper the other day that Gerhard Richter's work last year set a new auction record for a living artist at 24 million pounds! Pretty amazing right? If you haven't seen his work, check it out!

Here's one of my favourite paintings of his. This was also the first painting I saw of his that introduced me to the rest of his work. 

Sketchbook Collages

Sorry I haven't posted in almost a month - I've been so busy with starting college and getting back into things. I have sooo much work already and have been busy with uni applications. I can tell A2 will be stresss :'(

But anywayyy, I've been obsessed with collages recently. I love the effortless look of them but I've always found it hard to make them look good. I love the layers within collages but also the way some collages can distort figures and reality. To be honest, I don't know much about artists who work with collage but I love the work by Kurt Schwitters Johanna Goodman and Charles Wilkin (not forgetting the inspirational collages I see all over Pinterest!).

I haven't done much of my own collages before but I thought I'd share some of my recent collage work from my current A2 sketchbook. The theme of my coursework this year is 'Hidden Cities' and I've been looking at all the things that make up a city but aren't the obvious tourist attractions or those things that aren't advertised in brochures such as barbed wire fenced, tower blocks, drains and scaffolding. I've also been looking at things that can be used to conceal hidden things or lead to hidden places such as ladders and windows. Another aspect of hidden cities that I've been thinking about is the way that things are always changing and being replaced in cities, with buildings replacing and hiding the remains of the old ones, hence why my last collage is comprised of layers of buildings.

The stages of life drawing with oil paints

Below I will show you the stages of life drawing with oil paints. This painting of mine was done at a London Drawing summer school. This was my first time using oil paints so I may not have used them to their full potential. I was also rushed for time and am not quite happy with how the face turned out. However, it is only meant to be a simple study.

I forgot to take a picture of the very first stage but I always start all my paintings with a pencil sketch to map out where things are and the proportions of everything. 

The next stage was covering the page in acrylic paint, using only white and blue to work out the different tones of the painting. This provides a good base layer for the oil painting, especially since acrylic paint dries quickly.

 

Then the oil paint comes in. I started to cover the painting using different dashes of colour.

 

I then kept building up the colours very close to each other but not on top of one another. This is because the oil paint then mixes together and creates a different colour completely.

I thought a lot about complementary colours while painting and the colours I used were exaggerated.For example, the blue walls complement the orange floor. The hair and face is not quite complete so I may finish it off when I get the time.

If anyone has any tips on using oil paints please feel free to comment below :) 

Street Photography Source Display at Tate Britain

I am pleased to say that a photo of mine got accepted into the Source Display at Tate Britain! The theme of the competition was street photography and so I decided to enter this photo of mine. I titled it 'Man's Best Friend'. It will be on display until the 28th September in case you want to go and have a look. I will be visiting it myself to see my photo and I'm interested to see submissions from other people :)

Man's Best Friend, Rebecca Cromwell, taken on Nikon Coolpix P500

Photographer of the month: Dennis Hopper

I'm going to start off my first photographer of the week post with Dennis Hopper, mainly known as an actor and filmmaker. I'm starting off with him because he his photos are currently on display at The Royal Academy of Arts in an exhibition titled 'The Lost Album'. All photos displayed were taken in the 1960s, showing the younger generation or reminding the older generation how much has changed. It is on until 19th October and I would strongly recommend checking it out!

Below are some of my favourite photographs from the exhibition

Photographer/artist of the month

Hello everyone,

Just a short post to say I've decided I'm going to start doing photographer/artist of the month posts which may turn into fortnightly posts. This could be someone who has inspired me, has a current exhibition on or someone I have recently discovered. I will share with you some of my favourite work of theirs.

London Life Drawing Summer School

These past 3 days I attended a life drawing summer school, run by London Drawing. I'd never done any life drawing before going to their open classes and found that they were really useful so I decided to do their summer school.

I find it much easier to draw/paint from photos than drawing from real life and doing this summer school has helped me improve massively. I've noticed that I've got better at judging proportions when drawing from real life. We experimented with different mediums and different coloured paper, experimenting with ways to use colour. Also, it was my first time working with oil paints so it was good to try something new.

Here are a few photos of my work from the 3 days. each of the pieces below were quick drawings done in 10-20 mintues.

Pastels

Chalk and charcoal 

 Using white chalk to only draw the bits in the light

Pencil drawing