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:

  1. wow this is gorgeous, love those bold shapes!

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  2. very awesome!

    Is that Venice beach in ur header?

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  3. Thnx Chenny

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

    GurB-bellies

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

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

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

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  7. I'm especially fond of the SPEAR- excellent!

    Do you need research for spears?

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  8. @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!

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

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  10. Lovely colour work! What did you use?

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  11. @Abi-Thanks, glad to inspire

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

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  12. Gouache sweat and tears, I never tried that.

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  13. There's blood in there too . . .

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