Jessica's Art Journal: Easter 2014

Easter holidays:
This Easter I planned to get quite a lot of work done, I planned to do a few A1 painted portraits, paint on at least one of my A1 boards and get my sketch book completely up to date.

The first thing I did was this painting of and old women that I took a photograph of, I really liked the photo and thought that it would make a really good A1 portrait. One of the artists that I am looking at is Jonathan Yeo, and this painting was inspired by his very detailed but seemingly unfinished style.
I am pleased with how this painting turned out and think that it is one of my best, this woman was quite old which made her face more interesting to paint, as she had a lot of wrinkles and discolouration to her skin and eyes. What I found most difficult about this painting was probably her glasses and around her eyes, her glasses were hard as they were made out of a clear plastic which had a pattern on, and it was difficult to make them look transparent and 3D and not invisible. Around the eyes was particularly difficult as she had quite red looking eyes, but I didn't want to make the look over exaggerated, and it was very difficult to get them to look the right colour.

This image is not completely finished as I still need to add in the outline of her body and clothes.

During the holidays I also completed this painting of the back of my Mum's head, I painted this as I was inspired by Gerhard Richter's 'Betty', I had previously done a portrait of the back of someone's head in life drawing, but wanted to spend more time on making it more accurate. I painted this on board as I wanted to try something different to paper, however I found this difficult to do as it is very different to paper and the paint reacts in a different way. This took my longer than the ones I have previously done on paper as I had to change my painting style slightly, and use a lot more paint to cover the board so you could not see the background.

I am happy with how it looks now that it is finished, I think that it is an effective piece as you can only see the back of the head and not really any of the face.

Acrylic on board.

I also tried these alternative ways of painting, using watercolour, ink and tea, and a fine liner pen to add the detail such as the wrinkles.

I am pleaded with the way that they turned out and they are a good contrast to the acrylic paintings i have done so far in the project. This is also a much quicker technique compare with the way that I paint with acrylic, and creates a much more subtle portrait.

To create these images I added quite a lot of water to the materials that I was using which made the colours a bit lighter, but it also meant that it was easier to spread and move around and meant that I could use a straw to make the colours run.

A1 watercolour, ink and tea painting on paper.

I worked into a few of these studies to make them a little bit more interesting. First I scanned them into the computer and edited them on Photoshop to make the colours a bit darker and more defined, I then printed them out onto good quality paper so that I could work back into them easier. I then used a fine ink pen to outline all of the different colour variations and to add in some darker and shaded areas over the top.

I am happy with the outcome and think that it adds more depth and interest to the images compared with the originals, and the out lines define and sharpen the initial detail.