Since I have been focussed on my research paper and struggling with managing ongoing health issues since the Summer, I had rather let progress on my MA portrait research project slide. I have managed to do seven of the ten interviewsI realised , but I hadn't made any progress on the actual paintings or the flags, since finalising the style through some test portraits in July.
I realised that I need to but some turbo boosters into the project if I am going to deliver all the elements (as I currently envisage) by the end of the MA course. Since I paint the oil portraits in thick layers of textural marks - they can take several months to dry, so I set myself the (perhaps too ambitious) target of getting all the backgrounds painted before 3rd December when I am travelling to Germany for two and half weeks - with the intention of starting work on the faces over Christmas (I cannot be bothered celebrating Christmas this year given how traumatising last Christmas was) and into the new year.
I started out with Kristyna's portrait, I am slightly nervous about this one because I really wasn't happy with how her test portrait turned out. We revised the colour choice during her interview (which is in my protected blogs folder) and I have improved on the style with the other test portraits, so I am hopeful the final portrait will turn out better.
I was really happy with how Lora's test portrait turned out, so I am trying to keep the final portrait as similar as possible - just on a bigger scale. I thought it was cute that Boudicca came over and tried to lie on her portrait, since we stayed at Lora's for a few weeks earlier this year. I posted this photo on my Instagram stories and tagged Lora, saying that Boudicca missed her - Lora shared the story saying she missed Boudicca too.
I decided to keep the background stripes as uniform as possible across the paintings, to provide some visual consistency to the whole set, since all of the colour choices are completely unique and often contrasting. So, the stripes are all 2cm wide. I realised that it looks a bit like wall-paper, but hopefully when I add the splatters it will make the portraits more dynamic and less contrived. I also quite like the wall-paper metaphor, which reflects some of the insights from their interviews about cultivating (phusical and social) spaces where they feel represented and included, as though my participants have surrounded themselves with colours which reflect their identity.
The process for drawing out the faces is quite methodical and requires high levels of concentration to achieve accuracy. I work from a photograph and upscale measurements to get all of the features and profile in proportion, before the more creative process of splitting the face into shapes based on shadows and light. JC's was the first portrait where I hadn't done a test version of the oil portrait, with the compounding issue that I was working from a different photograph to the oil pastel design, as well as JC switching his colour choice during the interview - so, it felt like a whole new design, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
I'll be honest, I find this kind of painting quite a chore as it's especially tricky to get the thick oil paint into as neat and straight lines as possible. It's a horrible combination of being methodically boring and requiring a high level of focus and caution. I have to push myself to get through it - usually I have a podcast or documentary on at the same time to ease the boredom of painting vertical lines.
It had been my intention to keep all the heads roughly the same size on the canvas, but due to the differences in the photographs I am working from, I abandoned that aim and decided to go with whatever I feel works best for each individual portrait. I wasn't happy with Nikita's oil pastel design, so I altered the design significantly for the final portrait to try and better capture her expression and character.
Nikita also drastically altered her colour choice after I explained the importance of symbolic meaning.
Whilst I was painting Nikita's portrait a certain 12-week old trouble-maker started sniffing around a little too close and got turquoise paint on her nose.
I made a few changes to the test portrait I made for Redi in the final design. I decided to make his head a bit bigger in proportion to the canvas and the stripes are seperated rather than blended, so as to be consistent with the other portraits. The blending actually worked well for Redi's colour choice but really didn't work for other colour choices, so I decided to make them all consistently seperated.
I haven't done Redi's interview yet, so I double checked with him that he is happy with his colours via WhatsApp message, since a number of my participants have changed their colour selection during the interviews. I had already chatted to Redi about the symbolism behind his colours in a video call so I am confident he won't change his mind!
I added the splatters to Kristyna's portrait already and I'm really happy with how that one is looking now - I will add splatters to all the others at the same time, since it is a messy job and I can't be bothered to clean up 10 seperate times. Looking at all the paintings together in this photo, I find it interesting how some of the stripes feel thinner than others even though I know they are all 2cm wide - it's like an optical illusion where the lines start undulating as you look more intensely at them - which feels appropriate since identity is a fluid and shifting thing.
It's 16th December today, which gives me just over 2 weeks to get the other 5 backgrounds done (if I am to hit my target). I'd say this was easily achievable but with the Unit 2 Feedback and video assessments due on 25th November, and the fact that I haven't done any of the design-work for my last participant (who I have only just recruited) I am not overly optimistic of reaching my self-imposed and somewhat arbitrary target.
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