Reflection

Today I had a discussion with my tutor who helped me to develop my ideas for this project. I started off thinking about history and the fact that my grandma has some old books with photos from the area I live in (Hendon) from over 100 years ago. I thought about the history aspect of this project as well as the historical element of the painting from the national gallery ‘Men Of The Docks’. I decided to photocopy some of the photographs on an A3 scale so that I could see them more clearly in order to do some drawing studies from them.

For the first drawing I worked with charcoal on sketching paper and I drew it in a slightly impressionist style like the style of ‘Men Of The Docks’, I thought this study was successful because it looked quite historical and you could tell that it was not drawn from this day and age. For the second study I decided to use charcoal again because I liked the smudged, black and white effect, but on a different surface- khadi paper- paper made from 100% cotton rag. The paper has tiny bumps on the surface which changes the textural appearance of the charcoal and made it look more grainy and historical which I thought enhanced my study.

My tutor told me to look at artists such as Sigrid Holmwood who focusses on historical imagery and ‘draws with paint’, I also took an interest in Roy Oxlade’s work because I like the abstract style of his painting as well as the way he incorporates figures and objects into his work. I would like to study these artists and incorporate elements of their work into mine.

I intend to start painting from my studies, I’ve thought about cutting up my images and merging them together/ using certain elements from each. I want to start working with oil paints on canvas and on a larger scale.

Today I drew up my painting on canvas, I used pencil because I wanted to use something easily erasable and I used rulers as well as my fingers to measure the approximate size of different structures to try to make the composition precise compared to the black and white image I was working from. I thought about the palette I will use for this painting and looked at the works of Sigrid Holmwood and Roy Oxlade for inspiration as well as George Bellows painting ‘Men Of The Docks’, I am still undecided on the colours I will be using and I intend to do a colour experiment on some canvas before I start the painting. Something that I found challenging was cutting the canvas from a 2 metre sheet of canvas and working out what shape and size I wanted. I didn’t cut straight and this resulted in a wonky piece of canvas, as well as this I think I would’ve liked to work on a larger scale than the piece i cut which is roughly A2 sized. I will need to iron out the canvas before painting on it because it has many creases in it which i tried and failed to get rid of with water.

Today I had a discussion with my tutor about my current work, I felt that I had been struggling to connect to my subject matter and struggling with the application of paint as I chose to work on unprimed canvas with oil paints. My tutor suggested to me that I should start a new painting on primed canvas but i was worried about the time limit I have before the end of this project. We spoke about the style of my charcoal drawings and how they were more successful than my painting - possibly because I was able to move the medium freely across the surface without any tension. We also discussed methods/ styles of painting the figure such as blending it into I the background or using angled lines and shapes, I realised that the way I am painting the figure currently isn’t holding much character or structure. My tutor showed me several paintings in a book for inspiration on how to paint the figure in relation to the background and this helped me to think about different ways to paint my current piece.

Once I added colour to the piece it started to look quite flat and it lacked depth and texture, My tutor and I discussed incorporating elements of the black and white photos into my piece such as by blowing them up on photocopy and sticking them down in certain areas, I experimented with this but I didn’t like the way it looked so I decided not to glue the images down onto my painting. I liked the parts that I had outlined using charcoal and I decided to keep them unpainted. I used a palette knife to apply the oil paint more thickly to parts of the painting to add texture and depth. I decided to stop adding to it at that point because I had been looking at it for a very long time and couldn’t work out what else it needed/what it lacked. I may go back and continue this painting but I’d like to explore other ways of using the old images such as collage and mixed media pieces.

I decided to photocopy one of my black and white photos and work into it with oil pastel because I liked the old and new effect (as the coloured part of the piece looks more current whereas the black and white parts looks old). I thought this piece was successful because it mixed the old and the new, I had imagined what colours the structures would’ve been and I think that the colours I used complimented each other.

Part 2: fine art painting specialism

Part 2: fine art painting specialism

Movement in time and space: transcription project- weeks 1&2

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