#movementart

ARTIST RESEARCH: VALERIE LEUTH

Valerie Leuth is an American woodblock printmaker. She owns her own print company Tugboat Printshop and her work on it is phenomenal. I read an interview she had done saying that she tries to capture the glow and radiances experienced in everyday life. After reading this I knew this is something I also wanted to achieve in my woodblock pieces. As I was looking through her work I found many that felt very movement based so I was able to note techniques she had used to achieve it and place it into my own work. I also was looking at all the work she has completes so I could get ideas on colours and layers I could use for my own designs. I found with her work there is an insane attention to detail and precision which is extremely difficult to achieve normally in woodblock carving.

ARTIST RESEARCH:HOLLY WARBURTON

Holly Warburton is a UK based artist that specialises in both digital and physical art. It’s clear in her work that she is heavily influenced by both Impressionist and Expressionist painters. I wanted to look into how she combines colours and lines to create her work. I found out that many of her ideas like that of Valerie Leuth’s work come from everyday life and experiences. I think reading about both artists doing this helped me to start looking more at what’s going on around me as I might find more ideas to help me with my work. As her work is normally made on Photoshop or with acrylic/gouache I was more so looking at how her use of colours mixed with each other. I found that she layered many layers and used opacity to change how the colours interact with each other. I thought to myself that I could do this with the woodblock printing as there’s a transparent white can mix in with the colours.

ARTIST RESEARCH: BRETT HELQUIST

Brett Helquist is an American illustrator and author. He was the illustrator for all 13 “A Series Of Unfortunate Events” book series written by Daniel Handler. I found out that this set of books had been his first proper illustration job which I think is incredible considering the quality and consistency throughout his work. As his work is mostly created digitally and with pencil and paper it was had to reference his techniques especially for the print elective. Although he is using a different medium I was able to look at his use of linework throughout his works. I was particularly fond of the hatching designs he used to fill in dark areas. I used this idea to help me with how I would do shading for my etching plates. I also wanted to look at how he drew characters in an environment as I hadn’t created a scene like that in a very long time. I think seeing his work in black and white helped me to figure out how I would also show mine so that it would be a strong print with our without colour.

ARTIST RESEARCH: CHRIS PLOWMAN

Chris Plowman was a UK based sculpture and etching artist. He passed away in 2009 so there was very little information on him bar an article from the guardian briefly talking about his work. I found from this article that he liked to take everyday mundane objects and collage them into intricate etching designs. Once I looked into this I felt like I had been using that idea whiteout even really realising it. I found out about him from Des in a conversation about different etching techniques. The piece in the bottom middle was beautiful to see and even better in person as I could see all the different techniques used in the etching. In the bottom left corner of the piece I saw there was dotted sections of shadows which Des explained was a spiked roller. The top section with the sky would have been done using a paintbrush and methylated spirits as far as I can remember. In relation to my own work I think I was able to see how creating tonal values really helps the viewer to decipher what’s going on in the piece. I wanted to be able to do that in my pieces also as I like the idea of a work of art being strong enough without colour but can be also amplified with colour. It was great to see etching work done to such a high standard as I hope to work towards something of that standard in the future.