For
this piece my art teachers where trying to tear me away from my normal style of
organised and controlled painting, and make me explore a different style
of painting – free hand. I also wanted to paint a picture of the most heart
warming and sweetest love stories I have ever heard – and that may be because
they are my grandparents so there is sentimental value.
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| Figure 1 Grandparents |
My grandparents first met
when they were young before World War II, and sadly my Grandad moved away.
During the time they were separated, my Grandad went off to fight in World War
II and did not marry, whereas my Grandma married and had my Auntie. Decades
after they were separated, they met again and fell in love. In some ways, my
Grandad waited for my Grandma, and from the photos and videos I have seen, they
were one of the happiest couples I have ever seen and have ever known. So I
wanted to tell their story and paint a piece that depicts them.
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| Figure 2 Photograph of my Grandparents |
The background of the
painting was sort of inspired by the artist Josef Kote. I tried to paint an
abstract background, but I do not believe that it has been that successful. I
feel that the most successful part of this painting is my Grandad’s hand. Here I
have been able to create shape and depth, and although the colours are not
completely accurate with the photo (his real hand is more orangey, whereas the
painted hand is more purple / greeny). However, I feel that where I have tried
to add the darker tones, it has ruined the painting. I did try to save it, but
that just made it worse. The same happened when I was trying to add more purple
tones to my Grandad’s forehead – I added it, it went wrong, I tried to save it,
that failed. Thing part I found the most difficult was the painting the skin
tone, whenever I tried to mix a colour, it looked right on the paintbrush, but
wrong on the paper, so I actually ended up in some ways, mixing the colours on
the piece of paper. This did start to work, as I decided to be fearless, but I
then put on too much of one colour and then the wrong colour and it just
failed. I then got frustrated with it and become stress about it. Furthermore,
for this piece, I still gridded up the photo and scaled it up onto a bigger
piece of paper. This allowed me to drawn an accurate portrait of my
Grandparents.
This painting has influenced
the direction of my project as I will try to paint like this again to try to
improve my skill, and enable me to experiment with different styles of
painting. It has also influenced me to try and paint another piece that is more
about using the styles and techniques of the artist Josef Kote.
