March is the month of my birthday! After finishing my last piece
early March my 30th birthday had arrived and I got whisked away from my
studio for about a week. I had started working the circular support I
made 2 blogs ago, but the birthday interruption presented itself as a
healthy break and helped me to return to the work more focus and
refreshed.
Here is a photo of my most recently finished painting, I have been working on this for about 3 weeks excluding the time it took to make and prime the painting support. It is oil on circular wood panel about 130cm in diameter:
I then did second sketch to refine the figure of the girl puppet from the first sketch.
The next stage is to refine the drawing. The painting support had been painted with a base of powder blue, as the drawing developed the charcoal seemed to have a warm brownish glow against the calm blue, I really liked this aspect in the piece this inspired me to start pondering a colour scheme for the painting.
Here is a photo of my most recently finished painting, I have been working on this for about 3 weeks excluding the time it took to make and prime the painting support. It is oil on circular wood panel about 130cm in diameter:
Here are the progress photos this finished painting:
I began
with a couple of rough sketches the first sketch is just a scrappy
thumbnail with a small notion of the pieces composition with small notes
expanding ideas of some elements of this sketch.
I then did second sketch to refine the figure of the girl puppet from the first sketch.
This
second sketch is still quite rough, I use this sketch to trace up the
enlarged composition using an 'artograph' a projection tool that uses a
mirror, light bulb and a big lenses to project and focus the image. The
photos below show the trace up, at this stage I am quite messy with the
image as I am still working out it's composition. I rub parts out with a
large sponge and redraw bits until am happy with how the figure and
shapes feel to me.
The next stage is to refine the drawing. The painting support had been painted with a base of powder blue, as the drawing developed the charcoal seemed to have a warm brownish glow against the calm blue, I really liked this aspect in the piece this inspired me to start pondering a colour scheme for the painting.
Part of the drawings composition was a little more technical as the cog motif had to be symmetrical to make them convincing.
I like
the motif of cogs I use them here as a depiction of energy in the
universe moving, where mind and spirit meet. The characters with the
spotted tentacles represent new energies of ideas and reflections. They
come in and cling making adjustments to the universal systems at play. I
like using dense patterns with lots of circle shapes also depicting
this psychedelic motion.
I made a
simple card stencil with cog notches on it in two sizes. I used this to
aid my drawing, using a drawing pin and string much like a compass to
draw the circular form of these larger shapes.
Once the
drawing was complete I fixed it with clear matt Acrylic based spray
varnish. This locks the charcoal in so I can begin to paint the image
with oils.
The next
stage is the painting stage. I started this time with the face of the
puppet girl then slowly working my way out to the edges until the
painting was done, building up transparent washes of colour and
gradually added sharp edges, flat colour and details with a fine brush.
Here are some close-up photos of the finished painting:
