Saturday, February 03, 2007

Juno and Van Gogh make their Marks

I admit the two things aren't really connected, I just wanted to comment on them both in the same post.
Juno went to his first show of 2007 yesterday, Midland Collie Club Championship show. He behaved perfectly and won his class, Graduate dog for anyone interested. He is still looking slightly immature as he is at the 'teenage' stage, but I was very pleased with him.

This is an earlier photograph, but he had a professional photo shoot yesterday so hopefully there are some nice shots to follow.

Being self taught I intend to use 2007 to have a look at different artists, mainly Old Masters, although I might sneak someone very much still alive in the pot.
The aim is to look at an individual for a month to try to discover more about their working methods, and then see how I can incorporate something from them into my own work. A little touch of informal, formal art education.
This is a project that I am undertaking together with other members of my online artist friends, Fineline Artists .

In January the artist chosen was John Singer Sargent. Although I didn't participate if you are interested in him have a look at the following blogs.
Maggie Stiefvater
Katherine Tyrrell and
Nicole Caulfield.
All these members of the group produced a work based on something they had absorbed from the work of Sargent, all are well worth a read.

For February the artist is Vicent Van Gogh.
The following fineline artists are all taking part in the projects:
Katherine
Maggie
Nicole
Wendy

My initial research left me feeling unmoved by a lot of his work, I really found it difficult to relate to most of his paintings.

One I found that I really do like is 'Starry Night over the Rhone'



However, during his short career he produced a large number of drawings, and these did inspire me. As my own personal struggle at the moment is with creating realistic backgrounds in my work, I have decided to study Van Gogh's landscape drawings, in particular the ones that include trees.

I want to look at how he created the marks that made his trees look solid and fit into the wider landscape. I also want to keep in mind that a lot of his drawings were preparatory work for his paintings. It was a revalation for me how much preparation Van Gogh did, I always thought his paintings were completely spontaneous. I guess that is the first thing I've learned about him.

2 comments:

Making A Mark said...

I bet he had all the teenage girl dogs going gaga over him at the show! When does he get his first car and 'go faster stripes'? ;)

I found some great trees in Greenwich Park to do Gayle - all very old and gnarled!

Anonymous said...

Oh the more old and gnarled, the more Van Goghish they'd be!

And congrats Juno! He's becoming quite the collie pin up pooch :D