Assignment one
While working on this assignment I analysed what I did in the previous projects and realised that I fell into a trap as looking at the works of Elizabeth Blackadder and Henri Matisse I only looked at coloured work which are paintings, from which I took a lot. Both artists have works filled with colour and light that are vibrant and lively, in Matisse’s I notices a more contrasting use of colours often with a contour around detail, in Blackadder’s work the composition is flatter and not scaled, the coloured objects join and mould with the background and the space is not shown carefully, there is a lot of geometric forms this is a contrast to Matisse where we can always distinguish the focus point. I looked at a lot of work of fauvism artists such as Andre Derain and Georges Rouault and was always amazed with how they fill space with colour but in my opinion the composition and subject was always very identifiable and readable while Blackadder is in some sense similar, but her objects are very symbolic in character. The trap I fell into was how to show the mass of colour in drawing. I started to look more closely at Blackadder’s drawings and found a series of drawing of cats and other animal where each drawing line is very simple and looks like a simple sketch but combines to give depth, from simple lines she transforms to a patch of colour. Simple drawing of an animal is placed into a simple but imaginary space and suddenly we are not just looking at a simple drawing of a cat but an interesting composition which might turn into a full colour painting. Her drawings, in comparison to her paintings, are more like sketches have much more energy and are more dynamic.
Study of Cats. Elizabeth Blackadder
Kikko on the Rug. Elizabeth Blackadder
So, I decided to draw composition of my dog. I started with a few sketches with the dog and boots in the first plane, the boots being a random object. I realised that the floor the dog is sat on could look more interesting if I changed the colour of it and so in the next sketch I developed a different colour for the floor.
I started to develop the project without other elements such as boots. I stated to sketch my dog on the floor against a plane wall.
I drew then drew two bigger format drawings and decided to draw the dog as the subject with a colourful background floor to make an engaging composition. I did this on a big format, the first one is the dog against the floor, but I made the floor too pink, so the next drawing is slightly toned down with black tones in the background I did both to see which would look more vibrant and linked together.
In my final piece I stopped concentrating what space the dog is in and looked at it as more of an abstract and free space and to make the composition livelier I decided to draw a dog running and playing with is ball. I think I gave the same amount of focus on the dog as the background and wanted the two pieces to have a link and for them to work together, I used similar lines when drawing detail of the dog to draw the ball to make it look like a whole unified drawing. I drew this picture freely and in a very playful way using charcoal, I think I achieved quite an interesting result, I think it is worthy of the assessment.
Final piece “Dalmatian” pastel on paper A1
73 Kisiel OCA My Blog 