Printmaking Crit

                                             

The other week we had the "Printmaking crit" i showed the tutor my sketchbook because basically there is where i work and investigate the most, i would say that having a sketchbook allow me to quikly express my ideas and check if they work or not, if i like the result i can try later in other format, so it´s very important for me to make use of my sketchbook, pretty much the entire development of my work is recorded there.

For example i started thinking about basic lines, creating faces with a continuous line.         

                         

 

Then i tried some visual textures and other things such as creating textures with wood glue and playing with shapes and colours. Then i had other idea involving bubble wrap paper, basically i painted the paper with acrylic and then i used that to print on top of an acetate, changing colors and mixing everything up, then i discovered that it could be a good material to use with collage. I also looked some inspiring artists such as Krista Harris and did some proofs with acrylic in the sketchbook, basically i took notes of random ideas that poped up to my mind.

                                

 After all of that research and brainstroming i ended up having more like a finish  idea of what i wanted to do, i was interested in showing the idea of "print" my own way, for me it´s like a footprint, something that belongs to someone or something, that hides a story, and thinking about the idea of footprint i realised that human silhouettes can be understood as a kind of footprint too, actually, you can recognise someone just by his silhouette if you know him well, and if you don´t everyone could be the same person, it can be confusing and kind of cold in a way, not very personal and that´s why i incorporate acetates to the final work, my idea was to show people as a society, kind of reminding mass production concept, and acetates placed that way seemed aggresive and dangerouse, like a society could be.

But on the other hand, people i represented in the work are, most of them, people i know and that i can easily recognise by just their silhouette; so we have both ways of seeing the work.  

New Walk museum, LSA exhibition

The other day i decided to visit New Walk museum, because they are currently having an exhibition of members of Leicester Society of Artists that i was interested in seen.

I liked the exhibition in general but there were some pieces that grabbed my attention more that others, for instance this drawing by Jill Hailes, called Holiday Sketches, i was impressed with the way he practically made a collage but creating a landscape, combining textures and buildings and making everything a beautiful mess that is surprisingly really easy to read and understand.

The next pieces are three drawings by John Barradell called Mezquita drawings, i thought it was very cool how he made shadows, basically scrawling, portraying a really gloomy atmosphere, working with light and darknes, actually i really liked some of the drawing pieces i saw in this exhibition, so i might use some of them for my drawing presentation.

The last ones are paintings by an artist called Jane French, Malcolm, Joe and Solomon; totally eye-catching, it was pretty easy to feel attracted by them, the colours were amazing, so bright and right selected, i loved the colour pallete she used and the fact that you can recognise each feature but the paint strokes were clearly noticeable and i always love to see that because you can feel the movements the painter did and learn from them.

                                

Greg Betza

He is an illustrator, artist and designer from New Yersey.

His work inspires me in many ways, for example i love the way he plays with perspective, faking it so that it turns into the main attention point, i also find interesting the fact that he works in many mediums and styles, in order to produce different effects that i think work very well, i think his pieces are really unique and have a lot of personality.

But undoubtedly, what fascinate me the most are his drawing skills, fluent and decisive strokes with black ink that build up the whole scene; also you can really notice his influences by arquitecture which is present in basically all of his drawings.

So this artist has help me quite a lot in my drawing proyect "the journey", his artwork astonishe me because i can feel the atmosphere that he wants to create, the way he draws environments without been completely realistic but still keeping the vibe of the place.

Robert Longo presentation

A few days ago we did a presentation about and artist ane we chose Robert Longo.

We all were quite interested in his work and we wanted to investigate more about it; he is an American painter and sculptor but lately he has been focusing on drawing.

He took part of a group called Hallwalls, and a key event in his life was when they decided to go to New York to see exhibitions and that way they could get the vibe of New York city education.

I read an interview where he was talking about his work and he said that his job was to show how life is right now, as Rembrandt showed how was it in his time, and you can see that in his drawings, how he refers to the actual moment we are living.

His work seems to be photographically based although he sais it´s abstract in a way.

I was wondering why all of his latest artwork seem to be black and white and i found that it´s because he associate black and white with the truth, like old magazines that show black and white pictures of the war and then they have a colorful picture of a celebrity in the cover.

David Hockney

He has always been one of my favourite artists, he has mainly done landscape paintings, but i also admire his photocollages, the way he deconstructs reality and builds it again, showing a particular way of seeing life.

He influences my practice in a way that i don´t really know how to express, i just have his work constantly in the back of my mind, his colors, his vision of life, the way he plays with perspective...

His drawings are huge and that is one of the things of them that help you really feel the enviroment he´s creating, it feels like you are inside the landscape, like you are a part of it.

He painted in different canvases and then put them all together, kind of using again his collage technique and he usually painted outside, what i really admire because he wanted to feel the place, breathe the same air that he was trying to paint.

Joanne Greenbaum

When i arrived here i thought Paint was Paint, Printmaking was Printmaking and in general, each method was just that, but after a few months i´ve become a lot more open minded, and that´s brilliant because now i can make conextions and see how each method can incorporate things to the others.

With that been said, i have to say that discovering Joanne´s Greenbaum work has inspired me in my work; she is a New York artist that lives and works in New York, she makes sculptures but what have inspired me the most are her paintings.

Table of contents, 2004

The way she approaches painting kind of reminds me of printmaking, and also of drawing, which is clearly visible in all of her work.

The way she plays with colors, the abstract vision of painting as a way of liberation, she doesn´t follow formulas of conventional painting she´s rather expanding the possibilities of the technique.

I see her paintings as a beautiful process, where you can see how the work has evolve, she´s working with layers and it works quite well to my mind, her work show me the pass of time.

Poster, 2004.

"Presentation"

"Presentation" is decisive for the final artwork, the way you present your job is truly important because if you do it wrong your work can loose it´s essence and consequently it´s value.

You have to be aware of the kind of artwork you have created, and present it in a way that helps to express the idea you originaly wanted to create.

To do this, is significant to take into account several things, such as the size of your work, the meaning of it, how you want to make people feel with it, the format of your work, if it´s 3 dimensional or not etc... you also need to pay attention to the room or space where you are presenting your work, some pieces really need space to breathe, or a white, neutral enviroment to appreciate properly and understand the artwork and other crucial thing is the light you want to have in the gallery.

If we are talking about installation or some work that required any digital aspects it´s crucial to present it correctly, having the needed equipment and been aware of enviromental sounds that can interfere and ruin the work.

What i´ve noticed in the exhibitions i have been in is that depending of the format of your work you present it one way or another, so for example in Saatchi Gallery i saw this work by Annie Kevans, i thought it was very well presented because one entire room was occupied by just her work, and that makes it special and creates the atmosphere for you to capture the concept of the work.

Then here we have an example of how to present sculptures, if you want your work to be inside of a room it must be big, you have to let your work have its space, breathe, so that it integrates with the enviroment.

This painting by Claude Monet was well presented too, you could see it really closely and i liked the fact that it was situated near the floor, so visitors of the gallery could see the complete work, having their eyes situated in the middle of the painting.

                                 

One of the key things presenting a work is the way you document it, the label shouldn´t be very big because the main attention should be the artwork, but it is important that you make the label noticeable, so that visitors don´t confuse it with other piece´s labels.

                               

"The Journey" drawing proyect

At first i wanted to take this proyect as a way of discovering more about the city.

Everything was new for me, the town, country, language, people... so lots of things were calling my attention.

My main aim was to draw in the street, frome real life, and that´s because i was more interested in the process than in the final result, i really wanted to live the experience, because when you draw a place of a city that grab your attention somehow, you start seeing that specific place in a different way.

Drawing things forces you to really look at what you have to draw and at the same time it´s a kind of meditation, you try to achieve the feeling of a place, or al least, what the place is saying to you.

I try to capture the light and the shadows that it creates, as well as capturing people´s faces, their mood, some bits that were interesting for me; basically, it was all about conecting with my surroundings.

Then we had a class with the tutor and he showed us different approaches to drawing, it was completely different from what i was doing and it opened my mind a lot in that aspect; so i decided to experiment more in that stranger area to challenge myself and see what i could do, but at the same moment trying to make my own personal things. 

Printmaking practice

I have been doing different prints based on ideas i had, as a way of exploring different materials and mediums.

Between all that exploration i found really interesting printing on top of acetate, i really liked the effect i could get using acrylic paint and i used cardboard to help me print the images and bubble wrap too, which i quite liked.

Other type of paper that i found was tracing paper, again i get a watery effect that i considered very interesting so i will definitely be playing more around that.

In  general at this point i just concentrate myself of looking for different atmospheres, sensations and feelings playing with colors, mediums, shapes and i want to investigate more around layers.

The tutor encourage us to investigate with paper, leaving the 2 dimensional things for later, and trying to create something 3 dimensional, as if the paper wanted to say something itself.

London trip. Whitechapel gallery

The last gallery I visited was whitechapel gallery; I found it very interesting because her work is completely different to the one I normally like, but it was refreshing and open minded for me to see this kind of work.

On the other hand I really liked how Sarah Lucas plays with the furniture and make it look like a body, and the gallery itself was very interesting, the way the artwork was set was fascinating too.

London trip. Saatchi gallery

This gallery was really interesting and I think the artworks I could see there were very good quality.

I could say that the ones that called my attention the most were installation. This one for example in from the artist Han Feng and the work is called Floating city. I just liked the idea and the way the artist was able to make it.

This other installation was my favourite one, it was from the artist Marcelo Jacomé and its name was Planos-pipas. It remind me of something I did in the past but of course much smaller.

 Then I saw this room and the feeling I had was so strange that I had to like it.
After a few moments I realised that it was kind of an optical illusion caused by the sumped oil and steel that the artist put on the floor, so the outcome was a quiet space much bigger than what it actually was. The artist was Richard Wilson.

London trip. Jerwood visual arts

I decided to go to visit this gallery because it was interesting for the research we have to do for drawing classes.

I found there very interesting pieces of artists I didn´t know before and I went back home with a notebook full of notes and a lot of artists to investigate.

                                       

This piece for example belonges to Nendie pinto-duschinsky, she has very interesting work and I have seen that you can find her artwork in Saatchi gallery. The reason why this particular piece called my attention was the paper she used for it; I find very interesting drawing in a warm tone paper and I would definitely experiment with things like that for my drawing lessons.

                                                 

So basically all my research with this gallery has to do with different materials and techniques related to drawing. 

In this case this artwork really surprised me; the artists is called Nanako Kawaguchi and she uses tracing paper to create her work, I find it very interesting and versatile, because you can combine different materials like acrilics or markers and depending if you paint in one side or other of the paper you can get different effects. So that was definitely other good idea to try out later in my own work.

                                     

The last artwork I want to talk about is this one from the artist Lottie Jackson-eeles.

Actually, in the gallery I just could see this piece, which is made in a moleskine notebook, but I have found her website and now that I can see her complete work I realised why this piece called my attention so much, we have the same taste in regard to mixing materials and making subrealistic collages, so this last artist was very helpful and uplifting too.

London trip. Bankside gallery

The next gallery I visited was Bankside gallery, where the Royal watercolor society is, aswell as the Royal Society of Printmakers-Painters.

This was one of the galleries that inspired me the most and basically because I really feel identified with watercolor technique and printmaking, so I found this place very usefull for my printmaking class, it gave me a bunch of ideas to work on later, and I could find things related to David Hockney too, one of my major artists.

London trip. Tate Modern Gallery

The first gallery I visited in London was Tate Modern.

Although many of the artists there were really interesting I´m going to talk about those ones that I find help me more in my practice and influence me more.

Those artists are Matisse and Giacometti.

What have always interested me about Matisse is his interest for the colors (fauvism) how he used one color or other depending on the feelings he wanted to transmit and the simplicity of his lines, which I admire and practise.

                                                       

This particular piece is called Portrait of Greta Moll, (1908)

The other artist is Giacometti, and specially their drawings.

I really relate to them when I draw, the way he had to create atmosphere, drawing the person and the space, their surroundings and with a strong sense of line expression.

                                                      

 This drawing is called Seated man, (1949)