bamfatart

[bamfatart]

TITLE: Can't we be free?

DATE: 12/11/2020

MEDIUM: Charcoal

I find a great way to overcome and work through strong emotions is to create art based on the feelings I have at the time. This piece is no exception to the belief I have and so the concept is very close to my heart.

That concept is of two lovers trapped in a relationship, demonstrated by birds entangled in a rope. Delving deeper into the birds I had chosen, a mocking bird to symbolise the literal mocking of the relationship as these people were not meant to be. In addition to a vulture to suggest the ultimate end that the relationship would come to, as vultures are often associated with death and seen circling the dead.

This piece was a work in progress over time as the first piece I had created in April of 2020 (see third image) had many improvements to be made, for example there was no finer detail on the rope or wings and although I had tried shading the final product did not look polished. I moved to using Acrylic and Watercolour (see second image) to overcome this as I felt more confident in my painting abilities, however the colourful nature of the piece did not reflect the darker meaning that I wanted to portray. I then decided to revert back to charcoal and come out of my comfort zone to build on my skills.

After many months of practise from reading Douglas R. Graves ‘Life Drawing in Charcoal’ and online videos, I learnt more about shading techniques when using charcoal and even what types of charcoal sticks were used for. Coming out from where I felt secure payed off in the end as there was a clear improvement from the original piece and I learnt a new art skill.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: BECOME AWARE

DATE: 18/01/2020

MEDIUM: Ink Stippling

In this piece I wanted to bring to light the sheet that sometimes blinds us, I often found myself wanting and buying products without stopping to think why or what I am doing which triggered my passion to make this message heard through my art. We live in a world where product placement and technology camouflages many deeper issues happening around us, leaving us to live a facade.

For instance the drinking culture in Britain has caused over 9,000 people in the UK to die in 2019 alone, yet this problem is swept under the rug and not acknowledge as most people goto the pub to ‘forget their problems’ and drink themselves away. Another example of this being the multiple companies that run on child labour and sweatshops yet still make exceeding amounts of money from draining the poor, despite knowing this many customers still are blinded to the corruptness.

Illustrating this message I have drawn a high-street with two parallel sides, on the left side I have portrayed the life that is masked enhanced by vivid colour that often distracts us. However, on the right side I have shown the masked messages that hide underneath intensified by the black and white, void of deceptive colour.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: Hotel California

DATE: 19/06/2020

MEDIUM: Ink Stippling

When working with ink and using the method of stippling I found plenty of patience is required as I desired to get the details from these real life buildings perfectly imitated to the page.

Therefore the challenge when creating this piece was undoubtedly the time it took to create, as to not sprain my hand whilst applying the points I had to take it slow, this was also key as to make sure I avoided making any dashes instead of dots. In order to add depth to the piece I created illusions of darker areas by stippling closer together and further apart to create lighter areas, this technique is most prominently seen at the trees on either side of the piece.

When showing my mother this work she has this to say “ I think this is a great example of perspective and distances, also shows a great amount of patience to create a picture in this medium.”

[bamfatart]

TITLE: TRAPPED

DATE: 30/06/2020

MEDIUM: Ink Stippling

As I have previously specified, one of the remarkable aspects of creating art is it being a cathartic way to express emotion in conjunction with working through that emotion. Consequently this piece is very personal and certainly helped me to convey my feelings of the time.

I had touched on in a former art work (‘can’t we be free’) that whilst living in London with my partner at the time I was in a relationship where I felt constrained and so as the title of the work states it encompasses the feeling of being trapped.

For that reason I chose a mouse trap as the main object of the piece to reflect the situation. However the image in the bathroom of a heart with flowers blooming from it was my way of showing hope in the circumstance as the girls arm is reaching towards it, as was I reaching for a way out and towards a better future for myself one sprouting with love.

The bathroom I had illustrated was a replica of the one in the house I was living in at the time, to create the depth in the bathroom I used two perspective points which I had learned to use from Joseph D’Amelio’s ‘Perspective drawing handbook’.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: will to flourish

DATE: 24/07/2020

MEDIUM: Lino Print

I first created the design for this piece in 2018 (see third slide), as the years went past and my artistic ability grew I decided to rejuvenate many of my old art works and this was one of them. I allocated Lino print to be the medium I would use to recreate this piece as I thought it would suite the design and would be great contest of the skills I had been learning.

I am a visual learner and so I took to online sites to watch tutorials on how to use the Lino print tools safely and with precision, for example carving away from my body as not to hurt myself.

Furthermore I studied the uses of tool sizes, using a small size for fine detail such as the feet, faces and vines and larger sizes for carving blank space. A difficulty I did face was the printing itself, it took various attempts to get the paint to spread evenly on the Lino and then to place the print onto the page at the correct place as I was using two prints atop each other.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: It may blind the eyes

DATE: 28/08/2018

MEDIUM: Watercolour

This art work had been one of the first pieces I created, however this work stood out individually as it ignited a change in my academic focus.

I had always immensely enjoyed art and after this piece received a substantial amount of favourable reviews from friends and family it sparked the question, why had I not followed my true passion during school?

It was this piece that started a three year journey into teaching myself art techniques and mediums with the goal of entering a Foundation and Art Degree at university.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: As The World Caved In

DATE: 16/02/2019

MEDIUM: Acrylic and watercolour

I have a great appreciation for working with the human form and most of my pieces reflect this fondness. However I recognised I was using the female anatomy a great deal more than the male counterpart. Aspiring to try something different I challenged myself with learning the male composition.

This was something I wanted to perfect and so I took inspiration and studied from past artistic works to see how the masculine physique was explored. An example being Michelangelo, many of his masterpieces include a realistic portray of the male body and a common theme of Humanism which he used in both his painting and sculpting.Although Michelangelo’s pieces were composed of these realistic individuals as a renascence artist he also merged the ideas of the seen and unseen by relating his works to religion, an instance being his ‘Creation of Adam’ painting depicting Adam and God.

I admired this ability and so incorporated it when creating my own piece by adding the silhouette of hands reaching towards a mans body as he sat on a golden moon, keeping to the likeness of Michelangelo I adopted the Sfumato painting technique when applying the sky’s dark to light gradient hue to the silhouette.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: Self - Reflection

DATE: 18/06/2020

MEDIUM: Coloured pencil and Ink

As the title of this piece implies it is an intimate look into my emotions and feelings at the time. It represent sentiments I had during the lockdown and confusion of 2020. Isolation forced everyone to have a deep look into themselves and for me that uncovered feelings of depression that I thought I had conquered. Creating this piece was quite cleansing for me as speaking to others in person was not a viable option.

I communicated these feelings through colours the main two emotions I was feeling being sadness and anger so I took the two recognisable colours red and blue to be the main focus of the piece. On both sides I depicted the same room with knives pointing inwards, this is to impart the trapped feeling that isolation brings.

In the left section I illustrated a woman with her body contorted to represent the rage that grew from being confined. For the right section I altered the woman so she was reaching out, displaying hopelessness at the situation I was facing.

Concluding the piece, for the middle section I used multiple colours to express the entanglement of emotions I had been feeling, furthermore presented in the confused and pained expression of the womans face.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: Experiment in colour

DATE: 29/10/2019

MEDIUM: Pastel

Inspired by street artists using exaggerated facial features and colour to draw their subjects I wanted to recreate this in my own works. As pastels were an unexplored area for me I had to practise blending the pastels to bring well rounded facial structure to the work. This practise was crucial as seen in the first piece I created (second image) the blending was not perfected and so in certain areas where shadow should appear the colour is lighter and occasionally has an undesirable muddy colour.

There is a clear improvement to the final piece as I worked on improving on all the previous errors I pointed out, the way I fixed this was by watching pastel tutorials online and discovered that applying more pressure would correct my blending issue. In addition to this I added a detailed background by carving intriguing shapes into the pastel in order to make the subjects face stand out more.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: World Ender, Draft

DATE: 04/09/2020

MEDIUM: Ink

The creation of this work was based on following an Art challenge online which was to help with creativity in making unique pieces. The first stage was to create a mood board (see second image) by adding images or objects I found aesthetically pleasing. In my mood board I included bone wings, elf like ears, interesting shapes, bows, arrows and, space. Moving to the second stage I was to incorporate all of these aspects into one structured image. Slowly a story line for the work started to emerge of two foreign beings battling. This was nonsensical work I assumed would be something I would only dabble with and not take further. However, in doing so I created a character design I unexpectedly valued and due to this I decided to build on the illustration using different mediums.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: World Ender, Genesis

DATE: 17/09/2020

MEDIUM: Acrylic and Watercolour

Advancing from the ‘World Ender, Draft’ piece, I determined Acrylic and Watercolour paint would be a suitable medium to develop the character I had previously created during the online Art Challenge.

Some key details I worked on improving include, expanding the wing size of the creature as I desired this to be a focus point of the work. In order to keep the viewers attraction drawn to the wings I had to adjust the background too, rather than having the entire background as space I modified the piece to include space inside of the shapes, this is to keep the work from being too loud.

Moving from Ink to Acrylic and Watercolour paint presented the question of what colour pallet I would adopt for the work. I decide on soft pinks, purple and dark red for the character herself as I thought it be essential she stood out from the space and shapes, these on the other hand consisting of blue, black,white, bright red and gold.

A challenge I faced on this piece was not in relation to the work itself but rather that working and living in London has its own trials for a self dependent artist. My earnings were predominantly going towards rent and living costs and so I had to budget my spending on art supplies. Therefore, the detail I wanted to have in this work would need larger paper which I could not afford. To overcome this issue I made three separate pieces and combined them together, I felt that sellotape or glue would be an untidy way to merge the pages, as a substitute I sewed three A3 pages together by using thread with the same deep red colour I used for her hair and using cross stitches to incorporate the thread into the piece.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: World Ender, Terminus

DATE: 18/10/2020

MEDIUM: Scraper-board

When I started using Scraper-boards the main concept I wished to explore was the ‘World Ender, Draft’ work I had completed. This was due to the elevated result of the preceding time I refined it with Acrylic and Watercolour paint.

As the colours of a Scraper-board are the same as Ink and white sheet paper, which I had used for the draft, colour was not an option to explore and so to improve this piece from the draft I decided to delve into the storyline I was creating with each piece instead.

In the former piece ‘World Ender Genesis’ the narrative depicts the character in a powerful position and so for this piece I reversed the scene, alternatively having shown how her ending would be.

An issue I faced was how to shade her skin, I did not want to use block colour as then I would not be able to show gradient shading, which is crucial for adding detail as well as distinguishing between objects (wether they be in the foreground or background). Using dots comparable to when I do stippling was also not the solution as they would blend into the background of the stars. I settled on using line strokes which grouped together for lighter shades and separated for darker shades.

[bamfatart]

TITLE: DEAD END

DATE: 22/10/2020

MATERIAL: Scraper-board

Being my first Scraper-board piece I found the ability came to me quite naturally as I am confident in my illustration skills using ink and graphite pencil. The one difference I did find difficult to accustom to was that where Ink is used to create shadow and dark the Scraper is instead used to create light so when planning it was necessary I decided where I wanted the light to hit.

An issue I had with the Scraper-board itself was that I did not have a small enough tool at my disposal to create the minute circles for the stars, grooves in the moon, the snakes scales and other small details. In order to overcome this I taped a needle to the end of a pencil, giving the tool good grip and the perfect size for finer details. My father, who had initially recommended I try using a Scraper-board had this to say about the piece ‘Considering this is your first time using the Scraper-board this is very impressive with the detail, you really picked that up quickly!’

As for the image itself I decided to re-create an Ink piece I had created in 2018 as I loved the concept yet had not improved on the piece since I first drew it (see the second image).

[bamfatart]

TITLE: PERSPECTIVE

DATE: 31/07/2020

MEDIUM: Acrylic Paint

I had decided to challenge myself when initially creating this Art-work, as the name suggests the challenge I had set myself was of using perspective to investigate human anatomy. I was inspired to do this when looking through photographer Dana Trippe's pieces as I was impressed by the aesthetic she had created just by adding distinctive angles when taking pictures of her subjects.

Perseverance was key in the progression of this piece as I was using a different colour pallet than I was familiar with. Therefore, creating shadow and light to reflect the light source coming from the right side was a difficulty I faced. However, I was able to create this illusion by practicing beforehand in my sketch-book and when making mistakes on the real work (for example a shade being too dark for her face where the area should be lighter) I waited for the paint to dry before going over and fixing the mistake.

A comment from a friend who I had sent progression of the work to was this: 'This has turned out perfectly Izzy, in the start the shading was a bit rough so seeing it now is amazing, I love the touches you made with the flowers in her hair and fringe on her jacket, lovely detailing.’