Snow White

A favourite style of mine is pen work, I love the intricate work and the level of concentration I have to put into the piece. This is why when I saw this piece it instantly appealed to me. The Design is reminiscent to henna in my opinion. However with only the red being prominent, it drew me back to the original Snow White story with the apple. Maybe the design is meant to represent as Snow White bites the apple, all her feelings are small but detailed, uncontrollable and forming many different directions?
The illustrated background is very current and popular today, many magazine segments feature this style of work, the almost manga style eyes, and floral detailing especially is appealing. I can imagine this piece used as a cover for a book or design cover. It has been inspirational in the way It has simplified a popular character but emphasized a highly detailed and aesthetically pleasing background.

I found this image on Tumblr. I love this picture, I don't know the purpose, it could be costume design, fashion, editorial , etc. However, I find the picture to be very calming, the soft almost icy colours used within the feathers, are harmonious to the autumnal colours of the hair and other feathers. This with the pale almost frozen expression and pigments on the skin create a sleek and smooth mood to the image. I could see the image being used for a fashion shoot, with a natural beauty landscape, maybe an Alaskan or Icelandic landscape. The way in which the feathers protrude in different directions is no accident in my opinion, I think there is a strong reason for this, maybe to cover a greater area, or to show rapid and uncontrollable growth?

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland is my favourite book. In all honesty I haven't read many books, however due to my love for imagination, creativity I found this book to be a representation of my mind. The Disney movie was the inspiration that led me to read the book. I found the madness with in the book to be a constant flow with the characters like the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. The arguments that Lewis Carroll was drunk when he wrote this book, can be true in my opinion. The huge creativity and random rambling with the book is what gives it the charm which has given it the title of my favourite book. The book is inspirational in my own creativity and also stylizing of pieces. A final reason for the love of the book is the illustrations within the different versions of the book. Each artist has their own interpretations of the story, my personal favorite illustrations were those by my favorite artist, Salvador Dali. Being a surrealist painter he was the best person to combat the book and in my opinion perfectly captured the scenic craziness within the book. His illustrations indulge colour into the book which merges with the imagery within my mind. The book usually comes in a collection of the whole works of Carroll, the two Wonderland books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass along with a variety of other publications and poems. Each are as mad and imaginative and wonderfully brilliant as one another.
This book is a major representation of my personality and my favorite style of work, if you haven't read this book yet, definitely go to your local library or book store and buy it. Honestly, the films do not do Lewis Carroll's wonderfully mad literature justice.

Ludovico Einaudi

This song is a piece composed by an Italian contemporary music composer and pianist, Ludovico Einaudi. I stumbled across the piece while listening to the album Islands: Essential Einaudi. My brother told me the album was a great album to revise too. Although I wasn't doing revision, I often listen to slow music and orchestral music to complete most of my work for college, especially sketchbook work, drawing and evaluations. This song helps me to create vivid imagery in my mind, the tranquility of the soft music often creates a recurring image of a large lake, with icelandic mountains and scenery bordering the lake as far as the eye could see, as the music develops I can imagine nature within the lake such as the ripples created from diving fish or landing birds. I think I often draw this image is because I find water very calming and beautiful along with breath taking landscapes. Another song which I find highly influential on this album is Nefeli which also is a piece which continuously creates vivid scenes in my mind.
The music is helpful with my work as I previously stated, I find a slow song allows my brain to concentrate deeper and also allow my mind to reach a form of mind where I am able to deeply evaluate my work and annotate my thoughts. Not only this but I feel when listening to pieces like these I am able to sit for longer periods of time and work, for example intricate pen work.

Lucian Freud: Painted Life

The Lucian Freud Documentary that was shown on BBC, was a very in depth look into Freud's works that showed his personality and intense work style. I found the documentary interesting and compelling, I think this was because  I had never seen such an in depth critique into an artists life before or personality which was then reflected into their work. I enjoyed the way in which the documentary gave feelings from sitters of Freud's alongside friends and family as well as other artists. The main reason I felt so strongly to the documentary was the rare insight that was shown from the opinions and recollections from the sitters. It was intense to hear the sitters recall their time with Freud alongside there sexual relationships with him also. I found the way in which he had an intimate relationship with the sitters to be odd at first but on further viewing of the documentary I began to understand within the highly personal relationship of life drawing, especially when the pieces are on a large scale and completed over a long period of time, the artist and the sitter can create an over heightened personal relationship. A view within the documentary was that Freud was able to better his piece when he had this bond with a sitter, this could be shown with analysis of the length of the pieces reflected by the length of the sexual relations. This physiological side of his life has allowed me to enjoy the works of Freud on another level, instead of interpreting the work myself I can see and hear his story which allows me to look deeper into his work. 

The nudity of his pieces I don't find pornographic as others do, when I view the pieces I see an artist who loves the form of the body, every aspect and detail of the form along with the colour pigments in the skin. The detail is so defined it almost intimidates me how accurate he has created the expressions and mode of the sitter. The shaping and blends of the colour used have captured beautifully the bone definition and formation on areas such as the eye sockets, nose and upper lip, which are clear favourite aspects of Freud's, on the body. 

I recently participated in a series of life drawing classes, I wasn't able to gather motivation and excitement within these classes, I only wish I had seen this documentary before to see how a great detail of concentration and patients can create a beautiful outcome, in all honest I wish I had seen Freud's work before because I regret to say I had never heard of the wonderful artist until I viewed the documentary. 

I would use Freud's work in my future works and draw areas of his life such as the strong love for painting he has or the intense patience and concentration he gathers when working on a piece. I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary and I would recommend to any student, budding artist, painter or any artistic lover out there to get to BBC iPlayer and watch:

Lucian Freud: Painted Life 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cdhs5/Lucian_Freud_Painted_Life/