Assignment 3 - Rebirth

My enrolment in the OCA Painting 1 model followed the early stages of treatment of my wife's breast cancer. This period produced some very powerful images as my wife overcame the affects of chemotherapy and associated treatment. I felt that this assignment provided me with the ideal opportunity to express one of those key stages, my wife's rebirth from loosing her hair to gaining a new lease of life through wigs in styles she had never been able to achieve with her natural hair then onto the growth of new hair!

Time has moved on so I have used photo reference material of the main period, prior to the new hair, supplemented by life comparison for skin colour and expressions. I also drew on the many studies of my wife I had made during the projects and associated exercises leading up to this assignment 3 final piece.

Prior to commencing the assignment I had visited an exhibition of Jenny Saunder's work in Oxford. I was impressed by the scale and mark making. In particular, I was inspired by her drawings with several images overlaying each other. I had already experimented with this approach in sketches for my figure in an interior exercise and thought this would help me express the changing image of my wife as she grew from no hair to a new exciting identity.

The approach I wanted to take was also influenced by surrealist work particularly that of Magritte as all three portraits were to be blended into one image.

After playing around with the sequence of images I was interested in, I decided to select the three most positive phases i.e no hair, new wig and new hair. However, although my wife is trying to get her hair straightened, I felt her natural wavy hair created a more interesting contrast for my painting so modified the image in my work as I progressed.

Using tracing paper and a home made light table I extracted the key features of the three phases from selected photos working initially in pencil. I then went over the pencil marks with a drawing pen selecting parts I wanted to emphasise. In order to transfer this study onto my painting support I needed to increase the size of the image. This I did by using a grid in the form of graph paper under the tracing paper study. I darkened some of the graph paper lines to aid the scaling up process. I ruled an equivalent large grid on my support which guided my new marks. This worked fairly well leaving only a few adjustments to the painted portraits when I reached the later stages of the painting.

Working over the enlarged image, I blocked out the background then added tones to the over-lapping portraits. My wife's eyes are blue and it is also one of her favourite colours. This association and the fact that it is a cooler hue than the skin tones led to my choosing a blue background. Black and white prints of my reference photos provided some guidance to light and tone. Care needed to be taken, however, as the direction of the light source in the photos varied and tonal variations had to be adjusted as I wanted to create the illusion of a common light source in the painting. From earlier exercises I had discovered that greens and cool blues laid down as tonal guides provided a good basis on which to build skin tones. After I had applied skin coloured hues to the combined portraits I noted the need for adjustments to the chins, mouths and necks. The central face and left hand semi-profile shared an eye position which initially I thought should be part of the central face. On reflection I felt that to link this eye's view to align with the left hand portrait was more dramatic.

Adding hues for wig and hair followed leading to further reflection on the lack of contrast between wig and new hair. Despite my wife liking the images as they stood, I was still keen to increase the contrast between the three faces. First I depended the tones of the left face using cool greens and blues ending up with hues reminiscent of Gauguin's work. Then I sculptured hair that aligned to my wife's natural hair characteristics. The effect produced appears to make the new hair come towards the viewer.

I believe I managed to capture my wife's essence in this work particularly in the eyes and pose of the larger image on the right.

Reflecting on the whole section on portrait and figure, I recognise that this has taken me out of my comfort zone. It has encouraged me to work to a larger scale and stretched my knowledge skill and experience of life studies developing sketches and studies into complete works. I have been pleased with my experiments with other acrylic mediums (e.g. acrylic gloss medium and acrylic paste), with adding tissue paper to create greater texture depth and using painting knives to place thicker layers of paint. I have found ways to introduce a feeling of movement into my figure work beyond more traditional static portrait poses; an area I want to explore further. I have realised that movement is not just about posture changes as illustrated in my painting of Mo Farah in the Olympics (almost like time motion photography) but can also be represented by changes in place and/or time as illustrated in this final assignment 3 piece. This concept opens new doors to me and offers food for thought.

Telling a story

Recognising the time it is taking me to progress each exercise whilst allowing for drying time and reflection , I have experimented with progressing several pieces together. This exercise and the final assignment 3 work were therefore commenced at the same time as working on the "figure in an interior" exercise.

With the 2012 Olympics in the UK this year, I was inspired by the many images of the athletes across all forms of media. The individual stories of these people who had committed themselves to years of training became exposed as they competed in their chosen events. Although my daughter was not participating in the Olympics she is a judo coach and received funding from LOCOG for coaching certification as part of the legacy arrangements so she could continue to help local people develop their own skills. With this family connection, I felt for the participating athletes as their emotional highs and lows were laid bare for all to see.

For this exercise I gathered images seeking out strong emotional stories as well as interesting images. I quickly focused onto the stories of Mo Farah and the graphic images in the press as he reached the final metres of his battle for gold.

I am interested in capturing movement in its many forms and decided to experiment with telling the story of the final stages of Mo Farah's race. Mo was very expressive with changing gestures as he took gold whilst his opponents challenged for silver and bronze positions.

I created a composition by building images inspired by press photos taken in the Olympic stadium with 80,000 spectators. I wanted to show Mo's changing emotions which I decided to illustrate by including 3 phases of Mo within my group of figures. After roughly sketching out a composition I moved straight onto a prepared acrylic paper support marking out the respective positions of the group of runners with a burnt umber hue which I watered down as the individual figures disappeared into the distance. As the paint dried I was quite pleased with the monochrome image and was tempted to stop there.

I quickly discovered that working on a group of figures in motion was fun and I was more motivated to complete this exercise than the "figure in an interior". However, due to the smaller scale of this work overall and particularly the individual elements, I was drawn to using finer brushes and more compressed mark making. When stepping back for reflection and checking the overall composition these small marks became lost in the automatic blending of marks and hues within my eyes. I also decided that the group of 5 figures I had started with didn't create the atmosphere of the race I wanted.

I, therefore, modified the composition by indicating more figures in the background of the group. To achieve a feeling of space, depth and the capacity of the stadium, I kept the background to cooler colours and very limited detail.

I was very pleased with the outcome of this exercise. This was reinforced when my son on seeing the picture wanted to point out where he had sat in the stadium demonstrating I had achieved a feeling of being there. What I would try and do differently next time is avoid putting detail onto faces when working at this scale and focus more on the relative proportions of the figures; I appear to have created a taller version of Mo Farah in the distant figure for example. Also the coloured version of my composition does not have as much depth in the group of figures as I created in the initial monochrome draft.

A figure in an interior

Is the figure or the internal space the starting point? Does the figure determine the activity of the space or does the space require compliance from the figure? What are the dominant features of the image? When previously I have produced architectural perspectives for conceptual ideas, I have placed figues to enhance the architectural design by indicating scale and to help to tell the story of the place. In this exercise I have total freedom to determine the story...HELP!

After trying out some test sketches of different options, I decided to challenge myself with a scene including reflected images. I have wanted to capture my wife engulfed in her creative activity of stitching so have used that as the theme for this exercise. The room becomes a stage set for the activity the figure is engaged in.

Whilst observing the stitching process I recognised the additional potential movement of the figure creates. I explored capturing this through over-laying three different poses and was quite pleased with the outcome. A key feature of the scene was the sowing machine, a man-made object which would add contrast between the figure and room - should this be more dominant than the figure?

Achieving a satisfying composition whilst caputring the reflected image ment I needed to work in landscape for this exercise. Once satisfyed with the concept, I sketched out the composition and took some reference photos as the complexity of the scene and its location (my wife's work room) would prevent me from painting in situ. The reference photos distored the scene bending the verticals due to the nature of the camera lense. As I did not want to replicate the photo image, I corrected the distortions based on my sketches.


Wanting to work at a scale larger than A3, I chose to work on a mount board support (700mm X 500mm) which I primed with yellow orchre mixed with white household emulsion paint. I started by drawing in the key features with a light wash then began to block in the main hues. I found working on a larger support created new challenges, forcing me to stand back more often to see the impact of my marks on the whole and work with longer brush stroaks. Paint drying issues and mix quantities added to the learning process which resulted in my use of wetter mixes to begin with that were more transparent allowing underlying marks to show through.

As I had started by drawing out the composition with brush marks, I found I needed to adjust the porportions of both figures and correct perspective lines that did not flow through properly into the refelcted image. I slowly began to build up layers working from the reflected image and backgound feeling my way into the foreground. When previously attempting a composition of this nature I would have used mechanical drawing equipment, worked in pen and added colour washes. Working directly with brush and acrylic paint was creating a completly different outcome. I was particulalrly aware that the larger and longer brushes I chose to work with added to the frustration of fuzzier and fatter marks than my prior pen work. It felt like learning to walk again. New effects and limitations throuh up new opportunities and closed down others.

Having chosen a faily complex composition and at a larger scale, I realised I was spending longer on this exercise than I had planned. I had already started to work on the next exercise and the final piece for assignment 3 at the same time to make better use of my time overall. Despite improved time management, I have now put this piece of work to one side for the time beeing so I can move on with the module as a whole. This has been a very good learning experience and I intend to come back to this exercise as time allows to close out unresolved areas of the painting.