Week 2 Manipulating the image.

This week we started off with mono printing, I've never done mono printing before so this was interesting and to be honest by the end of it I didn't really like it that much, because only sometimes it even turns out very good. We started designing our mono prints by choosing a phrase or word like we did last week, and writing it out making it look 3d, or writing in cursive etc. This wasn't anything new for me but it was fun, I like the drawing side of it. After photocopying our designs we then started to mono-print. Mixing the inks to get light shade or different mixes of colours was annoying because it often came out blotchy looking and so you had to roll it out and then roll that onto a different plate to make it even, at least I worked that out eventually. I got some alright looking mono prints out of it, but overall I'm not too happy with them, they didn't turn out as I really wanted them too. 

On tuesday we started making posters using mono print collage and drawing or painting. I chose the phrase "Stop Animal Cruelty!!" as my first poster. This I did enjoy making because it involved text and drawing and I only mono printed the background so that was ok. The end result was a alright poster, the drawing of the giraffe is a bit rushed but it got the point across, but I like how the words stand out. The second poster I made says "Say NO to animal abuse!" and has a sad sad sad cat saying the words, I really like how the cat turned out it really did look sad and didn't take too long to draw either. I guess sometimes some things just work out nicely anyway. I also really like the mono printed background in this one, it turned out really nice, less blotchy than the previous one and not too overpowering. 

Overall this week was good and I am looking forward to next week.

Manipulating the image week one

This week was our first week of manipulating the image, also we got our marks back for drawing with nature and learning success which I'm very please with. We started off by taking notes on posters and starting on using words as images, playing with text using overlapping and different techniques using negative space and continuous line drawing etc etc. I think my favorite was my continuous line drawing because I didn't spend very long on it, and it was messy but it was a good kind of messy and it looked really interesting in my opinion.

After that we took our images and edited them on photoshop (I don't think I'm very good at this, but I tried.) and applied text over the top. I think my turned out okay even though I'm not the best and photoshop having not learnt all the in's and outs of it yet, I think it went well for a newbie. Then the next day we used magazines and cut out images in the shape of letter/text to create a collage of text. I really enjoyed this because it wasn't as difficult as photoshop and was colorful! I think I realized eventually that often too much colour is overwhelming and distracting, depending on the look you are going for, so I think in saying that my favorite of that session is the last one were I used black and white but with a pop of colour in there, simple but effective.

A Short History of Painting PPTX

Today we watched a power point on the history of painting to find artist's and their work we would like to make a forgery of. 

I liked in particular Rene Magritte's work ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe) because of the humour of it, because yes it is a picture of a pipe, but not an actual pipe itself.

I think the artist is trying to say that a painting is only a picture of something, but it is not the actual thing, it is only a picture even though you could still say that it is a pipe, its almost like a paradox. This work was created by Magritte during the surrealist movement and is a icon for modern art because it is so well known, his use of text ing his paintings inspired other artists later in the pop art movement. During the time this work was made the countries involved in WW1 were recovering after the war had stopped ten years previously.

Another work I liked was Roy Lichtenstein's Blam.

This work stood out to me because of its bold colours and because of its comic book or graphic novel style. Lichtenstein used comic books as subject matter and made small thumbnail sized images into big works of art, these were his contribution to the pop art movement. The pop art movement was during the 1960's this movement during a time when mass production was a new thing and the artists involved wanted to have art that was using popular subject matter and easily reproduced art hence the name pop art.