Foundation

Russell Mills - Russell Mills  is a British artist who was born in Ripon, Yorkshire, UK in 1952. Mills has designed many book covers and album covers for bands such as Nine inch Nails. Most of Mills' works are  predominantly   distorted portraits, with very jagged and defined lines surrounding the soft the (usually) black and white, toned faces. In t he surrounding (jagged and distorted) area of the faces, Mills includes colour to add some life to his paintings and create the ever present distortions and abstract elements in his work.  The piece on the left 'Live at Last' is of a female face, beautifully drawn in ink  but  her hair and clothes are painted very erratically and show how Mills uses colour to produce a very different composition than if he had used ink  for all of the piece. The oil paint Mill uses is red which is painted over the thick black hair Nel ten Wolde- Wolde is a Melbourne based artist who uses collages, lines,...

These photos are from my trip to the Barber Art Institute of fine arts in Birmingham. In my opinion it was like no other gallery I've been to. It was packed full of outstanding artwork as it was such a small gallery. This is an advantage, however, as it gave the museum more of an atmosphere which was very uplifting and inspiring. I found all of the paintings there very realistic, all with a great message to pass on. The artworks were inspiring and amazingly well painted, some, melodramatic almost and they offered a glimpse into the past of art and how it was like to paint hundreds of years ago. Altogether I found the gallery to be a great experience and I would explore it in more detail, if I were to go again, which I probably will.

This was a project I started at the very beginning of Foundation. The visual quality doesn't match that of my current work, but it was a fairly long project, so I'm giving it a chance to shine. These are a series of photos taken throughout the development of this piece to show the progression and development of it. The photo is of my friend that I took. There is nothing special about the photo, it is a portrait photo, the angle isn't heavily distorted and the lighting is fairly standard. I wanted to get as much light on the face as I could all to add to the beauty and life to contrast the acrylic I would put over it, softness vs rigidity. When drawing a portrait, I always start on the eyes, finding the right shape and size and with this I can create a rough outline of where the other facial features should be. I start working on one eye to get the right tones and depth of the rest of the face and put in a rough nose and mouth (it's still just construction lines at this ...

Pinterest board that influenced my work  This is going to be a very short post about the work I was doing during quarantine. It's all in response to Koidl and it's not work that I feel is meant to be explained, only interpreted. Hope you enjoy both the work and the influences.    The work below is in direct response to the Pinterest board linked above, mainly made up of Koidl's work, with a few other influences, such as Tim Burton.

Artist Research Arinze Stanley and Kelvin Okafor Kelvin Okafor The two main artists that have had the most impact on my work and techniques are Arinze Stanley and Kelvin Okafor. I look at Okafor for the techniques and processes he uses, how he handles his tools etc. I find his compositions differ too much from the reference photo to look at the final outcome of his drawings.    This photo taken from his instagram depicts perfectly what I mean. The final outcome looks too airbrushed and unlike the reference photo. To be more specific and critical; the iris is the wrong shape, certain parts of the lower and upper lids are too dark, the eyebrows are deformed and the detailing of the iris is all wrong. Despite all this, the processes Okafor uses throughout his compositions are extremely helpful.   A perfect example of this is pictured above. Okafor uses a paint brush to spread graphite across the composition, creating an extremely soft and realistic base tone for the skin tha...

Above: Final Major Project..... "I" https://photos.app.goo.gl/VQAFTLRghFAf1ARD6 - Progress shots of "I" With the deadline soon coming to pass, and with my final piece nearly complete, I feel it's the right time to compose an evaluation of the 10 month project.  As I mention in my proposal for unit 6, I would have much preferred -in hindsight- to start my final major when everyone else did because with all the knowledge I have now, it’d take half the time to complete and could be even better. There have been lots of struggles and mishaps along the way but now I’m at the end of the road, it was all worth it. The biggest challenge has been the overwhelming patience I’ve had to develop in order to not abandon or ruin the piece. There were many times I wanted to give up and start something new, many times I wanted to tear it off the wall and burn it. However, what kept me going was visualising the final result, the complete outcome. It excited me so much, knowing th...

This statement will discuss the progress of my artwork, concepts of my final major and timescale discussions of my proposed final major. The review of my own practices and the influence of other artists will be integrated throughout the statement, hopefully giving it a more dynamic structure. The key influence for all of my work during this foundation year has to be Chuck Close. Close was the reason I started to scale up my portraits to a size substantially larger than my previous. I knew from the start that a self portrait similar to his would be my starting point for my final major. Whilst this could be seen as closed minded and a linear way of thinking but the other units during this year have given me the opportunity to work in other areas and not be all absorbed by one piece of work. If anything, starting it so early has only allowed for major improvement as I’ve really been able to see my processes and techniques evolve. I'd like to draw attention to the increased improvement...

Eyes ~30 hours per eye ~60 hours total, however the scale of the eyes and intricate detailing could add up to ~10 hours Nose ~10 hours. Generally an easy stage of development however the detailed texture may add ~10 hours onto the process Mouth ~10 hours. Detailing again may add up to ~5 hours Hair Depth of the hair will require anywhere from ~30 - ~50 hours of work, the lack of hyper dark tones produced from graphite means more time will have to be spent working into it Skin ~20 hours. As this is new territory for me, I expect a lot of trial and error to take place regarding texture and tones of the skin. could take up to ~40 hours Proposed Time Min time: ~130 hours Max time: ~185 hours A guesstimate would require the common sense to round up to 150 - 200 hours This round up time of ~15 hours could be used to include planning, laying out and setting up of mediums Mon 16th March - 23rd June = Final Major time Given I average ~5 hours a day, max time would be 40 days Time for Final ...