ARMY BASE-Driffield
I decided to start, I would use the images that I have taken as reference to start some of my drawings. I first drew the outside of the army base with pencil and from here I used a craft knife to cut out the background. My original plan for this was to arrange rubbings of different shapes and patterns behind. I tried this and did not work out the way I wanted to so I decided it would be better to use blue tissue paper as the background as this way it made the drawing stand out more and made it feel more like the grass was overgrown and overtaking the decaying build. This reinforces one of my themes that suggests nature is powerful and can reclaim what was destroyed when the building was originally made.
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To make this piece more textured and be more boldly out-lined I experimented by using the craft knife to outline the piece scoring the paper. After I did this I used charcoal to rub into these score mark making the piece more textured and more intense in the places I wanted it to be. Overall I did like the piece but not as much as I originally thought I would as my plan for it changed quiet a lot throughout. Overall I think this experimentation helped me decide the thing I did next. For this I edited the pieces with different filters and editing effects to see what different vibes and atmosphere I could create and to pick which one was best suited for my project.
These three pieces/ edits are the ones I liked the most out of the six I did. I like the first black and white one the most mainly because it creates the sense and feeling of the past and time passing. I also think the black and white high contrast effect makes the image look more dramatic and intense making the piece overall more impactful and stand out more than the rest. The middle one I like because it creates a feeling of it being a dark evening. This makes the building seen quiet or even eerie and leaves the viewer knowing that nobody will be in the building anytime soon. The one on the end with different colour squares I liked a lot , mainly because of the feel it gave to the piece. It reminds me of the fact that there are only little sections and components of the building that are left exactly like when the building was in use. I think the different colours show the different tones or feelings that people could have about the building. For example some people may see this building as a useless wasted bit of land and other ( people who remembered and had connections with the building see it as a sad and upsetting feeling as they would have had memories there. Its almost like loosing pieces of their past brick by brick. The bottom two pieces I like because the first one is just a more enhanced version of the original and the second one creates more of a dull and sort of disgusting version of the building. Overall I like these different versions of the piece because they all create different atmospheres and energies to the building.
Test Pieces
These test pieces where done on top of rubbings I did on brick walls. This was to create a a more interesting and unique background. I did these rubbings with charcoal which I liked because it gave a less accurate/ looser look . This meant the background wasn't too intense for the picture that i drew over it. However I also didn't like this effect because it created quite a dark background witch in the end made it difficult to see the drawing. Overall I decided that these rubbings/ drawings where not something I wanted to continue doing as it didn't give the effect I wanted or that I thought it would create. This is when I moved on to painting.
I decided that by doing oil paintings would mean that I could use a more layered effect to create texture. I really liked the overall effects of both these pieces as I made the choice to crop down some of the images I was using as reference and find a more unique and interesting view point of the building. I think by doing this it really made the pieces work as it helps zoom in on some of the smaller details. Overall I liked using and working with this medium and I plan to do more of these paintings. The muted colour scheme i used for this first window piece really fits the atmosphere that I wanted to create and I think this is one of the biggest reasons that these pieces work. I especially like the way I layered and painted the red wall paper and where I used the darker red to create shadow. This is the bit I think was really affective. I will next start doing painting like these on found materials such as drift wood and found materials from the buildings its self.
Oil Paintings:
This is one of the paintings I didn't like so much as I feel like this one creates a more bleak feel to the building. This I like to a certain extent but also think I didn't capture the type of atmosphere that the building has and looks a lot less intense than the other two pieces. I decided to paint this picture as it was off a cleaning product that had gone mouldy. I liked this idea because i thought it was quite ironic and emphasises how much the building has actually been exposed to the elements and its level of decay. Overall I still like the piece but not as much as the two above. I think I would have helped if I had cropped the image and focused more on just the can as this is what I found worked the best with my other pieces and now know that is the way that I want to work on different materials also.