BA(Hons) Fine Art- First Year, Part I

I started my degree at University College Falmouth in September 2009. The first few weeks consisted of set projects that aimed to settle us in, get our ideas going, and break the ice. As an example, here's what I produced in a painting workshop:

The idea behind this was to get us to repeat an image, each time making use of different techniques, approaches and backgrounds. I found it really useful but getting all those windows in the right places was pretty soul-destroying after 2 days of it!

The next two were for a two-week project entitled "Transcriptions". Each person was assigned a painting to do a contemporary version of- we could take any aspect of the painting and update it however we liked. 
I was given "Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" by Joseph Wright: 

My idea was to look at reactions to death. I showed people internet videos of things like 9/11 and images of starving children, and filmed their reactions. Cheerful, I know! I then took screenshots and created two paintings from them:

I decided to do them pixellated to convey the fact that there is a contemporary fascination with watching death on the internet. In this instance, the "death" has gone through several reproductions before it was presented to the subjects, whereas in Wright's painting it was right in front of them.

This was the project that inspired my train of thought when we started Independent Study (left completely to our own devices for the first time- eek!). I began to cut up colour charts and use them to create collages inspired by pixellated photographs:

It's a LOT more difficult to do this than you would think. Teaches you a lot about tone though! This post will be continued...