John Virtue

Henri Michaux

Valery Koshlyakov

William Anastasi

William Anastasi produced a series of 'Subway Drawings', the drawings consisted of Anastasi sitting upright of the subway, pencil in each hand and a drawing board on his lap. With his shoulders away from the back rest and his elbows at 90 degree angles he aloud himself to take in the rhythm of the train journey including every turn, start, stop, acceleration and deceleration. As a result of this his drawings appear like random scribbles on paper, but when you know the process of the drawing you then see the recording of the environment that it was done in, in this case the journey of the train. This process of recording the environment through art is a different way of drawing ans in turn creates different drawings with different meanings and purposes.

I think that although the drawings don't appear to mean anything, they have purpose and this makes people have to think harder or spend more time with the drawing. Also similar the drawings may be ultimately everyone of them is unique and down to chance because of the environments.  I like how the drawings are down to chance and don't have structure to them because it is determined by the uncontrollable external environment. I think that using this method of movement to draw creates possibly better and more meaningful drawings.   

Giovanni Piranesi

Cai Guo-Qiang

Born in 1957 in China, Cai Guo-Qiang has worked with a range of mediums including performance art, video, installation and drawing. During the late 80's and early 90's; living in Japan he began to explore the uses of gunpowder in his drawings which in turn lead to him experimenting with explosives on a bigger scale. As a result of this came his signature explosion events. Guo-Qiang's work aims to connect the viewers to the universe  around them and make them see more of the bigger picture and allow an approach to history and culture.


In Guo-Qiang's 'Gunpowder Drawings' he uses gunpowder and then sets it alight onto canvas paper to create his charred drawings. The use of gunpowder is meant to represent the 'destruction' of his 'timid personality', and so is a personal link with him self as an artists and his materials he uses in his work.
I like how the material that he has used is personal to himself as an artist and it is just not randomly selected, the process of destructing the paper on canvas represents the destruction of the artist's personality and traits that he no longer wants. I like the link and the message behind his drawings along with the way he has carried out the process.





    
I think that this is one of my favorite artists because of the difference it has among the other drawings, he has used a material that isn't seen to be a drawing material and so he has taken something different and made it into a drawing tool and into a personal and meaningful  process.  

Alberto Giacometti

Son of post-Impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti, Alberto Giacometti; died in 1966, was a Swiss painter, sculptor, draftsmen and print maker. Most well known for his award winning sculptures of tall thin silhouettes, Giacometti has also series of expressive portraits. 
His style of drawing is very suggestive using loose lines to create tangled, yet structured drawings and with the use of light and tone he has added depth to certain drawings.
I like the use of tone in some of his drawings and how the use of black lines have been used to define detail yet still in fitting with the abstract and almost experimental style of the drawings. On the other hand some of Giacometti's simpler drawings, I do not like because of the lack of depth to them, I feel that his drawings with more tone are stronger and have more of an impact as a drawing than others. 

Alessia Avellino

Alessia Avelino is an artist, specializing in industrial  landscapes she also creates city and seascapes exploring the light and space and  the contrast of line within her work. To create her work she uses different fragments of buildings and space to build up her landscape using either memorized places or photographs. For her work she uses either oil, charcoal or graphite to create her work and draws onto paper, board or canvas. 
She sees her work as 'windows the viewers can walk into', and wants people to explore the light and atmosphere she has tried to create in her drawings. 

I really like this artist and her style of drawings, I like how shes explored the light and depth in her drawings and the materials shes used such as charcoal and white paint. I think the contrast in colors and material work well in creating the contrast between line and space in the drawings its helping get that across more to the viewers I think. 

William Kentridge

In William Kentridge's drawings,  you can see the theater influences that he includes in them that come from his love of theater. He also interests in linking drawing to film which shows in his graphic style characters in his drawings and his method of creating his film. Almost like stop frame animation he will take a photo of a drawing and then erase it and change the drawing slightly and then taking another picture of the changed drawing, continuing this until the scene has finished and when the photos are put together they create the film and a animated drawing. 






Kentridge's style of drawing is very loose using drawing materials such as charcoal  and graphite he is able to create drawings with a range of depths, and different line qualities to them. I like how he uses the same drawing for his film animations and erases parts of the drawing to change it, i think that it allows the film to show how the drawing has been edited and changed because of some of the visible lines that haven't been removed properly. I like the rough finish to his work. 

Tim Knowles

Artist and photographer, Time Knowles is known for incorporating nature into his work and using it to play a major part in making process of his work. He uses nature within his work and the use of chance within nature and the environmental elements to create abstract and experimental drawings.

 One series of drawings by Knowles is the 'Tree Drawings'. These drawings were produced by Knowles using the movement of the trees in the wind. He attached pens to the end of branches on different trees used large white surfaces perfectly placed so that they cached the movement of the trees via the pen strokes created by the branches as they moved in the wind. For this particular piece in 2005, he attached 100 ink pens to a weeping willow tree in Victoria park, London and placed a circular disk under the tree to catch the ink marks. 

I think that the way Tim Knowles has used the natural movement of the wind to create drawings make the finished drawing more organic. The drawings haven't just been created by hand, the small marks on the paper that if were hand drawn could appear to mean nothing or bland , have been created using nature; in this case the movement of the wind and therefore I feel that it gives this particular type of drawings more depth. I really like how experimental the drawing are and how unpredictable the process is in creating them. 

Tim Knowles also created a set of 'Balloon Drawings', these consisted of drawings produced by a pen suspended below a helium filled balloon drawing onto a slow moving roll of paper. The drawings produced can be up to 24 meters long as they plot the wind movements over a period of 24 hours. Knowles produced these balloon drawings on each of the highest mountains in England, Scotland and wales; Mount Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike. 

With these set of drawing I feel that they  are more structured and controlled than the Tree Drawings because some of his balloon drawings were in conjunction with weather reports and were more of a purposed and man made process with the mechanical  paper and contraptions used to create the drawings as apposed to the simplicity of a canvas and the wind in the tree drawings. However I still like the experimentation that has gone into the work and the fact that no two drawing will be the same.  

Martin Margiela

The Belgian fashion designer, Martin Margiela first came onto the scene in 1989 with a collection of clothing that challenged what luxury really could be. His ideas of deconstruction, recycling and raw finishes shocked the public and never took an appeal to mass audiences. However he is still known for his use of unconventional materials.
With some works he took car seat belts, belts to pull in the silhouette amongst other materials such as cut up tailored suits, belts and coloured ice.

Lu Shengzhong

The Chinese artist that specializes in the ancient art of paper-cutting choses to stay close the routes of the art of the traditional folk art. His work consists of  thousands of red hand cut paper dolls cut from red tissue paper and displayed is various different ways and various scales. The colour red is a good luck symbol in china and the tissue paper is normally used in celebrations such as weddings and new year and so the materials of his work bring something to the piece as well. The process is more than just art for Lu Shengzhong; the cutting out of little red figures is a spiritual and a performance which has been practiced for generations as an act to bring fertility to the families and as a symbol of ancestral continuity. This spiritual ritual gives Shengzhong meaning to his work and a powerful, cultural sense.  

By cutting the out all of the dolls by hand, Shengzhong is able to make each one slightly different, unique and helps his to represent the human population. He uses his work to reflect on how delicate human beings are and show that a human's life can be shorter than the paper's thickness. 

Rebecca Horn

German installation artist and film director, Rebecca Horn is most commonly known for her piece called 'Einhorn'. She works in areas such as installation, sculpture, film, performance art and poetry writing which is sometimes inspired by her artwork.
working around the theme of making a connection between the human body and the things around it in its environment, Horn produced her first body sculpture piece in 1968 where she attached objects and instruments to the human body. Her work has progressed since then and she has produced more of performance pieces including her pieces of art.

Julene Harrison

Constructed textile designer turned paper-cut artist; Julene Harrison is an English artist and illustrator who specialises in mainly text based paper-cut pieces.
With doing work for clients such as O2 and Virgin Trains, her work is well recognised and her unique style is popular. She uses both craft knife and the laser cut process to produce her work, both in which I could use in my own work when experimenting with paper. 

Sandra Backlund

In 2004 the Swedish designer; Sandra Backlund graduated from Beckman's college of design and soon found her own label that same year, she is now a well know fashion designer. Known for her sculptural and architectural clothing Backlund aims to exaggerate the female form and works with heavy wool, paper and hair to change proportions and dimensions of the female body.













When producing her work, Sandra Backlund designs her clothing as she knits, this method produces a more streamline finish to the garment and helps her mix her futuristic designs with more familiar materials such as paper and wool. Her work as an artists is driven by the experimentation of change the appearance, shape and form of the natural silhouette of the female body using simply the clothes we wear, and also from her personal and business experiences. I think that using your work to change the appearance of something is an appealing idea and inspiration for future work, also using your experiences you've gained from the environment around you to then use as inspiration to help change it is almost like giving something back.

Kirsten Hassenfeld

An American artist known for her installations made from paper, Kirsten Hassenfeld hand produces paper instalments, and with the use of light she displays them where they fill the empty space around them not just physically but with the light they give off also. As well as sculptures she also has created small environments that she details with intricate hand crafted pieces of paper that eventually make up the finished piece when all put together. To enhance her translucent and delicate sculptures, Hassenfeld uses light to enhance her installations.

In this particular piece by Kirsten Hassenfeld, named 'Dans La Lune' was created in 2007 and is one of my favourite pieces by this artist. It consists of large chandelier like instalments that are suspended from the floor. The detailed paper sculptures show off Hassenfelds painstaking craftsmanship showing every coil, fold, curl and cut of her work. I like just how detailed she has managed to make her sculptures with the use of paper and on the scale that she has done so. The simplicity of the plain white paper with the white lights allow you to look closely at the detail and don't distract you from the real detail of the piece.

Tom Phillips

Born in England 1937, Tom Phillips is an English artist who takes up several preoccupations, this including painter, sculptor, composer, critic, curator and forms of poetry and writing.
In 1966 Phillips set out to make a piece of art from the first second hand book he could buy for three pence; this began 'A Humument' which was the first and to be the longest series of his work including 4 editions. The pieces consist of Victorian books which once forgotten about have been reinvented using means such as collage, cut-up and other techniques. The series is still on going and is said to be only completed when all of the original pages from the books have been reworked. ON these reworked pages, Phillips has picked out certain words and phases and then linked them together by blocking out the other words on the pages, these phrases and sentences make up some of his personal quotations and saying which have been used by other artists in their work.
Using his other talents such as painting portraits, Tom Phillips has used these in his books as the backgrounds to his work which also link in with some of the words that he highlights.
I think that the way he has reinvented and reworked pages from old and forgotten books has worked well, I like the idea of reusing the materials and reinventing the materials for another use than what they were originally purposed for.

Su Blackwell

Su Blackwell is most commonly known for her paper sculptures and dioramas. Graduating from the Royal college of Art in 2003 she has then moved on to create detailed sculptures made up of paper and used books to sculpt into dioramas that she displays in wooden boxes. Her choice of material being paper is used to reflect the fragile nature of the world and life in general, she uses irreversible and destructive methods within her work to reflect how easy it is for the destruction of life, hope and ambitions.

With the books that she uses for her sculptures, she gathers them from second hand book stores and always reads the books she uses them first. Reading the words within the books she uses gives her inspiration for the pieces, not only does she read the books she looks at the history of the books, in terms of its damage and appearance taking note of every stain and tear adding to her inspiration and helping her to tell a story with her work.

As for Blackwell's cut-out illustrations, her inspiration is lead by the vulnerability that comes along with childhood. She uses little girl figures and places them in different environments; usually haunting and overwhelming environments to represent the vulnerability over children and childhood in general. Light is also used to set different backlights and set the different tones for the environments that Su Blackwell places her 'little girl' figures in.



With this artist I enjoy the delicacy of her work and the way she has linked her medium to the subject of the vulnerability of the world. I think that linking the subject matter and the materials is important and helps you to tell the story or carry the message further in a piece of work. I'd like to take this on bored and help it inspire me with my upcoming pieces.
 

Exit through the Gift Shop

Ron English

A contemporary American artist and illustrator, born 1966 he is known for his blends with visuals and political and consumerist statements. Along with artists such as Banksy, he has took part in illegal public art campaigns since the 1980's. English targets commercial brands and 'liberates' them with his own messages. He takes large commercial icons and then turns them around so that they attack the very image that they are trying to sell; for example with English's McDonalds themed art work consisting of the McDonald's 'Ronald McDonald' but a supersized version, attacking the fast food image and linking it to obesity. He has also done similar work with Kellogg's 'Tony the Tiger' again making the children's character appear to be supersized and advertising Kellogg's Frosties 'Full of Fat'.

 

Here English has taken a famous painting and recreated his own version but again using his own messages and the big iconic brands people know and love. The McDonalds logo in this piece has been placed on the top of a church, I think that this painting is symbolising how people have come accustom to McDonalds and how it has become a regular and normal thing in people's life style. The fast food industry is growing along with the cases of obesity and so there is a lot of controversy about fast food, I think that English dose well to highlight just how bad the big brands are in the food industry and highlights that they are still fast food giants and no matter how much they advertise about their new range of salads; and I think that his work shows this well because of the way his work portrays the brands, in a ay that he's almost mocking them.

 

 

Ron English as well as Shepard Fairey, also produced work for Obama's Presidential campaign in 2008.  The piece; 'Abraham Obama' was produced by English in 2008 and is possibly one of his most significant pieces of art. For the piece English combined America's 16th and 44th president to create a combined head made up of features from Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.