Sheffield City//Photography

In the last semester I struggled with my work and felt very 'stuck' with where I was going to take it and what I was looking at. I had a tutorial with my crit tutor which really helped to clear things up and made me relax about my work. He made me realise I was pushing myself too hard and putting too much pressure on myself to create work. So I decided to take a step back and stop thinking too much about what I was working on and go back to the core of my interests; Sheffield. So I took my camera around Sheffield and took photographs of architecture from different angles. 

Canvas Paintings

For my end of year assessment I created a few paintings on canvases, that were more 'final' pieces than experiments. 

Acrylic paint on A4 canvas

Oil paint on A4 canvas

Oil paint on canvas

More 3D

After creating the smaller experimental 3D pieces, I decided to create a few bigger pieces based on one of the shapes I had achieved. This was my favourite form to work with because it involved the most variation of shapes and tones, and whilst being a simple combination of shapes, like the architectural cityscape of Sheffield is, the form isn't straight away obvious as architecture. These pieces were created on A4 canvas board with polyfiller and Das air-drying clay, and then painted with oil paint. 

Pollyfiller on A4 canvas board, painted with oil paint

Pollyfiller on A4 canvas board, painted with oil paint

Das air-drying clay with pollyfiller on A4 canvas board, painted with oil paint

Cityscapes//3D Experiments

These pieces are experimental pieces I made on A5 canvas boards with Das air-drying clay. They are based on the cityscape paintings that I created, but I thought it would be interesting to try out making 3D pieces and to play around with perspective, which I did by making the foreground, middleground and background different thicknesses on the canvas board. Again I focused on the minimalist forms and shapes of the architecture seen in Sheffield, with a modernist approach to creating and painting the pieces. I painted the shapes I achieved with either acrylic paint or oil paint. 

Das air-drying clay with acrylic paint on A5 canvas board

Das air-drying clay with acrylic paint on A5 canvas board

Das air-drying clay with acrylic paint on A5 canvas board

Das air-drying clay with acrylic paint on A5 canvas board

Das air-drying clay with oil paint on A5 canvas board

Printmaking Workshop//Etching

I recently took part in a printmaking workshop with my tutor that was made available to me. In this workshop we did etching (autographic and photographic), which I had never done before. Learning the process of etching, which is a complicated one, was really interesting and produced a variation of results. My autographic prints worked much better than my photographic, but it was good to experiment and learn about this form of printing. 

Drawing, on tracing paper, that the autographic prints were made from

Autographic Etch

Photographic Etch

More Painting//Sheffield

I have been working hard on assignments and assessments recently, so haven't been able to keep up with blogging, so I am updating you on what I have been up to. I have carried on painting the Sheffield cityscape, focusing mainly on minimalist structures and shades. 

Oil paint on canvas paper

Acrylic paint with biro on paper

Acrylic paint with biro on paper

Paintings//Photographs

I created paintings that purely consist of different shades of the same colour, using oil paint on A4 paper or canvas board. The aim of this was to simply practice painting and mixing colours, and to paint just because I wanted to.
I then thought about paintings and photographs of paintings. A painting has so many layers and textures (homogeneous), but when photographed is just one smooth texture (heterogeneous), which completely changes the painting. The material on which the painting is created also alters the look of the painting. A lot of the time we only see pictures of paintings on the internet or in books, which provides a completely different experience to viewing the actual painting.
The photographs on the post are of my paintings, but give a very different effect to that of seeing the paintings I actually made.