I began this research by looking into Rembrandts self portrait, his work is very realistic and the paint strokes are soft. Everything blends just right together and he’s created such a marvellous piece. I found it enchanting to see such a great piece of work done of his own face, below is the picture I am referencing to:

I then looked into Van Gogh’s self portrait, his portraits are more iconic of his style. The mark making with the brush and the different patches of colours create a more interesting piece, the work isn’t too realistic but looks so unique, all of the colours blend well together to create a lovely self portrait. Below is the picture I am referring to:

I feel like both of these historical artists use similar materials, it create an interesting yet realistic approach and is very common in historical paintings. I feel like they had such elegant ways of showing their self portraits. I think the tones they create through there art is effective and it has given me inspiration for showing this is my own self portrait, I love how they blend the shading so well together.

This piece by Barkley :. Hendricks is a more contemporary piece, the different way he has expressed his self portrait is special. I like how the white robe is made a big part of the piece by showing faintly, the shading throughout this full piece is amazing, I love the way he has blended the paint throughout to create an amazing blend . I feel like this has changed so much, the later portraits have close ups. I believe in contemporary they show more and the portrait isn’t just a face, the full body on this self portrait I looked into and below is that picture:

I feel like the whole concert of art has changed throughout the years and all of these pieces have really helped me get inspired for my own portrait and how I am going to look at my work for the rest of this section of the course.

For this research I looked into the suggested Graham Little and Elizabeth Peyton for this, I thought it was an interesting chose of two and I was fascinated by Graham Little using coloured pencils as I thought that would be good inspiration for me.

Graham Little was born in Scotland in the early 1970’s He went to study art in the early 1990’s and he studied painting, in post college he began in drawing and sculpting and shortly after his work was widely known for being realistic. His work is done with fine colouring pencils below is the pictures I have chosen to look into further:

I felt this portrait was very appealing, the angle of the face is more interesting than most and it shows more character than others. The precision of colour is so exquisite, every stroke of the pencil is done so perfectly and the different tones throughout just make the full piece look like a photograph. I really do find it amazing the effect he has made on this full piece of art, I love how he has used his work to also have the reflection of the subject in the mirror, I think this just adds to the piece and shows realism.

Elizabeth Peyton is an American contemporary artist, her work is primarily in painting, drawing and mark making. I felt this artist really stood out to me, the different marks throughout her work really appealed to me and I found this work so unique, the isn’t so much focused on being super realistic and that’s what stood out to me. Below is the piece I decided to look into:

I love the paint strokes which are so evident on the piece, I think the different marks she has made really create such a unique look in the whole piece and it really made me inspired to try my own take on this style of work. I do think that the different shades of grey she has used in the piece shew good tones and it creates a good effect for the shadows and defining the darker areas. I like how she hasn’t blended out the paint stokes and she has individual strokes going through the full piece. I also find it a lot more interesting that she hasn’t focused on making the full portrait look realistic, I believe it makes a more fascinating art piece.

Comparing them both makes it very interesting, I feel like as years have gone on people are less interested in making every single portrait realistic and artists have become more adventurous in the way they express art. The fact people are being so much more imaginative with how people express portraits and landscapes now. I do think the portrait from Graham is so amazing and the fact that it looks like a photograph is just extraordinary, they both use a unique way of angles for the portraits but the two different displays are very different and I do believe that is the impact of change in the years. It has inspired me to be more adventurous in my own art work and try to think outside of the box.

Nudity in art has been around for centuries, we see it all the time but does it make it easier for us to do it with contemporary art? There is mixed opinions in nudity and i’m going to look into that. For a lot of people nudity makes them uncomfortable, it’s seen as something which should be hidden, it’s private. People get offended sometimes more than not at the sight of nudity and whether it is right or wrong to express that through art.

I feel that nudity in art is fairly common in the early centuries and is very common in a lot of famous artists work. I feel people have mixed opinions on this, personally I feel nudity is an awkward subjects a lot of the time but through art I think people express it in a beautiful way, I personally don’t enjoy drawing nude but I can see why people like to represent the human body and it creates interesting work. I do think when I was at college and I did life drawing I thought it was interesting, and majority of my class thought it was awkward yet when you’re at that age it is awkward. If we are introduced to this work at an earlier age I feel more contemporary artists would feel they wanted to explore this subject more. Personally I won’t be looking into this, I feel if the circumstances were different and I could attend a college class for it I would yet that isn’t an option to have right now.

In this assignment we were asked to create 3 pieces, two on A1 and one on any size we preffered. One of the piece was to be seated, one in a relaxed reclined type pose and the last one being a portrait with a different angle. I will talk each piece through and my mind set behind it below. I did decide to do all these drawings with a soft 2B pencil as that has been my go to throughout this full section.

Drawing one is my seated piece, I wanted to get a main focus on the limbs and show my improvement in proportion therefore I focused on the arts mainly and torso. I do struggle personally with larger scale as I feel my whole mind gets a little confused with the proportions but I decided to just take my time and no stop until I felt it looks right (not alien). On this piece I did not focus on the facial details but the next two I do as I felt this piece I wanted to focus on the hands because I have had a lot of back and forth with my confidence doing hands. I do feel like I need to spend more time doing independent studies doing larger scale pieces, it’s out of my comfort zone but I do need to improve in that department. During this piece I did a lot of the tones using my finger to blend the darker shades to the light to get a more realistic approach. Below is the picture of my finished result:

This piece I felt went good, I was so hesitant and nervous to do this assignment as I really do find doing larger scale pieces difficult. I find it hard to get the right proportions and be able to make sure the whole piece looks like it matches. I do think with taking more time to do these pieces it has worked so much better in my favour as I am able to make sure I am happy with how it looks and I’m in no rush to get it done fast. I did actually enjoy doing this piece in the end I found it enjoyable to make sure it was accurate and see how I could make sure it all matched up. I found with this piece I wanted to spend time making sure the hands were as accurate and realistic as I could, I always find it so difficult to get the shapes right so it doesn’t look odd. I still have a lot of improvement to make on my arms yet I am seeing my progress on making hands look more realistic and less alien. I do feel like I did well on the tones throughout this piece and I found I am happy with the outcome, I do believe you can see my progress throughout this section of the course and this as a final outcome has just shown how much I feel I have learned on proportions and also working on features like that hands.

Drawing two was to get a pose of reclining position, for this I decided to get someone lying down. I felt like I did this pose throughout the section and I felt it would make sense for me to do this pose on the larger scale in the assignment. I did this pose with as face, I do feel like this wasn’t my best work I did and it’s my least favourite of the three I have done yet I do feel like there was an improvement and I kept it because I felt it will help with my progress. I do did a lot of work on the tones throughout this piece because I wanted to make sure the shading though out was very known and the darker tones blended well throughout. Below is the picture of my result:

I think in this piece it was a bit more basic, the pose I chose was more basic than I would have hoped yet I do think the shading and mark making I made throughout was very well done and the tones were good to see. I do feel like I did a more illustration type drawing on the face yet I do think I didn’t realise that, the eyes don’t look in proportion with the rest of the face and I think that was just on the basic of working on a larger scale yet I do know I need to improve on this in the future. I believe piece is my least favourite just for the fact it was too challenging and it came out as quite a basic piece, I feel in the future I need to challenge myself with different poses and I do wish I had done that during this assignment, I would have done it again and had this as a practice yet I have run out of larger pieces of paper and the shop I get it from is currently shut.

Drawing three was my favourite to do, it was in my comfort zone and I have really been enjoying doing this portraits for this section of the course. I found it more interesting doing a different angle too and I felt this really helped with my piece to make it more challenging and show off how much more I have learnt throughout. Again I spent time trying to blend the tones throughout to get a more realistic look on this piece. Below is the picture of my result:

I really did enjoy doing this piece, I feel like I am more suited to smaller scale pieces although that might just be as I have had most practice with this size. I feel this piece has good tones throughout and I think the facial features turned out well throughout. I do believe I want to do more independent studies on features especially eyes, to get the detail in. I do feel as though I put a burden on myself doing the facial features using a thicker and softer pencil and I have learned to try a different softness in the future. I do like how the face looks as a piece and I have made improvement on the tones and how to make the face look more realistic than I had at the start of this section.

All in all I do think this assignment went well, I found it difficult using a larger scale yet I do believe it has helped me improve on my outlook at proportions and how to identify making the body look correct. I have learned different ways to show tone and how to really look at the body to show the features and shapes throughout. I found it helped doing this assignment to look at the negative of the poses and it helped me get the outline for all of these drawings which really helped me out when doing these larger scale drawings. I feel when I start to practice more in my own time I will start to improve more and feel more confident doing all of these things.

In this exercise we were asked to use our imagination or memory to create a portrait of a person. We were told to do it from someone we had seen or if we had read a book to recreate the character in the book. For this I decided to draw a woman I had seen recently seen, this was quite a difficult challenge to do, below is the picture of my result:

This exercise was quite tricky, I found it difficult to get the proportions right and to make it look unalienable. It was hard to know how to place it therefore I did a rough sketch of a head and sketched out the two lines to indicate where I was going to place the eyes, mouth and nose. I felt like you have to have an imagination to create something which isn’t therefore reference and I do feel like I achieved a good result on this task.

All in all, I feel like I have learned a lot about looking at a portrait and recognising the different characteristics needed. It was very eye opening to think of where to place the different facial features and to focus on how I would tone the face and make the detail up. I quite enjoyed this task it felt quite adventurous to use my imagination and memory to form this portrait of a woman.

For this exercise we were asked to look into magazines, on the TV and different images at people and do a couple of pages of facial features for such things as eyes, mouths and noses. After this we were then asked to try and draw an entire head and face and don’t worry about it being untidy and overlap. To just experiment and see how the work turns out, below are the pictures of my results.

I liked focusing on the different features of the face in this exercise, I found it was a better way to focus on detail and getting the right lines on the drawings and making sure all of the proportions are right and it doesn’t look alien. I do think I did well on these , I do need to practice more on mouths because I feel they were the weakest of the different features I did but the rest I was happy with the results, I would like to keep doing these practises just to get stronger at drawing individual features.

I found after doing the features individually it did build up my confidence and it made it a lot easier to put them all together in the last portrait. I do think this helped build up how the final piece turned out and it was better for me to fill in the detail throughout the last piece of this exercise. I do feel like it turned out well but I want to continue to try and build up a more realistic look. For my first portrait in this section I do feel like it went well and I am excited to further doing these pieces in the rest of the part.

For this exercise we were asked to go out and people watch then take quick sketches of groups of people and focus on the way their standing, how they interact, what they carry and what their doing with their hands and legs etc. For this I decided to look at past pictures of groups of people and reference from that seen as we’re back in second lock down and also so I could have a longer look at the subjects.

Below are the pictures of my results:

I decided to have two lots of drawings one sitting down and the other not, I feel like it is difficult to get across movement and to capture a type of pose. I do think that it helped a lot to reference from a picture I took earlier therefore the subject was still and look at the poses of the two people. I think in the future I might go out and try to do quick sketches on the spot and try to have an impulse sketch of the subject instead of using a longer reference. I do think that the longer reference has benefited for this piece and I found it interesting to draw random people because I never have really done that before. It a very good exercise and I enjoyed it a lot.

All in all, I think this exercise worked out well and I enjoyed doing this exercise as it opened my eyes more into looking at different interactions and looking at groups of people when they aren’t just poses and it’s a natural pose. I do believe I want to practise going more candid type work where it’s just drawings of natural poses to learn how to do that style. I did enjoy this piece and I feel like it turned out well, I would improve on doing bigger groups and maybe crowds of people next time.

In this exercise we were asked to drawing moving figures and try to fill a page a day, so today was my first day and I filled a page with four people drawing and I will continue to draw these pages until the end of this assignment. This will help improve my look at proportions and also stance when in movement. Below is my results:

I think this exercise has helped me look quickly at movement and be able to try and show that in my sketches, I think by the poses you can see the lift of the leg and the different angle of the figure there is movement involved, I do think tomorrow I will add more shading to these and make sure to do some different types of movement such as maybe dance or running.