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

The National Open Art Competition

I recently entered the National Open Art Competition, a competition open to anyone over 15. I entered this piece above, which was my AS Art mock exam piece. I thought it was a good opportunity as there's barely any competitions that give equal chance to both professional and amateur artists. If your work is selected, it goes in the exhibition at Sommerset House. I was over the moon to find out my piece got shortlisted - it got to the last stage of judging, being in the top 500 out of 3000 works. Sadly it didn't get through to the exhibition but it will be shown online on their website so keep a lookout.

Do degrees matter in creative industries?

I saw this post 'Do degrees matter in creative industries?' on i-D's website and it really got me thinking.

I don't know whether I want to do a creative or academic degree yet, especially since my A level subjects are so different but it does make me question whether a creative degree at uni is what everyone makes it out to be. Especially when there's no guaranteed job at the end of it. Many art graduates find themselves having to get a job in retail or something for years just so they can fund their passion. This leaves them less time to work on their dream job. The same goes for dance, another passion of mine. Quite depressing really.

But at the same time, uni's about so much more - meeting new people, interacting with others and forming connections. Being in a creative environment helps with your own artistic process and getting inspiration. It's also about the whole uni experience.

I guess it depends on a lot of other factors apart from the money side of things, including what type of person you are.

The importance of colour in art

Realising how to use colour in your art and what colours to place next to each other can have a massive impact on your outcomes.

This perception video is really interesting if you have the time to watch.

The lighter check is surrounded by darker checks, giving the appearance that it is lighter than it is while the dark check is surrounded by lighter checks, making it look even darker.

This same idea can be applied to your artwork. An example similar to this is complementary colours. Artists have been experimenting with complementary colours for years. It was present around the movement of Pointillism (paintings made up of many small dots or strokes of paint). Pointillism came about in the late 19th century. It is based around colour theories; complementary colours in particular, and how colours are used next to each other to enhance the painting.

Complementary colours are those opposite each other on the colour wheel.

 If you look at the painting below by Georges Seurat, one of the French painters who inspired the pointillist movement, you will see that the dashes of orange are placed next to blue, red is placed next to green and so on. This makes the painting come much more alive.

AS Level Art Exam and Tips for Other A Level and GCSE Art Students

The title for my AS Art exam was 'Numbers' and you can probably see that my work below doesn't look like it directly relates to Numbers, but being me, I like to go off topic and *cue cliche quote* 'think outside the box'. (Tip: don't worry too much about the title, it's just a starting point).

My thought process:
I initially made a mind map, spreading across a double page in an A3 sketchbook. (Tip: don't just stop at the first branch, push yourself to think of ideas coming off that branch and keep going. And literally write anything that comes to mind). I then used Numbers as a link to the theme of time. I based my project around the idea of time passing, things changing with time and capturing movement or moments in time. My main inspirations throughout this project were artists Gerhard Richter and Jonathan Darby, and photographer Arnau Oriol.

I have posted pictures of some of the pages in my sketchbook below along with some of my mounts. As you can tell, portraiture is my favourite subject to paint/ draw.

 

left - acrylic, right - acrylic and biro

left - acrylic and biro, right - acrylic

 

left - biro and acrylic, right - acrylic

 

acrylic and biro on newspaper

left - graphite on newspaper, right - acrylic and newspaper

charcoal, newspaper, paper and corrugated paper

acrylic on newspaper

left - charcoal on newspaper, right - acrylic

left - acrylic on newspaper, right - acrylic

acrylic - based on Arnau Oriol's photography

Final Piece - acrylic on canvas

More tips:

• Start straight away. A lot of the time it's hard to know where to start or it's hard to come up with good ideas and so you find yourself not doing any work  and then rushing to fit everything in at the last minute.  This is one of the worst mistakes you can make because art coursework takes up sooo much time (even though a lot of non-artists think art is an 'easy' subject). Even if you don't know where your project is leading to, don't waste time doing nothing - try to get some initial sketches in your sketchbook and start with some artist research to spark ideas. 
• Once you've researched different artists, take elements from their work and incorporate them into your own pieces. For example, take inspiration from the colour scheme of one artist, the brush stroke style or technique from another and the imagery from another to create something original. 
• I am a perfectionist which can sometimes prevent me from finishing work within a time limit or make me spend unnecessary hours on the smaller, less important things. I also hate being rushed when doing art but it's something I need to improve on. If this also applies to you, it can be helpful to practice 5 minute drawing exercises to get you used to working at a quicker speed.

Degree Shows

I thought I would share with you some pictures from recent summer degree shows I have been to. My favourites were definitely Manchester School of Art and Central Saint Martins.

Central Saint Martins - 'Degree Show One' - undergraduate and postgraduate

At CSM I thought the paintings by Andy Flett and the charcoal drawings by Emma Vidal were amazing - these are skills that, in my opinion, are not seen as often anymore and were lacking from most degree shows. As much as I love a variety of different art forms and styles, I find it slightly sad how everything these days seems to be all about conceptual art.

 I don't know what it is about portraiture or why I like it so much, perhaps because I can connect with it and can identify with the facial expressions. I find humans and their stories much more interesting, particularly in photography.

Andy Flett

Emma Vidal

Jing X Hu

Manchester School of Art - undergraduate and foundation

At Manchester School of Art, I loved the Graphic Design. I was never that interested in Graphic Design until quite recently and Manchester School of Art has definitely reinforced that. It has also made me consider studying it. I am also very interested in advertising and think this links in quite well.

 Anna Michelle Lear

Camberwell College of Arts - undergraduate

Slade School of Fine Art - BA/BFA

Manchester University - Architecture

These models were my favourite design from the whole exhibition. I just think it's such a unique and interesting idea - I love it.

Linxin Li

Leeds College of Art - undergraduate and foundation

Examples of portfolio work

Goldsmiths - Postgraduate

At Goldsmiths I ended up taking more pictures of the building than the actual work (oops) but I found it fascinating as the building used to be a swimming pool! I later found out that this was called the 'Laurie Grove Baths'. The rooms were labelled 'small pool' and 'large pool' and the students stored work behind little rectangular doors which would have been the changing room cubicles.

Nicholas Cheveldave

Nicholas Cheveldave

 

                Megan Broadmeadow - Pleasure Prison         Sculpture on the roof of Goldsmiths