Initial exhibition visits -

Exit from Aden at Saatchi Gallery

At this exhibition was the work of ALO who is an italian artist based in London who is an expressionist style painter. He describes his work as 'urban expressionism' as he draws inspiration from the outside world he is around. His work is very recognisable and early differentiated from any other artist working in this way. This is due to his vibrant use of colour and exaggerated, cartoon like characters. Although his work is far from realistic, the colours, mixed with the shapes within the work portray very strong emotions and feelings, making them very strong pieces as they evoke a lot of emotion in the viewer. The other aspect that I enjoyed was the shape of the canvases as they were long and skinny, accentuation the figure in the picture and I think that this very much added to the effect of the pieces. Another thing that I like about the way he works is how he layers colours and patterns to create bold shapes. Looking closely at the pieces, you notice that they are made up of very simplistic shapes, lines and block colours.

As soon as seeing this exhibition I instantly knew that I was extremely inspired by his work in terms of my project focusing on characterisation and personal perception of this. All of his pieces are generally single characters and this is something that I am interested in focusing on as there are no distractions from that particular figure, which is very powerful. As well as his composition, I am interested in experimenting with a more cartoon like and unconventional method of either sketching my ideas or actually applying the paint onto the body.

Makeup I did inspired by my visit to the exhibition:

I wanted to capture a child like - colourful essence so picked a sharp red/pink as my colour choice. I also chose this as it was a frequently used colour in ALOs work. I liked the idea of making something inspired by my primary research straight away without any thought because it allows me to churn out ideas quickly without thinking too hard about how I will use that artists work in my project.