AS Art Exam : 2014

Contemporary British artist Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge in 1970 and is most famously known for her larger than life art pieces of 'obese' women, usually using herself as the model. While finishing her postgraduate education at Slade School of Art, famous British art collector Charles Saatchi purchased her entire senior show and commissioned works for another two years. Saville became a famous artist when the controversial 'Sensation' exhibition at Royal Academy of Art (1997) brought Saville's work to the attention of the public at large. Saville has also exhibited widely all around the world including New York, Sweden as well as the UK. Saville is almost unusual among modern British artists in her dedication to the traditional art of oil painting. Throughout all her artwork, her subjects flesh is highly pigmented and she relishes each fold, protrusion, wound and discolouration. Since her début in 1992, her focus has remained on the body. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients.

'Crop of Stare' (2003) features a young male boy he is portrayed to be servilely injured and hurt. The injured physical state of the boy is empathised through the colour palette of the piece of work. With various shades of pink and red represents blood and deeper tones of purples and browns showing bruising add a realistic

effect on the oil painting. I feel the colours used in this piece represent clearly pain and upset as the boy appears to be desperately in pain with injuries. The occasional usages of pale blue convey a hint of sadness deep within the boy as the colour has been slightly covered by the 'bruises' and 'blood'. In this piece of work there is evidentially an underlying psychological underplay with sexual politics featured. The painting is an emotional overload and is very empowering and unsettling. The erratic brush strokes and paint marks throughout the painting, creates the piece of work to not just be a portrait of brush marks specifically allocated in certain areas but to become an abstract piece. With this piece of work Saville purposefully wanted people to know what it is exactly they're looking at but at the same time the closer they get to the painting, its likes going back into childhood.

The brush stokes suggest a sense of chaos and anger as the marks express different emotions within the artwork. The strokes also add texture and charisma to the piece as the imply scratches and depth in the wounds. The painful image of the beaten young child is a heartbreaking piece and Saville has successfully created a piece of art which represents multiple things to each individual. Saville is painting a reaction to idealized beauty in her paintings and expresses angst through the flesh in a figurative manor. Throughout this one painting, aching and painful emotions lie within as she is challenging the viewer to look at deeper emotions that we don't tend to like looking at and she is telling us that when we see people breaking down due to intense emotion, loss of control and socially unacceptable body states).

In addition to this, I feel Saville is representing each individual as meat (objects) and that she is portraying the internal experience of these people and challenging us to see past their containers of bodies to see the human form trapped within itself.

In this piece of work, Saville used acrylic paints to create the layered usage of colours of a portrait of an individual. The colour palette of this piece of work consists of mainly different tones of red mainly featuring deep tones to represent wounds and blood on the subject. The main focus of this piece is the injuries around the face between the eyes and nose area which could portray a fight causing the bruising on the face. The brush strokes represent a harsh reality of anger and rage with is contained throughout this piece. The contrast in colours of pure white against deep red connotate's the purity the boy once was compared to the devil like being which is illustrated. I feel the erratic brush stokes portray successfully the pain and desperation lying within the painting and I feel using the medium of oil paints to create the painting adds to the rustic feel of the piece of original work. Also, the drips of painting hanging from the face downwards conveys the sadness in the boy as he tries to shed the container of his body to be a free spirit and to be happy with himself.

This piece of work is influenced by my chosen artist Jenny Saville. I tried to recreate the bold harsh marks which portrays sores and cuts. I used oil pastels as they have bold colour tones and enable you to create various mark making with different strengths of tones. I feel I succeeded the right colour palette of this piece as work portrays pain and ache through a realistic sketch. I tested out dark tones of purples and blues to try recreate similar tones to relate to bruising on the subjects face. I used this particular piece of Jenny Saville's work of a close up portraiture of a person due to the usage of a persons body and facial features linked to my theme of containers. In addition to this, the mark making is what particularly intrigued me into the original piece as i felt it could work with a bottle container as the marks can illustrate the light reflecting off the sides of the containers or to show flesh of the bodies.

This bottle I drew on polystyrene with oil pastels was to experiment with different surfaces and mediums and to figure out what worked best with what resource. I feel my drawing was successful of the bottle with the light reflecting appearing it to become more realistic. I used the colour blue mainly to represent what bottles usually contain and black for the cork as I felt the mixture of tones you could achieve from one solid colour of black created contrast on the drawing with the white, grey and black tones.

These few pieces of work were also inspired by Jenny Saville's painting techniques of multiple layers of different colours representing the skin of bodies. I used water colour paints as the base of skin colour then layered over the top a mixture of reds and neutral colours such as beige, pinks and browns to create toning and texture. In addition, I used a wash of white emulsion to tone down any over exaggerated colouring which didn't represent the toning or convey structure of the human body.

These two photographs portray close up shots of the paint work techniques used to create body like toning and structure.

This image is a small crop of the following above images but focusing on the eye painting I created again in Saville's style. I feel I created a realistic painting on a small scale size. By not over doing the size limit of the piece I was able to concentrate on minor details. I used acrylic paints to create the piece and I specifically focused on making it to appear as realistic as possible. I did this by using a skin toned colour around the eye with mixtures of taupe and pink. Also, I painted white and dark blue specks in certain areas of the eye to create shadows and areas where the light it hitting. Also, by not doing obvious black harsh lines to represent eyelashes I feel it gives my piece a more realistic appearance due to the subtleness.

This pencil drawing was an experimental drawing based on Richard Oelze's piece of work, Judith. It links to my theme as it is a portrait of a ghostly woman's body. I feel I shall do a wash of emulsion over the drawing and then some painting to empathise the body structure to ensure it links to the rest of my work so far in the project and also my artist influence.

These are two pen sketches of containers found in my bedroom, which therefore adds a personal aspect to my theme of 'Collection of Containers'. I feel I have successfully ensured the hairspray bottle and cup to appear realistic form due to the toning of darker edges to represent shadows and whiter areas to portray a light source reflecting off the surface of the container. I added a wash of blue water colour to experiment with different mediums and how they work with one another and also to portray the typical contents colour tones of which are usually contained inside the cup. Also, by adding the spontaneous strokes of paint it links to my artist.

This page is rubbing marks off other pages which I feel create's an interesting composition of mark marking and different tones of dark colours contrasting against the white page. I feel this page links to my artists strong and bold mark making. Also, the contrast in colour tones I feel can work for body containers and typical bottle containers.

This page is a collage page of multiple drawings of skulls in mixed mediums. There is a small pencil drawing, a middle sized pen sketch and a charcoal large drawing. Also, a transfer of a small pen drawing has leaked onto this page due to the usage of hairspray, which adds to the mixed media collage purpose of the page. I feel the charcoal drawing lacks in detail which is an improvement I need to refer back to. I scraped white emulsion over certain areas of the page to tone down bold blacks to have contrast in colours on the page.

I also added newspaper due to the same colour palette suited the black and white page. I then ripped into the newspaper to give it a distressed look. By adding text and distressing and ripping it also links back to my coursework project of street art where I used these techniques throughout my work and final piece. I also added red ink to act as a gory element to the grunge like page.

This page is an observational study of a skull which I felt linked to my project as it is contained inside of our bodies. I tried to capture details of shadows and textures on the surface of the skull. At the bottom hand corner of the page I did another observational pencil drawing of the back of the skull to portray different angles and I feel I captured the detailing and the toning successfully due to using different strengths of pencils.

These two photographs are extreme close up shots of the previous observational drawing of the skull. The red ink from the previous page transferred onto this page but luckily its fits the structure and curves of the skull and drips down in appropriate places which adds to the deathly / gory genre of the page.

This page consists of multiple pen drawings of various body parts such as feet, eyes hands and mouths. I feel that the drawings on this page are all a realistic representation of various body parts and facial features.