Advanced Painting: More Mussels and Transcription

 Before my Advanced Painting class on Friday  I prepared a couple of  quilted pieces  with photos of the outside and inside of a mussel shell  printed onto black t-shirt transfer paper applied to a  fabric background (monoprinted or  printed photos of shibori/sand ripples. My intent was to extend the patterns from within the shells to their surroundings, embedding them.  More work is required  but I'm excited by the possibilities. Next step scaling up! There was a lot of interest from the others in  my class on using  textiles  to paint on.

 I also did some more work on the  canvas  from a couple of weeks ago, building up more layers , again more work required.

 The focus of the lesson  itself  after a pep talk on strategies for working was on 'transcription ' copying artwork and making it your own  , looking at the techniques used but also as  a springborad for your own ideas

  We looked first at Kehinde Wiley's interpretation of David's Napoleon  then discussed how to 'steal like an artist'   like Picasso did!

  A bit of fun looking at the  pastiches of Edward Hopper's ' Nighthawks' ( original at the top) . It's actually quite difficult to find a picture of the original if you google it, there are so many parodies!  But  you could  use a detail, the colour scheme , the composition  and  produce  something completely different.

Eileen Cooper  spent some time as artist-in residence at Dulwich Picture Gallery  and   you can see some of the influences of looking at the paintings there in her  work but it is uniquely hers

  The  optional exercise was to  copy Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne  looking carefully at composition  and tone. I didn't do it myself as I was absorbed by the  mussels  but there were some very varied and interesting results from those that did  from random colour choices ( but observing tones) to broad expressive bush strokes.  It reminded me how much I  learnt drawing from the masters at the National Gallery, so much I did it twice!  And   just rediscovered from the books in storage is this book which features some of my drawings.