Getting used to drawing the life model. I have started to develop my own drawing style, which involves a lot of feathered lines and hard mark making on top to create finer detail.
I enjoy the sessions but find it hard to concentrate sometimes and often strains my eyes after a long period of time.
I need to experiment more with different materials and styles.

Os Gemeos

Os Gêmeos (Portuguese for The Twins) are graffiti artist identical twin brothers from São Paulo, Brazil. Their real names are Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo and were born in 1974. They started painting graffiti in 1987 and gradually became a main influence in the local scene, helping to define Brazil's own style. Their work often features yellow-skinned characters - taken from the yellow tinge both of the twins have in their dreams - but is otherwise diverse and ranges from tags to complicated murals. Subjects range from family portraits to commentary on São Paulo's social and political circumstances, as well as Brazilian folklore. Their graffiti style was influenced by both traditional hip hop style and the Brazilian pixação

I like the detail and variety they creates in their work. The colours are often very bright.

Graffiti can sometimes be messy and not planned out well, but this work is well organised and has great detail which is what i love about it.

All his work looks as if they have painted onto canvas because it is so detailed and clean.

Os Gemeos choose old buildings to paint on, and also odd areas, such as outside prisons.

Shrubberies no1 and no2

An installation piece by Gilbert and George. I think that the work is, i presume, on four walls and finished with charcoal on paper canvas which gives it a gloomy feel.
It also creates a lot of texture, as they appear to draw very roughly which could be to make the image appear to be moving.
They gain more detail by adding more shading for example.
Also, a lot of their work is constructed by placing several canvas's together. Or possibly one large canvas divided up into sections using thick borders. This maybe to create depth and to break up a large, and other wise plain area.

Mad Tracey from Margate

This is a piece by Tracey Emin. It is an acquired blanket which has been appliqued. 

Almost like a diary, Emin uses her thoughts and feelings to create a mixture of emotions in her work.

I like the use of different fabrics and materials as they create an interesting mural which occupiers can spend a long time reading all the information.

In the future i will think about using this technique to create a dramatic effect.

Jessica Kerbawy

Whilst researches artists who use heat guns in their work, I came across Jessica. In her work she uses wax crayons to create pieces of bright, vibrant work by melting them with a heat gun. I like the texture of the wax when it has dried and become hard. Her other work includes creating flowers from green wax crayons by making the melted drips into stems.

Graffiti Artists

It was quite hard to find single graffiti artists, apart from the obvious Banksy and Robbo work. I managed to find one artist, established in 1984, named "Kelzo".

Based mainly in Manchester, he creates wall murals and also takes commissions for private work.

Next week I am visiting Manchester, so i will be sure to keep a look out for his work!

Manchester, 2011

Sheffield, 2007

A Company that i found is called The Graffiti Life Company the aim to promote graffiti as a positive art from and want to show the many opportunities that become available through urban art.

After having a look through their helpful websites, i came across a few time lapse videos that show how and where they work. These are very interesting and i hope more become available to watch.

As well as just using spray paints, marker pen is also used to create vivid murals.

http://graffitilife.co.uk/

Whilst at a festival earlier on in the year, i came across a graffiti artist. I took some pictures of the murals as i really liked the style.. The colours, shapes and writing appealed to me. 

http://www.graffitiartist.com/index.php

Karen Head

Karen uses hand dyed threads, wool, man-made yarns, silk fibres and miscellaneous materials to 'draw' within the medium of felt. Her work is all wet felted by hand and she chooses not to embroid or embellish.

Karen Head uses this technique to create compositions of landscapes and detailed replicas of flowers.

Polly Walker

Polly Walker grew up in South America, returning to the United States as a teenager, where she attended Boston University School of Fine Arts and later the Art Students League in New York to study metal sculpture. 

After exploring numerous different materials and mediums, including watercolor, egg tempera, ceramics, welded metal sculpture, papier mache, and etching, she primarily focused on painting on shaped or cutout wood panels with oil and acrylic paints, managing to incorporate the three dimensionality of sculpture with the infinite colour possibilities of painting.

Upon moving to the Southwest, she became intrigued with the colour and textural range of fibers, and began to make felt, presently living in Idyllwild, California, where she makes felted wool and silk and wool wall piece.

Examples of felted work:

Example of her paintings on wood:

Needle Felting

During my research i found a few helpful videos that will help me to produce needle felted sculptures.

(i do not own these videos)

Jenny Saville

Saville has dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting. She mainly focuses on large, naked women and how their body visually looks when when pressed against clear glass. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body.

Skelentons

Todays seshion went better than i expected. I really liked the chalk sketches as the chalk creates great shading and preduces good markmaking- although it is very prone to smudging so fixing spray must be used to save the original form. The lines also give the picture movement.
In future I need to practice drawing so that the image fits onto the paper, as I had trouble fitting everything in.

Materials used: Chalk, pencil, charcoal, biro pen

Frank Auerbach

Auerbach is a figurative painter, who focuses on portraits and city scenes in and around the area of London in which he lives. Auerbach is not an expressionist painter. His work is not concerned with finding a visual equivalent to an emotional or spiritual state that characterised the expressionist movement, rather it deals with the attempt to resolve the experience of being in the world in paint. In this the experience of the world is seen as essentially chaotic with the role of the artist being to impose an order upon that chaos and record that order in the painting.

Head of E.O.W 1955

Primrose Hill 1954/55

 "If you pass something every day and it has a little character, it begins to intrigue you."

Anselm Reyle

Reyle is a German artist who uses old, recycled objects to create new sculptures and large scale paintings. His famous works include using neon lights, coloured material and metals.



I came across his work when on a trip to The Saatchi Gallery in London. The untitled sculpture above caught my attention when I entered the room as the light emitted from it was very bright and colourful.

Later on, i researched his work and found that he created 'Project Painting by Numbers', which uses the mapping to create large scale paintings. This was inspired by his childhood as he wasn't allowed to play with such methods. Reyle leaves certain areas clear of paint, and fills others with different material and texture to create an abstract image that you wouldn't necessarily associate with Painting by Numbers.

"When I only pick out one detail from the motive it is possible to focus on the material and get back to the abstract image. This is a detail form the eye, so if you see the whole motive it is possible to recognize the detail"

Science Museum

On the 14th October, I travelled down to London to visit some galleries.A short stop in the Science Museum prooved very interesting and inspired me with lots of ideas. Mainly to do with the human body and all the attributes assocciated and how they work amongst each other.
one piece of work in the 'Exploring Space' gallery, was a Globe. I really liked this as it appeared as if to be floating, and I could not work out how it was being supported. Also, I loved how it was glowing, and the overall atmosphere the globe had on the room. It felt like it was the main attraction in the gallery, even though a lot more items were present. It received a lot of attention, whether that be due to the technical side, or the aesthetic appearance.
When outside the museum, the buildings surrounding it were very traditional, the streets were very clean and it was really bright. I felt like i was in America.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/