Summer Sketchbook Un-Slump Prompt 4 |
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To twist out of true meaning or proportion, to alter, to give a false or unnatural picture or account, to twist out of a natural or original shape or condition. Last week's prompt was watercolor and I relate words like beautiful, flowing, soft, and ethereal to it. This week I though we could go in the opposite direction and look at distortion which can sometimes be related to words like ugly, twisted, wonky, jagged, and odd. Some of these terms can have a negative connotation but I think that's OK--art is created to represent many different things and it isn't always going to be pretty or aesthetically pleasing--sometimes that's the point! And sometimes we need these other adjectives to be able to convey our thoughts and ideas. I think there is a lot to explore here and there's opportunities to find something interesting, new, and different. Here are some ideas to help you get started. |
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- Explore Perspective & Dimension Besides creating a piece using perspective in it (here's a video on drawing perspective for beginners), try turning your page halfway through or finishing your piece upside down, consider propping your sketchbook up, standing instead of sitting or vice versa and physically change how you create to change your perspective.
- Find Inspiration In This Painting Start with a word or phrase and lines then tilt your page to let the paint drip and distort. Leave it as is or add more paint / use a brush to further distort the lines and shapes
- Play With Paint Wet paint is a great medium to distort, move around, swirl, and mix. Start with some generous drops and globs of paint on your page. Instead of using a brush, drag a ball and chain necklace through the wet paint, use string to move it around, use your fingers, smush a piece of paper on top, see what else you have that you can use to move and change the paint.
- Cut & Rearrange Try collaging using magazine / catalog tear outs depicting a scene. Cut, rearrange, remove, layer, weave, add other objects, create a new scene. Here's some inspiration.
- Exaggerate your paint strokes, the subject you are painting, the emotion you want to convey. Go big and bold!
- Create An Optical Illusion Here are 6 easy ones to try. Focus on one or section your page off and try all 6
- What Has Distorted Your Vision, literally or figuratively?
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Expressionist artists tried to capture the emotional experience and the creative vision, rather than physical reality. They tapped into questions, topics, and struggles that were raw and true and expressed them on canvas in a dramatic way. The artwork itself is characterized by intense colors that may be bold and appear non-naturalistic, broad and free brush strokes, forms that are distorted, and thick textured paint application. Below are 4 Expressionist works and a description of each one. |
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- The Scream, 1893, Edvard Munch, Oil, Tempura, Pastel & Crayon on Cardboard is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based on Munch's actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his two companions, seen in the background, had left him (however the figure does not resemble him at all). Munch said, "The sun was setting and the clouds turned as red as blood. I sensed a scream passing through nature. I felt as though I could actually hear the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds like real blood. The colors shrieked.”
- City with Animals, 1919, Max Ernst, Oil on Burlap includes some cubist and surrealist traits that the artist was famous for. This piece is open to interpretation and I've read that it could be commentary on industrialization and urbanization causing chaos (the people and city in the background) and returning to an earlier way of life represented by the calm animals in the foreground o how the animals are unaware of the chaos people cause and are serene and calm. What do you think?
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- Murnau – Landschaft mit grünem Haus, 1909, Wassily Kandinsky, Oil on Board From Sotheby's: “The Bavarian village of Murnau had become a favourite of Kandinsky and his companion Gabriele Münter in the summer of 1908, for its surrounding dramatic mountain landscapes with their bucolic atmosphere and picturesque viewpoints. He pioneered a style of Expressionism that was fuelled by an explosion of pure colour, applied in brushstrokes of thick paint. Kandinsky's use of colour was inspired by his belief in a spiritual reality that could be discovered through form and colour, and in 1911 he published a seminal text entitled Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he examined radical theories relating to painting, the role of artists and the psychology of colour.”
- The Large Blue Horses, 1911, Franz Marc, Oil on Canvas From Wikipedia: “This is one of Marc's earliest major works depicting animals and is one of the most important of his series of portraits of horses. It is often thought that Marc considered animals to be more pure and more beautiful than humans and, therefore, his paintings represent a pantheistic understanding of the divine or of spirituality.” (Pantheism is the philosophical and religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity.)
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What aspect(s) of distortion and Expressionism catch your eye? How can you apply it to your sketchbook page this week? |
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PS: I love the song Heat Waves by Glass Animals and the line at the beginning--including the way it sounds--reminds me of this prompt: Road shimmer wigglin' the visionHeat, heat waves, I'm swimmin' in a mirror |
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