Sophie Portrait

The intention of this piece was to push me even further than before. For the Easter holidays, I had to paint an A2 free hand portrait of my younger sister Sophie. I was not allowed to draw with a pencil, I had to drive in at the deep end and paint straight onto the piece – which for me is terrifying as it something I do not do.

Figure 1 Sophie Portrait

This piece pushed and stressed me out more than the previous painting did. It stressed me out because I feel that the colours I was painting were not the colours in the photo and so they were not the right colours to paint, and I seemed to not be able to mix the correct colour – this is in relation to the skin, the other parts of the painting did not stress me out at all I think because I enjoyed and have always enjoyed painting hair and clothes more than skin colour. When I could do no more, because it had pushed me to my limit, my art teacher showed me how to paint in the style that she wanted me to, onto the painting. However, when I tried to do it, I feel that I just made it worse and the colours I was painting were not the correct ones and this stressed me out even more and demotivated me and I just did not want to carry on with it. Also, this style of painting is not the style I normally paint in, it was not controlled and organised. I had to change my style of painting, I could no longer use long brush strokes, I had to use splodges and paint the same colour in different places. I absolutely hated painting in this style, I know that I needed to try out a different style of painting, but I found myself getting stressed out by the pieces, whereas with my normal style I do not get stressed out and demotivated by those pieces, in fact I find that painting in my normal style to be calming and DESTRESSING, unlike the new style of painting my art teachers are trying to persuade me to do. I will never paint like this again, or at least I will try to get myself out of painting like this again.

Figure 2 Photograph of Sophie

From the experience of this painting, I have learnt that I can draw accurately without a grid, but I have learnt that I absolutely HATE – JE DETESTE – this painting, and I will never paint like this again, partly because it stresses me out and I do not want to be even more stressed out than I already am – I use art to calm and distress myself, but with this painting I seem to be doing the opposite. But I did like painting the hair, as for the hair I found it easy to differentiate the different colours I needed and how to get the shape and depth of the hair.

However, now looking at the photo and painting side by side and at roughly the same size, I can see that the painting I was doing was matching the skin of Sophie. But painting with colours that you cannot evidently see on the skin at a first glance confuses me and frustrates me because it makes me constantly question whether this colour is the right one. And as I was looking at it very closely whilst painting it, and the painting size was about four times as big as the photo, so I could not compare them side by side like I can now. Although I absolutely hate painting like this, I can see why this style of painting works and how it can easily create shape and depth in the painting. However, this style of painting is completely new to me, so if I had been taught to paint like this, or had more time to experiment with this style of painting, I could possibly become better at it and master the style. But, I have not and I do not. I know that I needed to try to get myself out of my comfort zone of drawing and painting by grid, and I do believe that as I have studied art I have tried to let go of the grid, or at least not use as many squares in a grid, and I try not to paint by square. By that, I mean that when I have drawn a piece by grid, I tend to ignore the grid whilst painting. I sometimes tend to ignore the grid when drawing and only use it as a reference to get the drawing as accurate as possible.

This piece has influenced the direction of my project as I will not paint in this style again, and I will continue to paint in the style I am comfortable with, but I will try to not grid up a photo as much as I have done in the past – not using a 1cm grid on the photo. But I do understand why I need to experiment with a new style of painting – but not just this one.

For this painting I painted a portrait of one of my younger sisters Sophie, scaled up onto an A2 piece of paper. I did not use a grid, instead I painted the entire piece with a deep red acrylic paint, and then I draw on the face, hair and clothing with paint. I then blocked out the hair, skin tone and clothes with a single colour for each. I then attempted to paint on the different colours and tones found in the photograph of Sophie. However, I tried and was successful with the hair and clothes, but not so much with the face. In fact, my art teacher had to help me with the skin because I did not know how to paint the skin the way I was meant to, and so she showed me how to do it. Nevertheless, I still found painting the skin hard, frustrating, and stress inducing.

Any Human Heart

William Boyd’s Any Human Heart tells the incredible life story of Logan Mountstuart and is one of my favourite books as it tells the story of a man who finds love again and again, but always remembers his one true love – Freya Deverell, who sadly dies with their daughter in a V-2 attack during the Second World War when Logan is being held in a Switzerland prisoner of war camp.

Figure 1 Any Human Heart

My intention for this piece was to paint a picture of the time Logan Mountstuart and Freya Deverell first met in William Boyd’s novel Any Human Heart. It shows the man already married and had son, into a rich family no less, ready to risk everything for that one woman who he thinks is her soul mate. And he in fact does practically lose everything. He goes from riches to rags, but his rags are a happier life with the woman he loves and daughter he treasures.

The research I have done into the artists Arthur Hughes, Josef Kote and Paul Hedley have influenced this piece, along with my own pieces like Sophie Portrait and Pride and Prejudice have influenced the way in which I have painted this piece. First, as I have said before, the artist Arthur Hughes has a huge influence on the whole of my project as he created paintings that were inspired by literature, and that is the direction I have taken in this project. Second, the artist Josef Kote and my painting Pride and Prejudice influenced the way in which I painted the skin, as by studying his work and trying out his techniques had a strong influence and gave me a technique that I could use to paint the skin of people successfully – using one base colour and then dramatic and bold colours to add some of the other skin tones that really stand out. Josef Kote has also influenced me in the way in which I paint the background in my pieces. Before this piece, I felt that if I were to paint a background that had buildings in, I would use a naïve art style like Helen Elliott (as in my Dancing In The Street At Night paintings), and if it were a landscape, I would use techniques like Josef Kote (as in my Pride and Prejudice painting). However, now having done this piece, I feel that I am going to use the techniques I have used here for the background in my final piece. Finally, the artist Paul Hedley has sort of influenced the way I paint the clothes and possibly the hair, however, the bigger influenced of this is from the experience of painting my Sophie Portrait where I found that I liked and preferred to paint the hair and clothes in that way compared to the other techniques I have used.

I feel that this piece has been incredibly successful, and I probably the most successful painting I have done in this project so far, as I have been able to find different techniques of painting that work for me and are effective when I use them together. The blurriness of the background created by the harsh and loose brush strokes helps to not distract the viewer’s attention from the main part of the painting – the two people. Then contrasting this with some very different techniques of the defined controlled brush strokes in the hair and clothes, and sort of in the face creates definition and holds the viewer’s attention. I believe that these two contrasting techniques work very well together and I plan to use them for my final piece.  

Figure 2 Screen shot from the TV series Any Human Heart that
I based my painting on.

From this experience I have learnt that I can take two very different styles and use them together to create an even more effective piece than if I were to paint a piece using one technique – this painting is more effective and successful than any of my other paintings as I have taken what I have learnt from each and put all of that into one piece. And I will carry on painting like this when I use acrylic paint.

For this painting, I firstly gridded up a screen shot from the TV series of Any Human Heart into 2cm squares, scaled it up onto an A1 sheet of paper, and used this grid only as a guide to draw from. For the background, I chose one main colour – light blue – to paint the entire background and then painted the other colours to create the actual background on top using harsh and lose brush strokes. In fact, for each part of the painting, I painted a base colour and then added the different colours and tones on top to get the depth, shaped and colour of each part.