new Ideas

This is another idea that Jake has passed onto me to do as part of our collaborative ideas. He has given me the skeleton o work with so that I can map and design what the outside of the creature will look like. This creature is part fish part cat; a Catfish. However, evolution has made this fish have the legs of a cat but the res of the body is fish, with fish fins and tail. The creature will mainly have the scales of the fish over the body, but the rest, the legs of the creature, are to be covered in cat fur. I have done a compostional sketch of this creature in my sketchbook, but to get a colour compostion if this becomes a serious idea to take forward, I may need to do a few paintings to get the colours correct, though i will be using the natural colours of the animals, it just depends what visual imagery i can collect together to inform the colour combinations.

Body plan of Jakes BatBird and new ideas

I took a copy of jakes plan of the creature through tracing it from his studio to take home to work with, as i need to make a start on the collaboration work with jake. Also discussed what other creatures Jake has created that may look interesting to do. Decided upon a creature that was a fish with legs as this could be a more likely strain of evolution to happen as the BatBird is less of a possibility to happen and appears more fanatsy.

This afternoon i spent working on the birdman painting. I managed to complete the wing i was doing and then start the second wing. I managed to work on the join of feather between skin, making the feathers get smaller and further apart the closer they got to being in contact with the human skin.

I started too outline the edges of the feathers as this helped me too plan in advance where the feathers would be going and it helped me too work faster. At the moment i am really enjoying this painting, and i am combining the colours of the skin and the greys and whites of normal feathers into the colour pallet of the feathers to give it a more natural look and a feeling of the two seperate creatures joining together.

This is as far as i got to with the feathres today. I managed to nearly complete this whole wing but not quite. The next thing i need to do is to finish this wing and start the next wing.

I also did the last coat of my primer onto the canvas today and it appears to have stretched really well. I think i may have done the last coat of primer with too much pva glue, i shall have too see what effect this has on my abstracted painting next week.

After restretching my canvas with water and waiting for it to dry, i went back to my painting and started on the feathers. Originally, i was going to go to a craft shop and buy some feathers that I could then collage into my painting to give it a more 3d shape and be less flat. However, i started to paint the feathers in as i thort this wud give the collaged feathers a nice background to go against. When i started painting though, i found i liked the detail in the feathers i was creating and it seewmed a shame to blot this out with a collage of feathers, so i decided against it and carried on with painting the feathers.
Also, i primed my canvas with a standard primer of watered down PVA. managed to do 2 coats of this through the day.

To get away from working on the birdman painting for a bit, i decided i would begin a larger canvas painting of the abstraction of inside the body. To save on my studio time by making a frame, i went to see if any of the old frames from the previous year would be suitable. I found one that was just the right size, as i wanted one that wasnt too massive but big enuf too allow me more room for experimentation. I then stretched my canvas to the frame, but i did not do it well enuf so before priming the frame, i tried too tighten up my canvas by just using a water wash over the front and sides of the canvas to tighten it. This would then enable me to work on a stronger canvas that was less likely too sag.

Dry-Point print

Over the study week, i have been working on my dry-point print(s)as another medium to experiment with alongside drawing and painting. So far, i have drawn out a 'DeerWomen' that is now ready to be cut and printed. If this goes weel, then i am going to do more dry-point prints on a smaller scale. These will be portrait prints of mutating people and so far im planning drawings of a fish/man and a tiger/women.

Possibilities

In my sketchbook, I have began to work out compositions for 2 new pieces of work that I am intersted in taking forward into either prints or into painting. This is because at the moment I am finding painting in oils on board quite an interesting process to be working with. This composition is of a part tiger/part women creation. I am planning to have the front half of the body (head-front legs) of the tiger and the rest of the body of a women. I have decided to do it ike this because the image will show the body stuck, as if morphing, in between forms in an orquad postiion. There will be traces of the tigers fur going over the skin of the human part so that the body looks more like a whole than having a distinct line between the end of the tiger and the beginning of the women.



This is the second compositional ide that I have come up with, and after completing both compositional drawings, I am more sure now that the Tiger/Women will be a painting and this new one a dry-point print as the quick, expressional lines in this Fish/Man drawing, would become quite expressive and striking in a print, more so than the Tiger/Women as I see this being better expressed with paint. So as well as the Deer/women print, I am going to be priniting this Fish/man as well and then perhaps consider another area to experiment further in, in either print or painting.

Email from Annie Halliday saying she was back at her residency and asking if I would like to consider my work experience with her now she was starting up her project again. I emailed her back on the 7th Feb saying that i had had some "...replies for work experience in schools but i would still love the opportunity to shadow you. What dates would be best for you? If it would be possible, could we discuss at least one weeks worth of work experience?"

Ihave not yet heard back from the schools, but if i get all the experience from the schools as well as a weeks worth with Annie, that will be 2weeks and a day of work experience that I can take forward with me.

Emailed back the two schools Simon Langton and the Archbishops School to confirm and change dates to work around current projects. I asked for a later week in March from The Archbishops and for Simon Langton i asked for dates late in March on a Thursday or Friday that covered the most Art classes. I need to keep in contact with the teachers and email them again if i do not hear from them in a few weeks.

This is how the wood painting is going so far. I am not applying the paint to heavily as i really like the effect of the wood pattern coming through the painting, almost making the image become apart of the wood instead of having heavy paint just sit ontop of the wood that may make it look out of place. I think it creates an illusion that the figure is actually somewhere. And having the wood texture still come through the painting fits with the reason of using the wood as a material as it still gives it a scientific lab feel.

The feet are a mixture of a human foot and the talons of the bird.

I started to draw onto the wood this morning, using the Birdman as a starting point and to use to experimant on materials as i already have the Birdman drawn out and done. Before I started the painting, I had to use the multi-surface primer (ESP) so that the oil paint would not just soak into the wood when i started painting and it would save time from doing an acrylic undercoating. After finally scalling the image onto the wood i primed it then carried on doing my experiment with drawing onto the abstracted painting while the ESP was drying.

I am really starting to like this mixture of painting and drawing, i think i would like to work with both this idea and the more realistic painting to give myself a wider perspective to work with. I started drawing more figures into the painting using charcoal, this time not making any mutations to the body as obvious as the Birdman i did previously. I think this adds to the abstractness of the painting and i may also explore using symbols in the painting as well. I think the painting needs more figures in the painting so that you cannot focus completley on individual figures. I hope to at least do one more of these paintings to work alongside at least 3 paintings on wood.


I spent the afternoon starting my painting. I wasnt sure what the painting was going to look like, what colour palette to use so i just launched into it and i am very pleased with the result so far. I didnt want to spend more time thinking about what i am going to do, i needed to just start being creative and i am quite pleased by the work i have done today. The wood painting is starting to look good and not that i can take a step back at the end of the day, i can see where i want this painting to go, i am going to continue painting the whole body and the wings, but i am going to get some feathers and collage them into the painting.

Today i decided i would work more on the abstract painting and what i would be doing with it, how i could take it forward as a piece of work or whether it was going to be a failed experiment, a dead end. As well as this, i got another piece of wood that had a nice textured pattern to work with, to do a painting on and depending on how this turns out, will decide what i am going to do with the image board.

I started out not very sure on how i was going to take forward the abstracted painting of inside the body as i originaly was going to do a painting in oil over the top of it or perhaps acrylic but then decided that this may take something away from the abstracted feel to the painting. I carried on though, choosing the birdman as the image i would use over the top and started to do a light sketch of it onto the canvas. During doing this though, i realised that a drawing maybe what the painting needed so i chose to use charcoal as it is easier to blend the image into the painting and really make it become a whole image.

Preparation for paintings.

Tuesday and Wednesday i have neen doing preparation work for paintings. I have been thinking about the backgrounds of the paintings, whether they should have the college of images i have done on the image board, or a wash of acrylic paint that looks like abstracted cells, which i played with in my developing a fine art identity. However, after a chat with John while doing this painting, i decided that this background, because it was so abstract, would not work with a more realistic image but i am still going to do a quick painting of a mutated body over the top of both the image board and the abstracted cell background, to decide which would be best, but i am not going to be using the collage of imagery in my final pieces as this could turn my work very political and make it perhaps insulting to some viewers. I have also decided that the image board is just going to be a maquette to help me decide on what materials to work on and the type of background, the wood that gives it a scientific feel or something else?