Final GE Drawing and Writing

Frank Auerbach is the artist that attracted me the most after looking through all of them again for a second time, I love the way that his sorta glitchy and dark drawings look, they look very manic yet controlled and replicating that will be hard but it is something that looks so satisfying to me. Frank often draws and paints a very small subject pool, usually faces/portraits of people or landscapes. Frank would often paint/draw over his previous work, and in one interview he said that he had painted over the same work 200 times before, he said that he never had a vision in mind and it would eventually come to him during the drawing. This led to his work appearing to be very heavy, there would be layers on top of each other and his work appeared very dark and distrubed because of it.

Frank Auerbach had a large amount of loss in his life at a very young age and this loss may have helped dictate the very dark and disturbed art style that he ended up pursuing. When Frank was just seven years old he was separated from his parents during the holocaust and sent to Britain for his own safety, after being sent to Britain his parents were killed in a concentration camp. Frank made the most of this second chance and attended art school, and then proceeded to the Royal College of art before getting his own solo show at the Beaux Art Gallery. Frank used the pain of his past by harnessing it and showing darkness and despair in his works, even if he didn’t necessarily mean it, it was still shown subconsciously. 

Auerbach never held back when it came to his markings, he would intentionally make very heavy lines, these would usually be very jagged and shaky lines though, this makes his art style very unique because usually someone drawing in a very bold line style would have very straight and well thought out strokes but he draws like someone with a light stroke that could be easily erased if not perfect. This doubles down on his bold style of drawing over the same work many times. I also really like the fact that the people that Auerbach drew were people that he knew. He said in an interview that he was more engaged with drawing people that he knew and he found it very touching to see them age throughout his art. Auerbach was a prolific artist during the rebuild and recovery of London and many of his critics credit him with helping other Londoners see the city in a different light and he was widely respected by his peers and critics, his style was so interesting and unique that it was hard to compare with others and it was apparent that his art was something with more weight than a painting or drawing.

Frank Auerbach has a style that really interests me and I am really curious if I will be able to replicate it even to a minimal extent, his work is very skilled and I was disappointed that I had never seen his work before.

Tate. “Who Is Frank Auerbach?” Tate, 2015, www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/frank-auerbach/auerbach-introduction.

“Frank Auerbach.” Artnet, 2015, www.artnet.com/artists/frank-auerbach/.

Exercise #7 – Cartoon

For my cartoon I’m going to do a cartoon version of Million Dollar Extreme : Wine Party, this is a short comedy skit that was shown on Adult Swim in 2015, the creator of this series is a dark and offensive comedian named Sam Hyde, I did a small sketch of an interchange between 2 characters for this exercise.

Homework #14

I really appreciated Daniel Clowes work, his art style was so beautiful to watch, as he drew the face of one of his characters it just seemed so effortless and easy for him. I also really liked how he was a little more of a recluse and seemed very humble despite becoming a rather famous artist and comic. He seemed like a very relatable and grounded person that was still relatable. 

 

Pablo Picasso is of course a massive name in art and even people who don’t follow art know his name and some of his works. However, Picasso has always been one of my favorites, as instead of focusing on realism he goes more abstract and out there subject matter, I always have liked his style and wished to draw in it one day. 

 

Manga and Anime art style has always been a kind of art that looks very visually appealing to me. While I don’t read Mangas or Watch anime I still really enjoy the art style. The art style currently is very sharp and aggressive and has lots of blood and violence. However the older manga style used by Hokusai and Sojo were more rounded and cartoonish. I find it very interesting to look at the rounded noses and foreheads of the characters in the old anime drawings and the very sharp chins and eyes in the newer ones. This art style is heavily pushed by the current Chinese and Japanese culture and you can tell by the ever changing dynamic of the art style that it is a fluid art form.

Homework #13

Raphael was a renaissance artist best known for his extremely large drawing with great technical skill, this piece of art combined a large group of philosophers that never met each other into one piece of art all together. He helped push art to the west and made art more accepted in Europe and also pushed art and drawing into the educational systems of western Europe. Drawing and art was described as the best reflector of man’s highest faculty.

 

The eye tracking part of the documentary wasn’t focused necessarily on one artist however it was very interesting to me, I loved seeing the difference between the trained artists and the novice, with the trained artist being very deliberate with their gaze and marks, where the novice looks desperately for something to grasp onto, to draw. This technology has come a long way since this documentary and it is even more accessible and there are other technologies that I find very interesting. For example I have a VR headset (Oculus Rift) and with this headset I can go into a 3d room and create shapes and models then walk around them and pick them up and turn them and flip them and interact in many different ways and all of this technology really makes art a very interesting thing that is constantly evolving.

 

Nadia Chomyn is an enigma as she had major mental disabilities that almost left her without the ability to speak however she could draw pictures and images that would be better than me while she was only at the age of 3. Her art is similar to Frank Auerbach in the fact that she would simply draw over other drawings that she had previously done, making a multi layered abstract drawing. While some of these drawings were very abstract it is very impressive to see how realistic her Horse drawing is from such a young age.

Homework #12 – Module 5 Reflection

I like using collage as it allows more freedom on the topics that we are allowed to cover, for example me and musicians, I really enjoyed this project. I think the strengths are the fact that I used my own pictures that I took at concerts that I went to and it makes it more engaging for me and other people that I talk to about it. I definitely think in the future if I were to do it again I would find other little pictures to intervene in the middle because it feels a little desolate in a few areas, but overall I like it. A collage really allows you to put multiple focal points and use colors to really attract people’s eyes to various spots.