Creating paint

To explore the Indigenous culture when approaching the art, I wanted to create my own paints after doing much research into the resources often used within the Indigenous culture. A lot of contemporary artist materials are derived from many Indigenous resources such as acrylic, charcoal and others.





When exploring the idea of using natural paints, I decided to take a trip to the beach and see what natural materials I could find to make into paints. When I was there, I found a lot of shells and soft rocks to make into paint and used the pulling end of the hammer to mine into the soft rock, finding the cores of certain rocks to be bright orange like copper or clay.




When I'd collected all of my resources, I headed home where I ground up the different rocks to see what different colour paints they could make and tried mixing them with different things to the base colour.








I found that when I mixed the ground up rock with too much water, it became almost transparent and didn't hold together very well on the page.




However, I also tried mixing the ground rock with egg and found that although it mixed together well in the mortar and pestle, when I applied it to the page, it was not a whole colour and was too transparent, something I've found a lot even when PVA glue is used to make paint.

 


Over all, I feel that the most successful rocks were the two bottom rocks which created solid colours that stuck to the page when I applied them instead of turning transparent. I also feel that they were the most vivid colours, and relate to my ongoing theme of the vibrant culture of Indigenous people.




This rock created a dull and almost transparent colour of paint and when I applied it to the page, I feel that it was unsuccessful in forming a solid colour which brings me to the conclusion that I will not be using it again.














This rock created a murky beige colour that formed a solid colour efficiently and was soft enough to grind into a paint. I feel that this rock was successful in giving me a solid colour and would consider using it again in the future.









This rock produced a dark auburn or amber colour after grinding it and adding a slight amount of water to it. I feel that this was the most successful rock to grind into paint as it was softer than the others and I found it easy to grind. The rock produced a colour that was both vibrant and earthy which relates to my concept of reconnecting with nature and feel that I would definitely use the rock again.

Jason Liosatos gallery

To get a further understanding of Indigenous art work, I visited the Jason Liosatos gallery in Totnes.







When observing the many Indigenous portraits of African culture, I found a better understanding of how I could take my work further into developing a solid final piece idea. When I found different perspectives of portraits, it gave me more ideas in terms of how I could experiment to further my creative process such as life drawing experiments or colour experiments in deeper tone and not just looking at line, colour and pattern but the different tones also.





The visual elements that I observed during my time at the gallery were certainly the different tones and mixtures of realistic and surreal colour. The visual elements helped build the portraits into realistic and vivid images based on primary images of memories.







I feel like this visit has definitely helped me develop my ideas further in terms of what experiments I would like to do next. I will look at figure drawing as an experiment that I can voice these ideas with and look at exploring the different tone and colour whilst I do so.

Pitching my ideas

To help with our own development and to give our peers a good idea of what our thoughts are for our final major project piece, we individually pitched our ideas in a small group and had to share our artistic journey so far. We were each judged on our use of body language, confidence, eye contact, enthusiasm, structure, volume, speed, language and content. I feel that personally, my pitch was successful in terms of body language and eye contact but that it could have used more structure and speed to show my ideas more clearly. I feel that not speeding up my pitch disabled me from being able to talk more about the future experiments, research and artist studies I wanted to explore to help me develop my project further.

Fluid painting

After exploring the visual elements that I feel are most prominent in the Indigenous culture, I decided to look into art work that strongly represented the line, pattern and colour in the aesthetic. After remembering looking at a nail painting technique called water marble and remembering the music video for Tame Impala in which they poured and layered different coloured paints onto a silhouette to make the human form into a vibrant, abstract shape, I decided to research further into these two techniques and tried to find any that were similar in the artistic field. After research, I found a technique of abstract, psychedelic painting called fluid painting.

Fluid painting is a form of painting where you continually pour paint onto a wet surface of choice and use different colours to pour into the spot of paint previously poured onto the page. In doing so, this creates a series of colourful rings in each section of the page and can be manipulated by moving the surface around to drip the paint into different patterns or even use a thin object such as a pencil or a toothpick to drag the colours into desired shapes, patterns and forms.

I found this particularly interesting and managed to find a series of successful and contemporary fluid painting artists such as Nancy Wood, whose own painting I have found reflect quite an organic concept, deriving from possibly using natural forms to inspire her ideas. I also found the printing artist Leif Podhajsky whose concept derives from looking at ideas of connectedness, something I could relate to immediately with my own work. 

Indigenous culture

When looking into the Indigenous culture, I began to look in depth into the particular aspects I could use to develop a solid concept and an eventual final piece relating to my beginning concept of 're-connection.' 

I started my exploring the colourful culture by visiting the Plymouth museum's exhibition on Indigenous tribes. I found that a lot of the clothing, jewelry and Indigenous art have very strong visual elements of line and vibrant colours.

This helped me to develop the aspect of my concept I would be looking at further after I had decided that I would take the ideas of strong line and colour and use it to find my next development idea.

After thinking, my ideas for a final piece are to create a 2D based piece on canvas roughly 30x30 cm or 60x60 cm in the form of drawing, painting or print and will incorporate the ideas of portrait and abstract art. I have decided that I will be focusing heavily on the use of line, colour and pattern which will lead me on to the artists that I will be looking at next. Nancy Wood, Leif Podhajsky and Robert Beatty being a few in mind with vibrant colours and intricate patterns of both unpredictable and psychedelic nature.

Developing concepts

For my final major project, my ideas began developing after a recent encounter with old friends which gave me the idea of exploring the theme of 're-connection.' I started thinking about all of the possible routes that I could take when looking at the concept of 're-connection.' I found it extremely helpful when reflecting upon my previous projects and thought about what I particularly enjoyed exploring. A recurring consistency within projects that I particularly enjoy are when I take an organic approach to my work as I felt in my altered project and my design to sell project.

When I began to think about what organic routes I could take, I created a mind map to see what ideas flowed. I found that when looking at nature and 're-connection,' a lot of ideas that I developed that I was particularly interested in were the concept of humanity and nature being reconnected. This was something that I was very keen to explore, looking at how humanity can be reconnected to nature.

With this in mind, I began thinking of what exactly could be the shackle that kept humanity and nature reconnected and found that my ideas moved on to Indigenous culture.  

A reflection on my previous projects

Final major project



My initial ideas for my final major project are creating something with my self-given concept of, ‘re-connection.’ I aim to produce a piece of work that effectively shows this concept and I intend on researching a number of artists that influence and motivate my creative ideas, such as Nancy Wood, Leif Podhajsky, Robert Beatty and other artists that specialize in an abstract style. I anticipate producing a large scale final piece of work, roughly looking at from 30x30 cm to 60x60 cm that is formatted in the artistic field of painting, drawing or print. I want to create something that shows my emotions to being, ‘re-connected.’ My concept of ‘re-connection’ has derived from the fact I have recently gained contact with people who used to mean a lot to me which triggered a very emotional response from me. I realized that the theme of ‘re-connection’ could explore many different routes as well as just the perspective of ‘reconnecting’ with past friendships and that I could look at a more natural approach, something I had been captivated by in my previous project.
  From this project, I want to gain an understanding of how far I am able to push myself to produce a piece of work that I am truly proud of but also an outstanding show of thought process that will lead to my final piece. I also want to gain more knowledge in the Medias in which I am exploring, such as painting, drawing and printing and want to show ample experimentation and a variety of creative influences including artists, secondary and primary sources.

The research I will produce to assist my ideas will revolve around mainly primary research whilst developing my slowly growing concept. I will explore the many pathways of, ‘re-connection,’ and experiment with how I can develop and nurture these ideas to create a solid final piece. I will also be experimenting with secondary research in terms of artist studies to gain inspiration for my concept and ideas. I will be looking at various artists that’s work particularly interest me, such as ones that use strong visual elements that reflect line and colour. Something else I would be interested in experimenting with is pattern and how it can be manipulated into forming a solid shape or image such as with the fluid painting technique. I will demonstrate independent, non-tutor led project work development by reflecting primary and secondary research in sketchbooks, worksheets and in the form of a blog and will find less conventional ways of exploring how I can demonstrate also.

I intend to document my on-going project development by blogging my creative thought process on either an Instagram, Tumblr or Blogger account. I will record my ongoing decision making and changes in project direction in my sketchbook by showing clear development and thought process within my work and will use worksheets. I will identify and record strengths and weaknesses within my project work by showing clear annotations and evaluations that are both critical and analytical in how they reflect my work. I will also keep an additional log book in which I will record my strengths and weaknesses in hopes to improve in each experiment I create. I intend to develop my ongoing reflective practice into a concluded evaluation by taking a number of progression shots of my work to show my creative journey within the project and create a summary of mistakes and successes.

The elements within my work I will document in my evaluation are the elements that show success in reflecting my concept, the elements that were less successful in showing my concept, the artists that I gained inspiration from, the creative journey I took to create my final piece and other outside influences that I used within my development. I intend to measure my project in terms of its success and how it relates to my proposed aims by judging whether my development successfully builds up to a final piece that effectively relates to my concept in an intriguing and creative way. I will also gage it by using peer feedback in a survey to judge how successful my project was.

Olive Flannery