Cubism in practice

Below is a portrait that I drew using charcoal. After exploring the history of cubism, it inspired me to 'give it a go'. In its creation, I drew heavily on the idea of different angles and perspectives to draw a portrait of my younger brother. I feel that although the image looks abstract to the viewer, it portrays the subject quite well.

Line is the main technique that is used in this picture. It relies on bold, heavy line to draw the viewer to the different angles and perspectives that I analysed in its creation.

Exploring Cubism

After exploring the portraits, we were introduced to the abstract art movement of Cubism. To help me to understand this movement, I did some research into it. This helped me to understand and interpret the art more effectively.

Cubism began in Paris in the early 1900s and broke the tradition of painting by incorporating several different viewpoints into one art peice (The Worldwide Art Gallery, n.d.). It was said to the the first of the 'abstract' art and was founded by two famous artists, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. In painting, the cubists tried to create a new way of seeing things in art. Images were painted using shapes to represent the different viewpoint to represent the way the mind sees things, more so than the eye (The Worldwide Art Gallery, n.d.).

The Worldwide Art Gallery (n.d.) believes that the cubist artists were influenced the most by a post-impressionist artist named Paul Cezzane, who began the movement by looking at the basic shapes that represented nature.

Below is the painting called Mont Sainte-Victoire, by Cezzane (retrieved from creative commons) which was said to have started this movement.

In this painting, Cezzane uses blocks of unblended colours to create depth and distinction. He accompanies this with short, hard and regular lines.

The Art Gallery (n.d.) state that even today, Cezzane's paintings are considered as having an enormous impact on modern art. It can be said that his exploration with colour, tone and line have allowed other artists to paint what they saw, as a pose to their traditional representations.

Self-Portraits

A self portrait is basically just a portrait where the subject is the artist themselves, as a pose to painting someone or something else. Selfportraits.org (n.d.) suggests that it was founded during the ancient period which thrived on Egyption and Greek civilisation.

A self portrait, much the same as a portrait, can be done using a variety of art forms. I chose to experiment using the simple technique of a charcoal sketch. Charcoal is said to be one of the oldest materials used in painting and is successful for sketching as it can be easily erased or smudged to create different textures (selfportrait.org, n.d.). This is an example of my self portrait.

In doing this exercise and actually drawing my own self portrait, I learnt a lot more than I had envisaged. In previous attempts to draw, I have not taken into consideration the proportioning and placement of facial features as I have today. I have learnt some valuable skills for which I would be sure to pass on next time I am teaching this art form to a group of impressionable learners. I think this shows in my overall end product as it appears a lot more life-like.

After I had drawn this picture, I took a canvas and decided to paint it using acrylic paints. I found this to be a lot harder. The charcoal sketch enabled me to easily shade the drawing and use defined line, however, with the paint, I found difficulties in making the right colour and creating defined lines. I can see how painting could be a lot more time consuming and difficult. The type of paint and brushes used is also important to achieving technique.

Portraits

A portrait can be done in the form of a painting, photograph, sculpture or drawing. Actually, it can really be done in any artistic form which represents a person, where there face is predominant.

Portraits have been around for many years. Some of the very first portraits were generally of people who ranked of high importance, such as kings or emperors. Over time this has come to change. These are some famous portraits, as you will agree:

Mona Lisa. Painted in oil by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Renaissance in Italy.

Some critics say that this is the most famous painting of all time (Mona Lisa Mania, 1999).

Whistler's Mother. Painted using oil on canvas by her son, James Whistler. (Meacock, n.d.)

Exploring Colour and Technique

To explore colour and technique, I used the three primary colours to experiment by creating new colours and shades. It is quite amazing how only three colours can be so colourful. I also experiemented with using some different techniques, such as pointillism, bloching, layering, etc. It was fun to see how the different ways of using the paint could create different visual aesthetics.

After exploring colour using the three primary colours, I added black and white paint to my tray to experiment with light and depth. Using the colours I had already explored, I exerimented by adding shades of black and white to change the colour again. Below is an example of this.

Colour

The more I begin to explore art, the more I am finding out about how colour is used purposefully in specific art movements. For example, the way in which Andy Warhol uses a lot of non-represational colour choices is an attempt to convey different moves in his pop art (Web Exhibits, n.d.).

In one of the lectures, I was presented with an opportunity to explore and experiment with primary colours. During this time were given the three colours, yellow, blue and red, and I experimented firstly with creating a combination of secondary colours. I then went on to create different shades by adding more or less of one colour to the blend, creating an interesting array of tertiary colours.

After reading further about the use of colour, it appears that it holds a great purpose in its choice for art. It is suggested that each colour alone symbols different feelings and emotions, and when used purposefully and intentionally, these can be used to infer meanings (Rohrer, 2010).

This might help enlighten me to the meaning behind some of these famous art movements.

What exactly is 'art'?

I had to look a little bit deeper than the surface to find a sufficient answer to this question. I must admit, although I have seen and worked with a lot of art over the years, when I actually took the time to think about, explore and read, I found that the notion of 'art' is a lot deeper than what I had originally percieved.

One idea that captured my interest was that of Read (1974), who spoke about defining art as a way of visually conceiving the world. He went on to elaborate on this by decribing an artist as 'a man that has the ability and the desire to transfer his visual perception into material form' (Read, 1974). This definitition was enlightening for me as I was able to then understand and infer how different art movements might have come about over the years. It helps to emphasise the fact that art is not necessarily realistic, more so that it is one person's perception of something that is then created as a visual peice of art, whether it be a painting, sculpture, or any physical representation.