Experimenting with paint

After seeing Morris Louis and Ian Davenport's work I wanted to experiment with pouring paint. This was the result.

 

I'm not too happy with how it turned out but I found the effects on the bottom sheet of paper very interesting, which I was just using to catch the paint so it didn't make too much of a mess. I decided to take some macro shots of it.

 

This speckled effect was created from dabbing a piece of tissue to clear up the excess liquid.               

                                                                                                           

I didn't use green paint but the paint blended itself together at the bottom of the paper.

Morris Louis

Morris Louis was an American painter born 28th November 1912 - 7th September 1962. His work is some of the most recognizable of the colour field painter which is characterized by poured paint over blank canvases. He developed his style after seeing Helen Frankenthaler's 'stain' paintings and began experimenting with different techniques of paint application.


In his series of paintings known as 'Veils' Louis used diluted paint, thinned acrylic paint on unprimed, unstretched canvas allowing it to flow over the surface freely allowing the pigment to become part of the canvas rather than on top of it. The illusion of 3-dimensional depth is completely eliminated. The paint moves freely without the interference of a brush.

 He started another series called 'Unfurleds' that are now his most recognizable works. Louis folded the canvas before pouring paint and then unrolled them as the paint soaked into the canvas. They are is largest paintings at up to 20 feet in width. He planned and executed these works carefully and destroyed any that didn't meet his standards.

His final series 'Stripes' feature horizontal or vertical lines on long narrow canvases. These feature much more systematic, planned lines unlike the free flowing paint in previous series.

Ian Davenport

Ian Davenport is an English abstract painter. In 1991 he was nominated for the annual Turner prize. Much of his work is made by pouring paint onto a tilted surface and letting gravity spread the paint over the surface. He usually works on medium fiberboard instead of canvas and often uses household gloss paint making his work very reflective.

 "His large-scale wall paintings are made using a syringe to pour paint, in vertical stripes, from the top edge to the floor. The painting process is formal and repetitive, like a scientific experiment, but the final image contains irregularities, where the paint is diverted by the wall surface, and surprises, where particular colour combinations create unexpected visual results."

 His work using dripped paint and gravity has been compared to the 1950s and 60s work of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis.

Davenport is a fan of experimenting with different ways of applying paint to a surface. He has used water cans, pins, blown strands of it with a fan and even used a wind machine! His most successful experiment has been the use of syringes to apply paint.

 His choice of colours are inspired by lots of different things. Sometimes it is just intuitive, putting the colours together and seeing how they look. Other times he could lift a palette from an old painting or as he did once, from the opening sequence of The Simpsons.

He feels like he has discovered a language that he can now play around with. He never set out to create this style of work though. And that's the great thing about art - you're never too sure where you're going to end up. It really is a personal journey.

Colour Psychology

Colour can have an imediate effect on our sense of space. It can effect our judgement of the proportions of a space, infulence our perception of size and distance and focus our attention.  A room's colour can subconsciously help influence our mood to be more cheerful or melancholy, painting hung up on a wall can affect us in this way too. Strong colours are over stimulating while weaker colours can have a calming affect on people.

Some pages from my sketchbook.

 

Now that I had an idea of what each colour represented I decided to try experimenting with abstract painting.

Red Paintings

Red represents romance, warmth, courage, strength, danger, anger, energy and passion.

Orange Paintings

Orange represents food, warmth, fun, ethusiasm, flamboyance, playfulness and confidance

 Being sick with a chest infection for the past two weeks has really slowed down my progress but hopefully I'm over it now and I can get to work properly this week. :) 

Blogging?

Ok so finally making a start on this blogging thing. It's difficult to get into...I mean I've used art sites like deviantArt before to just upload some of my art but I've never really blogged before. But first time for everything and I should just get stuck into it. :)

Week 1: 
Project Title: To sense my space

This brief is so open ended I felt completely lost as to what to do so I began brain storming. I concentrated on the part of the brief that said "some things to think about" and picked out a couple I thought would interest me the most; shapes, interaction, texture and colour. Then choosing to concentrate on colour and how that has an impact on space and started brainstorming again.
I decided to go out and start taking photographs of colourful and dark areas in the city. I concentrated on the playground just across from college and walked around looking for dark abandoned buildings.

I played around with this image in photoshop













Comparing the two you can definitely tell how colour can have an effect on a space, The bright cheerful colours of the first photo are inviting and stimulating. The duller colours of the second photo cause the space to feel cold and unwelcoming.













I did this again with a photo of an abandoned building and tried editing the colours to make it seem more inviting.





























After speaking with my tutors they suggested I take a step back before concentrating on using photoshop to change an area. So I decided to do a bit of research on colour pschology, how different colours affect us both mentally and physically and what emotions they represent.