It took a while for me to decide  with a subject for my 5th assignment which was a final assignment in the Drawing 1 course. To come up with the decision I asked myself all the questions which were recommended on the pages 114- 116 of our  course book. In our personal project for this assignment  we were supposed to bring all the  creative and technical skills we have obtained doing all the exercises and assignments of the course, our observational skills and artistic style developed through the course. Below is my work for this assignment and my thoughts about my personal project.

Title: “Studying  sunlight in the large leaves” (oil on canvas);

Subject: I picked as my subject big leaves of a plant with a focus on the sunlight they catch in a sunny day. These are the leaves of a plant in my garden so I could observe it and painted them au plein air. I have decided to paint them  not only because I did feel very inspired with their beauty but also because  painting them required  to demonstrate  technicals skills as  linear drawing,  creating light and shadows, different  tones  and demonstrate my  observational skills – there are many small details to see and pay attention to in order to achieve at least some realistic look.

Format: I am very fond of still life as a genre and I really admire a nature morte works by Dutch painters of early XVII century. I am very much touched and influenced by a work of Ambrosius  Bosschaert, “Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass vase”,  (Dutch, 1573-1621); I do like to draw and paint plants, observing their beauty in  many details.

Support: since I planned to paint with oils I chose to paint on canvas, size A2.

Medium: I used 2 mediums- oils by: Winsor &Newton, BLOCKX, AP, Old Holland classic oils; I also used acrylic in gold colour by Pebeo;

Line, tone: In my painting I used  lot of lines and worked on many tones of green, brown and yellow;

Composition: I find the composition as a quite experimental because I painted just a fragment of the plant, focusing on particular leaves and incorporating  gold colour among  natural colours;

Mood, story, visual impression: While studying and going through the course, doing lot of research, I understand now that I would like to create a visual art which contains very positive  mood via expressing  a sort of “high”`= very attractive to observer`s eye aesthetics. I name it  “high” because I put a great demand and appreciation of artist`s  sense of colours and elegance of his/her painting technique. I appreciate attention to small details and ability to bring the beauty of the subject to canvas ​ in its unique and indisputable senses.  As an artist I am very much influenced by Japanese Kano school and Gustav Klimdt`s artworks what I have expressed trying the following: 1) being careful  about small details of the subjects and mastering my  skill to paint them close to what I saw; 2) painting realistically I tried to be  expressive and loose in terms of letting myself to transfer the mood and story of the subject I  got inspired and not just the realistic details; 3)  in using  and incorporating a gold colour into my painting what makes  the  image  to change and transform into a new reality  what I usually observe in the artworks of my favourite abovementioned artists.

Light: I want  to master my skills of catching a natural light in my works;

Size: my tutor asked me to produce a work size A1 or A2;

Artist research for Personal Project.

Personally I am a big fan of Kano school painting style, as I mentioned earlier during the course in my blog post dated 23/02/2017. Kano school`s style has definitely shaped my style as an artist.  ​ So  I am using  again the opportunity to do an artist research about a  painter who`s artworks are so elegant in terms of overall style, colours and painting technique.

Kano Eitoku (1543-1590)

Kano Eitoku was a Japanese painter ( 1543-1590),  the grandson of Kanō Motonobu (1476–1559) – a founder of most successful and long lived, so called  “Kano School” of Japanese painting. During his lifetime, Eitoku was  an official painter for the Ashikaga shogunate, Azuchi-Momoyama and  war lord`s Oda Nobunaga period. He was recognized for his artistic talent at a very young age. Under Motonobu’s guidance, he developed his grandfather’s style, which had influence from Chinese painting. He was born in Kyoto  and received his first training under his fathers supervision.  Kano Eitoku belonged to a famous Kano   Family, he was a grandson of Kano Motonobu who was a founder of Kano  painting style. Kano Eitoku​s most prominent artworks are six fold screen with a image of Japanese cedar tree called « Hinoki »,  a screen representing lions,  and  a pair of six part screens with hawks and pines. It is recognised that his style contained very original bold and colourful approach  and characterised with broad vigorous brushstrokes. There is an opinion stating Kano Eitoku made Kano School style yet « more monumental and gorgeous by introducing a gold leaf back ground, upon which he applied brighter colours and heavier black ink outlines. Other critics say Kano Eitoku « introduced strength and dynamism to his  large compositions ». His works are also described as « vigorous and magnificent «  due to their size and energy they contain. I also  fully share an opinion which applies a term  to this particular artist`s works such as « that gorgeous aesthetic ». Most of his artworks  have been destroyed  over the times but we are lucky enough to have at least 10 of his works still available to contemplate.

Chinese Lions, image via mutualart.com

Cypress Trees, image via mutualart.com

Reference  list:

1)Britannica.com; Kano Eitoku 

2) Japanese-paintings.weebly.com

3) biography.yourdictionary.com; Kano Eitoku 

4) metmuseum.org; essay « The Kano school of painting »; department of Asian Art, October 2003 

5) nhk.or.jp; Cypress Trees by Kano Eitoku; 9th of November 2017,

6) moderntokyotimes.com; « Kano Eitoku and richness of Japanese art despite warring times » by Lee Jay Walker, February 16, 2018

 

Written element:

Artist`s statement for the project: “Studying sunlight in the large leaves”.

My main objective in this project was to demonstrate a set of skills I have developed and obtained through the Drawing 1 course and development of my artistic  sense of aesthetics, development of my path and style as an artist. I have painted a fragment of a large leafy tree from my  garden – large leaves catching the sunlight. I wanted to create a realistic painting  with the impression of a sunlight and different tones of green colour. I have  developed two preliminary works in oils  which I send by email to my tutor and he asked me to develop and work in the direction I have picked up – below left;

I also developed another preliminary work of the subject using a a medium dry pastels (below) to see, feel and compare which medium would let  me to get the mood and visual impression I wanted to bring. I have decided to continue with oils because they appeared to be the  best medium for my objectives since only oils give that  much control on creating different shades of  green leaves and sunlight:

 

Below is my final work:

My work consisted of the following elements:

1) Leaves and stems: even  though our first perception of leaves is “they all  are just green” in my work it was nothing like this. I had to create 8 different tones of green colour and 5 tones of yellow colour. Painting leaves required good linear skills to create a movement and elegance of the large leaves. As it is noticed some parts of the leaves are dry and their drying process brings a lot of detailed work. I was very much attracted by those brown dried parts: to me that dry lifeless part of the leave was not dead at all and I wanted to emphasise  it`s beauty. So I have experimented with adding and incorporating a gold colour to the dried parts of the leaves which I found as very appropriqte because this gold colour was  in a quite a harmony with green and yellow  in the whole painting, giving it more aesthetics and fresh approach.

2) the stem of the tree:  I  wanted to create a realistic look of the stem, mixing black, brown and white colours to obtain that natural greyish colour for the stem`s skin. I also worked on tones on the stem  using black;

3) the  background of the lower part of the painting. The lower part of the painting had to be dark where the sunlight didn’t reach. The plant was standing in a area with a very  dense leave mass which could be indicated as dark shades of green;

4) the background of the upper part: that part could not be painted just in a flat different tone because the upper part was lit by the sunlight and many other plants, leaves; branches  and flowers were visible. To me  this upper background part happened to be as an another painting because I used a different   technique to create a mass of leaves and flowers – I painted lot of tiny points and dashes smoothing their edges after; I have also incorporated small dashes of gold colour;

5) The sunlight. My attention to the subject of my personal project was attracted  because of the sunlight, which was coming from the top of the tree and  made the leaves look very graphic: there were edges and very distinct shades on the surface of the leaves. Some parts of green  leaves had so much sunlight that looked almost white.

Below is my work in progress: