Portrait Project: Artist Research

Here, for the project I shall show artist research for four artists I have found. I shall attempt to ensure there are at least two different time periods within this research.

The first artist is Tony Bevan. I could find little explanation of himself of his artistic intentions on his website. www.tonybevan.com . However I did find a statement about map making in a metaphorical way, and that he mentions he finds no point in charting that which has already been fully observed.

Self portrait neck 1988,

Charcoal and Acrylic on Canvas

88cm x 79cm

This from browsing his gallery appears to show best the style pf his work, thick bold dramatic lines with a dramatic style to the pose and intense colours which he appears to limit himself to in the majority of his work. I really like this work, the thick powerful lines and power behind the pose and colours make for a brilliant portrait. Perhaps to show the dramatic side of of those he draws, in this case himself.

The next artist is Marc Quinn, the biography on his website mentions his uncompromising use of materials, ice, blood, glass and lead to name a few. http://www.marcquinn.com/  This is a unusual list of materials and must involve a good few techniques to produce pieces with each different medium.

A moment of clarirty, 2010, 65 x 180 x 54 cms

I really like this piece, the technique used to give it a bronzed like effect and the composition of it stood on the small square, to me makes it look like a streer-performer who acts as a statue. The title a moment of clarity seems fitting to the look on the face as it peers at the vase of the skull. Perhaps guilt or more metaphorical and realising ones own mortality and that the end of life as a living being is enevitable. I also rather like the amount of detail in the model despite only using one colour.

This piece is much more recent that the piece by Tony Bevan, and where one uses a sureal yet realistic style, Bevans is a more dramatic exagerated style, each has its own merits and I like both.

 Another artist i've looked at is Jenny Saville whos work has great depth of meaning, usually having a meaning quite strongly held in her works, with a few pieces that are rather shocking within her portfolio.
 www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville/

Rosetta 2, 2005-2006
Oil on watercolor paper, mounted on board
99-1/4 x 73-3/4 inches (252 x 187.5 cm

What I really like about this one is the roughness of the strokes and the jaggedness of it all, yet it witholds the figure in a clear and solid form. In my opinion showing a look of bemused misunderstanding at something seen or felt, the jaggedness could affixiate for the distaste for that same feeling or the act or object observed. The slightly tiled head and stretched neck also hints to confusion.

 Julian Opie was a big inspiration for my idea of using my own personal fondness of animation in conjunction with this portrait project, having seen his own living portraits. Though his style is very basic with simple lines and no shading other than flat colour it appealed to the animator in me and I decided to use this as a basis for my own work, however I used a much different style as to suite the client.

This is a Jpeg still of the animated portrait, however you can view it here on his website. http://www.julianopie.com/#/artwork/film/2008/1230 I really like the technique of animation, most 2d aminations are frame by frame if not done of Adobe Flash. I personally used Photoshop CS4 and shall post my work when it is ready.

Portrait Project: Client Interview Based Research.

Pop Art
My client being an artist herself has interest in a certain style of art, this being pop-art it would make sense for her portrait to perhaps be done in a simular style in that it will then portray some of her own personal interest aswell as physically resmbling her own appearance. Allowing some of her personality to blend with the portrait.

However I am planning on making this portrait animated. Though minimalistically, so it still represents a portrait in some light, it will merely be breathing and blinking etcetera. This will take a while longer and I need to see if Pop-Art will be compatable with animation in a short time-frame.

This image shows how most of the picture would be one flat colour, and how the shading can be achieved by using only two tones of the same colour in a small dotting fashion. I believe that since the animation I intend to create isn't overly complex that this would work well.

This one alternativly shows that the whole of areas could be dots, and using blank space to represent highlights. However, I feel this would not only take longer to animate having to replicate so many various dots in each frame, but would not be fitting.

This one shows shading in a monotone like stle which works very well and is still clear, Also how to get highlights in red hair which will be useful considering my client had vibrant dyed red hair. At this point I am considering either this style, or the first I looked at unsing minimal dots as a shading technique.

The reason I have posted the picture above is that this classes as pop-art and my client expressed an interest in punk and rock aswell as pop-art, so perhaps she would prefer something that incorperates both. I also found this image below which is quite detailed in a few colour and punk/rock syle.

I quite like this one to, plus it shows a good colour combination for me to use as red will indefiantly be the main colour used in the portrait, it being the colour of her hair and her favorite colour.

I shall endeavour to ask the client more specifically on the syle of pop-art she prefers and show her these examples before I research down a route which takes me the wrong direction.