Experimental - flowers part 2

For this assignment (experimental flowers part 1 and 2) I was inspired by a well-known watercolour painter, Ann Blockley (http://www.annblockley.com/), who presents in her book ‘Experimental Flowers in Watercolour’ flowers through a variety of interpretations, from traditional to unconventional in both technique and concept. She is well-known for dramatic painting of seedheads, foliage, fruit and berries in winter, as well as the more traditional flowers and blossoms.

http://www.annblockley.com/artwork.htm

The second artist I was inspired by is Shirley Trevena (http://www.shirleytrevena.com/), who explores the boundaries of watercolour and is regarded as one of Britain's most innovative artists in that sense. Shirley goes against the conventional rules of watercolour in many different ways: through her compositions, strange perspectives, fascinating textures and, above all, the strength and vibrancy of her colour combinations.

http://www.shirleytrevena.com/gallery/?album=4&gallery=29

I found several images in book written by Jean Haines' Watercolour Passion,  some students work from University of Auckland from New Zealand and Jo Casson work I used them as a source of inspiration for my images.

http://flickrhivemind.net/User/Jo%20Casson/Interesting

http://www.jeanhaines.com/gallery

Student's work from University of Auckland (New Zealand)

All water-colourist artists encourage me to experiment with my photographs and produce challenging and exciting pieces of my work. They inspired me to look into, develop and eventually create my own style. My target was to combine oil paint style with photographs to achieve the abstract. I would like to show how we can combine digital montage techniques with mixed media equipment only to create art paint work.

Colour was one of the most important subjects for the painter and I find it as well fascinating, but also at times challenging.

I started with my own images of flowers which I used as a point of departure. The images I chose for the project displayed clear shapes of flowers to make sure that my composition is strong and that despite the abstract nature of the photographs, the viewer can quickly identify their theme.

I mixed colours, textures in unusual ways to achieve interesting atmosphere, which is different in every picture. By mixing colours, I achieved an effect similar to what was painted by the three artists mentioned above. In other words, the image received a quality of painting. This quality was also ensured by vibrant and vivid colours, which appeared in the images thanks to using textures by applying layers in Photoshop.

When placing individual layers on my images, I played with opacity level. This allowed me to modify an extent to which some layers (or their parts) were more visible than others. This is how I used colours in an innovative way, that is by making some of the colours stronger and others more faded. By doing this, the viewer has a chance to look at the images from a new perspective, determined by his/her fondness to particular types of colours and their intensity.

I also combined manipulating opacity levels with other textures, e.g. fingerprint, sponge, broken glass and water splash texture. By resizing the area of the texture, I was able to achieve an effect of paint drops and brush strokes, in a similar way that is done by such artists as Shirley Trevena. 

Another technique of my choice was painting with the mixer brush (wet and dry) to blend colours. Similarly to other techniques, this one contributed to the effect of brush painting and brush strokes. As a result, the images can be seen as a sort of hybrid between painting and digital image. At the same time, the colour level feature in Photoshop allowed me to experiment with the depth and intensity of colours and to choose the ones which I thought will be captivating for the viewer. This is mainly achieved by adding to ‘surreal’ quality of the images.

To sum up, my aim was to create effects which cannot be achieved by shooting a picture only. By applying Photoshop to digital images, I think I was able to create unique pictures which benefit from opportunities given by digital processing. The effect of surreal conception is visible mainly through strong composition, vibrancy of colour and texture surreal effect.

My images