Assignment five The personal project

For this assignment I decided to create natural realistic scenes using pastel on card board called

“Woman looking after calves”. 

(A1 format)

Before I started I took very long to think about the subject and carefully analysed my previous work and came to the conclusion that the pastel work spoke to me the most, especially the series of work with the calves. I did not want to copy previous work and wanted to create something new, a piece that would have a more personal character and a link to my everyday life, a piece close to nature. I started looking for materials and came across pictures in the barn with calves where I photographed a woman looking after the calves. I came to the conclusion that this photograph would be useful for my final piece. The photograph seemed very natural and gave me an idea that already seemed familiar. I remembered that I had seen similar scenes in a Polish artist Stanisław Wyspiański (15 January 1869 – 28 November 1907), who was a painter, poet and playwright and was known in the Young Poland Movement. An artist whose work was mostly pastel and portrayed mostly rural, natural scenes as well as portraits and became famous for his picture “motherhood” which shows his wife breast feeding his child, his work and that scene really speaks to me as it shows the natural happy feeling of the woman and I found this in my photograph.

Motherhood, 1905 Stanislaw Wyspianski

 

Self-Portrait with Wife at the Window, 1904

http://culture.pl/en/artist/stanislaw-wyspianski

Of courses the photograph was just the beginning to finding the perfect composition. A happy scene resembling a mother feeding children was important; I wanted to distinguish between the human form, the animals and the background using pastel. I started doing preparatory pictures and tried to make the right composition but they weren’t speaking to me, there was too much similarity in them with the use of lines and also the figure of the woman wasn’t standing out from the background. I decided this was the wrong direction and I decided to concentrate on the task: mother feeding children, and make this the most important. The concept seemed very easy during the whole process of creating became very hard. I had to work in a more controlled way, less loose, less aggressive to show the difference between the woman and the animals. In the animals I let myself go with a little fantasy but in the woman all the lines and tones had to be different to the animals, both in colour and in expression this was the only way to precisely show the difference and focus on the sense of the scene. The next problem that arose was how to show the difference between the figures and also the texture and at the same time show unity between the figures making sure the woman stood out but was also share some characteristics with the rest of the scene. The work using colour is also a task as I didn’t only have to think about what lines I’ve used but also carefully analyse what colours I should be using and what temperature the colour with have. Tonal and colour evaluation was very important in this piece.

During this work I showed great control of manners, in my opinion I was able to show what was most important in the whole composition, I think that my work has a warm and friendly character and can be a stepping stone to creating similar work in the future. The pressure I put on myself, such as creating the said scene in my opinion was successful, I showed who I really was and what kind of expression talk to me. I was able to create, from many uncontrolled lines, a piece of work that shows my own way of drawing. I used my own knowledge of how to use tone and line and how to define the form and I also most importantly tried to show some emotion. My work is made of simple ideas but I think that it is a success. The figure of the woman is in complete relation with nature and the animals and I think some people will have the same feeling about this work. This work could be a step in the direction to developing more scenes like this, decorative warm feelings and also showing some emotion which was a characteristic in Modernism. I think the chosen medium that I used was the best choice and in a way it pushed me to create this work and not something different. I am fully aware that pastel and charcoal controlled my way of drawing but I am fully personalised with it.

In conclusion in my opinion my work imagination comes in pairs with expression. There is also space for experimentalism but also for personal feeling. The composition seems right, and the technique was limited by the medium I worked in but was arranged in the right way and my idea which I wanted to show is clear and has the right character.

Preparatory pictures