This is the work i completed on Friday 14th last week. I managed to work alot more on this figure, working in the background, the body down to the stomache and painting in the face which i have since blurred to match the other painting. I have used different styles of painting so far; for the face a very undetailed painting that has been blurred to mask her identity and give the effect of her identity fading away as she obseses over being someone else, as well the lit areas of the body along the arms and stomache are going to be blurred into the background. I have used thicker paint on the arms, shoulders and some of the chest area making it more interesting visually and expressing more tonal detail. i have kept the stomache quite flat of paint so far because i liked the dark underpainting quality i had in the mapping that i wanted to keep in the picture. This adds to the effect of her losing herself as only some areas are in focus to the viewer.
I had some feedback from my fellow artists and realised that the hand resting on the thigh needs to be wider and to spread the fingers more apart. Also to make that arm more wider as it was very thin. I needed to move the face around as well as it was not sitting in the correct position to be looking down toward the thigh/bum area. But i need to rework this AGAIN because it is now not big enough....................................needs to be matched up to the first hairline but retain the shape and direction. As well as this, i have reworked this photo in Paint to try map out the thigh area again because it looks as though it needs to be larger, more lifted up to distribute the weight onto the back leg more. I've also worked in extra fat lines across the torso to highlight the twisting and bending of the body.
I have just realised while posting my last blog that this mapped out painting doesnt look quite in proportion and i think the leg may need to come around a bit more. Using photoshop, the thigh is now bigger and come around more though i will not redo the painting quite this big, a bit smaller than this but this will be the general plan. The hands also will need to be a bit bigger to fit the face.
Today i set myself the task of completing mapping out my 4th painting and to finish another one. I managed to get one half way to completion. I have used a blueygreen background in the end though it is mostly blue and a steely blue colour. I really love this colour as the background, i think once the paintings are all completed it will really make it striking. To begin with, i applied heavy paint to the top half of the background and figure because i wanted enough paint there to blur the face of the model with. The bluring is to represent the female losing her identity and only showing her as a bodily obsessed figure in a mass society. She has no identity other than the representation of her body. Although i am not sure how successfully I will be in applying this idea to the portrait painting of the woman pulling her face. I think that maybe a bit difficult because its so close up to her face. I may have her face more in focus but just fuzzy. Not as wiped out as she is going to be in the other 3 paintings. I quite like both of the stages of my painting so far, before i blurred it and after. Before i did, the painting looks really vibrant and expressive though iv really imagined them having this fading affect. So once i have got all the paintings to the same stage i will see what they all look like with the bluring and may work back into it.
When mapping out this painting, i have tried to paint the head in proportion with the body twice but it still dnt look quite right i think. So this edit in photoshop was done to try make a better form to work on again. Also using photoshop to work out the colours i could use for the background. I am trying to find a colour that reflects the background set of a photoshoot:
This is my tests before i began painting on a ground on my 4 canvases. I did for quick colour boxes as i wanted quite a rich tone of either yellow, orange or an earthy colour for this as it would make the skin tones of my figures more vibrant. I decided that an earthy colour like the one in the botton left colour box is what i am going to make, and to make a steely blue/grey and blue/green for the baground with plays of yellow/white light over it.