AS Exam Piece

For my AS level Exam Piece I began with the theme of 'Backyard'. My thought process for this piece was initially from memories I had in the backyard of family and friends. I began by exploring images and old family photographs taken in the backyard and examining the people involved. This eventually led to the emotions that we can see in photographs through facial expressions, and also the idea of hidden emotions which we can conceal from a picture. I researched how emotions can be portrayed within art and began to look at german expressionist artists who use different colour schemes to show different emotions. I decided then to create a piece that showed different emotions, happiness, sadness and anger, through examples of facial reactions, using colour to emphasise their particular emotion, inspired by german expressionism. I had also been exploring artists who did not particularly portray emotion within their work, but use their own emotions to help create it. This led me to the urban artist Banksy. I decided to use his technique of spray painting in my exam to create the basic shape of my figures, which were based on drawings of family and friends displaying a certain emotion. I then created stencils by cutting out the sections which I wanted to appear black on my piece. I also used emotive words to emphasise the emotions of the subjects, as this is a feature Banksy uses within his work frequently in order to portray a message.