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).