Brief;

 - Produce a body of work executed on appropriate surfaces consisting of small still lives, interior scenes and self portraits, thinking          about scale, brush type, surface and manner of application
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AIMS;

 - Become more comfortable using a range of paint media
​ - Exposure to the influence of a range of different artists, illustrators and their work
 - Think about how the choice of media and technique play an important role in giving meaning to any given illustration

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ACRYLIC;

Research;

Edouard Vuillard -

Ewan McClure -

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Still Lifes;

For these first acrylic pieces I was looking at the work of Ewan McClure oil paintings, and trying to adapt the technique to work with acrylic. 

​I was dissatisfied with my first attempt so I tried again and I was much happier with the results. I tried not to overwork it and instead imply detail. although I do think I took it too far and should have stopped sooner.

While I was working on the still lifes, I watched a video featuring McClure (linked in the section above) painting a portrait, which had helpful insight to his technique and also a comparison of this technique in oil vs acrylic paint. I applied his approach of starting very roughly blocking in shapes and slowly working in detail in my second painting and achieved much better results. I think had I carried this forward into my subsequent work I'd have had a better time.

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Room;

For the room I was looking at the work of Edouard Vuillard, although I wasn't successful in emulating his technique. I began with an underpainting before promptly painting over the entire thing in solid blocks of colour and neglected to photograph it beforehand. Throughout the process I made several attempts to get the impressionistic mark making and application of colour that characterises Vuillard's work, but I struggled to get the paint to behave in the way I wanted it to and kept painting over paint that wasn't dry enough, smearing the colours which I would then end up painting back over. As a bonus the painting ended up feeling like some sort of liminal hellscape, which was not my intention but nonetheless an accurate refelction of how I felt when I was working on it.

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Self Portrait;

This was supposed to be my second attempt at learning from Vuillard's work -  my plan was to do an underpainting and then apply splotches of paint in more of a dry brush technique - however, I ended up getting a bit carried away and did not do that. I actually think I prefer how the underpainting looked before I worked into it more to the finished piece.

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WATERCOLOUR;

Research;

John Sell Cotman -

Ambrose McEvoy-

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Still Lifes;

The one above and to the right was an initial test of colours and layout before I produced a more finished version (left). I tried to emulate the loose, gestural mark making of Ambrose McEvoy's work, and I think that I got the softness of it even if my colours were a little washed out.
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For the rest of these I'd kind of lost the plot and was just doing whatever, messing around with the materials and seeing what effects I could get with them. I had covid this week and was pretty sick at this point so there wasn't much technique or direction to speak of (the acrylic room also suffered this fate). However, I did find working wet in wet much more fun than working wet on dry in washes and I especially like the mountain I painted (bottom).

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Self Portrait;

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Room;

I didn't finish my first attempt (above) at a watercolour room as I wasn't happy with how messy the application of washes was. The second attempt (below) still suffers from this a little as I was impatient waiting for the paint to dry fully between layers, but its a little better controlled. I don't think I really understand how to layer watercolours to achieve the results I want which made learning from Cotman's work hard to put into practice, and I feel that better use of my time when researching the materials and techniques of the artist would have prevented this.