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.