WINTER

ARTIST RESEARCH: Jet James

In order from left to right: Little Bird Blue, Sunflower Art Print, Major Mitchell, Black and White Palm Drawing 4, Brahman Study, Hibiscus Rising.

Artwork I’ll be reflecting on

What are the meanings and ideas behind the work?

I believe the idea in this work was based on nature, as Jet James was surrounded by it a lot when he was growing up on a ranch, away from things and areas that teenagers would usually go to. So instead, he used nature and animals to hone his art skills.

What ideas were influencing the artist when they made the work?

Judging all the subject manners of his artworks, Jet James seemed to be very inspired by the natural surroundings and other humans that he surrounds himself in. He was also influenced by his father, who was also an artist and it was his dad creating a oil painting that really got his inspiration flowing.

Describe what can you see in the image -colour/line/shape/technique/materials/subject matter/texture/pattern/space/form.

The piece is full of bold colours and marks left by Jet James, created by laying inks and then revealing them to show this final artwork. The piece is filled with a cool colour pallet, which makes the small hints of yellow pop up. The actual piece consists of a little bird on a branch, with small and large marks of blue and black defining the shapes of them, helping them to stand out against the background.

What have you learnt about the artist when exploring their work, what do you like and what would you like to try in your own work? How does it make you feel looking at their work?

What I had learnt from looking at the work of Jet James is that he was really inspired by things in his childhood, from nature to his father and it really shows in his final art pieces. I really like that about him because I could learn more about who Jet James is from looking at what kind of art he creates. In terms of what I want to incorporate into my own piece, I would really like to try to create the small marks he does to define a shape as I think that it would be really effective.

REACTION

Here is a stencil piece made using watercolour and ink, I had created this piece as I wanted to experiment with using stencils some more and I wanted to practice background colours behind some sort of negative space. I had created this piece by adding the watercolour paint first, and while that was drying, I cut out all of the stencils, the photos were taken from Kew Gardens before placing them onto the now dry paper. I used blue tack and masking tape to keep the stencils in place before I rolled the ink out. This process was a bit of a nightmare, I must admit, due to those flimsy stencils sticking onto the roll all the time plus they tore a lot so that was super inconvenient. Despite these issues, I got to say that this piece was a success due to the flowers coming out quite nicely against the ink. What I have learnt from this process though it to get some less flimsy stencils, so that it’ll be more efficient for me.

Building the pages

Woohoo! Onto the next section now and in my opinion, I got off to a strong start, using some rough paper for the first two pages of winter and with the section that will eventually become the seasonal clothing area, I decided to use watercolours and ink pens to give off the cold grey and white feeling of winter. I’d also used this time to add the title for winter, using white watercolour on blue ink and thankfully, the two mediums didn’t mix TOO much.

After that, I stuck the seasonal clothing for winter onto the seasonal clothing section, in this case, I added a scarf, hat and gloves as they help protect from the bitter cold of the season.

Now for the events section, I decided to do a Christmas tree as when people think of winter, they’re bound to think of Christmas as well, it’s just a joyful and popular holiday. My original plan was cover the whole page with ink but then I discovered a way of creating a sense of direction of the ‘leaves’, I just repeatedly created short marks of ink using a paintbrush and I just adore the effect it created! Absolutely love it!

For the actual events, I chose three that takes place in winter: Christmas, New Years and Valentine’s. For Christmas, I drew a Santa Hat plus a wrapped present in watercolour as I wanted to replicate the watercolour Christmas card effects that it common in December, however the watercolour kind of went outside the lines and overall, I believe this part to be a failure. For Valentine’s I did a rose and a heart as the holiday is for romance and a rose and heart represents that effectively. I did the same thing for Christmas but with ink, however I had the same, although lesser problem of it going outside the lines, I believe if I was to do this page again, I’ll make the illustrations bigger so I’ll have more control over the mediums plus the mistakes won’t be too obvious. For New Year’s, I did a firework, well I hope it looks like a firework haha. I created a black background using ink and with some wet paper towel that I’d dyed yellow and torn apart, I stuck it on the black background to replicate the look of an exploding firework!

Back to the front page, I added the photo of Sandy and then added some white paper to replicate snow falling in the winter. I think with the light background, it really gave off a wintery feeling.

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