Author: Amara

Prepping new surfaces for painting: two different types of denim (grey and beige), and cotton, gesso.

Mark making and layering, one image.

I started thinking about my mark-making with my primed base. For one, I used a paint roller, which created a smoother surface with less texture. For another, I just used plain gesso with a brush, and for the other I used gesso diluted with water with a brush.

I then created different backgrounds using different methods. On the plain brushed gesso, I used a dark grey acrylic and brushed it on started on the outer edges, horizontally. On the diluted gesso, I used diluted grey acrylic in a ketchup-style bottle and squirted/poured the paint on it. On the rolled gesso, I used light grey paint and coated the surface.

Then, I started painting my image. On the rolled gesso, I used a sponge to apply the paint, focusing on verbs like drag and dab. On the plain brushed gesso, I used a paintbrush and focused on only using horizontal strokes, with verbs like brush, smear, and spread in mind. On the dripped canvas, I used the same method to drip the paint on, (this resulted in a VERY abstract rework of the image, and would have worked better if the paint had dried between colours).

Experimenting with cool colours, warm colours, neutral colours:

Tuesday, September 27

Chosen Photos: photo incl people, photo w/ people (landscape, still life), painting pre-1900s, film screengrab.

References – left to right: personal 2022, personal 2022, John Atkinson Grimshaw 1885, Johan Christian Dahl 1839, personal, 2022 personal 2022, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2009, Fight Club 1999, Beautiful Boy 2018.

Re-works:

* like, ** like more, *** like most

Charline Von Heyl *

Cy Twombly **

Gerhard Ritcher ***

Jacqueline Humphries ***

Pat Steir **

Rita Ackermann ***

Terry Urban ***

Painting through verbs: spill, dilute, smear, pour, flick, scrape, drip, drag, splash, flood, erase, drop, spread, pull, soak, smooth, dollop.

Surfaces: paper x3, wood x2, scarf fabric x2, misc fabric x2, mdf x1, denim x1.

Medium: diluted red acrylic in water, black and white acrylic with gesso.

Photography Reflection:

The past 6 weeks have been thoroughly enjoyable for me. From learning new art-making and photography processes to looking into artists to discovering new mediums I love, I think that my practice has really developed recently. I have always loved photography, yet had never been given the opportunity to try out something different than digital photography with a phone or camera. Learning about and trying out pinhole photography has opened up a new path for me to go down in the future whenever practising photography, and I also now know that I love making cyanotypes. I think that I produced some interesting works that capture the theme of nature drawing itself, for example, my pinhole photo of the tree next to the electrical box.

Preparing for Critical Evaluation:

I spent the day on Tuesday carefully selecting which works I wanted to pin up, the format, which ones to group together, etc. I really enjoyed seeing selected works put up on the wall and how they did or didn’t work together. On Wednesday, we went around for the full 3 hours and did critical reflections of everyone’s walls. I found this extremely beneficial and interesting, and it gave me a good chance to look at other people’s works, think about them, and hear other people’s thoughts on them too. I think that the discussions we had around everyone’s works helped me to think about my own work a lot and how to alter it before the final hand-in.