Initial Research

In order to diversify my portfolio of work i have decided to take a slightly different direction with this project. I want my work to reflect a much looser style that will speak to a different audiance than my previous work has done.

My first point of exploritary research took me to social media to see what work was current and up to date. From this i gavered a range of images of which i either liked the style, imagery used or composition. At this point the images i have collected varys greatly; however, this will be refined as time goes on.

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One thing that does connect this imagery however is its use of creatures that are not quite human nor animal. I would like to experiment with shape and form that loosly relates to the idea of monsters or entitys that are not quite human.

In order to further my research i took to the internet to research artists that use the human figure in abstract ways. I decided to start my research with the well known artist Keith Haring hoping it would lead me to more inspirational sources.

One thing that was key for me to figure out was the movement, style and medium Haring used in order to find other similar artists. I soon found Haring was origionally a Street Artist who contributes to the Pop Art movement.

From here i then went and looked into a variety of street artists in more depth such as Alo, 3ttman and Jean- Michel Basquiat, all 3 of which i had never encountered previously. I selected these three to refrence because of their use of human form or the overall composition of their work. 3ttman particually stood out to me because of his use of colour and composition. I enjoy the vast amount of sometimes humerious imagery he includes within his work which is all united with an overarching style and colour scheme.

After sometime of looking at Street Art my search soon took a turn to Surrealism which linked with my previous searches because of their somewhat distorted imagery. Although the work of Dali and Andre Masson contained imagery which i may use to inspire me the overall style of the movement did not fit in with what i am looking for within this project.

A link that was common within the Surrealist work was that of Organic Abstraction, a movement which i have not encountered previously. Upon reading into the movement i found it was defined as ‘the use of rounded or wavy abstract forms based on what one finds in nature.’ This definition sounded almost perfect for the style I would like to create within this project. Unfortunatly the scope of artists within the Organic Abstraction movement was not as broard as that within Street Art nor Surrealism; however, I did come accross an intresting artist named Bruce Riley who creates abstract images which often resembled human figures.

Eventually my search braught me back to the start and back to Pop Art which then lead on to a search within different areas of cartoon art. To inspire my project I want something alot more modern than that of surrealism; however, not as generic as Pop art.

From here i will do a search of books i can find in the libary to see if i can find a happy medium between the two.