Final exhibition

During this week and last week (2nd - 12th June 2014) I have been putting up my exhibition in the life drawing room. Now that I have finished putting it all up I am very pleased with the outcome, however It wasn't that easy to put up and deciding what to put up and where to put it was very difficult.
At first I had planned to put up my two bigger pieces, side by side, however this did not work out as planned and the two pieces didn't really work together and they just didn't look right as they were so different. I then thought about putting up the large acrylic self portrait and three of the smaller A3 watercolours, but they didn't look quite right either and the large piece was so over powering.
In the end I had to play around with the order and placing of all my work a lot as every time that I changed it, it still didn't look right, however in the end I decided on an order and that I wanted to put the acrylic paintings together, and after I was given extra space, I decided that I would also put up some of the other watercolour paintings as well, but on the other wall so that the techniques didn't clash.
I used bulldog clips to hang all my work from and just used screws to attach them on to the wall and boards, was difficult to screw in the screws, especially in to the boards as they move and are quite unstable, and the fact that we had to screw them in so high and had to use the steps, which ment we had to stay quite close to the boards.
Overall I am extremely pleased with how my show looks, as I feel that the way the work is grouped together makes the work look really effective and each piece really complements the other pieces next to it.

Thursday May 22nd 2014

This morning I have been adding the pen to my A0 watercolour painting and it is starting to look really effective and I am getting more and more happy with it the more that I do.

I think that the pen makes it look so much better and a lot more interesting, however it does take awhile.

For this piece I decided that I wanted to use more than one thickness of pen, as with all the other watercolours that I have done I have just used one size of pen, and I thought that it would be more effective if I used a variety of pens, and already I think it is starting to look better. I think that this work especially well as it is a much bigger piece, and I could have done think with the smaller ones as they are too small the the pen would have over powered the whole image. 

This afternoon I finished the whole thing and I think that it is the most effective watercolour painting that I have done, as I think that the image and the colours worked really well for this technique.

I think that the most difficult thing about this piece is the fact that when I was adding the pen I had to be extremely close, and after a while this started to give me a head ache so I had to stop every so often, which ment that it took a little bit long to do. However the actual painting part of this piece was really quick, only taking me about a day and half or just over to paint. 

Overall I am happy with the outcome of the two paintings and think that they look rally effective and as good if not better than I expected them to look.    

Wednesday May 21st 2014

Monday to Wednesday:
Over the past few days I have been painting the portrait of the old woman, using watercolour and ink. I have now finish the actual painting part of the piece, and I think that it is starting to look really good and that I could probably leave it the way that it is, however I do feel that it will look a lot better when I have added the pen, as I think that it will look more defined and accurate.

Watercolour and ink on paper A0.

Sunday May 18th 2014

Today I started to draw out the out line for my second A0 final painting that is going to be in watercolour and ink. Now that I have done the other painting it was much quicker to cut the paper and measure out the grid, however I did go a little wrong so this painting is 2cm narrower that my other painting, as I ripped the edge of the paper and had to cut it off. It was also a lot quicker to draw out the image as I had an idea of how to draw on such a large scale and where to move back to, to look at it. I will start to paint it tomorrow.

This is the photograph I am going to paint.

Saturday May 17th 2014

Today I finally finished My A0 acrylic self portrait, I am really pleased with the way that it looks now that it is finally finished. It did take a little long that I thought that it would at the start, as it took nearly two day just to draw it out, but I do feel that it is one of my best paintings and that I when I actually started painting it, it didn't take too long. I think that that part that I found most difficult was the nose, as it was actually quite hard to get right, without making it look like I had a pigs nose, it took a bit of time but I think I got it pretty good and quite accurate. The part that took the most amount of time was probably the hair, as there is a lot of it and it is a lot of different shades of brown, and I had to add in all the fine wispy hairs in with a really small brush.
Overall I am really pleased with this piece and at first I thought that I would be overwhelmed by the size, but it wasn't actually that bad after all and I think I go quite a good likeness to the photograph.  

Acrylic on paper A0.

Friday May 16th 2014

This morning I added the fine liner pen to the life drawing that I did yesterday, I feel that this had really brought the piece to life and made it look more striking and unusual. I added the pen around the different colours like I have done on all of my watercolour paintings to make them look a bit different, however I did add the pen all over this painting as I haven't done a large one like this before, and I am glad that I did as I think it works really well as the black pen is a nice contrast to the paler, muted colours of the watercolour.

I also continued painting on the A0 self portrait, which I should hopefully finish tomorrow and then I should be able to start my final A0 watercolour painting on Sunday.

Thursday May 15th 2014

Today was the last life drawing session, so I decided that I want to create a really big A0 life drawing in watercolour that links with the rest of my project and the paintings that I am doing at the moment. I had to stick my paper up on the wall as it was too big to go on an easel, this ment that I was at quite a strange angle to the model but as I was focusing on the face it wasn't too bad. However as the paper is so large and I had to stand quite close, as the room is small and there are a lot of people in the class, it was difficult to get the proportions as accurate compare with the A1 sized paper, and I had to go to the other side of the room to get a good look at what I was actually painting.
I do think that this life drawing work really well even in the short amount of time that I had to complete in. However looking back I think it was good that I only had a short amount of time as I think that it made me work a lot quicker and made my work a little more free and spontaneous as I didn't really have time to think about what I was doing, I think that it also made this painting a little bit different to my other life drawings as it was a bit of a different painting style which had a different effect and look. I think that the scale made it more interesting and engaging.