Nothing beats seeing real art in person. When i found out we were due to visit the New Walk museum to see some German expressionist art i was a little apprehensive to say the least. It's not a particularly large museum and i can't say the German expressionists are particularly well known to me personally.
Having said that, i was really impressed with artwork there.
The vast majority were produced with the wood cut technique. Personally i am a fan of this technique. Back in school i used to produce 2D work in a woodcut style. Due to the tonal values essentially being reduced to black and white, the artists showed a ridiculously good understanding of light, composition and tonal balance/contrast. Some were rather abstract and i was inspired how something so rigid as cutting wood seemed so loose and energetic!
There were also some more realistically cut pieces which showed beautiful attention to detail.
The last room really got me though. Essentially they were all portraits, but in varying different impressionistic styles. I should mention portraits are my favorite thing to draw. I went round studying each one just looking at how each different artist had defined the planes of the face with their own unique marks and style.
All in all, i felt the exhibition was short but sweet. My most inspiring moment came the following day when i was walking back to New Walk museum to draw some bones!
As it happens it was raining so i had taken my glasses off. With the one point perspective down New Walk i suddenly noticed that this blur of colours i was seeing reminded me of one of the German expressionist paintings of some light coming through trees!
I've decided that when i take my glasses off i see colour without being distracted by detail. Which really amazes me. Literally as soon as i take them off all the colours stand out more. So i shall endeavour to try and produce a painting like this at some point to see what results i can get!
No comments:
Post a Comment