Evaluation

When presented with the theme earth, air, fire and water I brainstormed a list of things that I could
associate to those four natural elements. Although it was a broad theme I found it hard to come up with
a great number of things that could relate to this topic so at first it I felt that I was limited to my area of
focus. After evaluating what I have brainstormed I decided that it would be interesting for me to focus
on both landscape and air.
To begin with, I done some research and discovered an artist by the name Casper Friedrich on Pinterest,
and as I looked through his artworks I found the piece titled Monk by The Sea. What was interesting
about this piece was the way he used the mixture of the colours grey, black and a tint of purple to create
the gloomy sky to convey the thought of depression and solitude. With the many artists I looked at
throughout the course, the one that greatly influenced my idea for the final outcome was Tang Kwok
Hin. The way he used the technique of collaging different elements of the image onto different layers of
glass fascinated me as the blurred effect that it created made me think of an unclear, foggy day which I
thought linked in well with the way Friedrich painted his clouds that had been overlaid across the sky.
In between studying artists that I had looked at, I had done a number of observational drawings of my
own, and responses to the work of other artists experimenting and using different techniques such as
acrylic paint, chalk pastels, charcoal, and even wax crayons. Doing all this experimentation allowed me
to be more confident, and made me less afraid of taking risks using methods and techniques out of my
comfort zone. When I started looking at Bruno Walpoth, after looking at artists such as Magritte and
Dali, I started being more interested and enthusiastic about the project as I found the two artists
mentioned difficult to work with in regards to their techniques. Walpoth was a much more interesting
artist to look at as he used charcoal and paint to create his drawings. Seeing as Ive worked with
charcoal before I thought that it would be fitting for me to study one of his work. I did so by doing two
responses, both of which I was happy with, and so I decided that Ill incorporate his idea of having a
portrait filled with obscurities into my final outcome.
To make the feeling of fantasy and surrealism much more effective within my work I brought in the idea
of a man walking along a path into and open door which is located on the left side of the chest. This idea
was inspired by Antonia Mora, a photographer who in his works like to merge two images into one. He
usually merges landscape with the human body making his work, in a way, spiritual. Which is what may
come to mind when looking at my final piece.