Exam final piece idea development

Final piece development 

I have begun developing my ideas towards my final piece. The key aim during my development was to decide upon my final piece idea that relates both to my exam question of  'Closely Observing' and the theme of butterflies & their colours.
At this point I knew that I wanted to chose a canvases as my base for my final piece, similarly as I have already done whilst working in the style of Rebecca J Coles ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7lGA1Tb7GT865WVkeWQye8a6Gx3WnyC0SUX4S06i0xcGIYNf9edZvw92l9LNw6joT8vG9q_8PaXFJRJlBAOvNBZ1GmcoNcLt14D98ofnusG8gzLl-2F0A8yYD53YWgBIsZEqssfGMWE/s1600/BeFunky_DSC_1353.jpg )

I then looked back at all of my canvas work that I had created, during my artists experiments.

This is when I discovered that some of the canvases link together, both style and colour vise, so I re arranged them to this:

As may be seen I have removed the orange canvas, as the orange tones don't go with the blue/purple coloured canvases. I also added a new painting (bottom right side, large butterfly wing with a large background) Which was created from observing my own photograph of a butterfly:

The wing was inspired from my previous experiments ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIaXbjSXaeBHy4_z3X3IZRkh-wauOu991eWMzCGlrfLSisbCSCoKjhD392w8eUgS6EwLQDJV43S3B9b-yQXMDmO7Z2Z3kSz36C1fMFwvzubvfZsun_habd18veFahryitHOwuGXIoBEcE/s1600/IMG_28498.jpg ) This really gave me a sense of direction, to what is should do next. Before even creating the large paper butterfly wing painting I first carried out some experiments in my sketch book, here they are bellow:

The idea of having paper wings came from my previous work done in the style of Rebecca J Coles                ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6xddEN-unMXWv04JLwfZ4M_rL_pZuVb_fAJjdH7kHfFbQETZP2CGWQw_pBHtwiu2v1bsgaoBMyjOl30oj-h-hjN-oIuEmENZo1dzFSeoWfuvCgcLu09gUAI3Z_D0zsouAWGufOBFZJY/s1600/gf.jpg ) I have since then made some alterations, for instance instead of doing full body small paper butterflies, I am doing half of a butterfly but on a larger scale alongside the various sizes of the small butterflies.
Neither less my wings are still strongly influenced by Michael Cina, and for these experimental wings, by his painting called  "Rapine", image bellow.

(Above - Michael Cina 'Rapine' Pigment and ink on paper. (1)

The wings were created whilst observing my own photographs of butterflies (taken with a Nikon camera) :

Also I looked at Michael Cina's painting called 'Deep Layer II' Bellow:

( Above - Michael  Cina 'Deep layer II' Acrylic, ink, emulsion on paper (3)

Here is my work inspired by this painting:

For the image on the right side, I used acetate to print out my previous sketches and then made a collage, and the translucent butterflies are in a way representing camouflage and the nature of  blending into their surrounding. On the left side is a collage that focuses on a particular butterfly (photograph of the butterfly bellow, taken by me) inspired by 'Deep layer II'. I mostly wanted to experiment with ways that would allow the butterfly wing to blend in with the background but stand out at the same time.

I think Michael Cina's style and techniques are the most influential to create butterfly wings, because his style influences me to make my own work very colourful and expressive, making it stand out as it becomes lively. Also it's the fact that it isn't neat or very precise, as the expressive style is much more suitable for butterflies because all the marks and lines etc. are created free hand, hence my work looks more natural and organic so it resembles the butterfly colours and patterns more effectively.

Continuing with my canvas painting arrangement, I repainted the green background of the big butterfly wing painting, as it did not work together with the other paintings (was not in harmony).
I decided to paint it to a darker black/blue toned colour to match the rest of the paintings, instead of painting the background with oil paint I painted the background with acrylic paint, which meant it did not turn out as well as it would have with acrylic paint. Another problem that I then faced was the fact that the wing and the background were a very similar tone, so they blended with each other and this did not look effective. Although for my theme I am looking how butterflies blend in with the surrounding around them, I wanted the wing to stand out with detail, but still keeping the camouflage etc. in context.

This is why I applied enamel paint onto the paper wing, as enamel is quite effective to drizzle and create fine thin lines, unlike acrylic or other paint. Also whenever it dries it has a glossy finish and still stands out. This brings out the wing and makes it stand out from the rest of  the background. Although I think for this wing I may have made the lines too thick and applied rather too much enamel at certain areas.

After this I decided to practice creating more paper wings, both small and large scale ones, so that I could practice using enamel paint and just generally finding the best media to create the wings in. Here is what I created :

All of these wings were still focusing on the blue butterfly photograph as seen earlier, and were inspired by Michael Cina's painting 'Act Free', Bellow:

( Above - Michael Cina 'Act Free' Acrylic, Pigment on paper (2)

Once again the practice of creating lots of different wings was very useful to me because, it allowed me to try out different ways of applying paint, also decide upon what colours go together well, and which butterfly wing would be most appropriate for my final piece idea. Practicing also helped me to learn how to apply enamel in thinner lines, so that they look more fine and elegant on the butterflies.

I have also done a few experiments which I believe were unsuccessful. The 1st experiment was inspired by Michael Cina's painting 'In Motion' where the artist layers similar toned brush stroke lines over each other (Image bellow) So using my own photograph of a blurred flying butterfly i tired to paint in a similar style using acrylic paint.

(Above - Michael Cina 'In Motion' Graphite, acrylic, marker on paper (4)

Bellow is what my work turned out looking like;

To some extent the paintings are quite interesting and expressive and have similar colours as in the photograph that I used to paint this (bellow, my own photo) However the lines seem to all blend together instead of layered, and once more I find that using acrylic paint to fully paint has proven unsuccessful or at least not as good as it could have been. Also this technique and style does not seem appropriate for creating butterfly wings or even a background or my final piece, because it seems to harsh and rough, it would just overdo my final piece, which is what i really don't want to end up doing.

Above is another painting of mine that I consider unsuccessful, this time it was inspired by Michael Cina's painting 'Deep layer II'. The problem my painting is the fact that it is overdone and there it too much going on and it gets quite distracting, this could also be because of bad composition, hence it isn't as appealing to the eye as it possibly could be.


Final piece Idea

After carrying out a range of experiments that were seen above, I was able to start organizing my paintings for possible ideas as well as developing my final piece plan. I also added a few new oil paint sky drawings inspired by Rikka Ayasaki ( http://ievaexamblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/work-inspired-by-artists.html ) and also added additional butterflies, and my final result was this ;

This is almost exact to what I am planing to do for my final piece, Except the sizes and amount of canvases will vary slightly.  I am using two different backgrounds because I want to vary the paintings, as having them the same background would look slightly dull and boring. The whole idea of this final piece is observing butterflies in the sky as they are frozen in the moment forever , like each canvas is a photograph, and the bigger butterfly wings are just a zoom into the smaller butterflies on the other canvases.

Reference 

1) http://cinaart.com/Rapine
2) http://cinaart.com/Act-Free
3) http://cinaart.com/Deep-Layer-II
4) http://cinaart.com/In-Motion

Recently I have visited a butterfly farm in Stratford-Upon-Avon where I had an opportunity to take various photographs of butterflies. Here are some of the photographs I have taken:

These photographs will be very useful to help me progress my work, and start experimenting with different media and techniques to discover ways in which I could draw/paint the wings of butterflies. Also it allows me to think which butterflies would be most suitable along with my sky backgrounds,  as it is important that both the sky and the butterflies are similar toned, since I'm focusing how butterflies adapt to their environment through their colours.

I have already had a chance to work from some of the photos I have taken, helping me refine my work and style towards my final piece idea, I looked at some unusual ways of representing butterflies. Instead of drawing/painting etc. a grown colourful butterfly, I created a collage of pupa's  (immature form between larva and adult, when the insect is warped up in a cocoon) It is interesting to observe different forms of the same insect, as it takes us back to a different stage of their mostly short life cycle. Here is the work I produced: 

It was quite interesting and slightly challenging creating pupa's' in my work, as their texture and whole appearance requires different media to be used unlike when creating a grown up butterfly. Even though I think these experiments did work moderately well, I still prefer observing fully grown butterflies as they give me more ideas of how to draw/produce them.

Also I used some of the photographs from the butterfly farm to print them out on acetate, in order to go back through my previous work and see how various backgrounds make the butterflies look. Here are the most successful backgrounds:

Even though I consider these to have worked the best, I still think that the background is overtaking the butterflies, and they don't stand out as well so the viewers eyes loose attention of the butterflies. I think the best ways to make the butterflies look effective would be if the background was quite plain and simple not overdone or very bright, and then the butterflies would be full of detail colour and tone, but still working well and slightly blending with the colours of the background.

Butterflies and Moths

Recently I have been trying to take photographs of butterflies and also I have done some research about them that in a way helps me by giving me more knowledge about them.

This is a photograph I took recently of a butterfly, according to some research this is a common European butterfly species called Sulphurs. I think it's fascinating how similar the closed butterfly wings look to leafs of plants. It is a clever way for insects like butterflies to camouflage themselves from any dangers that they may face. This gives me inspiration for my butterfly theme, so far I have mostly focused on butterflies and their colours, but now I have an idea of observing how butterflies use their bodies in order to blend in, become unnoticed, unless focused on closely. It reminds me of some work that I have done in the style of Rebbeca J Coles, where I painted a sky, from my own photograph and then created paper butterflies that looked similar to the background to make them blend in more. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7lGA1Tb7GT865WVkeWQye8a6Gx3WnyC0SUX4S06i0xcGIYNf9edZvw92l9LNw6joT8vG9q_8PaXFJRJlBAOvNBZ1GmcoNcLt14D98ofnusG8gzLl-2F0A8yYD53YWgBIsZEqssfGMWE/s1600/BeFunky_DSC_1353.jpg .  I want to take this idea further, I want to show butterflies captured "flying" in some sort of sky or background, like they are frozen in time. Because I found out "An adult butterfly probably has an average life-span of approximately one month. In the wild, most butterflies lives are shorter than this because of the dangers provided by predators, disease, and large objects, such as automobiles. The smallest butterflies may live only a week or so, while a few butterflies, such as Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks and tropical heliconians, can live up to nine months." (1) So although we usually see them round both spring and summer, we may not realize how short their life-span is, and the fact that most likely we see a specific butterfly only once. 


Also not so long ago I managed to capture images of 2 different moths that were on my window during night time. 

I have discovered "Butterflies and moths are evolutionarily related group of insects, called lepidoptera, that share many characteristics, including having wings covered with scales...Many butterflies are very colorful and almost all butterflies are active exclusively during the day. In contrast, most moths are fairly drably colored and are active at night. But there are quite a few butterflies that are dull and quite a few moths that are brilliantly colored and fly during the daytime. " (1) 

I find the whole idea of moths being the "night" butterflies quite interesting, because before seeing those two moths on my window, I never really thought about them, or even the fact that they are relevant to my butterfly theme. It's like a contrast between good and the bad. Because usually butterflies are assumed as the pretty non-scary looking insects, whilst moths are quite dull and seen more as pests that aren't as likable. 

Maybe I could consider connecting the two insects together, to represent the day and the night, although I am not sure about this. However I still did some moth drawings inspired by Michael Cina.


Michael Cina - "Past Context" Collage. 

I have already drawn butterflies in the same style before earlier in my sketch book (although using conte crayon and chalk for butterflies that are light coloured and delicate was not very suitable, I think it works well for drawing moths because the neutral paper colours, conte-crayon and chalk combined together create this dull organic and natural looking colour tone, that is quite similar to a moth. Overall I still prefer to have the main subject as butterflies, however it was interesting to examine and draw moths, to discover different ways to draw them. 
References
1) http://naba.org/qanda.html

Michael Cina

I have continued experimenting in more ways of my chosen artists, I have particularly focused on Michael Cina's style. I have already before worked in the style of his painting called "Ways of Serigraphs" ( http://cinaart.com/Ways-of-Serigraphs ).  
Here is my previous work( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj36CeyHGBW_fh3dJcVZQmbe4ygvlCFEwr8zxtOCtZk3fiWFgZYcvk8CDYJX_Vnm_Mv77gGMEe9zKtM7I8MP20GHM50-OKKjfCVR-mG3O2hVnELF4Qpm-u56E4WyYktiw2jjf4zKl8MHrM/s1600/IMG_2417.jpg ) However I have decided to experiment even more in this chosen paintings style, by using an even wider range of media. Here are the pages I created;

As may be seen above, this time I tried layering the media more to create a more textured surface, also similarly to  "Ways of Serigraphs" this time, unlike in the previous drawings I have drawn, the lines created were continuous and quite free flowing. Although this technique and style is creative and expressive, It does not seem to be a suitable style for delicate creatures like butterflies. However I have considered the artist style to be very effective as background.
Bellow I created an assemblage/painting on canvas ( 23 x 30 cm) once again it was inspired by mostly Michael Cinas's painting "Ways of Serigraphs".  My painting was created using tea stains, books, stamps, acrylic paint, pen, PVA glue and hairspray. In the begging the initial idea was to create a background in Cina's style, however as my painting progressed I decided that it needed a main of butterflies, so I combined Michael Cina's style with Rebecca J Coles butterfly assemblage idea and style. (http://ievaexamblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/artist-analysis-rebecca-j-coles.html )

Overall the actual background turned out quite effective, for instance there is a variation of texture from rough (as the surface is quite uneven) to glossy and smooth surface (from the application of PVA glue and hairspray on the top layer of the painting). The one downside is the butterflies don't really stand out, as they are similar colour and material as the background. Even if visually they may not stand out, in real life butterflies often blend in  and camouflage with various surfaces in order to hide or be unnoticed by predators to protect themselves, so in a way this could be viewed as butterflies in camouflage, and only if you concentrate and closely observe may you notice them. It is quite similar to some of the butterfly images that I have photographed, where they blend in with similar coloured surfaces and objects.  Here are the photographs https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-BXu61NjIAxHQ5UAJQywzI18hNBfVaGXsGlBg1hJSxcNyMgMac7S4WI1_2AGMDFLRUVpsspyaeeIAoGzDlQ-GZrD6dQPI7wQQ5DlbUb8Kor_F_dSEONmPBDWF3f9jeIIM08YZYgbnvfY/s1600/DSC_0481.JPG and 



I also tried to work in the style of his other paintings.
Bellow Michael Cina - "From Above" Mixed Media on Paper.(left)  (1) and Michael Cina - "Rapine" Pigment and Ink on paper. (right) (2)

Bellow are 3 images inspired by the paintings above

These styles work very effectively to show layering of colours, as paint gradually gets layered on previously dried acrylic and oil paint creating a pigmented surface, that is both smooth and rough. Also the bright colours make the paintings look colourful and lively. This style is great as a background or base of my work.


Bellow Michael Cina "Tokyo Paedia" (3) mixed media on paper (left) and Michael Cina "Document Series" media: paper (right),  Have inspired me to create collages with delicate butterfly drawings.

Here is my work bellow:

The reason I like Cina's collages, is they are simple yet effective, they don't consist of a lot of detail, and simplicity makes them stand out. I tried creating my own collages, inspired by "Tokyo Paedia" except after I had created the base of the collages, over the top I drew observational drawings of parts of a butterfly (bellow) 



















This style has helped me to think of how to combine both expressive, free hand organic looking backgrounds with detailed drawings, so that they would not be overshadowed by what is behind them. I now know that it work best when the background is not too bright or overdone, but more neutral and simple looking.


Lastly I took inspiration from Michael Cina's painting called "Toledo" Acrylic on paper (4) bellow.

Here are my experiments bellow :

The style of "Toledo" is rather unusual, it looks like the painting was made with very minim marks, like paint was just scraped above the surface. This is why for my experiments, I applied the acrylic paint onto the black paper using a piece of cardboard, the dipping it into the paint and then freely and without applying too much pressure scraping it over the black paper. It is quite a simple yet very interesting painting style do work in. It just shows that by choosing the right colours like light paint on black surface, can make the work be bold with minimum marks required. 
References: 
1) http://cinaart.com/From-Above
2) http://cinaart.com/Rapine
3) http://cinaart.com/Tokyo-Paedia
4) http://cinaart.com/Toledo
5) http://cinaart.com/Document-Series