This chapter proved more thought provoking than I had anticipated at the outset. I've never studied Lowry's figures in any detail, and haven't really been particularly drawn to this style of painting. What I found though was the more I looked at the figures the more I read into them. I may possibly have interpreted them in ways Lowry may not have intended. What for him might have been simply a view of working class people going around their daily business (sometime in the inter war years), became for me a strong statement about the health and condition of these people. On reflection I found the term 'match stick people' rather demeaning, implying as it does that they are disposable every day things of no value. I was quite surprised by the strength of my reaction to these figures.
The second group of activities in this chapter were much more light hearted, looking at Keith Haring's figures and making patterns with them.
Activity 1
I did a trawl of Lowry's paintings and selected only one for use. It had a number of striking figures that immediately caught my attention, and I felt after working on a few of the figures, that many of the characters in this painting have a particular story of their own.
Working in Fiber Pens
I made my first figures using Arteza fibre pens, selecting only a few natural shades to work with. I noticed throughout that the faces of Lowry's figures are pale and unhealthy looking:
I started off with the woman in the lower centre left of the painting, she has a slightly bewildered look to her and I wondered if she was maybe drunk? For the record I drew one rough pencil line along the bottom of the page for reference:
After the woman I drew a pair of fighting boys, both very thin and under dressed for the weather, all the children seem under dressed in this painting.
After these, a man and an older child are talking, the child is horribly thin, the man has lost his left leg and relies on crutches,
Next a middle aged couple walk along together. It's possible the woman is wearing a man's coat as it's clearly too big for her, a shapeless hat is pushed firmly on her head. Her companion strides along with his jacket firmly closed:
Using Pipette
I couldn't resist the temptation of using a pipette to draw some of these characters. Firstly, a hunchbacked (not sure what we would call this these days) man accosts another man who has lost his left hand, it has been replaced with a rather dangerous looking hook. A small child grabs the hunchback's trouser leg:
Next in this group, a man who has lost both legs, propels himself along on a little cart. He is one of only two figures looking directly out of this painting, the man's face is arresting, it's angry and defiant. A small child is accosting or talking to him.
Next is a man and a child walking away from us. The man's legs are curved and bowing outwards. Since no other figure in the painting has legs like this it struck me this might be a man with rickets. Beyond them in the distance are a group of men sitting elegantly on the factory wall.
Adding some final figures and dogs to this group. Dead centre of the group is a really strange character stalking away in a long coat and cowl of some kind. I'm not sure what this figure is but it looks remarkably like a medieval depiction of death.
The next group, also done with pipette started with the largest character in the painting and the only other person to be looking out of the canvas. This is another war veteran. This man hasn't seemingly lost limbs but still needs crutches. However, look at the man's face closely, on the original painting, one half of it looks like a skull, the other is flaccid and vacant. I wondered whether to interpret this character as a man with shell shock.
A group of children having a real scrap, and a very thin man walking away from us, concludes this group. The factory gates are in the distance with a hint of a figure walking through them:
I wanted to try out other ways of working directly on the page, but couldn't face any more Lowry. I turned instead to a fabulous painting by Breughel of children playing for my inspiration for a few more pieces:
Working in water colour. I chose a section of the painting and mixed up a subdued and simple colour palate:
Finally working in pastels, I took a detail of two children giving another a ride on their arms (I'm sure there's a name for this)
Moving on to Keith Haring
A much lighter subject. I worked up a couple of A3 sheets with his designs and then painted a few in his simple colour palate:
For the next activity I enlarged a few of the characters for making into templates:
The Templates
I took one template and rotated it, setting it on a background of small squares. In the final analysis the character ended up looking a bit like a group of circling hammer headed sharks!!!!!
Second Piece
I used all the templates and put them on a jigsaw background:
Third piece
Working on a black background this time
Final piece:
I did an internet search for other artists working in a similar style to Keith Haring and found a grafitti artist called Aaron de la Cruz. So my final piece should really be called 'Keith meets Aaron'. It took a few goes for me to get my ideas straight for this and I got very handy with the black gouache paint making changes along the way. Firstly I printed out a piece of Aaron's work and laid my templates on it, then traced everything. I used sharpened Neocolour crayons and colouring pencils.
27 / 10 / 2020
