I am doing art this semester, and our first big project was to create a Buck Nin landscape. Buck Nin was New Zealand’s first modernist Māori painter. He went to the University of Canterbury from 1965 to 1966. His teacher, Rudolf Gopas, had a significant impact on him. He started making modern paintings that used ideas from traditional Māori art.
I think my teacher was trying to get the class to think about their individual cultures and understand different art techniques like underpainting and whitewashing. I found painting the bridge hard but unfortunately, I had to paint over top of it. I struggled with matching the paint to the same color every time to continue where I left off. If I was to do something different next time I wouldn’t have bothered working so hard on the bridge.
Our task was to choose 3 landscapes that had meaning to us and draw the basic outline on our planning page, once finished we had to choose one and that would be the landscape we had to paint. After choosing our landscape we had to identify the main point in the painting and choose a bone that had the basic structure of that point. We then drew the basic outline of our painting onto our paint paper and did our underpainting. I used different shades of yellow for my base and did darker shades where it was darker on the image I was copying. After we had to use the paints available to color-match our paint and spend time painting the landscapes. I then drew my bone and whitewashed it and once that dried I tried to make it as realistic as possible using different cream colours. For my final lesson, I got a fine-line black marker and drew a bunch of kiwiana and Maori symbols onto the bone. The image I did is below.
This image is the Reefton swing bridge and it is special to me because my grandparents live in Reefton and we have gone on walks with them along the swingbridge and the track it leads onto. I did a spine bone because I thought the shape of the bridge represented a spine shape because of its length and slimness. I remember last year I didn’t understand underpainting but now I understand it more and I can use this technique in the future. I also understand color theory more and how different cool and warm tones make different shades of different colors. For the trees in my image, I did a dabbing technique to get a bit of texture. It took me a few lessons to complete but I am happy with the results. Here are some progress photos.
