Contextual Influences: Photomontages

Laszlo Maholy-Nagy

This is a piece by Laszlo Maholy-Nagy an Hungarian photographer. He does a lot of photomontages as well as his photography. After looking through some of his work this one stood out. I really like how this piece looks. I like they way that the grey beams overlay and create darker sections. I love how simple this piece is. As a graphic design student i really like this piece, Laszlo Maholy-Nagy has utilised his space really well, as the white space draws your eyes to the centre.

Jan Tschichold

This is a photomontage by Jan Tschichold this is another really nice pice of work, I really like how she has used the white space and I also really like the red lines used which ads a bit of depth to the image. The way the images are put together looks really professional. I think this artist is really talented and is one of my favourites that I have found.

Man Ray

Man Ray is a very famous and high rated designer and artist. He does a lot of wacky and strange work that stands out well and looks very good. This is a piece found and I decided I would use as an example. I really like this piece as its quite strange and can be hard to make out, i like the facet that he has only used 2 colours ,black and white, but the main thing i like is that you can look at it for a a long time just trying to work out what it is you are looking at.

Contextual Influences Photo montage

Dave McKean

Dreaming – Comic cover

-Dave McKean has used very modern techniques to create this image.

- Surrealism art is often referred to as a nightmarish dream land. With the title being ‘Dreaming’ it suggests this is something that would be featured in a dream, so to me it fits the Surrealist category perfectly.

- I really like how this image looks. I like the way how you can clearly see a face but if you look at the shadows you can make out shapes, like the crow and a hand, which to me gives away what this picture is about, like an insight to the book.

Hannah Hoch

-Bauerliches Brautpaar (Peasant Wedding Couple) 1931 

- This kind of art tends to be referred to as Dada and surreal.

- Dada art is art made from pieces of found scrap images. They use these images to create a brand new piece of art.

- Some of Hannah Hoch’s work is much like the work of Salvador Dali because of the fact they both do very surreal work.

-In this image the first thing you see are the two figures stood at the front. With this piece of art being called ‘Peasant Wedding Couple‘ I would assume they are the couple to be wed.

-The woman in the image has been given a Gorrilas face which suggests that Hannah may think, being a peasant and doing this kind of work is only for the animals.

-There is also a black man stood next to her. This may also suggest that work like this is also for black people, this may seem racist but at the time it wouldnt have been seen that way. 
John Heartfield

Jesus

-John Heartfield was considered the pioneer of photomontage as he would use his art work as a weapon and to help create anti Nazi movements.

-I think this picture is trying to say that the Nazi’s were not just killing of people but there beliefs as well.

-The way John Heartfield has done this picture I think is really good. At first glance I would have thought this image could have been on Photoshop because of how well it is done. E.g. colours fit well, its hard to se a definite edge between each separate image.

Kurt Schwitters

-     The Merz

-Here Kurt Schwitters has made a piece of art that was really unique at the time.

-This picture is made during the Dada movement but Kurt Schwitters went about making it different to any body else during that era.

-I really like this picture for one main reason, and it is that it has no hidden political meaning.

-Most people who did Dada art (like Hannah Hoch) would try to put a hidden political message in it, but Kurt Schwitters hasn’t. He made this picture because not everything has to be political. Sometimes art can just be a pretty picture.

Print Making

                             

Print Making

6th November 2012

Above are 3 very different prints. I have used various mono printing techniques to create my images.

We started off with a thin layer of an oil based ink on a flat surface. We then drew out some images on A4 sized news print paper. We then placed our image; face up, on the thin layer off ink. When the face up image was traced it left an impression on the news print.

My favourite thing about using this technique is that you can get a nice even colour. So it makes certain types of images really easy to draw. You can also create a lot of copies of the same image really easily at the same quality which is one of the reasons this technique is used so much.

The first print we did (top right) is a print we made were we were only able to use one colour so I decided to draw a skyline in the style of Jean Michel Basquiat. I deliberately made this image look scrappy and rushed because that is his style.

The second image (middle) is by far my favourite. It is a character created by Jean Michel Basquiat. I used all the same techniques that I had for the previous image but this time had added a bit of colour to make it stand out a bit more.

The far left is my least favourite as, but what i did was I used tissue to create a background. I made it in the weave style because Jean Michel Basquiat draws a lot of these random weaves in his work. The print quality of this image was a little poor because the ink wouldn’t transfer much due to the thicker paper.

Print Making

Chris Dent

Chris Dent does a lot of illustrations that have the common theme of cityscapes and buildings

The image is very busy not just by the people in it but by the amount of lines and the amount of detail that is in the frame. He uses very linear and fairly thin lines when making his drawings and most of them feature cities.

In this image he has put white blurry marks over the black, I think he has tried to make it look like snow and that it suggests its in the winter. There is also a Santa Claus in the foreground which makes me think it is meant to be New York City on Christmas Day.

I really like how busy it is and that  he manages to add depth without using colours. Its mass amount of detail is something that makes this image so good in my eyes.

Tommy Penton

Tommy Penton.

 Tommy Penton is an illustrator and painter.

Hayward
Acrylic on Board 
76x65 cm 

I like that even though this has been painted he still manages to make a vector illustration. I like how the picture uses block colours but you can still see shading and light areas. I also really like how he hasn't tried to make the image look too realistic and that he hasn't added too much detail

Because of the angle this picture is drawn at it gives the impression that the building is really big and complex.

Olivier Kugler

Oliver Kugler.

 Oliver Kugler is a graphic based artist who uses draws a lot using vector tools.
He does line drawings by hand and then goes over them using software like Illustrator. He then adds colour.

By using vectors it prevents the his image from loosing quality. If it was to be scaled up it would not become pixelated and blurry this is because vectors are not pixels and so they can be re scaled at any time.

I really like how he has drawn this picture . I like how he has used a much brighter colour to the object in the middle this instantly draws the viewer to it. By using  different colours for different parts it makes it easier to se the different subjects of the drawing. I like that even though the colours are very flat and of a single bold tone he still manages to create depth with the little shading he uses. i also think the plain colours gives the image a nice look because it complements the mass amount of detail.

Blogs of Interest

After being assigned the task to look up blogs, there were a few that caught my eye.

http://grainedit.com/ is a trademark blog. They review and share art work that they think is good. I really like their page because I can go on it to find new artists and learn more about their work. It is also really useful for when you are trying to find new blogs. I used the blog as a starting point when searching for new ones.

When looking through a list of other bloggers the name of the next one was what lead me to click on it http://cartoonmodern.blogsome.com/ I really like cartoons and illustrations so this one called out to me. It is a page filed with old styled cartoon characters which I really like the look of.

http://postercabaret.com/ is a gallery filled with of lots of illustrators work. I really like this site because it lets me see a lot of different artists, which is really helpful when looking for inspiration.

http://wardomatic.blogspot.co.uk/ is a blog owned by a single illustrator who uses it to share their sketches and artwork. I think the style they have is really simplistic but maintains a lot of detail in the image.

http://mistertoast.blogspot.co.uk/ is by far my favourite of the blogs I have found. I really like how they have drawn their pictures, very simply with bold and bright colours.

Frank Newbould

Frank Newbould  (lived from 1887-1951 in England) was educated at various art colleges. When he got a job in the art sector, he designed travel posters for a company in London.

His work is very flat and the colours used are in single tones.

Frank Newbould uses bold and bright colours, and the colours he uses, you wouldn’t normally see used in the way he has, for example he would use his block colours to fill in an image and would shade by using a mid tone block colour to add depth which really makes his posters stand out.

As an artist of the1930’s his work was fairly unique in comparison to popular artists that were around at a similar time.

From looking at Frank Newbould's work, I can see similarities with a lot of modern day illustrations and I would say that his work has been very influential to many artists that are around now.

I really like how he uses colours to make the titles stand out. I also really like the font he has used, I think its unique , and the weight of the text makes it noticeable.

I really like his work and I suspect he could be a great influence (in the future) of some of my own. I think the way he uses colour is something I could definitely incorporate in my own work. 

Artist Research on David Shrigley

Art by David Shrigley


This is a Picture by David Shrigley. I really like how simple it is and that he has used only three colours. To me I think this image is making fun of Damien Hirsts Cows head in a box. I think this image Is also joking about how over complicated art can be and that people can say they like things without fully understanding what it is they are claiming to like. 

I really like this image because it is really basic. I think the whole point of this picture is that, he is suggesting that people can be too eager to do something as radical as killing a dog, just to impress someone or to “please” them. 

Although David Shrigley is an artist that is new to me. I really like his work. His simplistic style and hidden meanings is something that really draws me in.
I think that a lot of David Shrigley's work appears rushed, un prepared and a bit basic because I think he is trying to make a point about how some artists (particularly those who may come across as pretentious) may over think and over plan their work.

Because his work is really basic people could say that, it’s not very good or that anybody could do what he does, but this is his style and it worked well for him. Some of his work is really clever in its subtle references to other artists and people that do stupid things. Although I haven’t seen a lot of his art I would say that his hidden meanings to his pictures is one thing that draws people in.

Artist Research on a Film Poster

Poster by Olly Moss

This is a fan made poster for the film “My Neighbor Totoro”

I really like how he has made the poster; I think the colours used make this piece of work very interesting. The fact that he only really uses 2 colours is what makes it stand out. The colours he has used are really calm and cool which suggest that the film will be easy to watch.

The main part of the picture I see is Totoros face at the front of the image. I really like how they have used Totoros face as a hill as well, which works really well with the silhouettes of the people and of the background. Because the face is so big on the page it gives us the feeling that he is really important in comparison to the smaller people who stood on its head.

I like that he has used the same fonts as the ones used by Studio Ghibli. I think he did this because this type of font has been used in all of the Ghibli films. I like that the title is nice and clear to read because it is on a dark background.

I think I prefer this to the original because it is really simple and works really well.