My final art piece which I decided to do was a small model village inspired by the Vincent Van Gogh painting ''Starry Night''. Starry night is exciting and complex to look at because of the intricate swirls and the fact that everywhere you look there is something happening that can catch your eye. There is also a very calm, sorrowful colour scheme of cold blue colours. This is effective because it is not harsh on your eyes; the colours calmly blend together and create a soft swirl of sea colours drafting around the sky- almost like it is moving.
Many things concluded to my final outcome to make it the best I could. Because I had created during this term and learnt about 3-D projecting forms I decided to stick with the idea of 3-D; so I could show how I have picked up new skills and techniques. I looked at my flower which I made to come out of a book I made a few weeks ago and thought that was a very predominant and eye catching design because of the size and the complex collaging f the plant and decided to make a 3-D piece in small relation to that.
During the half-term of the project I was asked to make a small piece of artwork that was to show what I had learnt so far and also had relation to our theme of recycling. We were given a website address for an artist called Tom Hunter who's work was inspired by the Art from Art range of work in which you take an old painting and recreate it to be relevant for your times; he has done many of these sorts of pictures.This inspired me to make a 2-D drawing of Vincent Van Gogh's starry night. I created it with pastels to create the swirling smoggy effect. To make this relevant to this day I created the village in the picture to be an industrious town that created light pollution to show how the world has changed since the 1800's.
Tom Hunter is an internationally renowned photographer who has exhibited in many places. He was also the first person to have a solo photography show at the National Gallery in London. He is known for making very contemporary pieces that depict life as it is today- often with a melancholy feel. He also takes photos of people and organisations who live in Hackney, to show diversity and multiculturalism. He also uses the borough in London Hackney a lot in his photos;he currently lives and work there. The pieces that I focused on were his Art from Art pieces.
One of my favourites is Two Men Wanted which is a re-incarnation of the piece A Satyr Mourning Over A Nymph. What he has done is after analyzing an old pre-raphaelite (such as Ophelia of the spirits) painting he decided to create a slightly dissimilar remake of it, but in today's context. He did this by photographing two people in modern day clothing- although one of them ,like the painting, is on the floor dying. This shows that losses can be made- even if they are not dramatised or on the news- like many of the crimes that are unreported in Hackney. He has used a copper back light to compliment the colour of the layered leaves and has achieved rich colours making the whole piece eerie and still, and quite haunting to think about.
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| Two Men Wanted and A Satyr Mourning Over A Nymph |
After I had looked at ideas from other artists I decided to continue with the idea of recreating Vincent Van Gogh's piece.I then advanced with the idea of Starry Night but then thought of an idea of turning my 2-D drawing into a 3-D model village; doing this would be more in-keeping with my projects and work I had done before.
This is the painting that inspired my final piece. You can see that in this painting you can make out old Tudor fashioned houses and a steeple church in which I kept in my piece so it had slight resemblance to the piece.
Before I properly started on my piece I created a smaller version maquette so I could make a decision on what I would place where and what materials I would use. This was extremely helpful because I could see my final design in a smaller scale but in a correct one so I could still experiment without making final decisions.
I made my final outcome by firstly obtaining three pieces of corrugated card. I used two of them for the backing and also the surface of my created piece. I then used the other sheet of corrugated card to create the miniature houses in the village. To make these it was very complicated work. I had to design a net for the boxes and rectangles that were made into a 3-D house. This was extremely complicated and fiddly because I had to slot each tab on one of the faces of the cube into a space(this took a lot of tries and time!) To keep with the recycling theme the only glue I used was left-over from classes before so I didn't use up brand new glue. Also all of my media which I used was recycling and would have otherwise been thrown away.
To make the trees I experimented with lots of ideas but then I found a brilliant material of the inside of an egg carton to be it. The shaping is perfect and the texture was rough and it looked like leaves had different layers. To create the church I had to create a net for a cuboid to make the long steeple which was even more hard to create and stick together due to the longer therefore more fragile. I wanted to vary the size and shape of all of the houses otherwise the whole piece would be slightly repetitive. That is why I created the church- to give more varying structures to the scenery.
I also changed the sizes of the houses so when you looked at the piece the perspectives are correct. When you look at something the sizes of things change e.g when you look at a person close to you and then a tree metres away the person looks extremely large compared to the tree. If you do not get the perspectives correct then the piece looks out of proportion and not right. By making the houses far away smaller and the houses nearer to the viewer bigger then you can make the proportions more accurate; this was a main aim for me so my piece looks slightly more realistic.
To create the roofs of the houses I still wanted to keep the same sepia coloured colour so I used the other side of the corrugated card to compliment the colour of the light brown. This also created a nice wood-logged feel to the roofs so it looked life the roofs were logged. I also used tissue paper and scrunched it up to create a textural effect of shrubbery and grass. I also used different shades of tissue paper in the sky to create a spiralling, confusing effect that made everywhere you look a different swirl. I also added different media use but still kept in the same colour palate.
There were many alterations in which I had to make while in the process of making my miniature village such as I started making the nets of the houses out of thick cardboard which made the folding extremely difficult therefore I had to change the cardboard to corrugated to make the folding easier. I was also contemplating whether I should add the black figure in Starry Night to show the resemblance. In the end I decided I show make it my own and I did this by not including the black figure and instead placing a farm by putting down corrugated card and flat tissue paper over it for more layering. I felt if I left out the figure I could make the piece more of my own and keep in the theme of Art from Art.
I also thought of adding LED lights to make the piece more like Starry Night- but if I added these I would have to set up a circuit and it would make the background more complicated than it needed to be. It would also draw the eye away from the main focus which is the architecture of the houses and church.
I am happy with my final outcome because It is what I had imagined and pictured it to look like. I think I created different focuses in the foreground, background and middle ground so the whole piece is eye-catching and intricate. I have so many things that I could improve it by. One of these things is that I wish I could have added stained glass windows onto the church. I would have done this by using tissue paper or sellaphane and stuck it in a window carved in. This would have made the piece much less simple and more intricate. I could also have added in LED lights but like I have said they could detract from the simplicity of the piece. I also had an idea of setting this scene on the pages of a book in which I saw in a shop in town. If I had made the houses and everything smaller I could have fitted it onto a page and it could have created a deeper story line. But overall- I think I executed the piece with justice and I think that the simplicity of the town and then the wildness of the sky creates a real contrast- making the piece much more aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.
Here are some pictures of the construction and planning of the piece-
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| My maquette |
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| My final piece |
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| My net for my houses |
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| My mind map and testing of ideas |
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| My first concept art and Ideas |
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