Some of Monet's water lilies were there and I found them to be quite incredible. Although it was one of the smaller copies, I was struck by the amount of different colours that there were on the canvas to just represent the water. This particular painting was after 1918 and it appeared quite abstract but what it taught me about colour was important. The colours in the painting all seemed exaggerated to an extreme, I remember my tutor told me this could have been due to cataracts in his eyes. Even though it may not have been deliberate that he painted it like this but it helped me realise that colour is a matter of perception. There are colours where you would not expect them. When painting pictures from now on I will try and paint what I see as the colours, not what I think they SHOULD be.
Another painting I saw in the Tate Modern was a painting of Matisse by Andre Derain from 1905. It stood out to be because of the simple use of thick paint to produce areas of light and dark on the portrait. Also the shadow areas of the face were made with blues to suggest an diffused light. There is one area of red which really helps the whole face to seem more fleshy. I think I just found it facinating that this painting could be so simple but give you such a feeling of form and shape. I think that again, although the colours are exaggerated they help to teach me about what kind of colours I should place onto a portrait.
A concept I had not come across was used in one of the paintings by Gunter Brus. Although I did not intially like it because it was so abstract I thought that the idea of it was exciting. It was an "action painting" which was not so much about the aesthetic of he work but more about how it showed the movement of the artist. The strokes were frenetic and excited. When I started looking at it in this way it became much more enjoyable to look at, every smudge and scratch of paint showed how the artist had moved. I guess that is something similar to the way in which Jackson Pollock would work and it has a similar appeal. I think that photoshop can never really show how the artist has felt when painting it in the same way that physical materials can, however the production time is so much shorter.
Once we had been around the Tate Modern I had become far too annoyed at the stupid paintings (something I never used to do.... hmmm) we moved on to the national gallery hoping to see some Turner paintings, my favourite painter. We had no luck in finding anything besides religious paintings and I became quite frustrated... but I was extremely impressed by the understanding of anatomy that went into these pictures. I found that alot of the paintings really tried to hide how they had been painted, something that I really stuggled with because I love being able to see expression and brush strokes.
We did then try to go to the Tate Britain but by this point they had just closed, we were very dissapointed. I would have really liked to have found something that was really inspiring. I don't think that the day was unsuccessful though, I had a really great day with my girlfriend and we did get to see some great artwork. There are so many memories from that day which I want to keep forever!
Just before we came home I did a couple of sketches of my girlfriend that I plan to develop later. I will probably paint a portrait of her so that I can get a bit of practice.
Today I have done a couple of painting samples of the flowers I have growing in my room trying to learn from what I saw. I would really like to study Freud a bit more. I love the way he manipulates paint, even though alot of his paintings are more than slightly vulgar, I believe I can learn alot from them. I think I will try to see how he paints light and shadow as well as colour and produce a couple of paintings of friends from this.
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