Tribal

These are a few pieces from the 'African' project that don't really relate to each other, but I'm putting up anyway!

 (canvas painting)

 The above two paintings were my attempt at trying my hand at a similar style of work to an artist I found called Moses Wanyuki.

 Here I used mod-rock over an existing original african mask I own because I love the features on it.

Birds

So, as I was researching african art work, a certain type of design kept coming up & in a lot of the images there were birds. From this style of Tanzanian art known as tinga-tinga, I decided to attempt my own version of this. I also looked at the work of the Kenyan artist Rosemary Karuga who focuses on birds and using a very interesting type of collage:

  (http://www.contempafricanart.com/artist.asp?id=RosemaryKaruga&inl=1)

Here are my initial bird sketches that I drew whilst visiting a bird garden:

 These are individual feathers cut from prints I did that were made up of marked & layered materials to create texture & depth.

 Really bad quick water colour.

 The above are all initial ideas of bird that I wanted to put in my final canvas painting. I wanted to try out colours & positioning.

This was my final outcome from the work I did on the bird theme of this project.

mask prints

This is a selection of some of the work I did looking at African masks, focusing mainly on printing techniques:

 These are initial line drawings of African masks looking at the shapes & components that made up the full mask.

 I then stayed within my comfort zone & worked with paint rather than fine line pen which gave a little more depth to the image with the use of shading by toning the paint down with water.

 Using a simple piece of felt I scored the outline of the mask into the surface, then used black ink to create a really rough print. I like the "rough & ready" look to this test piece. (above & below)

 With is mask I used lino & a roller press to create this print.

 From my previous painted masks I scanned & printed smaller copies which I then stuck down in an overlapping circle.

 More lino print with stitched in pieces to combine different media.

 This was a page from my sketch book of some photographs I took of my collection of masks. I liked the mixed up

 I've forgotten the technical term for this, but using the roller press again I did a print from layering up and cutting into the card to create different textures. I love the colour/shades this came out.

 This was a line drawing of different styles of tribal shields but drawn as the petals of flowers.

Using the same foam material as previously, I turned the (below) ink painting of a zebra into a rough print using foam to scratch the pattern into.

I know these all look very unprofessional, but my aim was to play around with different techniques and come out with different outcomes to see what worked & what didn't.