Fine Art Foundation Degree

SUPERSTITIONS I wanted to explore superstitions as part of my project because they can be a comfort for people after the passing of someone. I spoke about some examples on the memories & comforts page.  Sometimes it can be seen as a symbol rather than a superstition; ravens for example are a symbol of death & misfortune. This is due to their dark appearance, croaking call & their diet of carrion. In stories they act as phychoprompts, connecting the material world with the spirit world. If a Raven visits you, some people believe it means you are in need of some kind of guidance. It depends on which way you choose to look at things, a lot like people saying a black cat crossing the road is good luck/bad luck. For this first piece I used a reference photo I found off Pinterest & sketched it out then places a circle round it to give a background. I wanted to use charcoal to start with to create a more expressive piece & to help show movement & flow as it’s easy ...

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.  PRIMARY IMAGES For this project I needed to gather imagery as a primary source of things that are important to me & things I correlate to people I've lost. These were all things I found at my grandparents house that have been there since I was little & have memories attached to them. My grandma collects teddy bears, she keeps the tags on them & places them on display all around the house & most of them were brought by my grandad for anniversaries & birthdays as they're something she loves. The grandfather clock is a sentimental item that's been passed down in the family & was a comfort when I slept over as its ticking would send me to sleep. Flowers are related as that side of my family own a gardening & design business which was started by my grandad.  PLANNING PAGE: This is a page on all the ideas I had of pieces I could produce including smaller details like the colour, possible style choice & layout as a whole. Th...

 EXPERIMENTING To begin my personal project, I created two rough charcoal pieces with the intention of showing emotion attached to loss through body posture & facial expression. I chose charcoal as its an expressive media & is good for sketching as its easy to change & adapt when mistakes are made. It keeps the drawing loose rather than uniformed & precise which is good when presenting strong emotion like in these pieces.  The first piece is of a woman on the floor cross legged, looking as though she's holding herself together amidst a breakdown as my focus at this point was the feelings experienced after losing someone. The awkwardly scrunched over position gives a cramped & uncomfortable & isolated feel to the piece.   When doing charcoal I like using straight lines to further express the emotion I want to portray in the piece. It also makes the piece look less uniformed but mixes well with the curved lines that form the body. The background cont...

 WHAT BRINGS US CLOSER When we loose someone, we often hold onto specific personal items that belonged to the one who passed away as it makes us feel their presence & brings us comfort. Sometimes we even hoard these objects because its all we have left of those we've lost, or because we want to pass things down to the next generation, or maybe because it's too emotionally painful to go through what's left. These objects hold great importance once someone passes.  My mum used to go through boxes of photos, letters, jewellery & small objects with me when I was younger because she wanted to tell me stories of people in my family that I never got the chance to meet. This was a comfort to her, & interesting to me & it's something I would definitely do in the future with my children. When you're young & look at pictures you can create false memories purely from a picture & sometimes never find out if it was real or not. I used to do this a lot with...

INITIAL IDEAS For this project, we are able to choose our own topic. My typical artworks are tattoo style & dark imagery, however throughout this course I've explored many different things I haven't tried before or swerve away from. For this project on the other hand, I wanted to stick to something personal to me, & create imagery that uses everything I've learnt on this course to further develop & improve the original style I began with. Rather than pushing so far away from my comfort zone or trying to create imagery that I know will be liked, I want to create something that means something to me without worrying so much about how the final outcome will turn out. Meaning of artwork is something I lack focus on. I put my all into making something look good when it doesn't really have to.  My original idea for this project was spirituality as growing up my mum would give me books to read on wicca & occultism. Our connection to nature has always interested...

 THE FINAL OUTCOME Before starting my final piece, I wanted to create more work inspired by Yofukuro mixed with Jimmy Monsoon as both artists focus on body and face distortions.  Joey Monsoon: Joey Monsoons work has an uncomfortable feeling to it due to the way he extends, enlarges, shrinks & shortens different aspects of the faces he paints. The long necks & small chins are a strong feature in his pieces, along with the very straight & jagged lines he uses. He makes the people look doll like, a bit like bobble heads. He defines and exaggerates key features of peoples faces & bodies, such as collar bones & eye bags which works really well to create discomfort in the viewer. The expressions of the people are quite emotionless, which is similar to all the drawings I have created so far in this project. They all look curious or slightly empty, almost like they're disconnected from reality, in an idle state.   Yofukuro: Yofukuros work varies a lot in ...

 FACE DISTORTIONS Original Sketch: Continuing with my focus on face distortions, I wanted to replicate my original lino print of the two faces connected in a more realistic way. I used the image below for reference as at the time I had no one to take pictures of. I drew one face then when I was happy with it, I traced it onto the other side so they matched up how I wanted them to to keep the faces the same like in the original. The piece was done in biro & watercolour. This time, as the faces were facing away from each other I decided to only connect the eyes & have some sort of connection between the mouths. I decided I would give them a wave effect to distort this idea even more, which ended up giving the piece a sort of sci-fi look. I think this look also came about because of the blue watercolour I added to the piece. The background has a space/galaxy effect to it which I really like the look of. I think this added to the piece well & brought it all together. It pus...