Generating Images

One of the great things about the Greg Kerr workshops I have been attending is the homework.... I know, homework is usually a drag, right? But he sets such great projects that it really is fun, at the same time as enlightening. I have already mentioned the little book of tiny charcoal drawings that featured in the previous "dark cloud" workshop. And I posted the two triptychs of large charcoal drawings. What I haven't done yet is tell you how the source material, on which the drawings were based, was arrived at.

We had to make a little theatre from a cardboard box and furnish it with some prescribed items and some flats made from photos. Then we had to play around with lighting the whole thing dramatically and take black and white photos of the result. This provided a bunch of suitable material to use as a basis for some drawings and paintings.
















It made for some great moody material to base the drawings on.

The latest workshop is called "the dinner party", and the whole program is based on the idea of hosting an imaginary dinner party at which there are 6 people (5 guests plus me as host). We began by researching  the guests and generating images that would express who they are (were if they are historic characters). My guests are Peter Clarke, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Kevin Carter, JWM Turner and Sam Nhlengethwa. I chose all because over the years I have admired their work, and it has been fab digging into their biographies and getting to know them better as people. In the case of Peter Clarke, I really did get to know him, as he very kindly invited me to tea the last time I was in Cape Town, and we spent a delightful afternoon together chatting like old friends, he is a really humble and inspiring man with a naughty twinkle in his eye and a great sense of humour.

Our first task was to make valentines cards for each guest and ourselves. Here they are:



Charles Rennie Mackintosh



JWM Turner



Kevin Carter



Sam Nhlengethwa



Sue Hoppe



Peter Clarke

From these we did a series of small paintings as tributes to each guest, which are not yet finished, as we'll be tackling them again later in the process, but this is how far they are for now:

Charles rennie mackintosh tribute

Kevin Carter tribute

Peter Clarke

Sam Nhlengethwa tribute

Sue Hoppe tribute

Turner tribute

Next we will do a large format painting of all the guests at the dinner table and as part of the process of generating images for the large painting, we again had some great homework. This time we have to make little clay figures and arrange them in different ways around a table, and again do a series of monochrome photos.

Here are some of the results:

Looks like we are in for a fun year!