Oracle: Open Project - Comunication within Art and Design

Identify -

In this section I shall be looking into some artists, after the initial research I will be picking one artist and looking into them in more detail.

There are three artists that I shall be initially look into; Donald Zolan, Molly Britt and also Alphonse Mucha.

Donald Zolan –

He is mainly a oil painter, his art is usually smooth and realistic.

The colours that are used within his art are bright and cheerful, and usually have a serene feeling to them.

The meaning behind these paintings are that he wants to be able to celebrate the joy of childhood, with all its wonders, innocence and joy.

Donald Zolan tends to use soft lights within his work, making the paintings look softer, all the edges are not as strongly defined as some paintings can be.

Tender Beginning

Gone Fishing

Back Yard Buddy

Small Wonder

Molly Brill –

She is a water-colour artist mainly and she is but 19. She may do some others, but the work that I am going to focus on is going to be her watercolours and the colours and techniques that are used.

The colours that you would mainly see within the work of hers would be blues, also there is a very obvious pattern in her work, and that is that she likes to do faces within her work.

As seen below in the images of the art work, you can see there is a definite style within the paintings, this is what I would call the drip technique. It looks easy in the fact that it is basically paint running down a painting, but to do this successfully, and not completely destroy the art, is something I find hard to do.

The meaning behind these paintings are about women that have longing eyes. This is to do with the emotional state of women.
Her art is mostly directly influenced by the way that she is feeling at the time of creation. When she paints she is usually listening to music, that also influences the art, when she is drawing she has similar songs playing so that the range of emotion from them does not differ, this could influence a paintings meaning, if the emotion behind it is not clear.

As seen in the images below, the eyes of these paintings are very crisp compared to the rest of the painting, so it is obvious that the focus is on the eyes. This is a good technique to use when dealing with faces and other things. Making a part of the face a focus can make a strong impression, making the meaning behind it more prominent. The colours in these pieces of art are also cold and dark, making them have a kind of negative vibe about them. The blues, signifying sadness within the images.

These can all be classed under the title of Women with Longing eyes.

Alphonse Mucha –

He is a man that liked to focus on the female figure for his work; the colours of his work are of the yellow persuasion, making them have a kind of aged look. These paintings are also done in a nouveau style.

The meaning behind these paintings are that he wanted to depict rather specific things within the paintings. Most of what you see here is work of what he did to do with the seasons.
This could be because he wanted to show the differing emotions but the standard of the season that he put in his work, an example would be 'Winter' and being cold and isolated.
There are many things that could be shown though the seasons and most of it is to do with personal opinion. I think that Mucha wanted the people that looked at his work, to have a rough idea was to what it was that he was trying to get across but to also have their own input into his work, and have there own thoughts about it. Mucha's work is very much similar to one-an-another, they are all serine and lovely to look at and are very pretty in design.
They are very busy in style but rather mute in colour. The colour palate of these pieces of these works are in the red and yellow range. Also a common occurrence within these paintings is flowers.
This is rather simplistic in theory, but in practise I would imagine it to be a lot harder, this is because there would have to be a large variety in the shades so that the colours do not merge together and make the image look bland and uninteresting.

The Autumn

Four Seasons

The Summer

Broken Blossoms

All three of these artists have the human body in common when they are painting, not exactly the same though, they differ in the sex, age or part of a human they like to draw. Donald Zolan draws children in peaceful scenes, Molly Britt draws the heads of people and Alphonse Mucha likes to draw women.

The artist that I am going to focus on is Alphonse Mucha, this is because his art style is more to my liking. The crispness of the paintings are interesting and also the use of a small colour pallet.
Also the inclusion of flowers is interesting to me because I would be able to incorporate the language of flowers into my art, and this can also help me to get across a meaning that may be harder to do with the drawing or the painting.

To be able to imitate his work, I will have to use the materials water-colour (gouache) oil and just water colour paper.

Experiment -

The persons work that I am going to experiment with is Alphonse Mucha, this is because I like his style of work more than that of the others, this is because, I find it incredible that with such a limited colour palette that he can make such wonderful works of art.

This is a line drawing of one of Alphonse Mucha's work.

This is the art work of his that I have drawn from, to try and get a feel as to what it is like to draw in this style.
As you can see from my art compared to his (just in line) you can see that the face of the woman is more cartooned in my version, this is because that is how I am used to drawing, but taking from this, it gives me a step to improve on the next piece of work of his that I shall try to imitate.
This work is going to be coloured in, I just wanted to show my line work, before some of the detail may be lost (even if i do not want it to) because of the use of paint.
For this image I am going to show a step by step of what it is that I am doing with this image, to show how I shall try and gain the Alphonse Mucha look to my painting.
As you can see just from the line drawing the image is very busy and now I am going to try and differentiate the separate parts by adding colour.
This is going to be difficult, so some of the areas of what I am going to paint will not look like the original. I have sparse, this is because, I am using watercolours and I want to give them as less chance to run as possible!
Also the center wring which is brown in the original image above, shall just be a rather pale yellow nearly white, in my work this is so that I can make the blue spiral section as clear as possible.

This is an added extra that I did to the art. I did an exaggerated outline on the person - this is another technique that the artist, Mucha, uses in his art. This is to make the eye focus in on the subject or important part of the art.

The first thing that I did with the paint was a wash on the paper, I did this with a pale yellow. this is because I wanted to make a background that could be shown though but could also allow the other water-colours to show on the wash.

The first thing that I actually painted was the hair, this is because it is a main aspect of the art. This was a transgression from orange to yellow. This is is a very good effect but is easy to get wrong, I tried to get the effect as close to the original as I could and I'm happy as to how it turned out.

This is an image after I have painted the 'crown' that the subject of the painting is wearing. This is pretty yellow compared to the original that is more of a bronze. I am pretty disappointed that this did not match as close as I wanted it to.

This is where I have painted the skin and eyes. This went rather well, I think that the face looks rather less cartoon stylized. The face is not exactly the colour range that I would of liked to use. However - by the time that I had painted it, it was too late to try and correct it by the time I figured out the colours that I had to make.

This is the finished product of my copy of the original. I am quite happy with final of this painting. This is because I like the colours and how they match up to one another. The far right and left are rather an eye-sore in the painting due to being bland, but this is better instead of me messing up on an intricate parts and making them smudged and horrible.
I also like the star-signs in the ring, this is because I think that it looks like silhouettes and is simple in an ascetic way, breaking up some of the business of the painting.