Usually when I create a greyscale painting I paint the background first, but because I had already painted the canvas Magnolia to prime it, I decided to leave it and keep the raw material colour of the canvas. By doing this I was enable to include the colour of the background through my figure. As I progress with the figure the background is starting to appear more blank and empty, focusing the attention away from the figure with all the negative space behind it. Some of my peers suggested a light colour wash over the work. I thought this was a good idea but the only downfall is that I don’t usually have colour mixed in with my grayscale paintings so it would derive away from my style of work. I might try and paint a grey scale background but I will have to be carful that it doesn’t drain the energy away from my figure.
Bit my bit my form is starting to take shape. The magnolia background is still visible through the paint in areas as i haven’t layered the paint on thick at this moment in time. Parts of the form i have left bare on purpose so that you can see the bare background as part of the persons skin. The gaze is strong on the image i have created. Sourcing this image has not just come from one particular image it ranges from different photographs that i have collage together as a process through painting.
Finally i managed to buy the material and construct my canvas ready for my final degree project. There are 4 Canvases in total that are about 5ft high. This is my first time on working on large scale canvases. Creating images onto a large scale can seem very daunting for the first time especially when like me, you don’t use squares to scale up your drawings.
I primed my canvases with a magnolia emulsion, to keep the raw colour of the original material. (in case i chose not to darken my background.)
I took these canvases home, and was contemplating what i should paint. But i suppose i was reluctant in doing so as the canvases where larger than anything i had worked on before and they where new so i wanted to make sure i was doing the wright thing.
This was until my 2 year old daughter came to see what i was doing and naturally picked up one of my paint brushes and tried to paint on my canvas. Which made me re-think, if a 2 year old can just walk up to a canvas that large and just put brush to canvas then so could i. So that’s what i started to do.
