Big, beautiful, bold, and from a bygone age...
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Friday, 21 October 11 - 01:56 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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Once upon a time, Pharma advertising was bold, graphic and on occasions, strong.
Then, as now, you couldn't make big claims about the efficacy of your brand (unless of course you have the evidence to back it up), and so the graphic route was pursued to catch the eye, engage the viewer and stop them from turning the page.
Check out the Creative Review blog to see a few more bold and beautiful examples...
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/october/pharma
or better still, get yourself to Pharma, a new exhibition at the Herb Lubalin Study Center in New York, which looks at the way big pharma influenced the role of graphic design and advertising.
Can you see these kind of bold visual statements getting through today's endless rounds of market research?
Sadly no, me neither.
Monika Grzymala instilation
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Thursday, 20 October 11 - 09:26 AM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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Polish artist Monika Grzymala has created a stunning instillation at the Sumarria Lunn gallery in London, using black tape...
Street artist duo Miss Bugs...
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Thursday, 20 October 11 - 09:14 AM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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I love these!
Street art duo Miss Bugs has created this series of artworks that are designed to blend in with a variety of backdrops around London, including advertising posters, murals and even postboxes...
Titled Cut Out/Fade Out, the artworks are constructed on MDF frames, and feature collages made up of photos of the underlying location overlaid with other found images.
They have to act quick as the background environment can change so quickly, especially with billboards and the like, but the end results are stunning...
Life class section....
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Sunday, 07 November 10 - 10:27 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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Hi all, Just to let you know I've added a new section in the gallery. The life class section will cover my life class work, both drawings and paintings, from both my current weekly classes, mixed with work from classes in the past.
I hope you enjoy them.
Listed site...?
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Saturday, 25 September 10 - 09:40 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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..these Pencil Art sites! As you can see I've been added to a art web link...check it out
Back to life....
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Friday, 24 September 10 - 01:40 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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This week I joined an evening life class.
I've done them before and loved them. As ever, my problem is time, and not having enough of it (moan moan winge winge). What a once a week class does, is give me two guarenteed hours where I do nothing but draw. I love it. Admittidly I felt very rusty but even so I really enjoyed it. 10 weeks to draw upon....so to speak. Bring it on!
I'm hoping in the weeks to come that I can do some painting there too. I'll keep you updated
Here are the 3 large A2 charcoals I did on my first class. 45 minute, 30 and 20 minute poses....
At ease Sargent....
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Friday, 20 August 10 - 11:49 AM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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On Tuesday I took my eldest daughter to Tate
She’d been to the National and National Portrait gallery before, together with Tate Modern, but had yet to discover the delights of Milbank.
I’d promised to introduce her to the wonders of John Singer Sargent, Whistler, the Pre Raphaelites and the early portrait masters. When we arrived and got ourselves a map and I was pleased to discover that they now have a Modern British art and Contemporary British art section there too, filled with Robert Lanyon, Byrne and Hirst etc (for another entry, another time). Either way, we were in for a treat.
Well, the 1660-1800 portraits fascinated, Whistler engaged (always an under appreciated artist IMHO), Sargant was spell bounding, the Pre Raph’s thrilled while Waterhouse’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ mesmerised. She quickly became a convert.
Over the last 30 years I’ve visited Tate
On Tuesday it was John Singer Sargent who really caught my eye (although not the first time to be honest). After all, I have a print of his beautiful ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ hanging in our house. Thing is, a decent sized print hanging in your own boudoir is simply no match to seeing the piece in all it’s glory.
It’s a big piece (1740 x 1537 in it’s frame), and it’s beauty is imposing.
It finds you in the room, (a large room 13 with a lot of paintings) as you look around. My daughter was immediately drawn to it.
I think it truly is one of Sargent’s masterpieces, Beautifully composed, masterfully painted, and with a colour and tone that is hypnotic. Truly stunning, and very beautiful. Interesting to read that the Tate bought it off him straight after it's inaugural exhibition, good call!
But, for me, there’s always more to this piece.
Towards the end of his life in the late teens and early 1920’s, Sargent was an artist who's popularity was on the wain. Seen as old hat, a remnant of an old movement, famous for painting portraits for a social class that was in decline. It didn’t appear to bother him though and he carried on doing what he did best, ignoring the changes and developments in art like cubism, expressionism, the Blue rider, the Bridge and the like….nothing to do with John thanks all the same.
And yet......if you take a look at the top quarter of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, above the girls heads, you'll see those wonderful large lillys against that dark green background. Next time, take a good look, because I always see a wonderful abstract at work here.
Fantastic, dancing, abstract shapes. Lillies yes, but whenever I study the painting I can’t help but marvel at those fantastic, abstract, angled flowers. My eye jumps to them every time I look at the painting.
Painted between 1885-6, for me they are a graphic representation of flowers that rival Van Goghs marvellous blue Iris’s in the hospital garden painted 3 years later. Both wonderful, both abstract and stylised representations of flowers, one intentional, one…erm....maybe not.
Either way I love them both.
The jury's still out...
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Thursday, 05 August 10 - 12:02 AM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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Following on in the wonderful world of 'work in progress', here's another piece that, to be honest, has been hanging around for a while but has finally awoken with the big ambition that one day, it'll finally be finished.
It's a painting that originated from some shots I took last year, of grasses and reeds etc down in Devon (you can see one of the prints on the canvas in the top picture). Again, very quickly an idea came to mind and I looked to explore it and develop it into something I think would hopefully work.
Here's two stages. The bottom version is where it currently sits in my studio. I need to finish it. I need to finish this story and close the book. That is, as I've said before, so long as it's still interesting, still engaging, and something I think merits finishing.
To be honest the jury's still out. I still think there's merit in the concept/idea. Just don't know if I'm doing it justice. (the bottom photo is a poor colour representation)
Evolution of a painting continued...
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Wednesday, 04 August 10 - 11:33 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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It's been a week since the project was first started and things are coming on.
Again, like earlier, I've used pencil and charcoal to look at the composition and form of the painting and to explore the ideas I have floating around in my head. With this piece, right from the moment I first saw that tree in the field, I saw an abstract.
I then want to explore that. The form of the piece, and the colour. From this one image I may have lots of treatments. all with various look and feels in a variety of mediums. Trick is, it works as long as the image or subject matter interests me. Simple as that. Then it's worth exploring, it's worth spending time experimenting, and hopefully, finally, I'll end up with a piece I'm happy with.
Below I show an A4 page from my sketch book exploring tone and composition. I then did some charcoal drawings, and these really start to move away from the real, and develop a look and form that interests me.
Finally I got the canvas out (in this case a 90x90) and got stuck in. There's a long way to go yet, but it's getting there. It's a start...
Reasons to be cheerful...1,2,3
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Thursday, 29 July 10 - 09:34 PM (GMT) By Dave Harris in Blog |
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Here are three more artists that constantly inspire me at the moment.
Berlinde de Brucke is a young (ie. she's one year older than I am so she's young :o), a young Belgium artist, who's work constantly blows my mind. If you read what I say in my statement elsewhere on this site, you'll understand my awe in her depiction of the human condition and it's challenges. The fear, the warmth, the compassion and the violence. The beauty and the raw emotion, both hypnotic and disturbing.
The other two are Caroline Hulse, a British artist based in Berkshire and Trevor Bell. Two exponents of the abstract, both dealing with scale and perception, space and colour. Both wonderful.
Check out their work and let me know what you think...
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