Other artists...
I am also going to look at other artists, such as Jonny Hannah, and look at how they draw the figure. Even though he may not not be direclty influenced by Folk Art. Jonny Hannah, among others, breaks down the figure into simple shapes. This is something that I'm starting to do more to help me improve my fiure drawing and is something that the comtemporary illustrators I am lookin at also do.
I am going to look into colour and perspective too. Many of the artists/illustrators I am researching use skewed perspecitves. They also have a naivete to their work and drawing style that works well.
American Folk Art
I am definitely going to do American Folk Art and the contemporary Illustrators that are influenced by it for my research project. I think I will find this much more interesting and it will help to develop my work a lot more.
Hmm.....
Another idea I am contemplating is researching Folk Art, and other illustrators who have that kind of naive style to their drawing and work. As of yet I am a bit undecided...
I think that Folk Art would be interesting and would also be very helpful to me, as I need to improve my figure drawing. The simplistic drawing style of Folk Art is a good reference for me to help deconstruct the figure. I also like the skewed perspectives that folk artists often create.
3rd Year Research Project
I found thinking of a theme/idea for my 3rd year research project quite hard, mainly because the brief is so open. I want to look at contemporary illustration, and in particular illustrators who successfully use collage/ephemera/mixed media and create textures in their work. This is something that I have started to do myself and want to experiment with a lot more in my own work. Although I don't do it as explicitly as the illustrators I have shown here, I am very interested in their work and it influences me in one way or another. Within this I will also look at decorative elements of their work and how they use pattern and mark making, which is something I am starting to explore a lot more, especially with my drawing/pictoral language. To give my research more depth I am going to look artists in the past who used collage, namely Kurt Schwitters, as he is regarded as very important in this area.There are a lot of other illustrators/artists (some current) that I want to research for this too; they are shown below.
All of the research I have been doing, as well as the project itself, has been very interesting. It has made me think about clues and why things are where they are in films and other art work. It has made me look a lot more closely at them.
A scene from the film, where "Vicky" is dancing in a ballet of the Red Shoes....... with a paper man.
I have also watched the film version of The Red Shoes, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1948). It is a bizarre and very surreal take on the story. At the beginning, and throughout, the film contains painted backdrops, which were good to look at for my project. (See above)
I have been illustrating the Hans Christian Anderson story "The Red Shoes". It is about a little girl, Karen, who gets given some red shoes. Once she puts them on she can't stop dancing and dances everywhere. Eventually she goes to get her feet chopped off because she can't stand it anymore. She then dies at the end because she hears a choir singing in Church, which makes her feel so happy that her heart breaks. (Leila's very condensed version of the story)
There are a lot of different variations of the story, but I have been looking at the version from the link below:http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheRedShoes_e.htmlI chose to illustrate just a snippet of the story as it is quite long. The section I chose is when Karen has the red shoes on and cannot stop dancing. She dances into the woods, where she meets a soldier with a red beard, who condemns her to dance forever more. She then dances over the graveyard and to the Church where she sees an angel guarding the doors.
(Apologies for the lack of postage, I've been away the past couple of weeks over xmas)
Edward Hopper's work is a great example of filmic devices being used in paintings to tell a story. Similarly to Gregory Crewdson, Hopper creates images that could be film stills (The film references in my list (Far From Heaven and The Man Who Wasn't There) have obviously looked to Hopper for inspiration). He manages to make the viewer think about/decide what is happening in the painting. He does this by using clever clues to suggest different things.
Hopper is also clever in the way he uses perspectives.
Gregory Crewdson's photography is pretty amazing. He creates images that look as though they could have been picked from films as stills. Each photo tells a story. What that story is depends on what the viewer gets from the photo. Crewdson allows us to think about/decide what is happening/happened/about to happen. He creates atmospheres in them and pays a lot of attention to detail. Everything in the photo is there for a reason.
This film still from Far from Heaven is good example of how directors look to painters like Hopper for inspiration. If painted this image could easily be one of Hopper's.
