Artist Experiments

This week I have also began bringing artist influences into my own work. I have began experimenting with artist techniques, the media they use and the way they present their work. I have also tried to incorporate their styles and techniques with my butterfly colour observation theme. 

For my observational drawings (that I drew over artist experiments) I observed some dead butterflies (images bellow)

I firstly tried to work in the style of Michael Cina, I looked at a series of his paintings along with collages etc.  Here is what I have done and achieved: 

This was the first painting of Michael Cina that I used for inspiration, style and techniques (bellow). 
1)It is called Ways of Serigraphs
A. Cecil Taylor at Piano
B. Moving Portrait
C. Atlantis Launch
D. Runner Owl
E. Dexter Gordon Smoking, Medium: Serigraph.

This is one of  my favorite pieces of work by him. I like the idea how he has included not one but many subject matters in one drawing. This is really interesting because everyone may see something different. It is impressive how he uses lines, because they aren't very clear, however I can still see a man playing the piano whilst possibly smoking a pipe. Although the colours may not really be relevant or realistic to what they would be in reality, they really make the art work stand out.

My attempts to work in this style were not as successful, although there is similarities to Cina's work, I found it hard to create such lines as he had done. Instead I just drew some butterflies that I have observed (butterfly images above) and then layered over them with paint, pen and body spray (on some) I think the problem was the fact that I tried to keep my work neat to some extent,I was scared of overdoing and ruining my sketch book and this stopped me from really expressing my drawings. However I will come back to these pages at some point later on an possibly add more texture and layers.

The pieces of work bellow were inspired by two of his collages 'Past Context' and 'Collapsing'    Personally these are my favorite sets of drawing in the style of Michael Cina.  Because the collages work very well as the backgrounds for the butterfly drawings, as they immediately add some kind of texture, colour and depth. They are also simple yet very effective. For all of the 3 Drawings I chose to use conte-crayon, because I like the shadow effect it gives whenever smudged.

Bellow Michael Cina- 'Past Context' (3)  collage (left) and (2) 'Collapsing' Acrylic on Paper (right)


















Other pieces of work that I have done in his style were inspired by his work called 'From Above' and 'Ships Plowing Deep Waters'. 
Although some of these drawings/paintings turned out okay, the majority of them I do not like. It is mainly because in some of them I overused the conte-crayon making it look like there is too much going on in one drawing, especially whenever the butterflies were drawn in conte-crayon on a bright acrylic paint background. I have tried fixing some of them by putting white acrylic paint over them, and it has slightly helped, so it is quite likely that I will do so for other drawings that did not work out well. 

(Bellow Michael Cina - 'From Above' Mixed Media on Paper (4)(left) and 'Ships Plowing Deep Waters' Acrylic on Board (right) (5)

My most successful work was in the style of Rebecca J Cole, I really   enjoyed creating paper butterflies on canvas. Although it was challenging to find the right materials like paper, in the right colours (so that each painting would have a specific colour) It did turn out similar to what I was expecting. The only things that I should consider doing later on, is adding more detail e.g. texture to the canvases, because I personally find the painting quite plain. I will also try and use older materials, to give a older more worn retro kind of style, as well It would be interesting to combine her work with another artist that I am studying. Here is the work that i have done :

(Bellow Rebecca J Coles -  Camberwell Beauty' Nymphalis antiopa) (6)

The third artist that I recently began looking at is Rikka Ayasaki. 
I have not yet done a lot relating to her work. However I have closely observed small sections of her paintings.
For these observations I used oil paint. Even though oil paint does look good whenever blended together, It is quite hard to use. I found it quite hard to blend it and It takes quite some time until it fully dries. Here is some work that I have began;

Bellow are the names of her paintings, in the same order as the images of her painting observations done by me above;  Rikka Ayasaki-  'Passions, twilight 7013 ' 2012, Acrylic oil (8) (left) 'Passions, Sunset 5076' 2013, Acrylic oil(7) (middle) and 'Spring haze 7030' 2013, Acrylic (right) (9) 

Alongside oil paint experiments, I decided to similarly observe small sections of her paintings, although this time using acrylic paint, as it is the media that the artist often chooses to use.
The middle image and the image on the left were observations of the painting "Passions, Sunset 5076" (7) whilst the image on the right was small observations of my own photograph of a sky ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsYE8ggSlODyWIDX_zkYocepDSNzS8bfjZg4na3iM_HV7vZTPsnI_4fBcLObLR-Lq429zgl520uoKz4w_79TaJTRUlI555-0ZAg9lU987wEprU1QC4uNuD7FNvwB88KH6eNj4UNG2dR4/s1600/BeFunky_DSC_1444.jpg.jpg) still inspired by  "Passions, Sunset 5076".

As you may see, for the middle image I used the sellotape transfer technique, as I wanted to see how  these (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXDTM2Ha5eHPD5EPr56vXw5VfgrpaIwpG8Tgdyp79KwYlxHQ1i2nXOr-Hvl8lfhpKpDWguLbn3M7I88KrINnJnkE1ufXB-xSS9x9hd5NheSApdM8wNUwC7lNRqYasmvpy7OV-KnkCxr3Y/s1600/IMG_2307.JPGbutterflies) butterflies would look on a colourful background as such. The down side is that the butterflies are too dark, it is hard to see their details, patterns and shapes that easily, it would be more effective if the butterflies were to be colourful or lighter coloured.  Overall the acrylic paint was difficult to blend together, the colours did not gradually change from one tone to another and generally did not work effectively together, leaving brush stroke lines.
 So I think I will most likely still try and use oil paint for some of my work, regardless to the minor problems caused by oil paint, it blends more effectively and the texture looks smoother than with the acrylic paint.



References; 

1) http://cinaart.com/Ways-of-Serigraphs
2) http://cinaart.com/Art/Collapsing
3) http://cinaart.com/Art/Past-Context
4) http://cinaart.com/Art/From-Above
5) http://cinaart.com/Ships-Plowing-Deep-Waters
6) http://www.rebeccajcoles.co.uk/work
7) http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Passions-Sunset-5076-Painted-in-2013/6134/1727491/view
8) http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Passions-twilight-7013-Painted-in-2012-61x46cm/6134/1565457/view
9) http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Spring-haze-7030-55x46cm-Painted-in-2013/6134/1911688/view