radical geometry

Went to the 'radical geometry' exhibition at the royal academy which I really loved, it had lots of art from all around South America. Lots of bold, graphic lines, quite architectural.

Lydia Pape, Helio Oiticia, Joaquín Torres-García:

I love exploring patterns and line work and these give interesting perceptions on how you look at the world and how they are interpreting it. The bottom two are woodcuts, I love the texture it creates so definitely want to try this method this year.

Jesus Soto, Gego:

there were some installations that really played with how we look at objects, when you move around the installations it looks completely different each time and is a completely different shape. 

all the artists in this exhibition play with scale and colour, creating optical illusions that challenge the viewers perceptions. 

I enjoy doing more abstract work where I can depict what I see in more analytical ways - playing with patterns and textures, so this exhibition gave me a lot if inspiration for further work. 

line work

Over the summer I've been trying to improve my drawing of people, I've never been able to get it right. After attempting to do some sketches I realised one of the reasons it wasn't working was because I was using too many lines, my line work wasn't confident enough.

I follow Sarah Maycock on instagram, she put up a sketch she did of a dog that i really liked because of the simplicity of it. She uses strong, confident, single lines and still manages to get the character of the dog.

So I tried sketching with confident lines, and I was pleased with my outcomes; they may have not been perfectly in proportion but I think they had a lot more character and clarity to them.

matisse

went to the matisse exhibition at the Tate. I didn't really know much about his cut out work but I found the exhibition really inspiring.
I love the way he depicts objects and scenes, reducing them down to lots of different shapes and colours, it makes the pieces really striking. The mix of bright colours, and how he uses colours for different meanings rather than the colours usually assigned to particular objects, it really gives his pieces so much life and energy.

I watched a video on how he went about making them, and the speed he has while cutting the shapes is amazing, how neat they are really doesn't matter, its more about the composition and the contrast in colours.
The exhibition showed the original cut outs and the prints that were put into books, and I felt the originals were far more impressive. In the originals you can see all the layers of the paper, the colours are bolder and it felt so raw and energetic. I think a lot of the personality of the pieces is lost through print.
I feel his work relates a lot to the style in which I have been working in recently, I have moved on from detailed pieces and found I have really enjoyed deconstructing what I see into shapes and simple colours, not concentrating too much on individual elements.

sketches

amsterdam

went to amsterdam for a couple of days, loved the city - the strange architecture and all the rivers cutting through the streets made it really interesting to explore. 

 what most attracted me to it was the architecture, I love strange buildings, and all the houses there are slightly wonky making it feel like they are all closing in on you as you walk down the streets.  

artists ive been looking at

I've been looking back into Hockney's work, I love his landscape work so much. There is so much life in his paintings. I have started having his work in the back of my mind when i've been drawing from life and I have really liked the outcomes. It's like he is creating whole other worlds just with the shapes and colours he uses.

I've been getting into studying a lot of plant life over the summer, plants are all so different, so I've really been enjoying depicting all the different shapes, and seeing how I can perceive them differently. And I love Henri Rousseau's jungle scenes, there is so much going on, all the plants are overlapping each other it is like a painted collage. 

After my PPP work last year, I've been excited to start playing around with collage again. I haven't done much over the summer but I really want to get back into it this year. I find Bryan Olson's collages really dynamic and surreal, I want to be more confident with collage this year. 

secret garden party

went to secret garden party, was the best festival I have been too. Loved how much effort had been put into the aesthetics of it. Everywhere you looked there was something new to explore. 

Everything had been so thought out for the festival, it was just as much about the artistic designing of it as it was the music. Definitely want to try and help out with the designing and setting up of it next year.