GERHARD RICHTER EXPERIMENTS

As the exploration of my theme of afterlife and death is coming to a near end I wanted to just gain as much research as I could so that when it comes to my final piece I can use the techniques that I have learnt which I like combined with gaining inspiration from a certain minor thing from an artist. In relation to my experiments, I was intrueged by Gerhard Richters work by the strokes in which are created as we'd mediums are layered, to me it made me think of different ways to apply the stokes of paint, for example, I began experimenting with brushing the paint onto an emulsion washed surface and then used cardboard to then move the paint evenly across the page.

I did this with many of the mini experiments and wanted to use colours that would create a surrealist and abstract view to define. The texture on the primary surface if there is any, for some of them I chose to use the colour yellow within the experiments to highlight whether it would differentiate the depth of texture.

For these two experiments in particular I wanted to re create the movement with the photographs taken from shoot 2 when I captured the lines of blue through the camera lens. In relation to Richter's work I believe he uses a similar technique that links to the best way of re creating what I see in the images.

I uses the colours yellow and dark green acrylic paints as a starting point as I wanted to stick with adding realism to the concept of the composition, I decided to paint over brown paper with a thick brush of emulsion so I would be able to pick up the texture and know that paint would still be left when scraping it away- I believe that doing this technique would show a true idolise of lines from the brush strokes, giving a proper defined tone of directional line.

For the first experiment I believe the technique the of creating a smooth yet defined texture from the background has really created a production and build up of colour, What I will take away from Richters work is the technique of building upon acrylic, I could try this with oil paints to see if the layers actually build up to create a 3D texture.

In relation to creating a final outcome I think that I could use colours such as purples, blues, blacks etc. to build up a textured background to add to the collage of being out of space.

For the second piece I used the same method and same background surface but decided to add a small amount of red, I did this to portray the shadow of texture but I didn't want to endure black tonal shades as I believe it would overpower the yellows and greens. Overall, to improve I would work on top of this composition with a black oil pastel as I think it would pick up the texture from the dried emulsion paint as the brush strokes have clumped up colour.



The colours I used for these experiments

EXPERIMENTS RELATING TO COLUR AND MOVEMENT THROUGH BUILDING UP THE  ACRYLIC PAINTS

I wanted to see whether the brush strokes would become more clearer in regards to line movement so I have built up the colour from red to yellow and yellow to black marks. I just used white cartridge paper because I wanted the black acrylic paint to differ from the background, whereas if I were to use black cartridge paper the colours wouldn't appear more flamboyant and abstract. To improve I could've added more black to the composition to create texture from the brush strokes.  

In regards to Richter work and the way he spreads the acrylic to blend the colours colour via a scraping usage, I re created the technique using colours that are tonal and similar in relation to the colour wheel in depth of warm tones, I liked how the application of using a tool to spread the paint merged the colours into one but I felt like the yellow acrylic blended into the red too much, resulting in creating a musty brown colour. I have added yellow oil pastels to cover the brown patches created and I believe that although it does not relate to Richter work, I feel like this is a good technique to improvise into layering- in relation to my own work, it is a

very clever way to incorporate into collage.

I decided that I wanted to use the yellow oil pastel more often but applying it into a different direction so I were able to get a feel of the ways to recreate Richter's technique of smudging paint but with different mediums on top of the composition; I decided to use a red background of smearing paint with a large paintbrush to evenly spreading out the same colour as I were not blending in different tones at the time. I used black on the top after liking the other experiment above where the colour made a pop to the human eye, I wanted to portray the use of line rather than shape because I had the intention of dragging the paintbrush along the experiment until there were on more paint left on it. I then added yellow oil pastel over the black marks to differentiate and break up the power of the black paint.

Overall I would improve the composition by putting more pressure on the yellow pastel colour to see if the black wet medium would still overpower the red on the background, I would also try more cold colours such as blues as they relate to my theme of backgrounds of galaxies and out of space.

For this experiment I wanted to mainly focus on practicing Gerhard Richter's technique of smudging colour together and not adding too much black to the composition in comparison to the other experiments I have done, I mostly like how the yellow did not getting working too much into the pink but I think that is because I allowed the pink and yellow layer to dry before I added black on top. Overall, I think I would improve this composition by doing another layer of yellow onto of the gaps where the paintbrush strokes are visible from the black, or maybe I could try this experiment again using the same colours but on a black cartridge surface.

From this experiment I really wanted to see if the movement of colour would differ if I were to use solely paint brush movements instead of an actual tool to bland the colours to one another. I again used a red background but decided that I would dab the colour onto the page to see if the effect would change when adding more layers on top, I actually used a hairdryer so maybe this is why the texture did not maintain. I added just pure yellow acrylic on top of the background layer because I wanted to create a juxtaposing colour imagery of there being a very fierce, bold red tone in comparison with marks of a lightly combined yellow shade. However, the yellow acrylic began to bland with some parts of the composition that were not dry and so therefore, the yellow became overworked by the pressure of the brush and created a brown, off green tone. This began to shadow the composition as a whole and created actual shadow fro the yellow tones that did not blend completely, overall, I think that to improve I would add chalk, charcoal or more black paint with a smaller brush to define the lines created from the brush strokes.

For this experiment I took my own advice from a previous experiment of working onto a black coloured surface to see if the effect of blending colour would change the similarity to Richter's work, For this piece in particular I used a thick piece of cardboard to merge the blue and green tones together, I believe it worked much better than the tool as the patterns on the cardboard resulted in there being lots of movement. I then stuck on a small piece of newspaper to see if the medium would create texture. I then decided to add pure white oil pastel to spread all over the experiment as I wanted it to pick up the texture from the newspaper being stuck down and to see a difference between the black surface in comparison  to such a brightening coloured oil pastel.

To improve I would then add another layer of newspaper and just work onto it with oil pastels such as colours similar to the acrylic paints.

For this experiment I have done the same technique as the previous but wanted to use colder colours like I said in my reflection above, I have used the cardboard tool as a way of spreading the blue acrylic but then used a medium sized paint brush when adding the pink -purple tonal shade, I did this as i wanted to create a link and experiment to the colours found and seen in the picture to do with space and the surrealist view of galaxies. I don't like how the colours do not blend to one another but at the same time didn't want the tool used to merge the paint together to eventually over work it. I used a pure white oil pastel as I wanted to inhabit a 3D vision between created a 2d texture but make it look like 3D. this is why i firstly added small black brush stroked lines with then hints of dry white pastel to see if it did create the outcome i imagined, I feel like it really did.

I have used the exact same technique but incorporated a difference in colour because I wanted to use more dry mediums so I used pure oil pastels in natural and neutral colour (green and orange) I tried to blend the colour by adding more pressure to it, however, The lines in which I directed the pastels at did not blend properly so I quickly added white pastel in hope of blending the shades together; Overall I believe that acrylic paints are the best mediums to use when re creating Richters work.

For this experiment I decided not to use the tool but instead create more texture through the acrylic paint building upon itself, the marks made by the paint brush have really worked well as i didn't use a hairdryer and allowed the paint to dry by itself, so therefore, the paint wouldn't have been squashed onto the page flat. I then used white oil pastel to grab the top parts of the texture, To improve, I would add black oil pastel to the experiment to create real 3D texture.

For this experiment I used blue acrylic paint with the application of the tool similar to what Richter uses in his pieces and then decided to layer on top with lighter, brighter tones; I have used oil pastels in the colours white and cream. I used my finger to spread the pastel across the experiment and I believhat it has created a similar impact to the experiment above.