Module 5 Chapter 8

Search for Lowry Pictures 5.8.1

I love Lowry paintings and have been to the gallery at Salford several times.  There is so much movement in each painting and lots of interaction between the figures.  Below are the ones I chose from google images.

The bottom left is a waiting room at a Hospital Outpatients clinic somewhere near Bradford and it is almost identical to the one at Scarborough Hospital 35 years ago when I used to go for pre-natal check ups.  The seats were individual chairs arranged across the room, on the right was a hatch where you made return appointments and on the left side and in front of you were the doctors rooms. I just had to print this one.

From these pictures I chose the following figures to draw.

The man laid down is from my morning coffee mug and he is laying on a wall smoking a cigarette.

These are my modern day 'Lowries'.  I found it difficult to make them as small as the others because I wasn't copying them and didn't have the scale to follow.

Keith Haring. 5.8.2

  Again I used Google Images to find some of his work and chose these few.

Here I copied some of the figures from the pictures above.

This is my set of cardboard shapes traced onto white paper which I have then coloured with a watercolour paint and then painted the figures with Inktense paints.

When I turned the page the ink from the felt tip outlines had seeped through in places leaving some feint outlines.  I didn't want to waste them so I have covered them in pale pearlescent watercolours using wavy lines both across and down.  I finished this with the black border to put a finish on the lines going across.

Here I have used a piece of black card with cut out white figures and one red figure in the middle.  There was no need to outline the shapes but I did have to mark in the heads, legs and arms where necessary.  I liked this one and the choice of shape for the red figure I felt was just right and I didn't use it again.

This last one is shapes cut from a magazine in various colours and I have overlapped them to form a complex arrangement.  I made this by gluing down two or three shapes then marking in the outlines before adding another layer.  If I hadn't done it this way I think it would have got very difficult to work out where all the arms and legs were.  As I cut out each shape I placed it on the paper background and the arrangement was great but you can never quit recreate it when you have to take it apart to put the glue on.  This arrangement is fine but not quite as good as the original.

A good exercise this,  I enjoyed looking for the pictures and found Lowry more difficult to paint than I realised.  Keith Haring is so completely different, his figures have so much movement and can be arranged at any angle whereas Lowry figures have to be placed in context with their background.

Module 5 Chapter 7

Bodies and Movement

I started by dividing my sketchbook page into eighths and then drew in the sections of the body as shown in the coursework instructions.

I then made an articulated body using card and split pins.  The first one did not last very long, his arm and leg fell off but the second one was much more robust, not sure why, they were both made from the same pattern and same piece of card.

I then started to draw with them, still using my sketchbook.  I hope you can see these, they are very feint.  First I did single figures.

Then I went on to do several figures on each page.

I then did more groups but coloured them in.

These figures are coloured in pearlised water colour with Koh-i-Nor background.

This took a lot of working out and the effect is not quite as bold as I thought it might be.  I refered back to Module 1 and the patterns I did then.

I photographed these and then loaded them onto the computer and took the first of these two photographs and cropped it to enlarge the picture.  I then started changing the colours and textures.  I attempted to do this with the second picture but it meant clicking on every square to change the colour.

The cropped picture

Colour change.  This didn't completely change the colours as there must have been some breaks in the connecting pixels.

Here I have put a chequered background to the figures.

Then I put a venetian blind effect over the top.

This is a polished stone effect which has changed the colour of the yellow.

This was a shaded blued effect which went over all the picture except for the one black leg which I left as I thought it stood out so much.

I then tried the second picture using distortion tools instead of colour changes.

So here is my original which I have cropped.

This is the kaleidoscope tool.

This is a wavy edge tool.

This is curlicule. I liked this one.

I then did a couple of pictures using cut out models.

When I found these two papers in my box I thought they might look like people at a gym class in their lycra outfits so that is how I place them.  Afterwards, I looked and thought that they are more like groups of two people fighting.

The background to this is a photograph I took at Yellowstone Park where the trees are defoliated and killed off by the acids in the ground.  I thought it looked a bit like a WW1 landscape.  The men are cut from a book 'Testament of Youth' which is set in WW1.  The yellowed pages did not stand out against the background so I gave them a light wash of red watercolour.  I hadn't deliberately cut them out to make this row but when I started to move them about I realised that this was a good arrangement.  They could be men falling in battle.

I enjoyed this more than I expected.  It was interesting how colour made the figures come to life.  It was also interesting to see how you could make the figures interact with each other.  It's funny how you give the shapes a gender - the purple gym figures were female - but when you place them together, their body language can change that perception. My purple ladies became men because they appeared to be fighting.

Module 5 Chapter 6

Changing Faces

I was interested in this chapter as I had done some work last year on Maori's and the facial art that they use.  I went and dug out my workbook and enjoyed re-visiting it and the embroidery I produced at the end I was very pleased with.

Two of the pages from my workbook.

The finished article that now hangs on my dining room wall scaring all my guests.  He does have hair but you can't see it in this photograph.

This time, rather than look at painting the face I thought I would look at covering it with masks.  I made some notes in my sketchbook and decided to look at Venetian Carnival masks.  The women's mask are all a similar basic shape but with lots of decoration but the mens have more interesting shapes so I decided to look at those.

These are my notes

Some basic sketches of the masks I found on the internet.

The shapes fell into four catagories.  Half face masks, eye masks, long nosed masks and long chin masks.  Some combined the last two.

Popular colours are what they call 'Columbina' which is cream, red and blue in a diamond shaped pattern named after the puppets and plays of the past.

I decided that the long nose shape was probably the best to work with so I started with the shape and colouring it in different ways.

The half masks colour up lovely and decorate well but they are more difficult to make a stencil that has a recognisable shape.  So firstly I made a stencil and I bought a Gelli plate at the Knitting and Stitching Show so this was my first attempt.  The centre was blank, I had used too much paint but when I had finished with the stencil, I pasted it in the blank space and it looks fine.

On these prints I have pulled a second print from the first plate with a background that looks more like old leather now.  On the page along side it is a faded brown print which I cut out and put into the centre of the brown print and it looks quite good.  The green print stencil has come out grey and I couldn't work out why until I realised I had painted the wrong side of the stencil and the grey cardboard had pulled off onto my print.  I have tried to remove it but it is stuck and doesn't look too bad.

These prints didn't work too well although the one on the left looks a bit ghoulish.

This is the leather look after I had stuck the print into the middle.

All these prints are now in my sketchbook.  As the stencil was getting a bit soggy I decided to make a stamp and do some printing.  I went back to Module 2 and made some papers up from newspaper and various other strips stuck to it.  It takes a lot longer to do in winter as you have to wait so long for everything to dry but patience was rewarded and I ended up with this pile of printed papers.

From these, using another basic stencil, I cut out a shape from each piece of paper.  I wanted to make them look like a mask on a face but I didn't quite know how best to draw a male face.  I then had the bright idea of using a simple skull shape. I drew the shapes onto white paper then glued the masks to them.  I was quite pleased with the result but decided they would look better with a black background so I cut them out and stuck them on card and this is the result.

The one on the left is overprinted with an indian style stamp while the middle one is underprinted with it.  The right one, I painted the stamp with the three 'Columbina' colours.

The left is a Gelli print where I have drawn into the paint, the right has a Gelli print background of a fruit bag and the middle one is overprinted with a small Indian style stamp.

The left one has emulsion paint background, the middle one does not have gesso and is printed straight onto the papers.  The right one is underprinted with a circular lino print.

The right one is just red and black prints.  The one on the left is a piece of lutradur which has been printed with expandaprint through a thermofax screen, zapped with a heat gun then foiled on top.  This was done at a workshop with Lynda Monk and I thought it worked well for this exercise.

After cutting the shapes out of selected areas, I was left with papers that were uneven in size so I trimmed them all down and these will go into my folder along with my masks.

The very last trimmings I have tided up and put into my sketchbook.

I loved doing this chapter.  Once I got started I didn't refer to my course work until I had finished and then I suddenly thought that I should have checked that I was doing what was required. This to me is what a sketchbook/workbook is for and it is lovely to refer to in the future.  I enjoyed looking back at module 2 and getting that sketchbook out again. I have some bits of brightly dyed fabric that this print would work on and I just might have a go in the New Year.

Module 5 Chapter 5

Colourful faces

I chose to colour my pencil drawing of myself without my glasses on and I chose pastels to create the colour.

I did have some texture on the face but I smoothed it away trying to get the colour that I wanted.

I then took my black and white drawing and did a couple of colour changes on the computer.  This didn't work out too well as the original had no colour to change.

This was a negative with some hand drawn lines for the hair

This was called green edges.

I had a look at Picassa on the computer but Google no longer support it so I wasn't sure how long it was going to last for so I went back to Paint Shop and had another go with the colour drawing.

This is called coloured edges and it picks up the outlines from the drawing and makes it much clearer.  I like what it has done to my drawing.

This was called coloured foil effect.  Turns me into an alien.

I labeled this with the effect I used but it didn't fit on and I can't read it now but it is some sort of blur effect.

This is another negative print changing the blue and the brown colours.

This was a swirl effect which just changes the whole shape.  It could be used as a boss in an old building.

I wanted to try and avoid stitching my portrait but ended up doing so anyway.  I started by transfering the black and white drawing onto fabric by attaching the material to freezer paper and running it through my computer printer.

I have then added coloured chiffon to the fabric using fuse FX (very fine bondaweb).

I then cut away the surplus chiffon using a soldering iron and following the lines of the drawing which were visible through the chiffon.

I covered the whole piece with some very fine chiffon scarf in white just to tone down the colour and trap the chiffon pieces.

I have then added stitch, outlining the features and adding some coloured thread to the hair.  It sort of floats on this piece of paper I found in my box and looks a bit ghostly.

I wondered if I could do anything else with the piece so I photocopied it and then cut the copy into two pieces and stuck them to this piece of coloured paper.  It fits quite well with the background.

Something else I did was to copy the coloured picture onto brown paper which I then scrunched up until it was quite soft.  It certainly adds some wrinkles!

I don't think I will ever make a portrait painter but this has been an interesting exercise.