Links with my art and textiles

On 18th July 2010 my school hosted an A-Level Technology exhibition. We each got a space we could decorate to showcase our designs. The images of my presentation are shown below:

My playsuit (shown on the left of the display) is inspired by a New-romantic theme. The playsuit (on the right of the display) is inspired by a Grunge theme. On the back I have photocopies pages prom my textiles portfolio and on the table is my actual portfolio for people to look through.
I used small features such as the washing line with my name hanging on labels and a Vinyl with my name written on it to give that extra interest and quirky feel. I also did things like putting in the pink hand, adding jewelry and other garments in to style the garments. For the playsuit I brought in some Dr Martins to style the grunge theme.  I wanted the viewer to want to look at my display and see a connection with it.

My textiles has a definite link with my art work. To help myself i tend to use similar topics for both at the same time so all of my mind can go towards one large theme with extensions rather than two very different smaller topics. This also makes finding resources easier.
The link this year was through the music themes for both my textiles projects and my Art exam theme. The links were good for my to have as I had more practice applying the feel of music through the element of art, be it fine art or by design.
I know that both subjects help each other with drawing ability and overall creative skill. We learn techniques in each subject that can be applied to the other. An example of this is through life drawings in art. (These images are not put on my blog currently) It is a helpful skill to learn the shapes of the body when designing garments. It helps me to understand the form of the human body so my designs can be drawn faster and with a higher level of quality without the use of a template.

The images of my Art exhibition are shown below:

Exam: Rhythms and Cycles'

Exam: Rhythms and Cycles'

Rhythms and cycles was an interesting subject topic to me. I have always been fascinated with the renewal of old to new with fashion and trends. I also like the thought of life cycles and aging whilst showing it in a metaphor. I began to think about this deeper and came to the following ideas:
-Life from birth to death shown as seasons
-Music cycles and rhythms of music
-recycling/reusing
I decided to join two of these ideas together; Music and reusing.
My initial ideas on this project are shown below:

Looking at art History to develop my ideas

We Love 77 gallery by Sardine & Tobleroni

This is actually this first thing that inspired me to use music as a theme in my project, I found it when browsing the Dazed and Confused magazine website.The gallery contains mixed media images of how different artists thought a band meant to them through image. This was interesting to me as I wanted to get ideas of how people showed noise through imagery. some of the pieces really do this for me.
of the 77 paintings I chose to copy Siouxsie & the Banshees because I love the image. other inspiring images from the gallery are shown below:


Although the images look armature with little skill to the painting I like them. I think the roughness is one thing which makes them so good.

Oxtoby

This piece is an art copy from Oxtoby. Oxtoby is one of my favourite artists and as he based the majority of his famous work on music, I decided he was a logical choice. My favourite qualities of this piece are the mixed media and the energy of the man and how clear he is portrayed as ecstatic.The mixed media was interesting to me as I like the depth the hidden images give along with the aged and rustic effect it gives. this helped me decide to develop my mixed media use.


Here is another art copy from oxtoby in pencil. I like the contrasting lighting and the mass of hair. I have also decided that the slightly distant look also portrays a rock star image and I will remember this when taking my pictures. The scale of the hair and the face shows how big the rock stars ego is. He is absorbing the whole page just like how pop culture can absorb the lives of people.



I then wanted to develop my own art into the style of Oxtoby so I took a photo of my friend in a similar pose to the image above. this is shown to the left.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to update the mixed image effect to computerised art so I scanned collected items including tickets, magazine images etc.I then super imposed the image on top of a scan using Paint shop Pro 9 this image is shown on the right. It reflects my own interpretation of Oxtoby's art.



Album covers

I began looking at album covers in a book called 101 greatest album covers. I picked out my favourites including Nirvana, The prodigy, The clash and Happy Mondays (all albums are shown below). I used Bummed as shown on the left. This is where I first began experimenting with materials and mixed media. I focused here on letting the cluttered background show through the image but not distract you from the main focus which is the face. I also used Nirvanas iconic image on cardboard and with a rough painting effect to portray a loose feel. Working on the card board meant I was less precious about my art and although the final piece below looks contained I was quite lenient with my painting. This was good practice.

Banksy
Another artist I chose to look at is Banksy. This is mainly due to the pop and political culture he represents in his art which links well with music as many musicians try to represent the same thing. In my mixed media experiment I am saying 'music is freedom'. In my opinion this is what Banksy is trying to show. I like the depth of the mixed media and the use of images to show music.





Henri Matisse

I wanted to look at a certain style of artist I knew was known for showing emotions through colour so I looked at fauvism. I chose the famous portrait by Henri Matisse and copied this. After I wanted to develop my art work into the style of Mattise so I copied one of my photos (shown below) carefully focusing on using the techniques Mattise used. For example using brash colours, thick brush strokes and messy detailing all to show an emotion. The pictures of this process are shown below.

Taking and working with my photos

At this point I was planning to show the effect of a timeline of music showing how the cycles of music genres and tasted developed over time. As most genres are represented with music icons I knew that taking my own pictures would be difficult. I decided to stage certain genres of music. a few selected pictures are shown below but loads are shown on my prep sheet.

I staged 3 genres of music. Disco, Grunge and glam rock by dressing myself up and putting the camera on self times. this was a very time consuming method but worked as I had a clear image of the shape I wanted.



After slight image editing with colours, contrast and brightness I was quite happy with my outcomes. Below are some copies of these photos done in different ways to suite the image shown.


The picture to the right is done on a floor covering. I used it because the theme of the image is grunge. This meant I wanted to use a dull and textured rough material to paint on. I made the painting rough as well with little detail to experiment with artistic styles.














The images above are copies from my 80's glam rock period. I wanted to focus especially on the colours and textures so used lumpy dry paint on the white areas.


However, the huge consumption of time taken to get these pictures had made me think twice about having a timeline of music genres which (in my imagination) contained 7 or 8 different genres. On this though I decided to scrap the timeline idea and just focus on one period of time which is quite vague.
This led to me taking photos of my friends band 28 playing live. My main aims of the photos were to show the sound through the image so I let some blur on a slow exposure with a fiery red. I was also interested in getting a large colour It also adds to the confusion of music today and the vibrant expression music can have on you.
A few selected photos are shown below but the rest are shown on my prep sheet.

The pictures below show my artistic copies from band images. I especially liked experimenting with media to give interest and show the feeling the image represents stronger. For this picture I pasted band and music gig advertisements to some paper and copied my picture of my friend on the drums. I was planning to leave some of the adverts visible behind but during the process I decided it looked wrong to do this with the oil pastels. As this is a possible effect of my final piece I will not be using oil pastels.

The piece on the right was made by combining different images of the band. I wanted it to look confusing so merged them in impossible ways and added more cymbals to it accentuating the vertical lines. This is a possible technique on my final piece.


For this image I pasted a board with some images from the NME. I then painted on 2 of my own photos using acrylic paint. I used bright colours to make it bold and bright to give and impression of the music style. I then added splashes and blown paint to the piece to show more energy.

For My ICT work I collected together materials such as gig tickets, festival wristbands, music badges, music posters and advertisements as well as some of my own photos and one of my drawings. I then used a photocopier to make the images. Shown to the right are a couple of examples.

After this is made some ICT images using my photos and some other images found on the internet. These are shown below. I Made them by merging two pictures together then altering the colours so they worked well together.

The Exam

I found an old table top to do my exam on which I liked because it had a strong structure and a build in border. This was especially good for my mixed media piece.
The image shows me preparing my board before the exam. I planned to cover it in images of bands and music advertisements from magazines and flyers and to have these images slightly visible behind my painting on top.After looking at my prep however, I decided to make the pictures less brash and obvious so lightened them with white spray paint. The next image is of my exam after the first day of work. My alterations on my original ideas have meant that more of the background images are hidden. I decided on this to make sure that the pictures were big enough to have a large impact on the veiwer.

On the second day I continued to work into my final painting. I also began to paint on my vinyls and CD's. The image of a few of these is shown below.
After paintig the vinyls I screwed them onto the border of my art work and added more CD's and tapes. It does look busy and confusing however this is how music can be so why not make my art look the same? I then continued some shapes and lines from my painting onto the vinyls to make them work better together. The Final piece is shown below.

More art is shown on my prep sheet and as seperate larger pieces. These include more art history copies and extensions, scale drawings, my photo copies and ICT. Overall I am very happy with my outcome. It shows alot of what I wanted it to. Further improvements if I was to do it again would be to make it bigger and have more background images showing through. Overall though my artwork shows energy. I also think it shows the sound through the images which was my original desire. One thing which needs doing to this image but was not due to storage was putting the vinyls on the right hand side of the piece. This just finishes it off.

My favourite parts of my final outcome are the vibrancy of the colours, the mixed media use with the vinyls, tapes and the CD's and the all round composition with the balance of a small object then a big one repeated. I think this works well as it draws the eye across the page which goes back to my idea of a timeline of events. It would have been nice to develop this timeline further with clear diferentiation between dates however with the limited time this was not possible for me to achieve.

Off With Your Head!

I wanted to develop my idea of Alice in Wonderland as a theme. I wanted to look further into the distortion side of the story. My initial idea of this was to distort faces through glasses and bottles. This relates to Alice in Wonderland as the little drink me bottle which alters the size of Alice.

I began by using the image I already had shown on the left. I used drew over a copy of it with a board coated in oil paint. It acted like carbon paper but the opposite way around. I tried 2 different methods of application and these are shown on the left. I also drew it in pencil with Drink me written on the side.

I also thought that flowers could be a good direction to go in as they are often used to represent age and growth just like Alice growing from a child to an adult in the book and film. I took some photos and did a skill painting which is shown on the right:

I then looked at a bottle of Gordons Gin and attempted to distort it myself. I did the same for a face. the images are shown to the left.




I took more photos of my sister. These were portrait shots of her with a surprised expression. I altered the pictures in different ways some examples of this are shown on the right. I then copied this image in pencil which is shown on the right.


After this is look more photos of bottles and jugs of coloured water an image of this is shown on the left. I tried to make the eye show through the jug however this did not work very well so I decided to take more photos of my sister with the bottles. I then merged the images of the distorted faces with the bottles. a couple of examples of this are shown below:

I like these however I am not sure that it is a strong enough message and it a bit one dimensional for the things I enjoy doing. This was also as I found it really difficult to take the pictures of the distortion through the glass and the warped images were not good enough to base a whole project on. This is when I began looking at reflections however the same problems occurred with not being able to get a good image. One reflection in a spoon with a rough painting is shown on the right:

Eventually I decided to scrap the idea of distortion through glasses. I dressed myself up with an Alice in wonderland themed costume. It related to the mad hatter and the queen of hearts. I then took photos of myself on self-timer. The main expressions and feelings I wanted to get across was insanity, fear and relinquish. A few selected images are shown below:

I was very pleased with my photos and finally had a good idea of what the final piece was going to look like. I needed to experiment with the material and the media to use. I experimented with oil pastel shown on the right. And, I experimented with paint on canvas this is shown on the right. I decided that I prefer the acrylic paint on the canvas as it looked rougher. I really liked the messy painting like tick costume make-up wearing away at the edges. I also prefer the texture.

After deciding on the material, I could begin on my final piece of artwork. An image of this is shown below:

I am incredibly happy with the outcome of this picture as I especially tried to make the painting as accurate and realistic as possible. This was to give the haunting creepy feel to the viewer stronger. The head is just larger than life so has a big impact and your eyes are immediately drawn to the insane evil glare of the queen of hearts. I also like the rough painting towards the edges. this thick gloop is like the mask of make-up worn as a disguise by people every day. She is hiding behind this thick mask too afraid to show the true person.
Make-up wearing away at the edges resembling the deterioration of her mental health. Too much pressure for perfection has driven her to insanity.

I also really liked the repetition of these images when I laid them together as it almost shows the progression of her loosing her mind. I also feel when I look at the images to the right, that she is coming to get me and I find with quite scary and intimidating.

The impact of the repetition led to me making the picture on the right. I made one red to be unpredictable. It is the colour of the queen of hearts and gives something for the eye to be drawn to. This is the rogue one; the dangerous one. As i feel the images are directive to the audience I wrote 'eeny meeny miny mo' underneath. I feel this is disturbing to the viewer as they may be chosen. It also relates to childrens dressing up games and how when some people go crazy they go back to their happier child hood memories. I also find things to do with creepy children quite scary. This related back to the children doing things they shouldn't aspect of Alice in Wonderland.

Other things I did for this project include looking at a piece of art history. This is photocopied from a book and the artist is unknown however I feel is shows the same feeling I was trying to get across. I also like the messy brushstrokes and bright colours coming out of the darkness. It has an innocent but sinister look about it, similar to my painting.

Another thing I did was experiment with materials. I used a photo of an African tribesman with a tattooed face. I drew this in negative with a white oil pastel and black block paint. I then have the tattooed face eyes, lips and hair. these images are from superficial magazines and show the conformity's of that life. Everything is fake and the truth is all hidden. This is how you should be and nothing else is right.
I also feel that this image shows a similarity between the tribes with tattoos and the airbrushed models even though at first it would seem they were opposites. They are both wearing a mask to show something. In both cases it hides the true person and gives an impression to the person seeing them. They also relate to the cultures of both these people. Although very different the lives of both revolve around image.

Overall I am very happy with the outcome. After starting on the wrong path I developed it into a really good theme which I feel portrays a strong but almost hidden meaning which can be interpreted in a few different ways depending on the person. Some may see it as a craze for power and some as a phsyco killer following the theme of the Joker from Batman. Either way I am very happy with the outcome and love the impression it give to people.