Paul Butler

Artist Analysis:

Painter, muralist and draughtsman, and teacher, born in Bristol. Butler studied there at the West of England College of Art, 1965–6, and at Kingston upon Thames College of Art, 1966–9. In the 1980s he worked on a number of London murals, including the Shepherd’s Bush Peace Mural, near where he lived, and the Labour History Mural at the Trades Union Congress National Education Centre. Mixed exhibitions included Hunting/Observer Awards, 1992, and John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, 1995–6. Had a first solo show at Air Gallery, 1980, one at Montpelier Sandelson in 1996 indicating Butler’s affinity with Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and Jack Yeats in his handling of paint. The anonymous dramas of city life were featured. Arts Council, Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, Rochdale Art Gallery, Museum of London, National Museum of Mineworkers and Edinburgh City Council hold examples.

Paul Butler was born in Bristol and is an artist whose practice includes hosting the collage party. Paul Butler created a series of work called 'whats within'. He created this series by taking streat photography and cutting out the figure of the model. He then uses similar photographs that he has taken of the same location and layers it behind out the cut out figure. And this is what im going to be trying for my photoshoot i want to give my viewr the same feeling Paul Butler's work gives me and that is a sense of a figure being there but not knowing who or what it is almost as if its giving me a mission to find out. To help cut his work out Paul Butler uses the technique combination of printing. This technique is combination of two or more photographs and is quite simple. However for my work im going to be using photoshop and use the cutting out tool to cut out the figure and the technique double exopsure to add the layer at the back. In most of Paul Butlers work the figure is cut out and left white but to improve my knowledge of different techniques i want to expand m work in adding a background on it. Yow can add a background of a park or leaves but make fure it matche sthe whole picture as adding a brick wall for example to a picture thats in a park would not fit in well and would make the image busy. Paul Butlers work is very simplistic and so we want to keep ours that way aswell.

Photography Plan

Intentions

For my photography shoot I am going to be using myself and my sister for the modelling. We are going to be going around exploring the area and seeing which backgrounds are the best and take some photos.

Result

Paul Butler cuts out the person and is left only with the figure we are going to be facing the other way to showcase the figure.

Techniques

To take the pictures I am going to be using my camera (canon) with the speed of a 1 second because I am not shooting long-exposure. For this photoshoot I am not going to worry about the clothing since were not going to be seen either way.

Timings

I am going to start this photoshoot during the weekend since the weather is better then most other days and the weekend is the only time I'm free. Also as a bonus for my photos I am going to take pictures of the sky and background so I can add to my figure.

Contact sheet:

These are my contact sheets for my Paul Butler independent project. I managed to achieve everything I said in my photography plan and am very proud of the out come of the pictures. One of my main targets in this session was to enhance a variety of different backgrounds in order to have a wide selection of pictures to experiment different types of edits. I also took pictures of backgrounds so I can add to the cut out figure.

Overall, I'm very happy with outcome. The images show a connection to Bulter's work but also include my own ideas inspired by his work.

To capture my images I went out during the day at the weekend, making sure the weather was okay so I can go out and to create a bright, light and youthful lighting to my images. I also wanted to aim to use natural light, rather than artificial. I walked around the local area with my sister capturing her from different angles, but making sure all compositions were long shots to capture the whole body, rather than focusing on close ups. After taking some pictures of her I decided to become the model and so I went in front of the camera whilst my sister was helping by taking the shots. To develop, I would like to experiment with mid and close up shots to refine my photoshoot in my next redraft. It was important for me to capture the models figure, to relate back to Paul Butler's style.

My developments:

Redraft:
Contact sheet

This is my contact sheet for my redraft. I had an idea to not take new photos but to take advantage of my first photoshoot (Chloe Sheppard) and use those instead, since I found that it could link to Paul Butler.