Ink Deep

Hockney (Born July 9th 1937) is a well renowned print maker and artist, and is considered to be a large contributor to the Pop art movement, as well as an incredibly influential British artist.  We had looked at Hockney before during our expressive drawing studies, as he was one of the more linear and line based artists.  His work was minimal, showing how simple lines could represent to much detail.  Every line had a purpose and meaning, and subtracting a single line would be a huge detriment to the image over all. Portrait of Cavafy II from 1966 is a portrait of modern Greek poet CP Cavafy.  The print is an etching with aquatint on paper.  Cavafy was a man Hockney hugely admired, with a large chunk of his work suggesting homosexual themes.  It's suggested that the hotel in the background indicates the idea of chance sexual encounters.  Honestly, I don't particularly enjoy Hockney's work.  Perhaps it's just because I don't fully understand ...

Born 24th of February 1922, Richard Hamilton was a English printmaker who focused on screen printing and digital printing.  He passed away in 2011, leaving behind a collection of interesting prints and collages.  Considered to be one of the earliest involved in Pop Art in the UK, Hamilton's art poked at modern life and society as a whole, his work often carrying satirical intentions. Interior , from 1964-5 is a screen print including images of 50s and 60s lifestyle.  Truth be told, I don't fully understand how he's managed to create this, my understanding of placing printed images into a print is still underdeveloped.  It's clear to me that that is a complex image, with a lot of time spent on the composition.  These (seemingly) loosely collected images give a rather specific representation of a 3D space, suggesting a depth to those who look at it for long enough.  I feel the image is intentionally dated, the use of very specific trends and designs thro...

American Jim Dine, born 1935, was part of the Pop art movement in the US during the early '60s.  Honestly, I was surprised to learn he was a part of the movement, as none of his art I'd seen prior to this report made me think of the Pop Art style.  I had seen his Tool Box etchings and prints before, which use little to no colour.  Although his paintings featured a vast and vibrant colour palette, I did not immediately link his style to that of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. Tool Box I , from 1966 was one of Dine's first pieces that depicted tools and materials that held a significant relationship to him.  This would feature heavily in his work from here on out.  His work would often depict tools and utensils done using Printwork.  The above piece is a screenprint of the contents of his toolbox as well as other loose ends.  The detail in this work led me to double check this was actually a screenprint.  To achieve this level of detail (hav...

Over our October break we were tasked with taking three images a day, Monday to Friday.  We had to take them every hour, on the hour, and the idea was that they'd connect to each other.  So Monday, 7am, 8am, 9am, and then Tuesday would be 10am, 11am etc.  Admittedly, I often forgot to take photographs on time, some of them being as much as 25 minutes late.  I fear that's affected some of them, especially the later ones when the light is changing. On the first day, I was up early, starting in Innerleithen and travelling to nearby Walkerburn.  The following show 7am, 8am and 9am respectively; For the second three images, I was in Edinburgh quite early on.  I took some images in my travels, as well as a third I took on the drive home.  I took several out of the car, but oddly, I preferred the one from behind the wheel.  These relate to 10am, 11am and 12pm. On Wednesday, I was in Peebles for work reasons.  The weather wa...

This post is really just to document what we did in one of our classes.  We were instructed to go for a walk around the college, taking a photograph every 25 steps.  We had to do this ten times,  however we were allowed to attempt this multiple times.  I did it three times, so ended up with three sequences.  With that in mind, I intentionally headed towards some more scenic parts of the area, and I expected my later attempts to be more interesting.  Strangely though, I feel those came out rather dull, so I opted to use my first attempt as I felt the results were more varied, and I was challenged more to make the subject appeal more interesting.  My ten photographs are below;

As a class, we visited Scot Gallery, in Hawick's Wilton Lodge to see an exhibition entitled 'Seeing Beyond the Immediate' by Patricia Cain.  I'm ashamed to admit this, but I am not someone who has come from an 'arty' background, and my interest in art has grown from my own desire to create art.  As such, this was honestly probably my first visit to an art exhibition that I really took seriously.  For the first time I tried my best to understand what was being shown to me.  We entered the exhibition as a large group.  This may not have been the ideal situation for viewing the gallery.  As I've been led to understand, an exhibition is much like a soundtrack or music album.  It's designed to be listened or viewed in a particular order, to tell a certain story.  However, because there was so many of us, I ended up viewing the gallery in an anti-clockwise manner.  This may not seem like anything worth mentioning, but honestly, I was aware of thi...

Tom Davidson is a local artist who studied graphic design before setting his sights on printmaking.  Most all of his work uses lino cutting.  Unlike most lino cuts I have seen before, Davidson's prints are wonderfully vibrant and yet realistic.  This is honestly not something I expected to see from Lino printing, Davidson greatly expanding my understanding of what the medium is cable of. Light, Ripples and Reflections  is a landscape of a rural area.  The greens and blues used really pop and look vibrant, drawing the eye.  From afar, this image looks like a photographic.  It's only up close that you can see the very graphic nature of this, synonymous with lino cutting.  His use of colour is what amazes me the most.  The colours used are relatively simple, and they they work so well with the shape of the print itself. Sunlit Winter River  is another brilliant use of colour.  This time using complementary colours, with o...

Portraits.  Under different lighting conditions.  I honestly wasn't really sure what we were meant to be doing with this one.  People had mentioned 'candle light' and 'studio lights' and I wasn't really sure where to start.  I didn't really get the opportunity in my own time to do this, but thankfully, my classmates were on hand to give me some help.  All of the photos taken were done on the college grounds, meaning 'Candle light' was out right away, for obvious reasons. One of the first photographs I took, this one we simply used a bright LED torch in a dark room (the photo studio - utilising the dark backdrop).  I love the strong contrast between the light and the dark in these images.    We then tried to play with coloured lights.  In this instance, we used complementary colours, to see what sort of effect it would give us.  I didn't take many of these, which has been to my detriment, as the ones I have aren't t...