Helen Frankenthaler experiments, influenced by my own photographs

Today I have experimented with working similarly to how Helen Frankenthaler does by using my own photographs as inspiration to them. Whilst in Manchester shopping for my holiday clothes on the 15th July, I only managed to take a handful of photographs as I was on a tight timescale. I have selected these photographs to work from as they are of the city and Frankenthaler often painted what was around her.

I began by preparing the backgrounds yesterday, light washes of watered-down acrylic paint. I have noted down what paints and brushes I have used in my sketchbook for future reference. With Frankenthaler's artwork images laid out in front of me as reference, I painted my photographs onto these backgrounds.

Cinnamon Burn

Helen Frankenthaler

1968

Acrylic on canvas

I have taken inspiration from 'Cinnamon Burn' and looked at how the colours are placed together and how colour is abstracted into block coloured areas of this composition. The sections of colour don't form recognisable objects and so I have tried to do this in my experiments, removing the likeness away from an object and instead focussing on colour.

My photograph of Manchester Piccadilly train station

In this experiment I gave the page a wash of Reeves 'blue lake' and painted over the top of this. I focussed on simplifying the different shapes included in the structure of the building. I then have picked out the colour which has stood out to me most in these sections and painted them in this shape. The subject now has no realistic likeness to the building, much the same as Frankenthaler's landscapes don't either. However, due to the painted shapes being block colours, there is no tone in this composition and I need to add subtle areas of tone like in 'Cinnamon Burn'. Furthermore, there isn't much variation in the translucency of the paint in this experiment, so these two factors then became my objectives for the next experiment.

My photograph taken on a street in Manchester

For this experiment, I looked at representing the street that leads to the Pretty Green store- a brand that Alfie always buys from. In the centre building, I have allowed the grey and red to bleed into one another to portray that it is part of the same unit. I have added more tone into the building to the left of this one to try and add a sense of perspective as this is behind the centre one. Also, I have varied the translucency of the colours, and made the outside buildings opaque as they are larger and are darker in the photograph as opposed to the brighter buildings that are seen at the back. To do this, I added more water to the middle area, and barely any to the outer ones. I think that this experiment would look more harmonious is if had painted the street onto it as then they would all be connected to something. If I did this then it would have more of a likeness to Frankenthaler's work as she doesn't often have disconnected sections of colour.