For my project I have decided to call it 'Inner Beauty'. This is because I have the aim in mind to show how underneath the skin is just as complex and beautiful as a persons outer appearance. I will be exploring this aim through looking at individual facial features, muscles, veins as well as organ such as the heart and brain which is what I believe to make a person who they are.
Methodology of work
3/10/17:
After a week on thinking about what my project was going to be I began to decide what medias I was going to use within my project. After deciding on Oil paints on canvas I started to sketch out on the my first paintings. I decided to start with the eyes as I felt like it was a good starting point for my project. This is because when looking at 'inner beauty' people tend to relate to the eyes as 'windows to the soul'. They show the most emotion and give a lot of information away about the person and their character. By painting two different eyes of different age, I was able to experiment with the oil paints as I was challenged by varying tomes, textures and colours.
12/10/17
After completing the two small paintings I moved onto looking at the full picture. As the oil paints worked extremely well with the previous paintings I decided to continue using them. I decided on doing the full-face portrait because I wanted to look at the face altogether rather than just its individual features. I chose quite a basic photo as I have never painted a full portrait before, therefore wanted to keep it a simplistic and effective as possible. Although the project is about 'inner beauty' I felt like it was important to understand the proportions of the outer appearance before looking beneath the surface.
18/10/17
I began to sketch out various features on the body including the eyes, ears and forearm. When looking at each of the three features I decided to move forward with the forearm. This is when I began to see what was lying behind the flesh by looking at all the muscles, tendons and ligaments within the forearm. Taking the term 'inner beauty' quite literally. By searching in scientific biology books I was able to get a fairly accurate representation of the features which make up the forearm.
20/10/17
Took various photos of the forearm in different positions and lighting. Once I had my photos I sketched out the hand and forearm onto the canvas whilst leaving the palm of the hand exposed. I chose to only expose the muscles within the hand and not the entire arm as well because I thought I would be more effective to have the contrast of the skin tone against the deep red and purples within the hand. Also, if I had exposed the entire arm as well as the hand it may have become unclear to what image I was portraying.
23/10/17
Maintaining with the focus point being on the hand I took photos this time of the back of my hand, however this time not only exposing the muscles but the ligaments as well. This was to add some more depth to the piece as well as adding some extra texture and dimension to it. I chose to place my hand in a specific position so that it wouldn't appear as flat as the previous painting of the forearm did. So by chose to place my hand in a position where I was able to create shadows, the piece automatically had a more realistic finish.
27/10/17
Moved on to looking at the full figure. I began to roughly sketch out various figures to practice getting my size and proportions correct.
30/10/17
I bought a slightly larger canvas compared to the others I had been working on. This would allow me to see if what I am doing is just as affective on a larger scale as it is on a smaller scale. I chose only the torso this time to work on as I feel like I have a lot more expansion to do before working on perhaps the entire human body. This time however I decided to not paint so literally, meaning putting less detail into the skin tone. this was because when working on the undertone of the skin, I loved how free and visible the brush stokes appeared. This time however, rather than looking at the ligaments ect, I decided to go back to less literal form of 'inner beauty' and looked at the heart. Although the painting is literally of a heart, there is more meaning behind what the heart is.
2/11/17
After finishing the latest painting I agreed that using the heart as a symbol of someone's character would be a good idea to follow through with. However this time I thought of using flowers as a mechanism to show the persons character or 'inner beauty'. For example, if the flowers are alive and beautiful this shows good character contrasting to if they were dead; this represents a bad personality. As I was just experimenting with this idea, I decided not to use oils for this as they were just quick sketches. Instead, I used a biro pen for the outlines and shading and then watercolours on top to add some depth and diversity to the sketches.
7/11/17
After deciding on my composition of my next piece I started to think about how large or small I was going to go. Since the majority of my work in on a fairly small scale I decided to go a lot larger and use my studio wall as my canvas. I drew out a large heart and chose 2 of the flowers from my previous sketches depending on how successful I thought they were. I chose to use the lily and the rose. I decided to use 2 different flowers rather than one because since the heart was on such a large scale I think one flower would be sufficient for what I am wanting to achieve. For this piece I have gone back to using oil paints.
9/11/17
Once finishing the first few flowers moved onto the lily growing out the artery. I decided to use orange tones to contrast against the red I used for the roses. To add more dimension I places the lily on its side rather and front facing.
13/11/17
Rather than continuing using oil paints in order to paint the heart I chose to use acrylic paint instead. Purely because of the amount of paint needed to fill the heart in. I started to try and make the heart detailed and realistic like the flowers, but the paint wasn't blending and was drying straight after being placed on my studio wall; making it very hard to work with. Therefore, I resulted in doing a very abstract and textural method instead. Creating a good contrast between the heart and the flowers. I feel like having the two different painting styles compliment each other in a way of they're opposites therefore they work together. However, after my tutorial with Virginia we discussed about putting a background into this piece in order for it to really stand out from the plain wall behind it. I chose to use the colour blue because in my experiments I felt like although the blue was constrasting it added another layer to my work.
16/11/17
Once finishing the heart I was a little lost at what to do next. After analysing all of my work I felt like the eyes I painted at the start were the most successful, therefore decided on continuing with them. Rather than do another female eye I chose to do a male eye; for different textures and tones.
20/11/17
When getting my assessment feedback I read through the notes made by Virginia to get some ideas on what to do next. She mentioned doing life drawings to look at the full figure as well as the inside, skin and clothes as different layers that I could add to my work at a later date. Using this as a starting point I asked one of my friends to sit in front of me whilst I drew her within different time periods as well as different positions. I began drawing her within a 20 minute time period down to 5 minutes. This was so I could get different effects from a fairly detailed drawing to a quick sketch made up of the main components of her figure.
23/11/17
I then chose my top two positions to use watercolour to paint with. I wanted to try using watercolours again as I felt like I hadn't fully experimented with them. I decided to do one in colour and the other in black and white. I did this to see how the colour can affect the overall feeling of the pieces. On the black and white painting I used the flower concept and used the red oil paint. However, this time rather than mimicking a heart I wanted the red to look similar to the roses I painted previously.
21/11/17
Once having my life drawings I picked my favourite and painted these loosely only using monochrome colours such as black and white. Whilst still trying to keep into the theme of 'inner beauty' on the portrait facing forward I used oil paint to add a red splodge to the torso. I chose oil over acrylic because I wanted there to be some added height to this specific area and acrylic I find tends to not hold itself and spread out.
26/11/17
I went back to the three images before and decided to do a 'pop-art' simplistic version of those positions. Using bold colours I created a series of images slightly different from each other giving a contemporary feel to the paintings. Also, by outlining each edge n black acrylic ranging from thin and thick lines it added that final touch. When placing them on my wall I lined all the same colours next to each other as well as separating the red and blue pictures from each other. This is because they're both fairly dark colours so the yellow being in the middle keeps the piece looking bright and fresh. The masking tape was also strategically placed in one long line vertically down the pieces. This was to create some sort of division between the paintings.
28/11/17
This time rather than drawing the image first then outlining it is started with the colour first. Using the same colours as before I creates specifically shaped blocks of colours whilst not including the areas which weren't coloured in. Rather than using the colours as individuals I put the colours of each image together to try and create a more fuller figure. When it came to outlining the shapes I only outlined 2 thirst of each colour . I did the to try and minimalize the figure as much as possible.
28/11/17
I then decided to take the colour out of the paintings leaving the lines behind. I used the partial black lines from the paintings before on a smaller scale so they can be painted quickly as well as giving me a slight idea on how they would look. Once doing this I like how they were simple yet effective so I decided to move each figure from A4 to A3 size, each on their own piece of paper.
30/11/17
After using the acrylic paint to do basic mark making, I moved onto simplifying the heart using minimal lines. As well as this I added the flowers from earlier on in the project. Using the primary colours I used bold and basic lines.
01/12/17
Putting the lines from the body together with the mark making of the heart, I painted on my studio wall a large scale version of the two. I also added the primary red rose to the heart as well to the piece to add some colour and dimension tot the overall appearance. All together, I found this quite successful as its an abstract take on the human body whilst using symbolism .
11/12/17
Keeping in the theme of abstract and minimalist lines, I experimented using acrylic paint by adding the skeleton and flowers to the body . Using a yellow ocre mixed with primary red and titanium white I did quite experiments using the skeleton and flowers. With these experiments I may use them at a later date to create a more detailed painting.
13/12/17
With the idea into progressing towards a larger, more detailed painting I did quick sketch of the thorax with an area of skin removed revealing the sternum, rib cage and heart. In order to distinguish the layers from each other I used a craft knife to remove layers of paper for each layer of the sketch. Once doing this I painted each layer, the top layer being monochrome. I decided to have the hand pulling the shirt back to show the revealing of something underneath rather than just the skin with an area missing.
14/12/17
As hands are not a strong area of mine, I did some experiments using a monochrome colour scheme with a slash of primary red. The hand on the left using abstract and minimal lines with the bold rose on one side, contesting to the hand on the right which is holding back the short. This on is a little more detailed in the aspect of consisting of more tonal colours.
18/12/17
Once getting a large 70cm by 60cm canvas, I printed of various images of the heard, thorax and sternum ready to be image transferred onto the canvas. After randomly placing the 9 images on my canvas I layered up white acrylic paint onto the canvas and stuck the images faced down onto the still wet acrylic paint. After leaving for 6 hours to ensure the paint is dry I rubbed the top layer of paper off using warm water and a sponge. This the revealed the printed off images. I then left this to further dry over night.
21-23/12/17
When having the image of which I'm working off I drew the outline over the image transfers. I then watered down some white acrylic paint and placed a layer over the image transfers; this is so when using the oil paints any paper left on my canvas wouldn't bleed. The acrylic wash would act as a base primer for my painting. I then started to do the under tones of the skin with purple, blue and green tints. Once semi-dry I used fleshy oil tones to go over the base colours further adding shadows and highlights.
2-5/01/18
After adding the fleshy tones all over the exposed skin I moved onto the red and black checked flannel shirt. This did cause some difficulty due to the nature of the material being very creased with very small details. When trying to use oil t achieve this type of look as it is very slow drying any small details do tend to blend out. I also did the under colours of the inside of the thorax. Adding basic tints and shadows before eventually adding the details as the oil dries a little more and I easier to work with.
8/01/18
I finished the other side of the flannel shirt as well as added smaller details such as fingernails ect. Overall, I don't think this piece was that well executed as when taking a step back and looking at the painting there is some proportional errors and well as areas such as the exposed thorax looking very 'cartoonish' and not very realistic which was the original idea.
Summary of my project
When starting my project I began with the idea of doing portraiture mixed with the culture behind it, as this changed I ranged within my techniques and had a moderately successful project I would say. As some aspects of my project such as the smaller eye paintings or the abstract minimal mark making in the full body paintings were extremely successful in the way of although they are different to look at they're both detailed and inquisitive in their own way. The eyes are basic yet detailed and simplistic in the way that they don't make you think compared to the abstract paintings which may not look straight forward in what they are they can appear to different things to different viewers which I find very interesting. Not so good moments would be when I have tried to go large scale as that is where my proportions tend to go off and my paintings start to go distorted. At this moment I do feel like I have fulfilled the project as I do not see it going much further. I wanted to express the inner beauty of the body and although I may not have been able to do that I find that I have been able to express the human form as it is through perhaps a way I never have thought of doing so before (eg bold, abstract lines). Beyond this project I would like to look at maybe reflections and the distortion that comes with them . For example when looking into water, facial feature change or when looking into a spoon the face is flipped upside down.
Artist Quote
'Art is not what you see, but what you make other see', Edgar Degas
To me this quote is what art is all about, it does not matter what you paint, or how you paint it because what you see doesn't matter. It is what you make others see, think or feel when they look at your work. Its how you make people see your work which is what makes it successful.
8/01/18
I finished the other side of the flannel shirt as well as added smaller details such as fingernails ect. Overall, I don't think this piece was that well executed as when taking a step back and looking at the painting there is some proportional errors and well as areas such as the exposed thorax looking very 'cartoonish' and not very realistic which was the original idea.