Other Artists

I've been researching other artists on the internet, for inspiration and to learn from others. I have had a few recommendations as well, some of which follows below.

  

Edgar Degas, did a lot of work of women whilst they were bathing or grooming themselves. He chose to do poses such as a woman brushing her hair. He painted them all in a particular way, and I can understand why he would choose to paint them in this way. In my opinion, it has to do with the exposed skin; these poses are distinctly feminine and striking. His use of colour and subtleness is what makes his work so interesting to look at. He has captured the shape and tone of each woman wonderfully. I can only imagine that he used to do a lot of these poses from a picture in his minds eye, as I can't imagine anyone would manage to hold these poses for so long. I like all of his work, and the way he has captured these women; it captures a simple private moment, one that happens everyday and has made a colourful creation from it.

He also liked to paint dancers. In my opinion, I think he was inspired by their movement and grace, this is why I enjoy dance performances so much. Also, dancers have to be extremely disciplined to make their bodies create such different shapes, that are not part of your everyday movements.

I particularly like the last drawing above, the description and use of tone is amazing; he's obviously used some form of pastels or chalks for the descriptive lines, and he's mostly used lines rather than shading to describe the movement. He's also cleverly left spaces in the colour and let the initial sketches come through, especially on the tutu of the dancer's dress.

Georges Seurat used a technique I'm not entirely familiar with, it looks to me like he used dots to create his images. It looks to me as though instead of using white dots to create the light tones, he's just used the darker dots and left the paper to show through for the lights. Whilst this is a very clever technique, I'm not particularly moved by his work.



Auguste Rodin, The Thinker


I have a model of the thinker at home, and I didn't even realise the arist was a famous sculpture artist. I have admired his work many times before without a clue as to who it was!
















What I admire most about his sculptures is the simplicity of his figures; the thinker is just a man contemplating, the kiss is two figures intimately embracing, stances, poses things that people do every single day, and yet the care and attention he has given his work, is what makes his work so powerful and striking.

I've always wanted to try sculpture; it brings an artists work a dimension that can never be achieved in 2D, no matter how talented. To be able to physically twist and turn and move your work around, and not just in rubbing something out on a peice of paper, is something that I admire and respect greatly.



I know that these aren't strictly figures, but Van Gogh did paint them. Since I've been looking at the figure in it's entirety; it's structure beneath the figure, I wanted to put these paintings in. The display of tonal range here is perfect. I can see from the brushstrokes that he used only small marks to create his overall work, and he does so with clarity.





Self Portraits 1889

Van Gogh's work struck me as very sad and emotional. Obviously most people know at least a little about his life, and how he chopped off his own ear, but even his works before then seem to me incredibly sad; the use of muted tones. When I look at his work, I always feel emotional and feel a great deal of pity toward him. I think because he based a lot of his work using emotions about his love life, as an audience looking at his work, it's hard not to pick up on those emotions. He was an undeniable genius when it came to his work. To still have such an incredible amount of admirers so many years after his death; I understand that he was incredibly poor whilst he was alive, and yet he continued to paint. I think painting was his emotional outlet; it was the way in which he coped with everything that was going on around him. A lot of his work consisted of self portraits, some of which are below.



Self Portrait 1887



Self Portrait 1887



 



 

I also wanted to look at some more modern arists to see they're take on the figure. These are the works I found that I liked.



http://www.studio81.biz/figurative.htm

These pieces are by Kristina Laurendi Havens. I have to say, that I really love this artists work. It's so interesting, and the whole feel of the work is so clean. I love her use of colour and tone. I would happily pay a decent amount for her work. I only hope that one day I am able to accomplish something as amazing as this work. I will definitely be keeping an eye on this artist via her website, so I can see any new work she does.

http://www.jenthewlis-art.com/figures.php

These works are by an artist named Jennifer Cussons. I like her work because,

and I particularly like her style of painting in the last two images, because of the way she has seperated the images and even missed out the sections so that the figure makes sense proportionally. She has a great understanding of tone, and can use different materials to display the figures.