Righty ho, I'm back with another update on the busy schedule of my existence. So since the start of university, I have had to participate in a selection of workshops in order to gain skills in various areas of art and design (Which was awesome may I add) and this week I did good old fashion painting. This might not seem that interesting when there are so many options available in my subject but painting has been on of the pillars of my work since I became interested all that time ago.

Anyway, we were greeted with a monstrous piece of paper each stapled to the wall of our studio. This was the selected substrate chosen for us and the canvas for my next abstract work. This workshop was presented in a walk through style which gave it a little spice, as the uncertainty stopped me from attempting to plan my painting and envision an end point, as there wasn't a specific one in site apart
from simply a painting.

I started with creating marks with found objects as well as creating as random marks as I can. This to me was almost a release from my usual style which is tight and precise. This was followed by the application of primary colours in several shades onto the existing marks. My weapon of choice was a palette knife but I also included dripping and dry brushing. The techniques and ideas behind this piece for me created a totally unpredictable outcome that is now one of my favourite works.

It has been quite a while since I have been let lose with something as large and abstract as that and I must say it had almost a therapeutic feeling to it by the way I for once felt totally free to just let loose and see what happens. I wasn't bogged down with the fear or acceptance or the lack of perfection. The word abstract from the beginning felt like the key to this slightly uptight lock I have in regards to my style of work. If you are like me, in you have a strict and perfectionist way of working, this exercise is very enlightening to what you are capable of as well as the possibilities. (As well as releasing some tension, I was in an awful mood that day and hell just being let free on a piece of paper was exactly what my tense little self needed!)




Plus, the skin paint job looked absolutely awesome. I'm not sure why, but I just love the natural chaos of an artist's hand at work.


Here is the finished product, and don't be fooled, it is rather large. The actual scale of it is visible in my time lapse I created for you all below.

Hello my lovelies,
Since I'm going to be mega busy with my job this week (just this week though I promise!), I wanted to share some of my past work with you. I'm not trying to take the easy option I just think it will be nice to show you some of my old sketchbooks and how they have got me to where i am.

Unfortunately my cringe worthy GCSE sketchbooks have disappeared so I will have to start with my slightly less cringy A level one. This book is from my second year of A level and it my exam book (had a set start and deadline during the year). We were given a really awkward set of themes (seen on the first page below) to follow but thank goodness I was actually able to pull this one out the bag.

Obviously this isn't my whole sketchbook because it's tiny and I did have to take some of my better work to put in my portfolio but this is the bulk of the best work I did during this project. My idea for this body of work was to 'Elevate the Ordinary' and make regular things like people and faces that bit more interesting and unique.

I did decide to do some artist research during the beginning of the project to gain a little inspiration and knowledge on how other artists had elevated the ordinary.




As you can see I began to take an interest in linework and developing my own illustrative line style.





Here I was totally new to Photoshop so to me this layered image below meant a lot to me effort wise.


And my final piece (sorry about the blurriness) was a large, A2 board with a mixed media piece with tissue paper and fabric with a layered black outline on top.


I was so proud of this book when I handed it in because I felt I had really tried and worked hard to vary the style and technique throughout this project. In hindsight I could probably annotate more and explore more artists work but overall I was and am still pretty proud of my A level efforts. Oh, and if anyone was wondering what level my work was on, I got an A for both AS and A level which i was soo happy with!

I will see what other sketchbook I can dig up and will be back soon with more sneak peeks into my past and maybe even current sketchbooks in the not too distant future! Thanks for reading and see you soon.