Illustration Friday - Toy

This weeks Illustration Friday is 'Toy'. I decided to produce a teddy bear image using Adobe Illustrator, which I created using various shapes and the paintbrush tool.

Illustration Friday - Cultivate

This weeks Illustration Friday is Cultivate so i decided to show a farmer's field being ploughed and prepared for the planting of crops.

Illustration Friday - Stir

This weeks illustration Friday is 'stir' so i decided to draw a bowl and spoon. I have also made it look like someone has been stirring the mixture by creating a circular motion.  

Illustration Friday - 'Warning'

This weeks illustration is 'warning'. I decided to draw a hand with the 'exclamation' symbol in the middle which emphasizes you to stop.

Improvements:
-Look at a hand for detail
-Take a better photo
-Alter the detail on the hand e.g. the thumb
-Don't do all fingers the same size
-Improve the shading
-Use mix media

An Analytical Review Of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was a figurative painter. He was born in Ireland in 1909 and died in 1992. He was well known for bold, graphic paintings showing distorted faces, emotion, feelings, pain , violent mood, showing deep inside rather than appearance.

Bacon started painting in his 20’s but not seriously. He worked in interior decorating and furniture design for a while. His career didn’t start until he was in his 30’s because he was looking for a subject that would interest him.  ‘Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion’ was his break through in 1944. This work and his heads and figures of the late 1940’s and 1950’s sealed his reputation. From 1950’s he painted single figures, usually male, seated as if suffering in hell. They would appear isolated in glass or steel cages. In the 1960’s he painted mainly portrait heads of his friends. He said he saw images in ‘series’ and painted variations on the crucifixion. He focussed on half human grotesque heads in ‘Heads in a Room’.

Bacon was homosexual and when his lover George Dyer died, his paintings became more personal and themed with death. The materials he used were sundeala boards which were a a cheap alternative to canvas and he painted with oil. Bacon’s technique was using rags, his hands and dust with paint and brush. He painted Triptych which is a work of art divided into three sections. He placed figures behind glass and used photographs as reference material.

He painted distorted faces and the paintings showed anger, horror, violent moods and feelings. He smeared the colours and his brush work changed to smudging and twisting. Bacon was the first to paint homosexual themes, and influence many artists like Lucien Freud.

The subject matter he painted was lovers, friends, artists and himself like Lucien Freud did. He also painted animals and hunks of raw meat . Bacon’s influences were Luis Bunell, Matthias Gruinewald, Diego Velazquez, Rembrandt, Picasso. He was good friends with Lucian Freud.

‘Triptych 1976’ sold at Sothebys for 86 million dollars. “Three studies for a portrait of Lucien Freud” sold for 23 million pounds in February 2011. In 2008 an exhibition of 60 of his works at Tate Britain travelled to Spain and then to New York.

Study After Velaquez’s Portrait Of Pope Innocent x 1953

This is a distorted version of the portrait of Innocent x by Diego Velazquez in 1650. It is One of a series of variation in Velazquez paintings in 1950’s and 1960’s. Pope is shown screaming but his voice is silenced by surrounding drapes and rich colours. The dark colours of the background give a ‘nightmare’ tone to the painting. The curtains are painted to look transparent and appear to fall through the popes face.

Painting 1946

This is a large painting. Flesh is a major part. He was attempting to paint a bird on a field and a chimpanzee in long grass but then he changed his mind. He had no intension to do this picture. He quoted ‘One continuous accident mounting on top of another’.

Two Figures

This is a painting of two male lovers making love.

Self Portrait 1973

This painting shows him suffering from a hangover or a headache and he is painting himself in a bad light. This shows he was as critical about himself as well as the models. He quoted ‘My painting is a representation of life, my own life above all, which has been very difficult. So perhaps my painting is very violent, but this is natural to me’.

Francis Bacon’s paintings shocked people because they were not in ‘good taste’. The pictures of screaming popes and nude men could upset people. I think his paintings are powerful but disturbing because of the face distortion. They show people unhappy and in pain. They remind me of scenes from horror films and they are very interesting.

Webliography

Wikipedia.org/wiki/FrancisBacon

www.artquotes.net/masters/baconbiography

www.answers.com

www.enyclopedia.com