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.    

Monday May 12th 2014

Monday - Wednesday:
I have been continuing to paint my final A0 self portrait for the last few days and I think that it is really coming along and starting to look really good. However it is taking a while as it is so big and when I started I didn't realise just how big it actually was compared with the rest of my paintings that are A1, and when I started the A1 pieces I thought that they were big, but they look very small in comparison.
I feel that I have got a lot quick at painting now, especially as when I started this painting I was painting it on the floor which was quite difficult, however I am now painting it on the wall which is so much easier and means that I can step back and look at it from a distance and actually see how it is coming together.
I think that the most difficult part has been not getting to precious about the painting and just going with what I think, as it hard to go over parts that are wrong without think that I am going to ruin the whole thing.

  

Sunday May 11th 2014

During yesterday and this morning I have been cutting the paper to size, gridding it out and drawing out my image. This has taken quite a while as the paper is so big and much larger than I am use to, it took a lot long than I expected to cut the paper and gridding it out took especial long, however I do think that this was because I don't think that I cut the paper particularly straight, so as I was measuring out the grid all of the line started to go a little awry. However in the end I managed to make to grid work. I then started to draw out the image, this was difficult but not as hard as I thought it might be, as the grid really helped, However I did have to move back a lot further than I am use to as the paper is so much bigger than I have ever worked on before.
This afternoon I started doing a little bit of the painting but I will have to carry on tomorrow, I think that this will probably take the whole week to paint.
So far I think that it is looking good and I an happy with how it is starting to look.

Friday May 9th 2014

Today I decided what I am doing for the first of my A0 paintings and I am going to start by doing the acrylic self portrait, as I think that this will take longer than the watercolour and ink study.
This is the photograph that I am going to use and I will starting drawing it out tomorrow.

This is the image I have decided to paint for the exhibition.

Thursday May 8th 2014

This afternoon I did life drawing, and I decided that I would create another watercolour and ink painting as the last one that I did when so well and I wanted to experiment further with the way that the ink and paint runs down the page when the paper is on the easel.
I experiment using skin tones like browns and reds, but I also add some green and blue tones, inspired by the paintings of Jenny Saville.
I am happy with the way that this life drawing study turned out however I was stud in the same place I was last week so the two studies from this week and last week look very similar, so next week I will try to move and stand in a different place, so that I can paint from a different angle so all my paintings don't look the same.
Next week I plan to create a study that is on a much larger scale (1x1.5m) the same size as I plan to do my final two paintings for the exhibition.

Wednesday May 7th 2014

Today  I planned what I want to create to go into the exhibition, and I have decided that I want to do two pieces that are much bigger in scale that any of my other pieces. I plan to paint a Larger that A0 (1x1.5m) self-portrait in acrylic paint and I also plan to do a watercolour and ink painting of an old woman of the same scale. Also if there is room I will put up some of the small A3 watercolour studies that I created a few weeks ago.  

Tuesday May 6th 2014

Yesterday I started to paint the A1 portrait of my dad that I started on Saturday, and today I continued working on it. So far I think it is going really well and I think I have mastered the watercolour and ink technique and I think that this is one of my most effective pieces to date.
This afternoon I have started to add the fine liner pen over the top of this portrait, however I think that this will take a while as it is A1 and there are quite a lot of different colours that I will have to draw around.
So I asked some of the other people in my class what they thought of the painting, as part of a quick peer review, I explained what my ideas and intentions were and they said that they liked the painting and the techniques I was using, and thought that it was a bit different and unusual compared with my other work and other peoples work in the class. However they did suggest that I shouldn't add pen all over as it may look over worked and that they liked the way that some of it was just paint and some of it had pen added. I agreed with what they had to say and did what they suggested and didn't add pen all over, and now I am very happy with how it has turned out and agree that it would have looked too over worked.

Watercolour, ink and tea on paper.

Saturday May 3rd 2014

So today I planned out my final A1 experimental study, the last one before I start doing my pieces for my exhibition. For this study I plan to do a final watercolour study as preparation and practice for one of my final pieces. this study will be a combination of all the different watercolour studies that I have done, incorporating ink, tea, watercolour paint and fine liner pen, and combining ideas from my first watercolour A1 studies, my smaller A3 studies and the watercolour and ink studies that I created in life drawing, creating natural and artificial runs in the paint and the ink.
For this study I plan to paint my dad as I haven't really painted anyone his age, and my project is about age so it will give my a good and varied range of ages through out all of my paintings.
This afternoon I started to draw the out line of the image out and I will start painting it on Monday.

This is the image I am going to paint in watercolour and ink (A1).

 

Thursday May 1st 2014

This afternoon I did life drawing, I decided that I would still focus mainly on the portrait/ face, however I decided to paint this one in watercolour and not in acrylic paint, as in my project I have started to look at watercolour artists and I have started some studies in watercolour and ink already, and because the rest of my life drawings are of the face, in acrylic paint and they are all starting to look a little bit similar.

I am really happy with how this life drawing turned out and I think that it looks really effective as it is quite a strong contrast compared with my other paintings and life drawings.
Even thought I used the same materials that I used to create my other watercolour studies, I think that this piece still looks quite different to them, because when I created my other studies I was painting them on flat surface and using a straw to move the ink around and make the paint run, but in life drawing I was painting on an easel, so the paint naturally ran down the page. This gave quite a different effect compared with the others and really worked with the way I had composed it on the page and I particularly like the way that the image fades out towards the left hand side.

I then used a black fine liner pen to add in the detail and to draw around some of the defining colours. I think this worked really well and makes the image more interesting and unusual, and is quite reminiscent of the lines on a map.

Overall I think that this study worked really well, however the proportions a are a little off especially the chin which is much to large and I wasn't really sure how to paint the ear to make it fit with the rest of the painting, but other than that I think it worked effectively and was a good experiment. i plan to develop this further in other life drawing sessions.

Watercolour, ink and pen on paper.

Tuesday April 29th 2014

Yesterday I pretty much just did sketchbook work and started to think about what I was going to put up for my exhibition.

Today we did a sketchbook  workshop where we look at different size, style and shaped sketchbooks, including home made a bought sketchbooks. this didn't particularly help me with project, however I think it will help for future sketchbooks and sketchbook ideas. I am thinking about making my own book to put the posts from this blog in to make it into a physical journal.

This afternoon I also did some work in my sketchbook, feel that I maybe a little behind with some of the written part however I do feel that I have almost caught now and I am happy with the way that my sketchbook is coming along, and I do think that I am getting a lot better at the written side, especially my artist research as in the past this is the area where I have struggled most.