Friday, 17 June 2011

All About Bridget Riley

For each module you have to study an artist that relates to the theme, and for me an obvious choice for the colour module was Bridget Riley, who has produced some wonderfully striking works with bold colours.  I attended an exhibition of her work at the National Gallery just a few months ago with this module in mind (Bridget Riley; Paintings and Related work) which was really inspirational and it has certainly made her works more 'real' and made researching her a lot more interesting.

I wanted to come up with a different and slighly more inventive way of presenting my work about an artist, rather than the usual couple of pages in a portfolio.  So I decided to create a consertina booklet.  (I like to make things difficult for myself!)  When I started out I had a plan of how I wanted it to look but I was a bit unsure if I was going to be able to put it into practice, and create it to a standard that I thought was good enough for C and G.    After a lot of fussing around with text size, alignment, etc. and wasting far more paper than I care to admit, I am pleased with the final result.  So here it is...

The Front - with a 'band' to hold it all together made from a copy of one of  BR's Paintings
The whole 9 yards (well almost!)
Close up of the first half 
And Close up of the second
So all in all it's not bad for a couple of days work (including looking after Freya, of course) and I am pleased that the presentation is a bit different. 

In relation to my timetable, I am already slipping a little behind but it is certainly useful to have a plan of work so that I know what to focus on next.  Which this time is finalising my research on colour, which sounds fun but it is such a HUGE topic!  Hard to narrow it down but I think I am getting there!

Wednesday, 8 June 2011

One Direction

Well I am finally back from our lovely holiday in Crete, and also the Hay Book Festival in Wales, and ready to continue with my work. Good news is I have had my feedback on Module 2, and it was really positive, with some very encouraging comments.  My tutor said that she is 'delighted with my progress' so that has really spurred me on.  She commented that she really liked my Nelson collage,and that she wanted me to develop it further by putting it into computer software and manipulating the image and creating a few more designs.  This I have done, and it has been very interesting.  The other thing she said was that the stripes in my Ohio star should all be going in one direction, and that I should amend/or redo with this in mind.  So here is my second, and ok, yes, better (!) attempt... 
Ohio Star - Stripes in One Direction!

And now I am working on module 3.  I have ordered myself a lovely A3 red sketchbook, (in keeping with the colour theme) and I have started my research on Bridget Riley, my chosen artist to study.  It seems that for this module there is mountains of work and outcomes, all of it so interesting, I just wish there were more hours in the day!  I have put a 12 week plan together and I am going to do my best to stick to it...but we shall see.  Sometimes life gets in the way...