ideas for shading, mark making and ideas for print making and illustrations in my own work..

gangster style motifs - such as the rose and gun to develop in my work

makes me think of the idea of a man impregnanting a young girl and how naivve she is

I have chose to explore this piece by Louise Bourgeois because I love her use of simple brushstrokes. She uses an array of red and blue tones to convey the mood of the figure, which I would love to take into my own work. I would like to explore using this simple change of colour nuances in my work to depict a mood and feeling. Through her simplicity of silhouette and colour she illustrates a strong message about the female body and the development of a fetus. I am interested in using colour and brushstrokes to convey a mood in my work.

"These cocoon-like objects reflect Abakanowicz’s interest in biological systems, organic matter and regeneration, topics she discussed with scientists in her native Poland. In response to a commission to represent Poland at the Venice Biennale in 1979, she made hundreds of soft sculptures of varying shapes and sizes, ‘rounded like bellies, or elongated like mummies,’ as she described them. Abakanowicz collected old mattresses, clothing and sacks to create this ‘invented anatomy’ of forms and installed eight hundred in Venice under the title Embryology."

(http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/materials-and-objects/magdalena-abakanowicz)

In 1917, Egon Schiele painted his wife Edith Harms, and titled his creation ‘Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up’. The portrait displays Edith sitting on the floor, resting her cheek on her left knee. The fiery red tones of her carefree hair produce a striking contrast with the vibrant greens of her loosely fitted shirt. Her look is bold and intense as she appears to be staring directly at the viewer. Her casual pose and attire create an intimate moment with onlookers.

The suggestive nature of this portrait was not an uncommon trait in Egon Schiele’s work, as he admired the controversial artistic manner of his mentor, Gustav Klimt. However, making eroticism the major theme in most of his artwork got Schiele in trouble with the law. He was imprisoned in 1912 for obscenity in his paintings, an incident that did not deter him from his erotic artwork, (although it may have motivated him to put clothes on Edith in ‘Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up’). Schiele created approximately 300 paintings and more than 3000 works on paper during his career. His life was cut short when he died of the Spanish Influenza at just 28 years old; his pregnant wife died of the same illness a mere three days later.

(http://www.aaronartprints.org/schiele-sittingwomanwithlegsdrawnup.php)

'Lines were then generated by taking numbers, two at a time, at random out of a bag.'

What draws me to this piece by Kenneth Martin is the story behind the drawing. The fact that the artist himself had no clue what the outcome of his work was going to be and that he allowed the element of 'chance' to be the guide of his drawing. To me this is a very exciting way of creating artwork because almost most of the time you find that the most interesting and unique outcomes come from unknown and unplanned work.

When I first saw this piece by Martin it appears to me as being a very orderly and though about drawing because of the perfectly straight lines and the fact that the lines have no overlapping of messiness to them. It is so interesting to then read about how this outcome came to be as you realise that despite the piece appears to be in order in fact it was completed in an very disorderly way. I like how the artist used the simple rule of picking numbers from a bag to guide his line drawings. I would like to use this idea to inspire my method of work for this project, by looking further into similar adventurous methods of work development.