Second pathways.

Today I tried two different pathways- Fine art and Visual Communication.
In fine art we were given photographs that we manipulated to give a whole new meaning using materials such as paint and sand. We were also introduced to artists that use this technique a lot such as Hughie O'Donoghue, John Stezaker and Gerhard Richter. I tried to use the same kind of color palette that these artists used, and also tried some more techniques that we had not been shown during the demonstration.
To start off, I put a few dots of different colored paint on the side of the photograph, then I got a ruler and dragged it across the paint and photo, giving it a nice kind of striped pattern, I also put sand on the top of a few of them to give it a more textured look. I was quite excited to try it out this technique after watching the demo, but when I tried it myself I became frustrated when it didn't turn out like I had planned or wanted it too.
My favorite one I did was one where I painted the picture blue and green and then because you couldn't see the row of houses in the photograph, I thought about what I could do to make it better, and so I scratched some of the paint away, exposing the houses underneath,
 I thought that in a strange way, it could almost reflect the way we live today, about how the reality only scratches on the surface of the imagination- this was represented in the dullness of the houses you can make out beyond the vibrancy and uncertainty of the paint.

 Next we tried mono printing. Like the photograph manipulation, I had never tried this either, so I was eager to experiment. To do this, you drew either on paper or on the printing board itself, and then when you peeled the paper back you had whatever you had drawn printed on it. I had always decided to try to collage some pictures from a magazine onto the paper before I printed on it, to make it more original.

I liked this technique, however I did run into a problem when I tried  to trace a perfume bottle I found and a woman's profile- when I had tried to print this, because I hadn't had much practice, I struggled to get the right consistency to make the print not look too blotchy, and I had around six attempts playing around with different elements before I got some feedback from the tutor and was able to finally achieve it.