I have been concentrating today on the large scale painting now called Guilty Pleasure and also doing a number of samples on spray paint text on a union jack background and a painterly ground.
I have by testing improved the way I have laid down the text but this has really been by trial and error and many errors have been made. But yet, little things learnt, like laying black down by stencil and then adding another colour directly on top staight away brings another layer of depth and energy to the finished design. Also, due to the nature of the spray paint and the process itself it creates cracking as it dries and this creates a useful effect.
So I am getting more sophisticated but whilst as a step in the right direction I am pleased overall with GET YOUR COAT as a painting my concerns for development are:
The painting of the woman is far from perfect – left eye is not right but for now I am happy to present at a reasonable standard and move on, as it is more important to develop ideas than spend too long on a vanity project.
The union jack, text and image together remind me of a photoshop layering exercise, mimicking magazine language so on that level it is successful.
The GET YOUR COAT text was all going okay until I managed to get a line of spray paint between GET and YOUR which I had to remove as best I could with turps but it left a stain and as such, I decided to messy up all the other areas around this text to hide by mistake. I additionally dripped red paint using turps down the image, adding to the metaphorical staining of the image and its connotations.
I added the earlier used stencils for REVIEW and ON SALE NOW as they have feminist issues I want to discuss and by putting them on their side instead of horizontally like the main text I wanted them to not compete with the main words. I have spray painted those letters much better so my next attempts I hope will be better polished.
I am a little unsure how this will be read by an audience so I have put 3 works up in the exhibition area to test audience response. I can then consider this before making the next large work. Also, only one of the 3 includes a figurative image. Is it necessary at all or shall I move onto large text paintings instead, although my instinct is to resist this.
Time to stand back now and let this filter through a little and consider audience response.
