Briony Howell's Internet Art Studio 

Hello! My name's Briony Howell and welcome to my cyber studio. I am currently in my first year at university and this is some of the first term work.

This is my studio space.

Much of the work that I have been doing this term has been more experimental. We have been encouraged to do our work this way as it helps us develop ideas and broaden the perspective in how we look at art.

I have found the course quite challenging in this way as I tend to challenge my ideas in a objective, observational way.  I think the degree programme discourages the methods and constraints of G.C.S.E and A level stuff and allows you to be more expressive.  So most of the time we get left to do what we like in our free time which is great as there are no set projects.

As a starting point this term I have decided to concentrate on figure as I think its an exciting and challenging subject and as I haven't really had the chance to do it till now.  I didn't really know where to start at first as it is such a large subject so I thought I would start from basics, the structure, framework a skeleton maybe.  The first challenge was trying to find one, for some strange reason the art department don't have one, it is in some student dorm. collecting dust ...apparently. The science department had one so I wandered over there every Wednesday for a few weeks to draw him.  Harry was a fantastic model not very talkative but then he never complained . The thing I found interesting about drawing the skeleton is how much you can find about the body and the person, their biography for example. I was being told when drawing by one of the science tutors that Harry was quite athletic from the ridges on his bones and probably about thirty when he died. From my studies it also made me think how complex and fragile the body is, a bit surreal in a way to think he was once alive and walking about.

These are my skeleton studies, A3 pen on paper, October 2004

As I was drawing I started to think about layers ;bones, muscle, and whether they meant anything more. I started bringing in the idea of light like x-rays and produced some large scale drawings from these ideas.

A0 large scale drawings ink and wash on brown paper. October/November 2004

As well as this I also made Harry the skeleton sculpture made out of metal wire, I later added red tissue paper to explore the idea of layers, this took me two days ten hours to complete and nearly drove me insane.

This is Harry

The painting project although seeming quite different in context was actually based on the same idea, I had been looking at the skull for a while and liked the shapes and curves of the bone making deep contrast shadows. I liked this idea of contrasts and decided to do a Van Gogh ( he did self portraits coz he had no friends.) and make studies of myself using dramatic lighting. I liked the way some of the tones from the lighting looked different and so I decided to emphasise these and look at colour relationships and contrasts.

I am not completely sure why my images seem to be so emotional , as my initial idea was objective but colour in itself can represent certain moods. I think art is an extremely powerful medium in terms of expression and the more and more I think about it the more autobiographical my work is even if Im not really thinking about it.

I am pleased with how the two canvas' turned out I like them both but for different reasons  in terms of development. I am also pleased that I have learnt to control my style which usually comes so easily to me and move it forward. My style is usually expressive but in this instance the project was about colour and so the colours had to be pure, clean and balanced.

Self portrait 2(top) oil on canvas November 2004 , Self portrait 1 (below) oil on canvas November 2004

I've got a few ideas for my next project dealing with the figure but I'll update you of my progress by the end of next term (semester) Easter time.

Any feedback would be extremely helpful. You can email me on my student account   This is a bitmap to stop spam harvesters. If you click it it will not do anything, it has to be typed in.