My original idea of Buddhist temples was an extension from a topic in my coursework I did about Buddhist symbols.
As the Buddhist religion is based around peace, in some of my work I tried to show disruption combined with symbols of peace, for example I used Buddhist symbols to represent peace and colour to represent disruption.
As I started to produce pieces around this theme I felt the project needed to expad to more than just Buddhist temples and so it progressed to a mix of Egyptian art and Buddhist temples.
Etchings of a buddhist prayer wheel changed to represent a buddhist temple, based on my original idea of purely buddhist temples.
I decided to do etechings so i could experiment with different colours:
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Buddhist prayer wheel etching. The temple representing peace. The red behind the temple represents the disruption hidden behind the peace. |
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| Buddhist prayer wheel/temple etching with an earthy background. |
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| Buddhist prayer wheel/temple etching with a misty background. |
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A black and white pencil drawing of a Buddhist prayer wheel. I tried to use shading to create a more 3D effect to the drawing. |
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I started to look at different types of Buddhist buildings:
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| Buddhist temples: done in charcoal. |
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| A carbon drawing of a chinease building. |
Photos
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| A composition of Asian and African art. |
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| In this photo i tried to produce a photo more with interesting shadows. |
From these photos of mixed culture I decided I wanted to use this idea in my art exam..
I decided to use Egyptian symbols to mix with my Buddhist temples.
My art then developed into a mixture of Buddhist temples, symbols and Egyptian symbols.
So I looked at the Egyptian symbols to see what I could use:
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| A postcard of an Egyptian cat statue. |
Art History
For my art history I looked at Egyptian hieroglyphics which I used to designed the background of my main piece - with the hieroglyphic styled alphabet. I also looked at different Egyptian symbols which I could possibly use in my exam.
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Following on from this decision I decided to look at Egyptian hieroglyphics, here I have copied a photo of hieroglyphics with some sepia ink. |
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Louise Hibbert
I looked at louise Hibbert because the shapes she uses in here work can be compared to the symbols of Buddhism. This marine art for example is a similar shape to the Buddhist dharma wheel I have used in some of my work. |
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Louise Hibbert
This piece could represent a Buddhist prayer item. |
I experimented with differnt material so I could see which materials and colours worked best:
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| The Bodhi Tree: although I feel green worked for this picture I decided not to use green in my exam as it didn't represent either of the cultures in my exam well enough. |
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| Here I have used layering to start planning the composition of my main piece |
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| You only lose what you cling to. |
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| A pencil sketch of an Buddhist prayer item. |
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| A carbon drawing of Egyptian gods. |
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In this picture, the lotus flower represents peace, but the colour shows disruption behind the peace.
Although I liked the composition of this, I wasn't too pleased with the outcome of the picture.
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I also looked at images of pharoahs as an idea to use in the background of my work.
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| A copy of an Egyptian symbol in my exam piece. |
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| A copy of an Egyptian symbol in my exam piece. |
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| A pencil sketch of the Buddha & Lotus flower with original picture. |
I decided to use a colour scheme of blue (as I felt this represented the egyptian side to my work well), red (as this is quite an oriental colour, like the Buddhist religion) and purple as this is quite a nice medium colour)
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| Due to decideing to using egpytian symbols in my work I practiced with wax on material in egyptian symbols. |
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| I did a practice painting on the prayer wheel I decided to use in my exam, to see if my colour scheme of blue, purple and red would work. |
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| I decided to use the idea of the prayer wheel representing a temple with an Egyptian scarab beetle merged on top, in my main piece, and therefore had a go at painting this idea out on paper. |
I kept the idea of using the Buddhist prayer wheel merged with the Egpytian scarab beetle. I also used to idea of Egyptian styled writing in the background.
A merge of a Buddhist prayer wheel, in place on a temple, with Egyptian symbols and a hieroglyphic styled alphabet.
For my exam I used wax and brusho on material, this was because I thought it would be a good material to use for bold symbols and it would bring out the colours used.
When colouring with brusho ink I encountered the problem of the darker colours running into the lighter ones previously painted, I overcame this by using it to my advantage and used it to create shadows in my work.
I was quite pleased as I felt I used the all the best aspects from my preparation to create a interesting composition of Buddhist and Egyptian symbols. Although if I were to change anything, I would use a richer orange and create a spectrum of shades moving up the piece from dark to light, I could perhaps of spent more time doing more delicate detail in the main body of the piece.
