Fine art

Since the 17th centery fine art has ment, art that has be develop primarily for the aesthetics, they traditianly were created uing painting or sculpture.

        Fine Art - "a visual art form considered to have been created primarily for aesthetics and intillectual purpose and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolours, graphics and architecture."

 

"Fine" does not refer to the quality of the work but the purity of the dicipline, so fine art tends to exclude visual arts that could be concidered craftwork.

 



 

Breif Rational (update)

After doing some work on the project my ideas and research have led me in a different direction instead of taking the book in a more literal sense i have started looking in to the themes of the book and the emotions Alice would feel.

I will still be continuing in my chosen area that is fine art but i will now be looking at installation art, which i will do some research in to to get some ideas and to help my work progress. How i will create my work will depend on the research that i will do to weather i stick to traditional materials or not.

Project (so far)

At the start of this project i was looking at Alice in wonderland in a more literal sense. I began by wanting to work in fine art, so i started looking at the several different version of the Alice in wonderland films and looking at the concept art for the films. From this research i started making small sculptures based on the characters from the book and the film, with this the general intended direction that i was going with my project. I feel that these pieces based simply on the characters and the book itself don't really work very well as they are not really my ideas and my thinking towards my work was to literal so i quickly became bored of the project and was running out of ideas.

After making some pieces based on my initial ideas i then began to play with the material that i could use, i started experimenting with wax, glue and ink. I think that experimenting with materials worked really well as it inspired me and help change my thinking and direction of the project, the unexpected outcomes and patterns of the materials made me think about the nature of the book and some of its underlying themes. I then stared noting some the recurring elements that i notice within the book such as size, riddles, time etc. I also looked at some of the underlying themes of the book like growing up, identity, confusion and curiosity. I started looking at artist work that were based or what i felt that could easily represent confusion such as Sol Lewitt, based on this research i then started making some more small sculptures that i thought would represent confusion. These pieces were just quick experimental pieces where i was experimenting with the colours and shapes to try and create an effect and show how you would feel when you were confused or  i tried to create a piece of work that was confusing to look at.

I am going to continue trying to create confusion and base my work on confusion, but i am going to try and experiment more on a larger scale playing about more with the shape and possibly sound as so far i have manly focused on colour and random almost automatic shapes. I also want to play about with environment try to create confusion or a feeling by manipulating the environment within a room, this idea was inspired by the work of the artist Mike Nelson who uses extended labyrinths in his instillation.

Sculpture Inspired by Confusion

Research

After doing the experiments i wanted to change the direction of my project, the experiments have inspired me to focus on the way Alice feel through out her experience and the underlying themes. I felt that on of the main emotions that Alice would be feeling would be confusion, so i started looking at artist that inspired me or i thought that their work gave a look of confusion.

Dan Flavin

Ellsworth Kelly

Sol Lewitt

Experimenting with Materials

I decided to start experimenting with materials such as glue, wax and ink. I decided to do these experiments to play with the possible materials that i could make a sculpture out of.

 wax & glue

glue & ink

Here i used wax and ink to create this, i first poured a bit of molten wax on to tracing paper then dripped the ink on top. It has work well as i expected the colour to blend into the wax but instead the ink has repelled the wax and left a interesting texture in the wax.

I had the idea of using a small glass jar then layering ink and wax so the ink gets trapped in the jar and in the wax, the idea was inspired by the potion that Alice drinks that makes her shrink. 

 

I then had the idea to drop molten wax in to cold water so it would dry quickly to see how it would dry and what shapes it would make. I think the result  the texture and shape that it makes are really interesting.

 
I then was playing with the way ink blends in to water and created these, i chose to do it in a small jar as i was trying to recreate the potion that Alice drinks to make her small.

The unpredictable outcome of the experiments inspired me to change the way am approaching the project, as i am now going to take a less literal approach to the project and look more at the way Alice would feel in the situations and the themes within the book.

Cheshire Cat Sculpture

After looking at other peoples works based on Alice in wonderland, i decided to continue basing my work on characters from the books. I then began to create a the Cheshire cats head, i decided to create only the head as the Cheshire cat can turn parts of its body invisible at will. The idea being the it would be as if the rest of the cat had turned invisible and the head would be floating in mid air.

I made the structure for the head out of wire which works quite well as it is sturdy but gives the shape of the head an unnatural roundness to it. The sculpture is still unfinished but if i was to continue with it i would continue by competing the bottom of the head then either covering the structure with tissue paper or paper mache then paint it.

Sculpture Inspired by Alice in Wonderland

After looking at the concept art i then started looking at sculptures that were based on or inspired by Alice in wonderland .

Alice in Wonderland Concept Art

After creating the character maquettes i started looking at how other people had used Alice in wonderland in the work and how they had interpreted it to help me to get ideas. So i started looking at some of the concept art for the films

Character Maquettes

I have started my work for the Alice in wonderland project by creating two small maquettes based on characters for the Alice's adventures in wonderland.

I created this maquette based on the Cheshire cat, i created the cat out of clay by building it up by adding little amounts of clay at a time then sculpting out the shape. I think that the maquette look ok but it needed its features sculpting out more as they are not very obvious.

The second maquette i created was based on Absolem, this one i created out of Plasticine and was created in a very quick and simple way, for the time it took to make it, it turned out well but lacks facial features. 

Breif Rationale

Alice in wonderland

For the Alice in wonderland project i have decided that the subject area that i want to work in is fine art.

 My influence for the project will be the book its self, then i will go on to look at how other people have interpreted the book, by looking at the films, cartoons, paintings and sculpture etc. Then i will go on to look at other artist work to develop my ideas of how to interpret Alice in wonderland in to my own work.

To create my work i will stick to traditional  three dimensional materials such as clay, wire, plaster etc unless my research directs me in a different direction.

to see and make sure my work is going to plan i will take pictures of all the work that i create then evaluate them which i will post here on my blog and/or in a sketch book.