The Blog is now up to date again...

The Blog is now up to date again...

I have just spent a whole 2 days updating the artstudentuk blog; I’m now up to date. I have two projects to finish which are the Ducks Still Life and the Manchester Townscape. I also want to practice with the oil paints and get use to painting with them; I’m not sure which I’m going to do first but as long as I do something and do some art. The College course is now over, I can both go back next term and do some extra credits on a lower level. Or I can do a 2 year course but it isn’t just painting and drawing it includes all sorts of things which I don’t want to waste my time with like ceramics. The other option well there isn’t really one I don’t want to try and get on a MA course as I don’t feel I know enough I need to practice and stop spending all my time with folders, research and general time wasting. So I don’t know what I’m going to do but I need to make my mind up within the next couple of weeks…

Project 8: Still Life with Background: Final Design

The Finished Piece (well very nearly)

This is image is the stage I was at when I handed the project into be marked. I would say final it’s about 93% finished but I’ve run out of time all I would need is an extra couple of days but the college will finish tomorrow and this needs to be in to be marked. Below is the Evaluation:

EVALUATION

The Still Life Project isn’t completely finished I would say it is 95% finished at the moment and it requires another weekend to get to a standard that I’m happy with.

I choose to do a still Life as I thought it would be the easiest brief to do as I’m a few weeks behind due to the death of my mother. Out of the preliminary designs I would have said that the final piece I choose to develop wasn’t the best one that that fitted the brief. However it was the one I wanted to do it so I followed my feelings and choose the image that appealed to me.

I believe I have followed the brief to the best of my apart from the background but this is a bath and nothing would have really fitted in there. I could argue that the Toy Ducks were the still life and all the surrounding items, bath mat, bath, plug and chain and the plug hole were actually the background.

I did try a couple of things one was a towel hung over the side of the bath and the other was the end of a shower curtain Rail but I felt that both of them didn’t do the image and justice. The worst thing about the project was nearly damaging the project right at the end after doing all that hard work on it, if this would have happened I wouldn’t have been able to hand in a finished piece as I wouldn’t have had the time to produce another piece.

The finished picture that I have taken a photograph off I hasn’t been done to the best of my ability. I forgot to take the photograph of the picture and frame without the glass to stop any reflections, I also couldn’t take it in Daylight as its dark outside and it has to be marked in the morning. As soon as the painting is finished and I I’m happy with it I will retake the photograph and put it in the display folder.

If I had the chance to do the Image again I would like to do the piece in Oil Paints but due to the time I had I wouldn’t have been able to make the painting in Oil Paints and have it dry in time for the hand in date. I also need time to experiment with producing the water and bubble bath at the bottom of the bath. In the preliminary painting I have included these items and I find them very interesting, without them in doesn’t feel the same and I do think I need to add these elements to the painting. I feel if I had another weekend on the project I could iron all the bits out I’ve not got around to finish yet and I could make this a good portfolio piece. I have learnt a lot with this project with experimenting with a subject I wouldn’t consider to do. I have produced a decent or on the way to be decent painting, hopefully I will get a chance to complete the picture this weekend. 

Overall I’m very happy I have chosen this brief to do as my project, I’m sure I will be delighted with the outcome when I get around to actually completing the picture. I believe I have fulfilled every part of the brief to my best ability so far.  I’m sure if I had the option to choose from a selection of briefs that I would possibly not choose a Still Life project again.



DON'T FORGET TO CLICK THE IMAGES AGAIN ONCE THEY HAVE LOADED FOR A LARGER IMAGE...

Project 8: Still Life with Background: Final Design

Using Lemon Yellow and Orange I painted in the Ducks, again I watered the acrylic paint down and painted in the ducks to kill the white of the canvas, I wasn’t too careful in painting them as there wasn’t any need to be. The paint dried within seconds due to the amount of water added.



The paint dried within seconds due to the amount of water added. The ducks eyes were added and a green beak was painted on the mother duck mixing the colours I already had on my palette. The orange of the duck also felt too red so I added a yellow glaze made from Cadmium Yellow and added this on top of the red/orange duck once it was dry.



The bath matt had bumps on to stop a person from slipping; the ones on the original matt didn’t look too clever so I tried something different. The bath was also given another coat of paint, I went over the ducks on purpose as I wanted them overlapping. However I also went over the plug chain and I didn’t even realise until later.



All the metal areas I filled in with grey paint also the plug was painted the same colour, after refining the plug hole it started to look okay.



As well as using the Preliminary Sketch and painting I was also working from the original photograph at the same time. As you can see the original colours have changed for the ducks the colour scheme of the primary colours Magenta, Cyan and Yellow wasn’t working together as good as the colours I used.




As well as using the Preliminary Sketch and painting I was also working from the original photograph at the same time. As you can see the original colours have changed for the ducks the colour scheme of the primary colours Magenta, Cyan and Yellow wasn’t working together as good as the colours I used.




I went back to have a look at the Plug Chain as I accidentally painted the chain out. The chain worked well and I’m quite happy with it I just need to add some shadows to them.




I was having a lot of problems with the beaks on the ducks so I decided to start all over again to see if I could get it to a reasonable standard.

Project 8: Still Life with Background: Final Design

Which Idea should I do for my Final Piece?

Out of all the preliminary sketches the three ideas I prefer and the three above, all of these paintings I have spent in between 4 and 6 hours on each one starting from the idea stage to the finished painting. All of the ideas have had something to do with my niece staying with us for the last couple of weeks, the bath toys we had to buy as she wasn’t too happy with just having a couple of empty bottles in the bath to play with. I think I prefer the last two with the bath toys, idea 02 has a meaning to the design where idea 03 is just really a pleasant image. It’s hard to choose which one to use for my final piece but I have decided to use Idea 03 as I really like the composition and the elements. Without working out the colour scheme and design for Idea 02 than Idea 03 wouldn’t have happened. All I’ve got to work out now is what medium and size and material of support I should use. I really want to use oil paints but I know this project needs to be handed in and it wouldn’t be dry in time which was a lesson learnt in the last project. I don’t want to do a small piece I much prefer them larger but any image larger then 20x16” I would have to buy an expensive frame on the internet and keep my fingers crossed that the frame would get here in time. 

I needed to reproduce my A3 painting on to a 30X20” Canvas board, the first thing I did was to scan the original painting into Photoshop at 300%. I then printed out the enlarged painting in greyscale on A3 cartridge paper; I didn’t require the colours so there wasn’t much point in wasting all the coloured ink. I then pieced the A3 prints out together with masking tape to make it the correct size. The 30x20” canvas panel was slightly larger in height which gave me a bit more space to play with.  I used the rules of the thirds to align the composition better and made use of the extra space on the larger support.

Rather than using tracing paper or a projector I’ve used Royal & Langnickel’s Graphite Paper. This works in the same way as carbon paper but it uses graphite instead which you can remove with an eraser. The piece I’ve used has been used many times over and I need some new pieces but the shops locally haven’t got any in stock at the moment so I’ll have to make do with the old stuff. I used an embossing tool to press down on the original print out, this way I’m not making pencil marks over the original print out. Once this is done I had to go over some lines with a pencil as the graphite paper no longer had any graphite left in certain places.

I decided to add a towel in the background, the only other thing I could think of is added the end of a shower curtain rail. I did try both and this one looked slightly better so I transfer the image over. The reason I was adding the towel is because the brief stated it needed a background. The other ideas both had decent background however as this was just a bath it didn’t really have any background. In the end I felt it was better without the drawing of a towel so in the end I used Gesso to get rid of it as I had already used fixative to fix the graphite. I felt if I mentioned this in the evaluation and explain why it didn’t have really a background then it would be satisfactory.

I needed a copy of the drawing that was on the canvas for two reasons. The first was just in case everything went totally wrong I could easily start again if I had a copy of the drawing. The other reason was in case I needed to do the painting again at a later date or I needed proof that this was my painting which I could prove if I had the original drawing.

As I had already worked out the colour scheme out on the original A3 painting I decided to get on with it and do the painting in the same colours and just the same method. I started by killing the white of the canvas by using Cobalt Blue acrylic paint mixed with a substantial amount of water. All of this painting is just an under painting and will be painted over with a thicker mix of paint later.

Project 8: Still Life with Background: Primary Ideas

All the photographs taken, what do I do know?.

I’m not quite sure which one I should choose there’s a lot that I like and quite a few ideas that I loathe. I think I’m going to start off with doing a few traditional still life subjects just to ease me into it. I’m not too worried about the background at the moment or whether to use a found still life setup or compose one myself. I’ll have a look at objects like fruit, bread, bottles, flowers and all the other subject matter that comes to mind when you mention a traditional still life. I have never like pictures of flowers they don’t do anything for me at all; at least with the object you get the smell. I’ve always said I would never do a painting of flowers but I might give it a go just the once and see if I can loosen up and make a more impressionistic mark then realistic. I am going to have to start off with some observation drawings to get me into the project.

Crumpled Paper: You simply screw up a piece of paper and draw it by observing the subject looking at the values and form to try and reproduce it looking three dimensional. I spent around 30 minutes on this lesson but quickly lost interest and started wondering off doing other things.

Bread on cutting board Graphite Pencils on Cartridge Paper

Final Design Bread on Cutting Board [Acrylic on Cartridge Paper]

Orange, Satsuma and a Lemon

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This is my first and probably only painting of flowers; the medium is acrylic paint with acrylic paper as the support. I feel I loosened up with my brushstrokes and produced more of an impressionistic painting of flowers rather than a realistic image which was my Intention. The background I have made dark by using 3 colours to look like the Dutch masters earth colours, the light is coming from the front. 

For this piece I built a simple shadow box using a cardboard box with some dark material. I used a spot light clipped onto one of the boxes flap to help control the shadows. I only used two geometric shapes as I wanted to concentrate on the shadows, form and the reflected light. The piece was done in oil paints and took a long time to dry however this gave me more time to blend in some of the brushstrokes. This is my first time with oil paints so I just wanted to use two colours rather than buying a full set, I wanted to see if I like the medium before I decided to buy any more.