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.

Portrait - conveying character

I decided to work from photo references for this exercise having discovered how difficult it is to capture a smile when working from life. Continuing a theme of using family members and their partners as source material, I have used my son's fiance as the model. My aim was to capture her open expression.

In an attempt to identify key features that expressed that part of her character, I prepared some studies using tracing paper and pen. To bring these sketches alive I added colour to the back of the tracing paper so the pen marks would still be visible. The result was cartoon like images with the pen marks too even and not differentiating/subtle enough. I then worked in pencil using different views trying to identify tone. I found the top left image most life like as I had taken more trouble over measuring proportions.

From these preparatory studies I felt the frontal pose expressed the character best. Using my sketch book I checked my proposed composition and tonal intentions.

Working on a prepared acrylic paper support, I sketched out the portrait with burnt umber washes indicating tonal variations. I found that this looser style of setting out the portrait with washes was freer and flowed better than working with undiluted pigments on a portrait sketched in chalk, as I had with my last exercise. Continuing to use washes I started to add skin and hair colour then worked on the clothes and background.

In order to improve the contrast between the portrait and background I over-laid ultramarine to the earlier background washes, mixing white into the blue where I wanted to lighten the tone. I was then able to start adjusting the portrait hues from hair to clothes bringing out greater depth and contrast.

The skin tones were the last to be adjusted. I have found that by leaving my paintings for a few days before the final washes and marks are added I have time to compare my draft work with the reference pieces and enhance tonality and expression. The result shown below has produced more depth to the face, better tonal representation of the hair and life to the eyes.

Comparing my head and shoulders portraits, I found the last two exercises most successful. I believe I had achieved more confidence by this stage in mixing skin tones and drawing directly onto the support in light washes. Also being restricted in available time to work from life, I have found the use of photo referencing suits my circumstances and allows greater opportunity to capture fleeting expressions or to exaggerate features. Technically the changing light and sitter's comfort working in natural daylight from life was very challenging particularly as I feel self conscious of my slowness whilst I build confidence with colour mixing and my mark making.

I have observeded other artist's work at various galleries, in books and on-line during this project and am still discovering different, new and interesting expressive techniques I intend to experiment with as time allows. I have captured some examples of these works in my sketchbooks for inspiration but accept these are only limited reproductions of the original works. I have yet again experienced why some artists can spend a lifetime studying and exploring a single theme.

Portrait - creating mood & atmosphere

In preparation for this exercise I made reference to works by other artists i.e. Monet, Modigliani and Picasso.

I particularly liked Picasso's "Girl in a Chemise" and Modigliani's "Portrait of a young woman seated". Using my wife as my model I produced some pastel studies in my sketchbook inspired by these reference pieces. I wanted to create an image that expressed happiness/cheekiness without being completely true to life. I wanted to use a pose similar to Modigliani's but employing a dark background as used by Picasso.

I liked the joy, warmth and happiness expressed in the image of my wife wearing a wig (figure on the left). However, I was attracted to the cheekier image on the bottom right created by elongating my wife's shape and stylising key features.

I played with this idea creating a rough collaged image. Before proceeding further, I decided to research Modigliani's work and in the process came across a study of Vogue covers (Packer,William: The Art of Vogue Covers, 1909 - 1940) which included examples by Helen Dryde, Lepape and Benito produced in the 1920's where features had been elongated. I produced some reference sketches of both the Vogue images and works by Modigliani from 1917-1919.

Working with a photo reference, I experimented with the elongation of my wife's features based on the Modigliani pose above (except in my version the left hand is on the right breast).

Having enjoyed producing the collage, I decided to work in a mixed media format for this exercise using mount board as a support. Prior to setting out the image on the mount board, I referred back to some earlier tonal studies using side light from a north facing window.

I then marked out the approximate position of the image on the mount board support using a chalk pencil indicating where the highlighting would be. Tissue paper was then applied with PVA glue and allowed to dry before applying a base layer of white household emulsion paint mixed with acrylic paint.

I used a green acrylic paint for areas that would be exposed skin. I applied a purple background and then started to work up the hues of the portrait. I realised that although purple had looked fine in my earlier pastel sketch, now that I was using slightly different hues in acrylic colour the skin tones were not contrasting sufficiently with the background. I referred back to Ostwald "The colour primer",Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969 recommended by my tutor in order to re-assess colour contrasts and chose to replace the purple with a blue green. I also adjusted the expression of the face, slimmed and emphasised the muscles in the neck and thinned the hand and fingers.

I am pleased with the expression and overall effect of the final piece which has achieved what I had set out to create. The colour of the lips are less pronounced than I had intended but they seem to work in an under-stated way. I have tried various skin tones as I have worked up this portrait and in future intend to experiment with colour mixes prior to starting the final painting. I prepared some pencil studies of hands but working in paint is more complex and needs some more practise to achieve something more life like. I enjoyed creating the textured surfaces with tissue paper and creating highlights/grey tints to the hair by running a painting knife over the textured surface.

Head and shoulders portrait

I started with my wife acting as my model, preparing a number of study sketches before setting up a pose for the portrait.

I then tried out a colour and composition study again in my sketchbook. This study was completed in one sitting but I took a photo for reference purposes enabling me to reposition my model after breaks. This first colour study produced an image that appeared to age my wife but we are still talking! I had prepared the support with an ochre wash onto which I built layers of acrylic using brush marks. The finished image was flat, the lower face proportions were too narrow and the whole image felt lifeless.

For the next piece I worked on an acrylic paper support that I had prepared with a mix of white emulsion paint and green acyclic paint. I outlined the portrait with washes before adding layers of colour with brushes. Then to create more life I started to work with painting knives building up thicker and rougher marks.

To get maximum light and give my model a comfortable pose, I set up this portrait in my conservatory. I worked for about 2 hours with breaks before I reached the stage in the right image above. I was not satisfied with the shape or proportions of the eyes or mouth and was struggling with colour matching as the light changed as the sun moved round and the paint dried to a darker hue than when wet. I took some photos for referencing and left the portrait for a few days before returning to it. 

When I went back to this portrait I worked in my studio using the reference photos. Working with filbert brushes, I lightened the skin tones and built up the detail to the background and clothes. I also improved the proportion of the lips and shape of the eyes and nose. I took breaks to allow the paint to dry and reach its final hue and periodically I checked the painting against my actual model as the photo's do not reproduce the skin tones very well. I still seem to have aged my wife in the portrait but am more satisfied with this image than the earlier study.

I am not satisfied with the accuracy of the eyes and matt finish of the raw acrylic paint and may experiment with applying a glaze of acrylic gloss medium over the whole picture. I prefer the additional texture provided by using a painting knife but this has produced a less realistic finish to the skin areas which are soft and smooth in life. It has helped, however, to distinguish between the focus of the picture and the surrounding details. I find the darkening of the acrylic hues on drying frustrating as I struggle to achieve the colour matching I am looking for. I am learning to take breaks to allow the drying to take place before proceeding with new layers.

To experiment with capturing a more natural smile, I worked up a soft pastel sketch of my daughter from a photograph. The photo was adequate for capturing the pose but had limitations in assessing skin hues.

Due to the time it takes me to complete a painted portrait and to create portraits that are  satisfying, I have discovered the advantages of mixing time with the model and studio work from reference photos. I have found that working with live models is far more challenging than still life both in terms of considering the model's comfort and capturing the colour variations on skin hues and tones. 

Self Portraits

I started sketching myself before selecting examples produced by other artists or comparing my approach to that taught by accomplished tutors. As a result my initial sketches are not porportionally accurate with some features exaggerated.

I discovered that I was capturing a staring pose, long faced with relaxed mouth. Being a mirror image I was also producing an image not seen by others with my bent nose pointing in the oposite direction to reality. The sketches helped to define tone and where to darken the background to enhance contrast. The proportion and shape of my face were not factually correct in the early images which I improved in the following sketch with glasses.

Prior to working in colour I made reference to other artisits' work I seen at prior gallery visits and from internet searches. I selected a range of examples of other artists' work I found interesting (i.e. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Lowry, Fiona Scott, Henri Matisse and David Hockney).

The portraits with simple backgrounds help to focus the eye on the person. In the Van Gough example the features of the room in the background add context as does the paint brush in the foreground of the David Hockney watercolour. The two ages of Hockney show both his developing style and confidence with mark making. Lowry and David Hockney have illustrated the wide eyed stare that painting from a mirror image creates.

When creating my own painted self portrait study, I worked from the eyes and mouth outwards thus improving the proportions of the final image. I worked with painting knives on the face to give texture when I put down middle layers before finishing with a filburt brush. My wife thought I had created a sad looking image that made me look 10 years older! I discovered how difficult it is to paint a smiling image as holding the smile for long periods is uncomfortable and leads to a false smile. The result is a more serious pose. I am pleased with the proportions and shape in the colour study portrait below but have over emphasised the redness of my skin colour.

Working on a contrasting green mid-tone support, I prepared a second painted image using brush maks only. Again I have produced an image with elongated features and an over rudy complecture. I feel I have caputured my eyes, forehead, hair and mouth well. However my nose is too long and my lower face too narrow. I believe the image is closer to how my father looks than me - perhaps a preminition of how I am going to age! By photograghing my sketchbook page in a mirror I have reversed the image on the right to appear as others see me.

I am impressed by the way the red tones stand out from the mid-green of the prepared support. I intend to play around with my own portrait focusing on key features similar to Matisse's approach.