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Painting

This acrylic painting is inspired by pre glazed painting I did in my workshop in ceramics.

In this painting I wanted to relate it to other pieces of work I’ve done such as the watercolour piece where the dancer is extremely long and my printmaking where the dancer with the stretched neck.

I wanted to make her feet look distorted in an uncomfortable structure. I decided to have her feet bent to make it appear like she’s standing on the knuckle of her feet.

I then purposely made her feet have a bleak appearance using blue toned colours mainly. This was to represent how a dancers feet may look in these shoes form dancing excessively

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Painting

This piece was inspired by the etching I did during my printmaking workshop on week one. I wanted to keep the stretched neck and the transparency on the dress during this piece as that is also what I focused on during my prints.

This piece was actually inspired by another students work I seen while looking in different studios. It is a shadow like piece. Which means I mainly tried to paint only the shadows or where light would not hit the dancer while in this pose.

I thought about medias that was be most effective for this and I chose ink as I thought it would be most effective.

If I were to do this again I think I would experiment with other medias such as oil pastel or oil paint.

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Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings, he depicted light, movement and speed. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, but unlike other leading futurists he was not interested in machines or violence with his works tending towards the witty and whimsical

I felt like Ballas work was very interesting because it reminded me of my mark makings while doing ceramics. It looks similar to the marks kings I made using verbs relative to Ballet. I really love the structure of his abstract work as it shows movement through the paint and other medias he’s used

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Life drawing

As a group we used different drawing materials such as paint, markers, ink and pen to draw our life model Geff.

As he posed in different positions we studied and drew him multiple times even overlapping our previous work.

We then switched sheets and each did 3 more drawings on opposite sheets providing many different structures and colours. The various techniques showed his different angles and everyone’s own techniques which looked really good all together.

@eoinmclsad

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Jordan Matter

Jordan Matter is an American YouTuber and photographer. He produces content on the YouTube platform, primarily focusing on photography, dance.

I was inspired by his photography and the flexibility of the dancers he photographs and found that it was extremely relevant to my project as the dancers pose looks obnormal just as some of my pieces such as my prints do.

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Sketch book!

Using the sketch book I made during my first week in print I’ve been experimenting with different techniques and structures.

The front page says my subject in a font I found relatively to ballet and a sketch of ballet shoes which is what I partially worked with. Although these shoes are not distorted in many ways.

In my second page I worked with interpretation of the dancers and their structures and poses. This related a lot to the flexibility of the dancer and their elegance. I worked with primary research from books in the library to find these.

I then went on to experiment with media and experimental work in general. I did a zoomed in drawing on the dancer mainly focusing on her clothing and pose for this and foudn pen helped emphasize detail

I then used two different coloured markers and did two seperate drawings ontop of eachother to have the effect of movement within the dancer and her dance.

I then followed that by doing a ‘man walking a dog’ technique to show some experimental work with a dancer and decided to do multiple drawings following this.

I then showed the pallet I used to do my water colour painting in the previous post

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Watercolour

For this piece I focused on the structure of my primary research.

I depicted her in a stretched looking pose and wanted to stretch her arms, legs and neck to show that most ballerinas are extremely long to look at.

I chose watercolour for this as it’s a free style of painting. I didn’t have to provide details but I could emphasize on the colour throughout the piece to hint at lights shining on her while on stage.

I really enjoyed doing that backround as it gives a sense of a swan lake setting, as if she is practically dancing on water.

I purposefully painting her face a shadowy purple colour as while watching the dancer we often times forget to looks at the face of the dancer and more times we looks at their anatomy. I felt like painting her face a dark colour while the rest of her is bright would draw attention to the part of the dancer that usually goes unnoticed.

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Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures.

I’ve chosen him as an artist for my movement project because although he doesn’t paint on the subject of ballet, he has a collection of works based of body’s. I found it interesting how it’s not particularly anatomy but distortion within the movement on the body and it has a dark atmosphere around it which i think relates to my project with isn’t about the anatomy of the dancer but the distortion of flexibility and her structure.

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Ceramics

Print making on clay.

For this piece we began a fresh slab of clay and some newsprint. We then cut out patterns into them. I decided I wanted my backround to look ‘flowy’ so I cut that into my paper resist and gently laid it onto my clay. I chose a navy like colour for this park as a sort of contrast.

For the shoe I had to cut out two stencils while I waited for my backround paint to dry .so I could take my paper resist off.

One stencil was a general outline of the point shoe and I used yellow as that colour as it was the skin. I then laid down the stencil for the actual shoe and used a pink paint. I waited for that to matten out and become a leathery texture to take it off.

I really enjoyed doing this and I can’t wait to see what it looks like once it comes out of the kiln. If I were to do this again I was leave the paint dry more as this looks a bit messy.

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Ceramics

Colour and tint on clay

After our models came out of the kiln we put some colour to them using oxide base paints.

I began with my flat surface and dunked it in water as the colour would go on more smoothly that the clay wasn’t thirsty.

I chose pink and black as I thought they were appropriate colours. It began as a simple piece inspired by mark making but not it became an image of the beauty of ballet but the darkness that surrounds it which made me really enjoy doing this because I never thought it would become a meaningful piece.

With the boxed piece I decided to go with tones of blue. I tried to create an ombré looking effect . I thought about how many of my pieces for this piece aren’t stuck down and it let me have the freedom of movement so I really enjoyed having that aspect of this piece

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Ceramics

Paper and clay Week 1+2

During the first week of ceramics we made models of our mark making which mine is in a post below. To begin we made two structures, one a box shape and the other just a flat surface. I then began by looking at the mark making through my view finder to find a shape I found interest and discovered the circular shapes looked fun.

On my flat surface I made multiple cylinders and hot glued them inside one another, each one getting taller as the cylinder got smaller. I then crumpled some paper to reveal an interesting edge from above and another flat piece in contrast.

With the box shape I just found a more linear picture within my mark making and decided the challenge may be fun and see what I get from it. It was a struggle to keep the thinner pieces of card to stick to the edges but I quite like how hectic that one may seem. With this one I also experimented with different textured edges of each strip.

We then began to make them in clay and did the exact shapes again with the flat surfaced piece with the cylinders and with the box piece.

I found the box piece more interesting as it allowed me to use different tools to cut different edges into each strip on clay I used and had a lot more movement than the flat surfaced piece.

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Ceramics

Latex

During the second week of ceramics we made molds out of clay which would hold and mold latex.

While molding I thought of the verbs from the first week in which we used to describe the subject of projects. For the first mold I thought of turning and gliding so I decided to ‘dig’ out a pattern which represents those words.

For my second mold I thought of the steps in which the dancer has to take. So I used a textured roller to represent these steps and then i decided to stretch the piece of clay to represent how it may not always look right .

For the colour of the latex I thought that the pink manifests its way into ballet, such as a lot of the point shoes and stereotype clothing dancers may wear.

Overall I really enjoyed this process and it allowed for me to also focus on other work making me more productive. If I were to do it again I would have loved to try different patterns in my molds of free movements just to experiment with different shapes

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Artist research

Edgar Degas

Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints, and drawings. Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers.

I found that my project is very much inspired by his works of art. He depicts a lot of the dancers movement and manifests the colour within the clothing of the dancer.

What I really like about his work is he neglects the emotion of the dancer, their faces have a sense of monotone so we can’t emotionally relate to how the dancer is feeling within his artworks. And in my project I have noticed I tend to not focus on the face of the dancer or even leave the face blank with no features yet I have noticed reason for this.

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Ceramics

After marking making we then made two different view finders. One in black and another in white in 9cm X 9cm and the other 4cm X 4cm.

This was to perceive and find a focus in our mark making in a different way. To find a movement that appealed to me and one I wished to make 3D.

I found this extremely helpful as I found different texture and images I wouldn’t have seen while looking at the page directly.

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Ceramics

Mark making

This week in ceramics we began by coming up with verbs in relation to the subject of our projects. I chose words such as turning, moving, balance and jump.

Using these verbs I then began my mark making using Indian ink and different tools such as cardboard, strings and a small mop like brush. I also experimented a lot with different tones of the ink by diluting it with water and then expansion of the ink.

I think if I did mark making again i would be more delicate with some of my movements with these tools.

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Printmaking

For the second process, etching I used the final picture of the posed dancer with an extended neck. I carved in different patterns to see the effect and it was subtle.

I then used different files at different pressures and found that that made an effective tutu effect on the hem of the dress.

In my last pieces I liked how the dress seems see through, the legs of the dancer is white compared to the rest of the piece with is outlined in black.

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Printmaking

This week I did printmaking which included monoprint and etching.

To begin the week we started with monoprint. At first I focused on ballet shoes and the structure of the foot holding itself in that specific position.

I then wanted to experiment with the dresses and the poses in which the models position themselves. Suzannah then pointed out to me that ballerinas have long structures and I should try something unusual like a long neck on one of the posed dancers.

After doing this I found it extremely effective and moved it into my etching process