Contemporary Artists | niki's oca student blog

Look at contemporary as well as historic artists who work on the face in different ways. Use your research to inspire your own experiments.

Look at Graham Little’s use of coloured pencils and the more fluid blocking tone of Elizabeth Peyton. Both artists draw the face in a painterly manner.

Elizabeth Peyton

Elziabeth Peyton comp

Elizabeth Peyton was born in Connecticut in 1965, she studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she now lives and works. Her works; inspired by photographs in the media and from life and is made up using oil paint, watercolour, ink and pencil are small yet bold and powerful. She captures that face in a few bold tonal marks with greater detail focused on the facial features, the eyes, mouth and nose. Her use of bold, fairly flat colours and classic composition of iconic images of familiar figures that we are used to seeing as photographs makes you look twice at the image and give them a really edgy look.

Graham Little

Graham Little comp

Graham Little born in Dundee, UK, 1972, studied at Goldsmiths College London, in contrast uses coloured pencils in his finely detailed almost romantic views of women in domestic situations. He to sources his subject matter from the media, taking glossy magazine articles and advertisements and re visualizing them to suit his own vision. The photo-real drawings are rich and powerful and take months to complete.

I then went on to look at a number of artists and have selected those whose styles struck me as having an energy and distinctive styles.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) was a driving force in the Die Brücke group that flourished in Dresden and Berlin before World War I, he was a talented and influential German Expressionist. He uses quite lurid bright colours in a naively painterly style that is really powerful.

Gwen John

Gwen John comp

Gwendolen Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939 in Wales) worked in France for most of her life. Her portraits are of whistful female sitters of varying ages in gently closely related tomes. She painted in a very considered fashion and only had one solo show in her lifetime although much of her early work was purchased by an American Collector.

Leon Kossoff

Leon Kossoff comp

Leon Kossoff (born 10 December 1926) is a British figurative painter known for portraits, life drawings and cityscapes in London. I saw his Chldren’s swimming pool painting at the All too Human Exhibition at the Tate Modern, standing back from the huge canvas the bold brush marks make more sense and the image comes to life. I was interested to see how this bold mark making translated to portraiture, which it does so with great energy.

Margaret Olly

Margaret Olly comp

Margaret Olley (1923-2011) was one of Australia’s most respected and well-loved painter. Mainly a Still Life painter her work represents crowded objects in an organised clutter. This example with the reflection in the mirror examples her portrait work in her style show the figure as almost doll like and painterly. I also found this other artist’s portrait of her in a much looser painterly style.

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas comp Marlene Dumas (b1953) has been called ‘the world’s most interesting figure painter’. Her practice centres around the human figure and examples of her work can be found in museums around the world. Like Elizabeth Peyton she draws on collected images and popular culture, her style is bold and painterly in a really interesting way, she captures a character with unconventional shading and line.

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin comp

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter recognized for his experimental use of colour. He was very influential to French avant-garde painters and modern artists. I really like the brushwork and colours that he uses and is a really refined painterly style.

Sylvie Gilliot

Sylvie Guillot comp

Sylvie Guillot was born in 1972 in Paris and studied at The Paris School of Fine Arts. Her work centres around the human figure and she shows a really interesting exploration of skin tone, shape and tone. Her work conveys tension and draws the viewer to the part of the drawing that she finds of most interest by emphasizing the depth of colour in those areas of the composition.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge comp

William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. I like his sketchy monotone work and have been inspired by it for my last exercise. I am drawn to his pocket drawings and charcoal work as I am really interested in the storytelling in images and I think black and white is a powerful technique.

Ephrem Solomon

Ephrem Soloman comp

Whilst looking at different artists I came across Ephrem Solomon, an Urban African artist who uses collage and woodcut to produce these bold graphic portraits which depict the daily life of Ethiopians and the issues that they face depicted in the facial expressions of the subject. I found his work really moving, I am drawn to work that uses strong line that even though looks basic, is really expressive in its simplicity.

Dereje Shiferaw

Dereje-Shiferaw comp

On the same site I found this work by Dereje Shiferaw also an Urban African artist who also works in a painterly manner that in this case is done in watercolour. I especially like the background in the far right example contrasting with the figure. He paints people performing their daily activities in a couple of lines, forms and asymmetric shapes to record the rapidly changing environment and values that are present in his society.

Compilations

mix face comp

Finally I have compiled a couple of collections of portraits that I came across on my research but couldn’t find out much about who they were by, but saw something in their technique that caught my eye.

portrait mix comp

The Loui Jover portrait caught my attention as it is worked on newspaper, this is a medium that I have too be working on recently, I like the minimal colour use here.