Originally, this week I intended to begin my final piece, but I soon realised I needed to further refine my ideas and so I spent the week conducting more experiment. Although it’s set me back slightly I now feel much more prepared to begin my final piece. Although I haven’t been feeling myself at all this week, I managed to be quite productive through confiding in my work and I discovered through painting I was able to calm and uplift myself at times, through confiding in my work. It is paint that I have mainly been working in, and I feel as though I’ve improved lots through my focussed studies this week.
I didn’t enjoy working on this so much as I found the canvas rather dry to work on, I prefer the paint to slide a little more over the surface so that I am able to uphold a flow in my brush strokes, perhaps I should have used more water with the acrylic. Looking now at this study, I realise I don’t dislike it quite so much as before, I quite like the way I painted the reflection in the mirror, in a block style, for at a distance it’s effective, I seem to have captured a sense of shining light. I don’t think the composition works as a whole, for its a little empty towards the right, but I may use sections of it towards my final piece.
I am tempted to use mixed media for the final piece so here is a test piece exploring how mixed media’s could be layered. I like how the coloured pencil creates a sort of net effect but I think the pencil looks a little too scratchy and rather like a study as opposed to a finished piece, so if I were to use coloured pencil, I would be more delibrate with it. I do however like the white ink, as it allows the dark blue acrylic to show from beneath creating that nice opaque shimmer, same with the white oil pastel over the acrylic.
I admire this piece below, by Lautrec, for the solitary blues are comforted with warm pinks which lends the piece a sort of mellow atmosphere, which I should like to create within my work. I’m also drawn to the suggestive outlines he surrounds his figures with as they really bring them forth. His pallet for this piece is what informed my acrylic on board study below.
I much preferred the surface of the plywood as I did the canvas, as I was able to push the paint around much more and was therefore able to paint a lot more fluidly which resulting in a much more suggestive style that I’m fond of.
Jesse Leroy Smith is another artist I have been looking at this week for his way of building up layers and his combination of refined areas against tangled suggestive paint strokes, especially in the piece below, captured my attention as I would like to paint in a similar manner. I am especially fond of the way the figures face in his work below bleeds slightly and the way he balances his use of colour through including specs of colour throughout the background, matching the colour he uses in the face.
Below I attempted a study in a similar style to his, which, through doing so, got me to realise lots about balancing colour across the page. It also got me to think about incorporating specs of colours in the figures flesh while also maintaining the realistic aspect.
I looked back at the A1 painting I did last week, in which I’d planned a composition, and created these studies, developing the figure in the mirror- based on a photo I took using the self timer on my phone. First sketching it out to familiarise myself with the shape and areas of shadow and light, before moving onto painting a more detailed version. I would say I need to be a little more careful in painting the flesh as it’s a bit heavy handed, but I know I will find it much easier to paint lightly and with more fluidity when I move onto painting at a larger scale, as I feel a little restricted working at such a small scale.
I should mention also that this study was made over a wash of raw umber which I like for it lends a warm tint, which compromises the cold blues.
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