Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon was born in France in 1840 and died in 1916. He was a French symbolist painter, print maker and pastellist. The symbolist Odilion Redon showed the world from a metaphysical perspective. He used his intuition and emotion and his work awakes our subconscious. The charcoal drawing from the folder the ‘Two Trees’ it is not only a classical charcoal drawing but also a symbol, a portal to another world in our imagination of good and bad emotions, of fear and emptiness. The drawing does not use expressive lines, modern way of drawing or innovations but the value is in the symbolism which is shown in a very classical way of drawing. We see there a return to nature and peace in a turn of a century and end of an era.             Odilon  Redon was considered an artist of the Decadent movement and you can clearly see this in his later work. These works are a contradiction to the new ear of modernism they are more a show of despair, sadness and mourning.  This is all seen in the works ‘ Crying Spider’, ‘Cactus man’ and ‘Spirit forest’, these are very poetical but at the same time not dynamic we can see the time escape which is opposite to the ‘time forward’ which you can see in the works of Alexander Rodchenko  or Kazimir Malevich in modernism. This is only my opinion but I would call him a symbolist but also Nihilist. In Short his style is classical with excellent technique, good composition with a renaissance style which is located at a moderate bit space, space of imagination.                  Do these works still bring out such strong emotions in the twenty first century? I am not so sure, they are not very dynamic but are very thought provoking and lyrical. In his colour pastel drawings we can see the same things but also we can see impressionist inspirations and influences examples of these works include ‘Pandora’ and ‘The Cyclops’.  In the colour works we see signs of neo-romanticism, symbolism, impressionism and art nouveau. To conclude I am happy to be reminded of this incredible artist.

    

Joan Miró

I started my research at looking at the works of Julie Brixey-Williams but the work from the folder loctationotation didn’t speak to me as I didn’t see anything on my screen as it was too small and therefore I didn’t see it in its full and could not say what was going on. I think that her type of work is controversial to some and is not necessarily understood by everyone but there are many artists who identified with many strange aspects of culture but now are a big part in the history of art or cause emotion and controversies. So I started to think of artists which portray emotion in their works.                                                                 I started to search in lots of new directions and came across pop art and I found a new conceptual sort of art society called The Collège de ‘Pataphysique’. The name itself say a lot I shall not go into the etymology of the word but the group of artists identifying with this group includes Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miró, The names of these artists speak for themselves and evoke emotion. I want to focus on Joan Miró whose work focuses on lines, abstract way of thinking and the way of portraying his work as if he was a five year old child not losing the chid like drawing but using it to express emotions in a mature way. There are many works by Joan Miró that you can admire but I will talk about the work  The Morning Star (from Constellations) which is one of his most beautiful and reflective works. It is really childlike but once you look deeper and start to analyse the work you don’t see a star but a wed of lines and shape and this awakes emotions of anger as I can’t see the topic of the painting and I have a feeling like someone is distracting me from seeing the topic and is pulling away my attention to a completely new direction but after a few minutes I can see that it is the goal of the work and is not just a coincidence. The lines are chaotic but also have a sense. Of course the colours in the painting also play a part in emotions. After some time looking at the painting we can see the outlines of eyes, a crying child, shapes of birds and other things from our imaginations and after from a distance we can see a star. The painting is beautifully balanced.                                                                                                   I chose this work just as an example of Joan Miró’s work which all shows emotion, the colours he uses are sharp and bold, the lines are expressive and in his work we can see everything but also his work can be seen in many different things this is because he uses simple concepts to fascinate the viewer. By simple I mean the simple lines and group of colour you can explore and see the deep ideas and emotions.

TEMPORARY DRAWINGS

                 

Project 1 FEELING AND EXPRESSION

Exercise 1: EXPRESSIVE LINE AND MARKS

For the exercise I used charcoal, white pastel, black and white ink and pencil pastel, ball pen and pencil.

When I started, I found it very difficult, and I needed to think carefully for a long time. I did not know whether to treat this like a usual exercise or whether to express something more deep. I started with sad emotion on black paper because sad is always associated with black for me and it was easy to start with that. When I started drawing, I started feeling something. I carried on with anger, and it was much easier to express myself in that way.

I carried on with joy, I am not 100% sure I was joyful while doing that exercise. It is not easy to change feeling every half hour.

I carried on with bored, and to be honest I was bored that time.

SAD

ANGER

JOY

BORED

Project 2: BASIC SHAPES AND FUNDAMENTAL FORM

Exercise 1: GROUP OF OBJECTS

I made some quick sketches and I didn’t think too much about proportion but more about composition. When I start drawing I found it difficult to draw only outline because I always like building the shape using light and shadow and I like to try to give information about structure when I draw as well so I drew another one with shadow to help and look at how line builds the space. And finally I did only a line drawing but I could not eliminate my habits.

Black ink sketches on A2 format

Black ink sketch on A2 format

Charcoal on A2 I am not so happy with that.

Exercise2: OBSERWING SCHADOW USING BLOCK OF TONE

On a grey piece of sugar paper, I drew a fruit bowl focusing on the shade and I tried to catch all highlights.  After, I placed a wooden figure of a tucan and a half empty bottle of ink on the table. I tried to concentrate on the light; this was a big difficult as the tucan figure is multi-coloured so I tried to express the most light and dark places. I drew this figure with charcoal. Next I focused on a group on fruits in a sharp light. I used conte crayons for this drawing but the effect was more suitable for the next task.

Pastel, charcoal and brown conte on A3 paper.

Exercise 3: CREATING SHADOW USING LINES AND MARKS

I used four different mediums and drew different fruit and vegetables. What I found interesting in this task was using different mediums; I attempted to draw everything in a similar technique.

Exercise4: SHADOWS AND REFLECTED LIGHT

I used charcoal on an A2 format and I found it very easy to catch a reflected light. So I decided to do another one on grey paper. Unfortunately the light in the room changed and not everything worked that well as in the previous drawings, so I decided to make an illusion that light is not just on the object but everywhere.