finished kate wahoo….
helen is nearly done, a few problems need to be ironed out though. john (my tutor) thinks that her nose is slightly out of joint, and her left hand side nostril needs to move to the left a bit more, and to be a bit bigger. left to do on her is: her lashes, the nose, and to darken her teeth a bit. i’m going away this week, but i’ll be taking the next set of photos, ready for when i get back. they will be of me and my friend alex. john said he dosnt think it matters that my exhibition will be all females, that it adds to the concept, because its about beauty and the decaying of the blossoming flower, as it where, rather than the death of heroism or other manly attributes. if thats the way that its read, then that’s fine, as long as it dosn’t look like some kind of feminist statement then i’m happy. john aslso suggested that rather than putting the paintings all in a row, with ther skulls inbetween, that i could put the skulls underneath the big paintings, which is more relevent to historical depictions anyway. death lower to the ground, so to speak. the skulls are going to be quite quick and sketchy, which will provide a contrast to the portraits but also be a metaphor for the seped of decay.
oops, i seem to have lost the last photo of helen, but it dosnt matter because it looked crap anyway. here are the photos from today. i corrected all the obviously wrong things, still lots of little adjustments to be made tho. spoke to painting tutor today, he said he thought the one of kate worked better as a painting because of the scale of the face. he thinks that the scale matched the types of brushmarks i am using, whereas i am using the same kind of brushmarks on a painting that should be using smaller scale brushmarks. hhmmm. brought the one of kate home to finish. going to finalise my degree catalogue statement tonight, a surprsingly complex task for about a hundred words! i’ve been alloted my space for the degree show, i’ve got a thirteen foot long wall, which is great. four big paintings, three skull pictures inbetween them. just got to paint the buggers now!
rah. did more work on helen on friday (which ill put the photos of at lunchtime) but when i showed it to her she pointed out loads of problems, which is good because she is probably the best person to tell me why her own face dosn’t look right. the follwing needs to be corrected: face needs to be thinner, on both sides, the neck needs to be thinner on the left hand side. her left hand side eye needs to slope to the left more (at the moment she looks faintly chinese because it is too straight) and the corner of the left hand side of the mouth needs to, similarly, tilt down to the left. the right hand side corner has something wrong with it as well…. meanwhile , kate is nearly finished, so soon i can put her picture up with the word FINISHED under it!
worked on kate some more this morning, made her face wider, etc. still to do is her hair, on the left particularly, her eyelashes and the shadows under them, her hairline all along the top, and her nose ring needs to go in. going to work on helen now, and ill post the photos of that on monday.
the painting of kate is nearly finished! today i have to make the face a little wider in places, sort out the hair, the pattern on the clothes and anything elae that can be done while its wet. then i can leave it until monday, and do stuff like eyelashes and the shadows under the eye. also today, im going to try and put a bit more detail into the face, as i think it looks a bit plasticey – it needs to have the pores and tiny hairs that you can see close up on a face put in.
the one of helen is still lagging behind, but i made some progress with it yesterday, by changing the mouth another couple of times, and altering the shape of the face. i think i may have chosen the wrong photograph of helen, because her face is in shadow, and that makes it look very flay tonally. the one of kate is in bright sunlight, with strong shadows, so its very sculptural and therefore easier to paint. at least i know for the next lot lof photographs.
