Fine Art Rotation

Like others i was looking foraward to this two weeks as my A level was 'Fine Art' so i got the impression it would be the most familiar and not as alien as fashion and textiles or the other rotations to come. In the beginning we drew from previously made installations in the middle of each room, we experimented with different materials and techniques yet i found drawing in this area much more free rather than specific instructions as to what we had to do like in fashion. I was a bit thrown by this initial task because the installations apparently each had meanings which the objects and videos within them all contributing towards, yet i struggled to see the references. I also discovered the tutors were mostly impressed with the more abstract and simple images made and did not like the use of shading and detail.. i guess to start us off slowly so we could get a real feel for the things we were drawing rather than focusing on making the drawings looking good. We went on to make sculptures out of a cardboard box which i found challenging yet it showed me how you can use your imagination to make the most standard boring object into something completley different which mirrored the drawing studies we had been making.

After this we began self directed mini projects using objects from  home and materials we chose to work with which is where i took more of a grasp on the definition of fine art, working this way and watching others work this way i could see the people who work best in self driven almost biographical situations which i struggled with. Being given so much freedom to express whatever we wanted freaked me out and i sort of lost momentum. I had taken some photos of purple flowers over the weekend which i liked and thought would be good to work from, so i first began a painting of a flower on A2paper.

I wanted to blend the colours really smoothly to try and make the painting realistic, yet David said i needed to get a fat brush and ignore detail which i ended up trying. Working this way did losen me up and allow me to be more experimental rather than just copying the flower exactly from the photograph. I did enjoy this and was pleased with some of the smaller images i produced using watercolours and fine liner.

After this i began to think more about my chosen subject for my work and i was inspired by beauty amongst the concrete jungle we live in, such as flowers creeping out between paving slabs, or a flower bed on the side of a street littered with cans and broken glass. I liked the idea that the natural worldwas rebelling and breaking through the man made. Thinking further about this i felt i needed to experiment with some new materials so i mixed up some plaster and played aroundwith pouring into different shot glasses and plastic boxes and positioning different leaves and flowers in them before they set. I really liked the contrast of the smooth plaster which set against the plastic to the rough areas, yet shot glasses and plastic boxes seemed too formulaic as shapes so i decided to try pouring the plaster into the corners of plastic bags. I was really pleased with the shapes they made as the plaster is such a strong material yet the form of what i had produced was fluid and i felt reflected the shapes and movement of nature.