Getting over myself...

I've realised I'm becoming a little bored and routine in work and figured that I was fed up painting myself?
I've moved on now to painting other people and I'm enjoying it a lot more.

Here's the first of (hopefully) a series......

Final First year project...

I want to continue the portraiture from ranking but also to bear in mind the use of light to create different effects and also the use of materials for painting. What can I use instead of a brush?

Here I laid down masking tape and painted over with a a mid brown orange tone. After I peeled off the masking tape (with great difficulty) I was left with white areas portraying the lightest areas on my face.

I then layed down darker tones using pieces of card.

Here I watered down the different tones of  paint, poured it onto the surface of the page and then tried to manipulate it before it dried. It actually took almost a week to fully dry.

I am really happy with this life painting. I used little pieces of wood to do the entire piece and am really happy with the effect it gave. I used a LOT of paint but I think it was worth it.....?

Painting Ranking Project...

For ranking I wanted to work with the figure but apart from the time I would have available with the life model I didn't really have anyone available to pose for me. So I decided self portraiture was the way to go.

First things first was to get over my phobia of staring at myself in the mirror for ages so I just needed to get started and paint myself.

Not too bad but nothing special. Composition is a bit boring too but it achieved what I wanted to achieve, I no longer feel wierd staring at myself in the mirror for hours on end.
Next I played around with composition, doing loads of studies using ink, paint or charcoal. I wanted to play around with perspective and this composition is what I settled on to work up;

After settling on this image I got to painting;




Underpainting done. I wanted to bear in mind the use of colour throughout this piece to add depth to it. Adding depth is particularly important to a piece like this as without it the painting would essentially look like a flat painting of a very deformed little man.

Almost done. At this stage there were only a few things that were bothering me; I needed to work up the detail on my face a little as this is the forwardmost element of the composition. I also needed to consider what to do with the 'painting within the painting'. I didn't want this to be fighting with the actual figure within the piece colour wise so I had to figure out a way to make the painting inside the painting actually look like a painting and not just some sort of wierd reflection.

Finished piece. This is my wall set up for final ranking assessment. I pared back some of the detail to make the problem area look more like a painting and added a few details to cement the idea that it is a painting of me painting a painting of me..... I added a piece of paper and some thumbtacks to help the visual interpretation.

Got into painting..................woop!