Research – Portfolio Site

Full Egoistical Exploration

For this project, we had to learn to use translate colours to evoke sentiments in the viewer, conveying our true meanings.

Each layer of images become a deeper, more in-depth view of myself as a person, taking the viewer on a coloured trip down my personal psyche.

Inspirations and Research:

I’ve always wanted to explore the many detailed delicacies of using an analogous or monochromatic colour scheme. The lack of fancy colours require intricate detailing to bring the picture together to harmonious completion, and the story is in the details. Watercolour is a very good medium for these sort of portrayals. The very tinted colours of watercolour portrait create colour compositions which flow seamlessly together.

The Art of KiDChan- *children +coloured+*

Watercolour and acrylics can also be used to create more dramatic colour compositions. The high tint, low tone hues resulting in fresh and bright colour compositions with a clear contrast.

I also wanted to play around with complex hues like tertiary colours. An example would be purple, which creates really intensely popping colours when paired around with green, orange or black. Due to the very different makeup of the colours, when placed in a triadic composition, they vie for dominance and often confuses the viewer’s eyes if the quantities of each colour are not aptly measured and portioned.

This may be used stylistically to create a piece which bedazzles the viewer’s eyes but at the same time leaves them confused without a clear place to focus on. Below is a personal attempt that I have done in the past

Ang. 2015- *A cacophonous symphony in man-made natural beauty*

I learnt that if i wanted to have a clear sense of direction when using this colour scheme, I may use the 70/20/10 rule to weigh out percentages of colour usage.

S t u p I d.ly

My process consisted of me trying to replicate the watercolour effect on digital mediums. This caused many of my paintings to have shadings, which veered my squares away from clean-cut colours. This caused some confusion during my presentation as some shadings had caused the original pure colour to be mistaken for something else, ruining the composition’s colour scheme.

I had not slept well for a week up to the presentation, sleeping on an average of two hours a day and I didn’t sleep for the presentation. This caused me to jumble up many presentation points, even wrongly labelling the colour scheme. 1000% screwed up the presentation, I bid bye to my dear 20%

Poor time management was an issue. I painted all my pieces and spent an extraordinary amount of time on them, almost neglecting other subjects. I should have been like my peers and used flat vectors to make simpler designs- effective as they not only save time but get the message across clearer. Also, colour schemes are more easily perceived if flat colours are used.

For the first row, I investigate the cool feeling of familiarity increasingly being encroached by conflict.

Me: Closed Off

The first piece uses complementary colours opposite the colour wheel to give a sense of unease. Supposed to be jarring and highly conrasting, the strong greys wash out the pure bright reds and greens, creating tones that seem to blend together seamlessly. This creates a colour which had lost its unique hue and integrity as a colour. It is now neither clearly belonging in the realm of complementary colours nor can it identify itself as analogour colours, as they seem similar due to the heavy usage of greys. This stylistic choice depicts my feelings of apprehension to this project, as I did not have a clear sense of direction, my integrity wavering between revealing an unadultered, pure side or presenting a manufactured self.

Unravel

This piece uses triadic colours red blue and yellow hues which have been been added with whites, becoming soft tints. These tints create very child-like, dreamy atmospheres to evoke a childish sense of safety, as a bed to lull me into self discovery. The yellows start to travel from the top left corner, creating a leading line into the focus of the painting, which is the coat. The highly detailed colouring on the coat also attracts attention, presenting to the audience the metaphor of having layers of self-insulation from realising the truth.

Vulnerability

The final piece of this is done in complementary colours red and blue in higher contrast, so as to depict the strong sense of disjunct opposition in colours. In comparision to the first square, which uses similar colours, this piece has a different approach and contrast is further emphasised through the use of the dark hues of black. This conveys the sense of conflict.

These pieces use a black as a majority colour, creating a strong sense of framing and contrast, directing our eyes specifically to the points of intended interest.

Isolation speaks the tale of how I feel secluded and isolated from the world because of my weirdness. My realm of existence seems to be multicoloured in my eyes, whereas the world of others was droll and dull. It aims to illustrate the conflict of fitting in or staying out.

This piece uses triangular (tetradic) colour scheme, using yellow-orange, yellow-green, red-violet and blue to create an intensely hyper-coloured piece that is very much in contrast to my other equations. This gives a strong sense of activity and invites intrigue. However, as all the colours are cold-toned, it creates a sense that the hyperpigmentation of colours does not symbolise a happy mood. This aims to disorientate the viewer as they realise the intent behind the usage of colour is not what they had expected. This evokes the sense of disorientation in my piece, allowing the viewer to feel like a deer in a confused realm of multicoloured headlights.

Stranger

This piece uses split complementary colours of orange, blue-green and blue-violets to depict the resistance to join the crowd despite repeated drags and coaxes. The strong opposition of majority cool colours against one warm colour further highlights the tension and opposition.

Implosion

This piece uses tetradic colours of orange, yellow-green, red-violet and blue, depicting the internal implosion of personal weirdness.

Using triadic hues of Orange, Green and Violet, I create a playful, imaginative colour scheme which opens itself to exploration as it plays well into the colours of the colour wheel.

This evokes the sense of openness to discover and delve deeper into myself.

A wide variety of styles are also used; from graphic design flatlay, to pop-art, to advertising or fashion-esque. These further emphasise the willingness to explore beyond set boundaries.

Experiemental

The motif of the octopus is constantly used to reinforce my attempt to climb out of the bottle, which is an image of how I bottle up my emotions.

Discovery

Even as I delve inside, looking into the bottle in an attempt to squeeze myself in it, I try to change and become free of the bottle. Looking through the bottle allows me to see the other side, becoming a way to gain clear insight, discovery and introspection.

Expression

The tentacles grow to occupy largely most of the surface of the square, presenting my hopes that one day, I will be as free and comfortable to roam and be myself.

This depicts my self hatred. It is a journey of intense emotions. Each individual section is made of a different colour scheme.

(Left) Angst, Contortion:

The first on the left is split complementary, consisting of yellow-green, blue-green and red. This creates a sense of “split” tenseness, illustrating the building up of discomfort and unease.

(Middle) Inferno:

The middle is an analogous colour scheme ranging from yellow-orange to red. These colours are all tinted with a reddish-orange hue, creating a feeling of monochrome. This creates an intense colour scheme where all colours converge on being extremely warm, illustrating the burning suffocating intensity of the emotion

(Right) Catharsis, Loathing:

The right piece uses a triadic colour scheme of red-orange, yellow-green and blue-violet in high contrast. This is further emphasised by the use of the black and white negative space. As purple is a tertiary colour, it is more complex and thusly, in addition to the above listed reasons, the colours of the right section look most unnaturally popping. This is stylistically intended to show a warped sense of catharsis, which is a strong release of emotion, which usually garners attention.

All in all, the three compositions are stitched together into one piece which depicts an analogous colour scheme. This illustrates the entire transformative process of my inner pain and anguish. The detailed shading further draws the viewer in due to the intensity of the colouration

Due to Technical issues in my hall’s wifi, I was only able to complete updating some parts by 12 28. The information had been typed, but the final publishing was lacking in material. WordPress lagged and earlier versions consisting only of the final presentation was uploaded. Other parts of research and process were buffering while uploading, and I faced the spinning wheel of uploading for 20+ minutes. Very unfortunately this means a late submission. The wifi server was overcrowded and fell down, unable to be connected, even if i moved to the common study lounge in my hall where wifi would be guaranteed to be assured. I hope my lateness can be understood and I won’t be further penalised.

Forrest Gump: Research into the stylistic thematics

Surrealism and Dadaism both go toward abstraction and returns to representational forms of art.

Surrealism and Dadaism are fundamentally juxtaposed, yet in all its dichotomy, inextricably linked.

Surrealism	Dadaism
Surrealism creates new art	Dadaism is fundamentally anti-art
Has a sense of aesthetics	Conceptual and goes against traditional schools of aesthetics and style
Focusing much on painting	Works across almost all genres
Brings out Freudian theory: works on the subconscious and dreams; actualizes and interprets it	Political response to challenge existing authority

As I am someone who has an almost anarchist curiosity about delving into and questioning the status quo and current politics, I was very drawn towards Dadaist ideals. However, I felt that it was ingenuine to merely ape the Style of Dadaism in my work, as Dadaism is not a visual style, but an expressive style of ideas. The entire Dada concept was to overthrow restrictive boundaries of artistic styles which limit free expression, and thusly it felt awkward to be placed in another box should I attempt to copy the Dadaism style.

However, I still did some research and inspiration to gain more insight into how I should use certain visual techniques to aid my artistic presentation. Stylistically, I was inspired by my research on Theo van Doesberg. He is associated with the Dadaism movement, using clean lines and curves direct the viewer’s eye, creating a sense of elegant movement and direction.

This style is very effective in guiding the viewer’s eye to certain highlights of the image, allowing them to traverse the entire image without stopping awkwardly, creating the visual flow. This can reflect the entire flow of capitalist ideology, which presents itself so unctuous that it is easily spooned down the masses’ throats and accepted as the status quo.

I decided to focus on the theme of capitalist ideology in my art pieces, using the lens of Dadaism to guide me to convey insight and critique on the system, hoping to de-stabilise it and subvert it through my works.

Forest Gump: Final Presentation

My Line is Emo: Technique research

In mark making, both the physical mark and the performance of leaving a mark contributes greatly to the final product.

Physical Mark Inspirations

1。Ed Moses Drawings from 1960 and 70ties

Early 1960 — First exhibition, developing stage. USP: Element of surprise–

Late 1960 — Joined Arts Faculty–

Early 1970 — Experimenting with process and material, using resin & latex. Thematic developments: Increasing the layers and chaos of his works–

**The idea of process remains his focus as opposed to the finished product.**

1st impression:

Materials- Resin work, charcoal on canvas

Technique-Crisscrosses varying in weight and pattern

**Expert use of framing, negative space**

The black artwork is rotated and cropped. Why cropped?

The cropping allows for a unique framing which allows the viewer’s eyes to vacillate around the borders. The viewer’s eye can travel, looking not at one spot. Thus the artwork captures our attention and leaves an interesting impression

**The extra detail adorning the negative space is comfortable and adequate, yet not messy**

The second looks very messy and unkempt. The usage of dirty colours (ranging from dirty white to brown to grey and blacks) creates a foreboding atmosphere where the eye wanders around uneasily, unaware where to focus.

The human eye is attracted to light, however, the lack of chiaroscuro (The lighting is top down and almost universally evenly lit) confuses us as we do not know where to focus. We would choose to look at the centre brown periphery first from instinct,

Our vision and attention is torn, branching out from the centre in all directions as the jarring colours, lights and darks fight for attention all at once.

Ed Moses Drawings 1958 – 1976 Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California

Well knit cross sections which seem to present depth in its intricacy. Great handling of weights and shading creates the chiaroscuro, and its light areas seem to be glowing internally, presenting some sort of etherial quality from its ghostly light.

The squared border creates a flat image for the painting, not giving it a false illusion of a curved surface. The etches in the border gives the sense that the painting is stretched flat and embedded in its base canvas.

Our eye travels down, enjoying the gradient transiting from light to dark, and the transition from thin to thick strokes enhances the effect.

2。Sol LeWitt “Scribbles”

2005– Started the series of ‘scribbled’ murals

It was not the work of an individual, rather by other artists and his apprentices. Lewitt gave them specific instructions to fill in the wall by scribbling with graphite.

1968 – 2007– The wall drawings, executed on-site, generally exist for the duration of an exhibition; they are then destroyed, giving the work in its physical form an ephemeral quality

In his instructions, he noted that the intensity of scribbling should be varied, creating

**a continuum of tone that implies three dimensions”, not in order to make the drawing “as much as possible two-dimensional” but, on the contrary, to detach it from the wall in the most illusionistic way through bundles of thick and chiaroscuro’s signs.**

1st impression:

Are you kidding me? The expert detailing, sheer difference in line weights and spacing creates an illusion of a 3 dimensional space existing within and at the same time outside the confines of our flat 2d white walls. The curvilinear and playful lines spin and weave, adding to the almost ephemeral, transient quality.

What looks like the airiness of the universe’s specks are revealed to be hair-like concentric designs of acute precision. The light strokes and alternation between density/sparsity create an airy breathiness, which slowly clumps together. The artwork seems to be in a state of constant flux, breathing and moving by its own pace.

The concentrated areas of scribbles are down with strokes precise enough to make out individual lines, and thin enough to create an overall clean outlook. The effect is not garish and suffocating, only softly smothering.

“Each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently”- Sol Lewitt. Each piece in the mural series is different, as it is made up of multiple contributions by multiple hands.

The series blends well together with its soft, almost viscous fluidity, creating an overall relaxing ambience, which seems to be quietly pulsating, having a heartbeat of its own. Through mesmerising ourselves in the artwork, e seem almost more in tune with the universe as the artwork seems to encompass the essence of our world and the unique human experiences. Quiet like an exhale, it seems to be gently embracing the undeniable unchanging realities of our world, making us at ease in our current states.

Physical Mark Inspirations

3。Cai Guo Qiang

Growing up in the time of warfare between the Taiwanese Guomintang and Mao’s Communist China, artillery sounds and explosions were a concrete, visceral part of his childhood.

His father was an artist too, deeply rooted in tradition, his desire for control preventing him from steering away into the unknown. Cai Guo Qiang is more experimental, discovering the usage of gunpowder to art infused with chance. Every stroke or colour may be pre-planned, but the path of explosives is still tempestuous and unforeseen, leaving a large gap for improvisation and fate.

**Usage of natural mineral gunpowder- a conversation, a dance with nature.

Creation is like dancing, like flirting**

1st impression:

The performance, the process is art in itself. The process of creation shows the wavering instabilty of the medium. Like a dance, both parties try to establish boundaries but also allow room for experimenting. Improvisational mistakes create a whole new masterpiece which would be otherwise stifled under overbearing need for control

Vortex 2006, Gunpowder on paper, 400 x 900 cm, Collection of Deutsche Bank Collection, commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG, Mathias Schormann © Cai Guo-Qiang

Directing a team (to do saikang) Cai Guo Qiang has a hands-on approach to his craft, directing and crafting the explosives’ path.

His pieces exhibit the unique quality of detailing in abstraction, blending two opposing elements harmoniously through the careful, light touches in post processing.

The above is my favourite example of his gunpowder artwork, because the strokes blend together via their softness, as if melting into one airy and transcendent frame. The movement of animals are blurred yet present, creating a sense of movement and ephemerality, as if the marks are “after-(burn)images”, or footprints showcasing the animals which have crossed.

The uneven circular structure creates an artistic flow and further harmonises the piece