Tag: fine art

Research: Art Noveau – Alphonse Mucha and Will H. Bradley

Research: Art Noveau – Alphonse Mucha and Will H. Bradley

by turquoisecho ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In one of the books I’ve been reading called Greetings From – Retro Design, I carried out some research on Art Noveau as a movement.

It was an artistic response to the rapid technological increases in the 1800’s, for example advancements in electricity and machinery. Artists showed the aesthetically pleasing elements of living in a city around this time. It was a holistic art movement in that the ideology could be applied to almost anything: architecture, furniture, advertisements, etc.

It is defined in the illustrations I’ve researched by a few specific conventions. These are:

  • Flat, densely detailed illustration
  • A central female figure – often lewd, or suggestive
  • Natural and organic detail filling up as much negative space as possible.
  • Pastel, muted colour pallettes.

Alphonse Mucha is typical of this art movement. His works are some of the most famous of the time.

I’m inspired by Mucha because of how beautiful his illustrations are. I’m really attracted to the shapes he creates in the images – the circles, the loops and natural curves and how they interact.

I will likely take inspiration from Mucha in terms of my colour schemes. The pale pinks, light browns and beiges are all colours I enjoy wokring with.

I like the way the hair is drawn and how it crosses over itself in a hundred intersections. The fact that it’s in block colour and only the outsides are lined attracts me.

Another artist famous in Art Noveau is Will H. Bradley.

You can see similarities in Bradley’s work, but his work was slightly more progressive in that there’s more negative space than traditional art noveau illustrations. There are larger expanses of flat colour here. Bradley was also famous for designing the covers of Chap Book, a publication that ran through the time of Art Noveau.

I’ve made some work in response to Mucha and Bradley and their working styles.

I couldn’t help but notice that an artist I’ve been inspired by for a long time, KomunHorangi, is clearly influenced by the flowing style of Art Noveau. You can see similarities to Mucha’s work in the way she draws hair.

Although you can clearly tell that she’s been influenced by Japanese manga and animation style (see the huge eyes and facial proportions), you can also see an obvious stylistic similarity in the way the hair is drawn.
Chance and Sequence Reflective

Chance and Sequence Reflective

by turquoisecho ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This project was all about creating fine and abstract art based on the laws of chance. We took part in four activities. I’ve detailed exactly what we did in my reflective journal, so I’ll just upload pictures and critically reflect here.

String drop felt like quite a silly activity. In reality, I like what I created with it a lot.

How could I take this further? I could use the activity of “dropping” paper shapes onto magazine images to select images and shapes to collage with. This would force me to randomly select textures rather than carefully cutting out images I found appealing. I thought that if I coloured in the spaces in blocks, it could create quite an appealing background to another illustration or drawing. I could simply repeat the exercise with grass, straw, leaves or other natural material.

This was geometric randomness. I don’t really like this as a piece of art on its own.

How could I take it further? I thought I could do this with more limited colours, e.g. blue, purple and pink, to create a random piece of art that was slightly more aesthetically pleasing.

This was the collaborative, instructional drawing. I had a blast actually doing this exercise. I’m getting to quite like letting go of control in collaborative exercises. (And I never thought I’d hear myself saying that!) Things happen that would never have happened if I’d worked on my own.

How can I take this further? I could collaborate again with friends – e-mailing or swapping drawings to work on for each other.

The conceptual emotional drawing was fun again, because I jump at any opportunity to introspect and write about what I’m feeling. I like the composition of this a lot, and the stricter colour scheme made me feel better from the earlier drawings.

How could I take this further? Well, I actually made Jamie complete an identical exercise that night. I have his art and I might turn it into a larger piece, so that they could exist in a series.

Finally, I created some random poems using dice and newspaper clippings which you can see in my sketchbook. These really were nonsensical at times… I don’t know why, but I suppose I thought I’d create something super edgy and deep! They were still fun. I might create a few for my reflective journal or put a twist on them for something fun to do.

I do hope I’ll do some more work related to chance, even if just a small aspect of something else. It’s nice to leave the thinking to the laws of physics and probability!