'www.thisiscollosal.com' Bredan Monroe

My attention have been brought to a art like website called thisiscollosal where anything adnormal, comical, illustrative and pretty much anything art related is shown to the world, there are many different artist and creators on this website and so I've just chosen one to show.

Bredan Monroe looks at 'Topography' Map making but in art usaully using a combination of natural and artifical forms involving location in some way.

"Oakland-based artist Brendan Monroe has been on a tear lately a solo show and several group exhibitions featuring his delightfully strange human and topographic forms composed of whirling rivers and swarms of color. The artist says his artwork is mostly rooted in science and then executed through painting and sculpting, which is not hard to see given the flow of energy found in each piece that seems influenced by the flow of water, tornadoes, or the grouping of microorganisms"
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/09/brendan-monroe/

 

 

 

 

This work is inspiring for my own ideas on how to invovle map design and drawing together and I defintely recommend looking at this website for Inspiration, research or for fun.

 

 

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/

 

 

 

Maps

I've been looking at maps of Exeter to start of my project and lead me into my photo shoot of my Everyday Journey in and out of Exeter city. I oviously started with google maps finding my routes around the area, where lived and plain birds eye view images and actual maps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuing from this I decided to practice with my digital skills on photoshop and have a mess about with these maps with colours, contrast and consistinsy. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These images have certain visual effect that work well with there concept like the first image looking like city lights shaped like lightning hitting the ground and the second giving of a urban feel like complicated graffiti on the wall. These picture are nice to look at but I'd would rather involve some drawing skills ino it weither it by observational or imaginary.

The City

After finishing 'Traces 2' I've moved onto my next brief with a choice of 'Boundaries', 'City', 'Book Makeover' and 'Domestic'. As you can tell by the title I've chosen 'City' as my starting point and I have started looking into Map Art and everyday journeys.

As first Inspiration for this project I've looked at Glynis Tinglof who paints abstract pieces based around maps and cities using warmer colours found on maps of fields or of the place in which the painting is of.

 

 

From here I'll try experimenting with observational drawing and implementing it into other abstact map work, I'll also take a photo shoot of my way into college and my everyday journeys around exeter city.

PDF

As a look into Digital Art I decided to look into programing itself starting with the PDF file.

'Portable Document Format' was originally created as a way to link all file formats from word proccesors to a variety of image and graphic formats. This was due to the early days of the internet and everyone having different programs and files, so weren't able to open documents that would have been sent to one another.

Today Adobe is more of a tool program to help edit certain images, videos/animations and word based documents and this seems to be the direction in which it's taking with portfolio tools and buisness tools becoming a real proffesional and common program.

Finalizing Ideas - Montage

One of my final ideas was to take my texture pieces and cut them up and then take inspiration from Mondrian and work into composition with collaging these cut up pieces into a Montage.

This was alright and had visually apealing quality but wasn't as Bold as I would have liked it to be and didn't involve half of the things I had looed into so was kind of pointless.

So I decided just to stick everything together, by taking my texture, drawing experiment pieces and montaging them I would involve what I had learnt from Mondrian, it would involve the drawing techniques learnt from Claude Heath and blind drawings of rocks and traces would involve my Journey ideas and Ester Roi's concept.
Finally to link it all together I decided instead of using various squares and rectangles I would use circles to incorporate my digital pebbles work and 3D experiments.

I believe this idea came out extremely well and even though it may need a tweek here or there for now it brings all my ideas together and shows what 'TRACES' means to me.

Combination Experimentation

In a attempt to fuel some ideas I tried experimenting with my last two pieces, 'Claude Heath Drawing Technique' and 'Texture works' and entwining them together to create these stand out pieces.

These were created by taking these texture rubbings which I explained in my last post how they were made, and taking a subject to blind draw from 'in my case a rock or sculpture' and then using pens, pencils and fine liners to draw over the top.
Also to give it even more stand out quality I then took it to photoshop where I filled the page and upped the exposer and contrast. 

Claude Heath

Claude Heath is an Artist renowed for his blind studies where he uses one hand to feel the subject and draw with the other hand all while blind folded.
"You create a problem and become fascinated with 'it'. (1) This line is one which feeds centrally into the artist's own work.
Heath's drawings are intense, private dialogues between the sitter/object and the artist. Larger installations and prints require a modification of technique. The artist photographs his work, then projects the enlarged images onto paper, tracing the lines one by one with a pounce wheel, which perforates the surface. He then fixes the colour through the 'stencil'. These images lose the nervy intensity of the drawings, but produce a more clearly articulated line."

The idea that you create a promblem just so you can solve it is what drives Claude to create these amazing pieces using pens, pencils and fine liners.

I still want to incorporate the idea of rocks and traces with in them and I would like to show this with drawing techniques like this and it would also give more of a focal point. I will practise these techniques for now until I can find a way to mix it in with my abstract coloure and texture ideas.