Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Ghana


Here's my contribution to the 'home' theme of the Art Blocks for Ghana project.  I found out Ghana means Warrior King & I wanted to incorporate forms found in African sculpture so I tried to incorporate all this & ended up with this Warrior King relaxing at home with his pregnant wife and first born son.

These exploratory thumbnails show my thought process-I started out with the image of a communal tree or village, playing around with sculptural iconography.  I guess it's all pretty cliched stuff, certainly not representative of modern Ghana. I was thinking of imagery from a more primitive time in the past.  The meaning of the word Ghana led me to the 'Warrior King' motif which I eventually combined with the 'home' theme for the final image.


(Thanks to Don Shank for the Gesso tip!)

16 comments:

Cheyenne said...

wow this is gorgeous, love those bold shapes!

Abz said...

very awesome!

Is that Venice beach in ur header?

gur-B said...

belly

Matt Jones said...

Thnx Chenny

Abz-yes, it's based on a visit to LA last year.

GurB-bellies

Uli Meyer said...

Nice to see you painting, Matt! Love the colours...

Unknown said...

will you come to the exhibition on L.A in March? I like the research very much.

KAVI said...

I really like this piece ! and it's great to get to see the previous researches they're fantastic !

Artur Gorczyński said...

brilliant thumbnails

Matthew Cruickshank said...

I'm especially fond of the SPEAR- excellent!

Do you need research for spears?

Matt Jones said...

@UM-Thnx Uli, hope to do more painting next year

@Stef-Maybe! Good excuse for a trip south!

@ KAVI-thnx for the support

@Artur- I think the fun I had shows in the drawings

@Crookie-I worked from the model sheet you drew for me!

Lilmendoza said...

wow! these are inspirational! :D love looking at your new posts!

Jess said...

Lovely colour work! What did you use?

Matt Jones said...

@Abi-Thanks, glad to inspire

@Jess-Cheers my dear, it's gouache, sweat & tears

Unknown said...

Gouache sweat and tears, I never tried that.

Matt Jones said...

There's blood in there too . . .

凱西的黑貓館 Kathy's Catworld said...

LOVE IT