Personal study.1) I’m doing my personal study on David Hockney. A very famous inspirational man, loved by many artists such as me.

David Hockney born 9 July 1937 he is English and lives in Bridlington, in Yorkshire and he also lived in Kensington London, he also lived in California for 30 years. Hockney was a very important contributor to the pop art movement in the 1960s and is actually considered to be one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. David Hockney has a very broad approach of a big range of diverse styles in the early 80s Hockney began to produce photocallages which he called joiners he used Polaroid prints commercially-processed colour prints and by using Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject, Hockney arranged a patchwork to make this composite image. Hockney’s early photomontage was of his mother. Because the photographs are taken from loads of different perspectives and at different times, the aim of this is to show how the human vision works. Hockney started using pictures in Los Angeles and he made a composition and he later realised there was a narrative it was as if the viewer moved through the room. This discovery stopped Hockney painting for a while so he could pursue this new technique but he gradually got frustrated with the limitations of photography and its (as Hockney calls it its) “one eyed” approach. So he later returned to painting.

Hockney also designed sets and costumes. Also painted the backgrounds for sets, and designed for loads of different opera and ballet performances. Throughout David Hockneys carrier, from 1998 he has used loads of different types of art work; he painted portraits mostly of his friends, lovers, relatives. And he repeatedly returns to the same subjects – his parents, artist Mo McDermott. Writers he knows fashion designers George Lawson. And lastly his ballet dancer lover Wayne sleep, also did I mention David Hockney is a proud gay and he shows this in many of his paintings. in his paintings he openly explored the nature of gay love. And named one of these portraits after a poem called; we two boys together clinging. In 1963 he painted two men together one showering, while the other washes his back.

Hockney was born with synaesthesia. He sees synesthetic colours in response to musical stimuli. This defiantly doesn’t show in his paintings or photography artwork, but is a common principle in his designs for his stage sets for ballet and opera—where Hockney bases background colours and the lighting of the sets on the colours he sees while he listens to the pieces of music.

There’s loads of other types of approaches Hockney uses in his art work like land scapes but I’m not going to tell you yet so keep reading on.

2) Now after all this about Hockney you the reader are maybe thinking. So why did he pick Hockney for his personal study... well Hockney relates to me very well as a painter “a artist” I (Charles Benjamin Barrett Jones) work with photos, for example I would take pictures of my family and Photoshop them to make this abstract picture. And then paint from them. I’d make a photo collage, then draw from what I’ve created, I also paint with a lot of layers. I like to work with acrylic paint and I make sure my artwork is full of colour, i also explore friends

and family and companionship I’d draw my dog bonnie because she’s always with me. Also I love to experiment with mixed media materials. I just take risks. But the main link between me and Hockney is we both work on are family and relatives he draws his relatives and so do I. I like painting my mum and dad. David Hockney as I’ve said explores gay love because it is a big part of his life, I like to explore in my art work to. Not gay love obviously because I’m not gay but I like to explore my relationships with family members, long story short I like to show real emotion and meaning to my artwork just like Hockney.

Hockney uses many different styles, (which I’ve mostly talked about) but when drawing people or other stuff he uses five different techniques there are loads of others but these are what he’s most famous for – drawings on iPad, portraits, large paintings, photos.

When drawing on ipad Hockney uses the app - brushes. This app enables him to paint where ever, without paint or anything it’s just on his iPad and it looks so real as if you’re drawing on paper which is pretty incredible. Hockney even had a massive room in a gallery. Full of all his iPad drawings, which show, you can pretty much do art anywhere.

Hockney also uses photos to create photo collages, Hockney does these collages by standing in one place and photographing a scene or object like a puzzle. Anyone can do this if you use a medium focal length lens 50-100 mm, stand it in a certain place, lock the exposure, and then start at the bottom of the object or scenery and keep taking pictures until you get the whole image. Look at this example of a city:

When i first looked at this i felt like i was looking at a painting it’s a very cool idea which I’ve tried many times, taking loads of pictures and creating this master peace helps the viewer to see many different viewpoints of the image this represents the object or scenery in a much greater context.

The next style is large paintings and I’m not just saying large... David paints pictures using 60 canversis or even more, some painting could even be the size of a small house this is why i picked David Hockney for my personal study he draws massive drawings of people and landscapes, I could look at his work for hours.

Hockney also work with my theme for this project. People, with people Hockney explores friendships and companionship, one companion named Dominic Elliott, died as a result of drugs drinking acid and alchol. He died aged 23 but dominic was seen in many of hockney portraits of people and was one of his companions he showed the companionship in this drawing:

I know they were companions because the pop art ledged David Hockney said: “he was like a son to me “ Dominic was a subject of many of Hockneys portraits Hockney even bought him a car! This must of hit Hockney hard as he didn’t have any son’s or daughter’s so losing a companion as close as that would hit him “like a sledgehammer”.

He also does portraits or even collages of family member’s friends or even just people he met. He’s also painted himself on a few occasions which some paints don’t usually do, he’s done this with paint or collages or water colour. He did one collage of himself which shows him ageing he did this by taking pictures of different angles of himself and to me you can see it looks like he’s got something on his mind and then you see the grey hairs and the wrinkles coming through, here it is so you get a idea:

These portraits are normally of memories or family members like his mum and dad, this brings me on to talking about Hockneys memories and meaning, as I said Hockney lived in Yorkshire and many other places in this world. There are many landscapes of Hockneys I can talk about. And I probably could say how wonderful all of his paintings are but there’s just one landscape drawing that catches my eye its this one:

It’s very nice and makes me feel cold inside, makes me feel Christmassy but wait does this look familiar? Can you see for the tree’s Hockney hasn’t just used brown that most people would think is the only colour a tree is, but he’s used reds purples yellows and greens and Hockney being a master of colour has done this so well, you’d look at it and not think he’s drawn a massive broccoli but a very well drawn tree amazing. And do you notice he hasn’t used blacks or greys for the shadows he’s used blues and dark purple.

Or maybe this one? Again he’s used dark colours for the tree’s this time, but still no black he’s used dark blue and purples and little bits of brown, also you can see he’s clearly drawn this picture using 6 canvases and he’s used all the autumn colours (oranges reds yellows) to clearly understand its autumn.

Or this one? Now you can see it’s beginning to be spring, the green leafs are coming back, and you can barely see the landscape, as the hedges cover them, but this style seems to look a lot more realistic. You can see the strains of grass and the colours all seem to be bright. And the trees are brown he hasn’t used the purpals and blue ‘s in this one its more

dark brown but still looks so amazing. You can see its golden hour as the sun pears through the leaves. Very nice peace.

This one is clearly summer very green browns in the trees but you don’t see much shadows which is weird about this drawing but defiantly still amazing, he’s even used pink on the path, which most people won’t even think of doing, but he’s pulled it off perfectly. And I think there’s even more but I think you get the idea! Hockney visits this place in Yorkshire in loads of different times of the year, summer, spring, autumn, winter to show you the differences of colours in each season, and to me each season makes me feel something, summer makes me warm, spring makes me feel this cold breeze with the sound of spring lambs, autumn makes me here the sounds of crunching dead leafs, and winter makes me shiver. Hockney also does collages (as i said before) he takes loads of pictures to create this beautiful woodland area as you see bellow:

Look at the accuracy of the pictures he took they all match up perfectly its absolutely remarkable.

Also David Hockney draws swimming pools, this all started when he moved to California, he draws these swimming pools often with people in the pool, and he draws with acrylic paint. This creates a very vibrant realistic colourful style, as you can see:

If you look quickly you’d think this was a photograph taken, he seems to always put a video in my head, I can see the man swimming and the trees swaying in the background it just creates a story in my head as it were.

We now go on to the LA landscapes and films, Hockney didn’t always live in Yorkshire. He was there for 3 decades, then came back to Yorkshire and then went back to LA. I’m going to show you his work as they tend to be very colourful, as there’s not much information on his landscapes in LA. I thought I’d talk about the painting because they’re very complex and abstract just like my style most of the time.

This is very very cool I love the way the furniture and floor and a slight realness to it but then the walls are just so abstract, I love the way he’s made the room slightly curved as well, art work is meant to lock the viewer instantly and make them think and try make out the meaning. And this certainly does this for me.

This drawing has a sense of warmth to it, and obviously this isn’t a realistic drawing its abstract i really love the simplenass look to the drawing but it must of actually been very

hard to draw, yet again the master of colour has done it again i look at this drawing and instantly want it on my wall.

These are the best examples I could find of the abstract landscapes of LA very colourful and enjoyable to look at, if only it was in my price range so i could buy it...

David Hockney was also in a documentary/ film the main two I’ll be talking about is the bigger splash and the bigger picture, the bigger splash, directed by Jack Hazan and writer David Mingay. They had full access to Hockneys work and his circle in 1971 to 1973, this was a very critical time for the artist, the film was said to be a “groundbreaking and enthralling” documentary-drama which celebrated Hockneys life and his work. There was an appearance from some subjects of Hockneys paintings; Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark, Henry Geldzahler and Patrick proctor. Is a very good watch and helped me get a lot of facts for my personal study.

A bigger picture is a film by Bruno Wollheim is a show about David Hockneys large paintings which normally consisted of 6 A2-A1 canvases one of the pictures in his bigger picture exhibition was the “Bigger Trees Near Warter” which used more than 30 canvases bigger then a church wall, so yeah basically this film is about Hockneys biggest pictures and in a way its a behind the scenes of Hockneys work, the exhibitions were shown in Guggenheim Museum on the 14th of may-30 September 2012 then it was in the Museum Ludwig on the 29th of October 2012 – 4 of February 2013 so it was a very big exhibition which defiantly went well and is a very good film to watch if you want to see Hockneys greatest works.

What I have learnt about Hockneys work that I will use in my own work is his use of colours, I normally use to much blacks and should start to use dark blue and greens to create shadow effects this makes it a lot more realistic and makes my work look very colourful without a massive blob of black on the page. Hockney always looks in so much detail when drawing, like trees for instance. He uses so many colours, that you wouldn’t normally see if you looked from a distance. So the main thing I have learnt is his use of colour. Then there’s other things like photo collage, taking pictures of family or friends or just people you meet and on each photograph take a different angle of the person and change the brightness to make a very interesting effect when looking at it, so I’ve learnt to look at things closely so you get the true colours and use different angles and brightness’s when taking photo’s, I can do this by taking the photo’s at different times of the day in different places to change the shading of the face. This is everything I have learnt that I didn’t already know, so I look forward to trying it out in my work and seeing how I do. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my personal study on my favourite artist David Hockney.

Bibliography:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=david+hockney+swimming+pools%23&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jsR2UuaBLarM0QX5t4HoAQ&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=824&bih=873#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=nUe1obNBYcv7bM%3A

%3BmFY0efbS1v6NAM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.ibiblio.org%252Fwm%252Fpaint%252Fauth%252Fhockney%252Fhockney.pool-2-figures.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.ibiblio.org%252Fwm%252Fpaint%252Fauth%252Fhockney%252F%3B1098%3B769

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=david+hockney+landscapes&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=YL52UruHHMG60QXmhoHICQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=824&bih=873

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney

http://www.hockneypictures.com/

http://www.biography.com/people/david-hockney-9340738

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books:

David Hockney

Thames & Hudson, Limited, 2004 - Painting, British - 368 pages

Films:

David Hockney

Yale University Press, 2006 - Art - 256 pages

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm717987584/tt0071219?ref_=tt_ov_i