Fine Art Week

 Week 1 - Fine Art

On the first day we had a session of theory - we learnt about and discussed metaphors in art. We talked about how metaphors are used to express ideas and emotions. We also thought about metaphors in song lyrics to inspire us in our art. I liked the song lyric "slow dancing in a burning room" from Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer that describes the break up of a relationship using the metaphor of fire.

On the second day, we were told to be very direct; draw/paint around objects, use the projector to draw around the shadow of the object, or paint onto the object and print it onto your page. I didn't really get it at first and my first attempt was quite weak and uninspired as you can see opposite. I did like the leaf print (bottom right). I painted a leaf, placed it on the paper, then stood on it and the pattern of my shoe was imprinted in the paint in the shape of a leaf which I thought was really interesting and unusual.

Later on in the day, I realised that the point of this exercise was to think about composition and how things looked on a page together. Bearing that in mind, I started a new piece and instead of randomly placing objects, I thought about what I was doing. I also changed from drawing round the objects themselves or painting them and printing them on the page to projecting them and drawing round that. I did this because we were working on huge pieces of paper and I thought that bigger images would make more of an impact and that on my last piece, the small images got lost. I like this piece much more and it makes more sense to me. I really like the plant I drew in charcoal - it's bold and an interesting shape. In the middle there is an image of rope which I drew around in graphite pencil - this is the weakest part of the piece because it doesn't stand out like the blue and pink paint and the charcoal. I wouldn't use it again on a piece like this.  

We started thinking about how we could portray the metaphors we had chosen using only the objects we could find in the room and working directly with them. I was interested in looking at fire and flames and the fiery colours such as red, yellow, orange and blue. I was unsure how I was going to do this with just things we could find in the room but then I saw a plant and in the bottom of the plant pot were dead, and dried up leaves. I thought that the twisted shapes could look like flames when projected onto the paper. I did one layer in red, then moved the leaves into a different positions and painted loosely around them in orange and again with yellow. I think it was really successful and I'm pleased with the outcome. I then added in some blue "flames" which were prints of living leaves. I think this has really made a great image for fire and I like the way the flames start down on the right and spread across to the top.



We started to think about our metaphors in more depth on the last day. I was still interested in the image of fire and I liked the using the leaves and wanted to see what more I could do with that. I started to print leaves covered in three different tones of blue all over a cardboard box and then to help it to dry I placed a sheet of black paper over it several times to take out the excess paint. When I peeled it off the the black paper a interesting flame pattern had formed. I really liked this and I decided to try this with different colours and then I tried layering orange and yellow over the blue. I made a series of these prints and together they looked quite effective.

This week I have learnt to think about composition and to try putting things together to see what will happen - because sometimes they will work really well together.