Another Splash

Another Splash | Acrylic on Canvas

So Christmas has finally been and gone and I am super excited to be home, put my feet up and visit family back here in the Yorkshire countryside! Before breaking up for the holidays I managed to get another painting finished (pictured above), 'Another Splash', inspired by David Hockney. 

Hockney and his paintings of California from the 70's have popped up within my research a few times, particularly because of his use of soft pastel colours and focus on the luxury of living there. I also came across an artist, Guy Yanai, who recreated David Hockney's 'A Bigger Splash' in his own style (Image of the painting here) which gave me an idea. As I have recently made a series of works based from one composition, I thought it might be an interesting idea to do the same here and paint my own 'A Bigger Splash', forming a collaborative series using one of Hockney's, Yanai's and mine. I was also imagining homes in California all looking the same; modern architecture, outdoor swimming pool, freshly mown lawn and exotic plant life surrounded by a flat blue sky. I like the idea that the houses are made from one standard mould, but once someone lives within it they take on a different personality and I think this represents that idea.

Through this process I learned a lot in terms of colour and composition which I have found to be a valuable lesson when it comes to painting. Paying attention to colour is something I have struggled with in the past as I find it difficult to get the exact colour I want before giving up. While recreating Hockney's work I was forced to focus more on colour as his soft pastels are a signature aspect of his 70's paintings. I have come to realise that I love his palette and want to try using similar colours within my own work.

Overall I'm extremely happy with how this painting turned out. I believe I've managed to capture my personality through the techniques I used to create it and through this project of doing an artist study rather than creating my own work from scratch, I've learned a valuable lesson in the use of colour and composition.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and I wish you a Happy New Year!

Light and Shadow

Just a small photo blog post of some awesome light formations I've come across in the last month or so. I think they are really interesting so I thought I'd share them with you!

A Week Of Completion

Repose With Collage | Acrylic, Wood Veneer and Collaged Photos on Calico.

Repose Inverted | Acrylic on Calico.

Transparent Repose | Acrylic on Calico.

It's been a pretty busy week for me as it's coming to the close of the first semester which means I'm scrambling to get all my work together for hand in. Having said that, this week has been super productive as I have finally finished my 2,500 word essay and completed three paintings.

I had so many ideas which emerged from past group critiques that I really wanted to test out so I decided to make a series of paintings based on 'Repose'; a still life acrylic painting I did earlier in the module. I bought myself three canvas' and started to reconstruct a different version of Repose on each one. For the first painting I collaged wood veneer and photographs of leaves onto the surface to produce a contrast between the more fabricated areas of paint and the realistic pieces of collage. With the second painting I reversed the sections of flat colour with the areas of gestural brush strokes. In doing this the background became much more expressive in tone whilst the subject maintained flat simplistic shapes. The third painting was an experiment with thickness of paint where I used a thinner mix of acrylic to build up transparent layers so that the bottom grounds became more visible. 

All three have their positives and their negatives. I love the wood veneer and the gestural background as it creates a sense of depth but I am not so keen on the transparent paint or the subject being flat shapes of colour because it becomes simplified and too dull for my taste. My favourite from the whole series is the original Repose painting because I love the colours, composition and balance of the flat blocks of colour in contrast to the expressive areas of the subjects. However, from doing these paintings I really want to concentrate on bringing more collage back into my work especially the wood veneer as I found it exciting to work with. 

In addition to the first three experiments I also painted a few abstract close ups of Repose to see what an enlarged version of the sections would look like. I used a view finder to select a small square of the painting which I then recreated on a larger scale and these are the results of this process. It gave me the chance to play around with scale and how increasing it can affect the visual result of the painting, however I didn't enjoy doing this as much as my full scale still life as I prefer to paint the whole picture where I can focus more on depth within a composition. I rely on the negative space surrounding a still life to balance out the different shapes; the close ups are overly busy and like my painting from summer (Untitled) there is too much going on to portray the harmonious atmosphere I am wanting.