The Wallpaper Painting is Finished!

I feel like I've nearly destroyed my mental health in the process but I have managed to reach my target of finishing all of the portrait backgrounds before my trip to Germany/Belgium in December. It was an ambitious target, given the time required to paint the straight lines - on top of the three pieces of coursework due in December and working full time - I've basically been working non-stop for a month and started to become unhinged as a result.

I've also been dealing with multiple vet trips - Boudicca coming down with a mystery illness including nose bleeds and Guinevere having a bad reaction to her second vaccine, requiring rather drastic measures to stop her scratching at the back of her neck where she had caused a nasty injury. I know it's over the top, but I get very upset when my pets aren't well.

I've been gradually sketching out the final portaits onto the canvases - upscaling and trying to improve on the original designs.

Painting the "wallpaper" (straight lines) for the background took hours - around 4 per portait after sketching out the design. My tutor had asked me why I had decided to paint the backgrounds in this way, with the straight lines and splatters overlaid, my response was that combining the straight lines with the splatters could allude to the balancing act between the attempt to create structure, routine and plans in your life whilst managing that which you cannot control; the crazy, unpredictable chaos of life.

The final task was adding the splatters, which was a messy job - requiring plastic sheeting and a lot of kitchen roll. I normally enjoy the freedom of splatter painting but this felt incredibly stressful given that I was adding the splatters to canvases which I had already spent ovr 5 hours working on. There's no was to entirely control the splattering - which I guess is the point, but there's definitely a technique to getting them more aesthetical. I think some of the portraits turned out better than others - but that was always going to be the way these would turn out - and sometimes in life you have to accept the randomness of success and failure.