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Portraiture as a mode of Response

Throughout the course of this project, I have examined and explored using portraiture as a way to respond to the world around me, beit through the people around me, that influence me, myself. I have explored and produced both representational and abstract portraits, engaged and researched throughout the process of realising my work, through workshops, peer and tutor reviews and opinions, artist research, and am very happy with the pieces that I've created.

I initially chose response as the focus for this project because I wasn't sure of what to do, and figured that something so broad wouldn't leave me stuck when I had no clue what to do next. This broadness was definetly helpful, I hadn't boxed myself in, there was a lot of room to explore and experiment with what I created, but I was never wondering what was next. The freedom that was allowed throughout this project allowed me to work in whatever way I pleased, and as a result the topics which I covered jumped out at me without a second thought, there was never an idle moment.

Whether it was the work of another artist, an old photo, a concept, an experiment, whatever, I always made sure that it was related back to my own response to the topic. As a result, there was naturally a lot of self portraits created throughout the course of the project. I started off with the representational, straight portraits, moving to different ages as the topic changed. After a while of this however, I wanted to move away from the detail orientated way of explaining what the work was about, hence the abstract portraits. These were a combination of drawings and paintings, very gestural and expressive, some with no suggestion of a head or facial features at all, yet I think that these were equal in significance to the project as the representational pieces, in some cases they even gave context to one another.

Experimenting with the techniques and materials that I used to make these pieces also played a key role. Some of these came at the suggestion of tutors, peers, and even through the artist research that was conducted. It helped to stop the work from becoming stagnant and boring, just a continuation of eachother. I think that each piece and the development leading up to them are unmistakably individual and unique of eachother, remaining clear to my style, while also showing experimentation and growth.

I'm very happy with everything that I've produced as part of this project. I made sure to criticize and readjust where needed, and I think it's clear to see that this reflects in the standard of work presented.

:)

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This is the finished portrait, responding to the self portrait from an abstract perspective. I'm very happy with this painting, I think that the research and preparitary work that went into this attempt definetly was beneficial.

The different drawings and studying of Maggi hambling's work definetly helped here. The expressive brush strokes and the use of colour work very well with eachother, including the use of a sort of apparent light source with one side of the portrait being darker.

Also painting over the brighter areas of red and yellow was 100% the right move, they work best in the smaller amounts you see here. I also substituted these in a way by adding short strokes of blue throughout the portrait, which I think works very well with the browns and greys used.

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Here are some progress images of the current abstract portrait. Already this is off to a far better start, I think that the composition works a lot better, and having a darker and lighter side definetly makes it appear more as a portrait with a light source falling on it.

I do think that I will paint over some of the yellow and red areas, as those bright colours are out of place and just don't work well. There is still a lot of work to be done, and adjusting this in the process would definetly work better.

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Before beginning the painting, I wanted to to one more focused drawing. I first went to the library and took out the book Maggi Hambling Touch, which is a collection of work from an exhibition of Maggi Hambling's work at The British Museum.

Looking through the drawings in this book, I was able to get a sense of the movement of the marks on the page, and no matter how abstract or representational, no matter how impulsive or fleshed out, you could see that the artist coaxed out of the page exactly what they needed to represent their subject.

Paying particular attention to the drawing in the book titled "Giovanna" from 2002, drawn in charcoal. I felt that this was a good sort of guide as an example of something similar that I was aiming for.

I'm happy with my own charcoal drawing here and think that its a decent start for this second attempt of a painting that I've researched and worked towards.

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Here are some quick blind sketches in preparation for the next painting. These were very spontaeneous, done on a single A4 page on the train home one evening, watching a video and letting my gaze wander about the train and the scenery outside. All of this helped to keep the process automatic and make random expressive marks.

They were drawn out in pencil first and then I went back over and defined the shapes more in pen. I think that looking between these different drawings while painting will be a good quide.

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Maggi Hambling

Image Links: https://media.houseandgarden.co.uk/photos/64b7fa55d6a55acd0396feca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/october224532asSmartObject1-production_digital.jpg

https://artlyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Maggi-Hambling-Hangover-200x200.jpg

Maggi Hambling is an English artist who's body of work consists of painting, print and sculpture, with a range of subject matters such as the self, friends and family, life and death, sex, and climate change. A lot of her work includes a degree of abstraction (although she would never say so), using expressive colours and brush strokes creating a body of work that leaves a lasting impact and subverts all expectations of what it is she does.

In relation to what I'm aiming to work on, I focused on Maggi Hambling's Self Portraits. I took these screenshots from two interviews done on YouTube with the artist. I think that the suggestion of a head is a good way to get the message across that the work is in fact a portrait, and then that leaves room for the expressive brush strokes and pops of colour.

I think studying these as I paint would be very useful in creating something that better suits what I'm trying to get across here.

First though, I'm going to do some more preliminary sketches. In another interview, Hambling says how she begins each morning with a drawing, closing her eyes and drawings with her left hand, encouraging the subconcious to be brought forward, while renewing the sense of touch.

I think that this sort of blind drawing would be very useful in my own case, it would help to create a lot of drawings quickly, that could potentially act as a guide in a painting that would follow.

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Two progress images and one of the final result for this abstract portrait.

I think that in the first two images, it works to an extent, but by the third image I had to stop because there was too much going on, in my head it was overworked.

Looking back at it with fresh eyes the next day, it wasn't as bad as I originally thought, and worked quite well when displayed next to the representational portrait I did about The Caretaker's Everwhere at the end of time, almost like the two give context to eachother, both being such abstract works.

Having said this, that connection wasn't the aim so I'm going to reevaluate and do another attempt. I think that more preparatory work and some artist research would be a huge benefit going forward.

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After doing a few straight representational portraits, I wanted to switch to more abstract portraits, something that is more expressive and doesn't rely on detail or likeness.

I began with these charcoal drawings as a quick gestural starting point. The first two I was looking at my reflection and for the third on the right above I used no point of reference.

The first two turned out well but I still think are slightly too representational in terms of what I was aiming for.

The third however, I really like and it is definetly along the lines of what I would be aiming for. I'm going to make some paintings in a similar way to this.

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Here is the finished portrait. I'm very happy with the finished piece, I think that the flat clothing, scratchy scrubbed in background, the bright patches of colour in the face that create the fake smile and the look of confusion all come together to create a disconnection between all the components of the composition, highlighting the staged nature of the photoshoot the reference for this piece came from.

I definetly achieved what I aimed for here, making this piece as a response to the super disingenuine, staged photo moments which I clearly hated since I was a young child.

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Here is the reference photo and some progress on the current painting.

After toning the paper and sketching in the figures, I blocked in the main areas and background.

The background is slightly based off of Michael Borremans' painting "The Pupils", I used a brown tone for the background colour, and wanted it to have that patchy look. To achieve this, I used a palette knife to put the paint on the paper, and then scrubbed it in with a ball of tin foil, which I think got a great texture as a result.

I want the clothing of the figures to remain sort of flat and one dimensional in this piece, I won't be adding much detail to them. I think that will add to the feeling in the painting that all the different aspects of the painting are disconnected, like with the photo. I aim to achieve this both with the expressions of the faces, but also in the stark contrast of textures in the piece. The scratch background, the flat clothes, and hopefully when they're done, the faces which are giving a forced smile and a look of confusion.

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Michaël Borremans

Image Link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/The_Pupils_by_Micha%C3%ABl_Borremans.jpg

Michaël Borremans is a Belgian painter, known for his technique drawn from 18th century art, and using photographs as the basis for a lot of his work.

This artist was recommended to me during the week just before I was about to begin work on the portrait from a childhood photo. After looking at his work I thought that it could serve as inspiration for the idea behind this piece. I noticed that a lot of the figured in his work seem quite disconnected from their surroundings, which would definetly apply with my concept.

The piece seen above "The Pupils" in particular I found very interesting, the figured are stacked on top of eachother yet remain completely detatched. I think that the background of this adds to that feeling in the painting, and could be something that I use in my own work, seeing how it appears scrubbed into the work surface.

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For the next portrait piece, I wanted to do something to do with some aspect of childhood, I thought that this would be really interesting to respond to. As a starting point I spent some time looking through some photo albums, and came across photos of myself at different ages as a child. There were so many different periods and events that I had to choose from, but I mostly felt drawn to photos from a family photoshoot that was done when I was about 3 years old. I did some sketches of these to test what I liked best, as I wanted a dark background for the painting, but all the photos had a white backdrop.

I felt particularly drawn to this because as a child (and still to this day really), I never liked these sort of organized photo moments, it always very so staged, forced, nothing genuine about it, just something that would be put on a shelf somewhere to gather dust until one day it's broken out to prove to someone that there were happy moments in the past. And theres nothing wrong with wanting to remember happy moments don't get me wrong, but I think that more spontaeneous pictures get that across much better, they don't impede on the moment and it remains pure. I think that is what I want to highlight with this piece.

The drawing on the left gets this across well I think. You can see that I'm holding up a toy of mine, most likely at the direction of the photographer. It seems an unnatural way to show off what I was playing with, definetly highlights that staged feeling in the photo. I liked this composition but decided to move forward with another drawing to see if there was more I could do with this idea.

The drawing on the left is myself taken from a photo next to my sister. You can clearly see by the face I'm pulling that I was definely over the photoshoot by this stage, ready to be done, and faking a smile in order to get things finished quicker. I think that this expression works better for the piece, theres nothing to distract away from the idea of a staged moment of seeming happy, like with the toy in the other study. Although I didn't include a drawing at this point too, I think that including my sister in the painting of this would add to this feeling, as she's just a baby who was placed there for the photo, and has no clue what's going on.

I like the direction that this piece is moving, and I definetly think that I can play with different aspects of the painting to make it seem very staged, forced, and indeed disconnected from reality in a way.

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Mark Rothko

In preparation for similar work we'll be doing in the future, everyone in the painting discipline chose an artist from a list, and created a short powerpoint presentation about them.

For my presentation, I chose Mark Rothko, an abstract expressionist famous for his rectangular colour field paintings. Throughout the powerpoint I looked into what his life was like, influential figures and factors that played a role in his work, the materials and techniques that he used, and the different stages and development of his body of work, leading up to his eventual suicide, talking about how different aspect of his paintings gave clear suggestions of a troubled, struggling man, and the mental decline that was taking place.

I had an interest in Mark Rothko before chosing him for this presentation, so I found this research very interesting, getting to learn more about him and understand his work better. It was also in clear contrast to my own work, so getting this other perspective was really interesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if I returned to Rothko as an inspiration in some fashion for future work.

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On Tuesday of this week, Sylvia was holding a Colour Studies Workshop, where we arranged our own little scene of fruit to paint a still life.

We painted with the primary colours here, mixing where appropriate to create the different tones and values within our scenes. This was a really interesting exercise particularly with the brightly coloured backgrounds, which played a big role as we had to pay attention to how the light and shadows of the fruit and backdrops would mix together.

I think the most noticable example of this in my painting above is where the yellow of the lemon meets the blue that it's sitting on. With the cast shadow and also any light that gets cast up to the lemon, it's clear to see that the yellow and blue have produced different shades of green.

This principle applies throughout the whole painting, which I found very interesting and enjoyable to use. It helped me to take my time with what I was painting, and pay attention to the details of colour that was present in the scene.

I'll definetly be keeping what we were taught in this workshop in mind for the future, I think that it's really useful and now that I understand it better, could definetly be applied to other work in the future.

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Here are some drawings made during the last Life Drawing Workshop, before Jeff finished up for the year.

For this session I went back to some of the materials that I was familiar with, ink and graphite. Some of these studies I aimed for a more straight approach, looking to pay attention to anatomy and take the time to draw it as accurately as possible.

On the flip side of this I also made sure to experiment like I had been recommended to do in the last few weeks. Some of these studies were drawn very quickly, simplifying the form, or breaking it down completely. Some of these in particular, I would use previous drawings as the referece for, try to draw from memory of the pose, look only at the model rather than my paper, or with my eyes closed even.

I got a good mix done in this workshop, it was definetly a good way to go about the final week of the figure drawing.

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Here is the finished portrait, very happy with the result, I think I got across the idea of the ambiguous response to something unknown to the viewer well. This was definetly a challenge in terms of how I would get across this idea which at times was even a struggle to describe to others and through posts here, but strangely that worked in favour of the piece, which I realised after finishing it and taking a step back to look.

The empty space at the top of the piece with the dark background works well with this idea to give the sense that there is something unknown within the work, as well as with the figure's eyes fixed on the viewer.

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Here is the reference for the current painting, and a photo of the first stage of it, mostly blocked in colour, just beginning to add some shadow and tone variation.

Next to the reference photo, I think the idea of the ambiguous expression is a lot more apparent here. Is it fear? Anger? Contemplation? Whatever, could be anything. The fact that the figure is also looking directly at the viewer here makes them part of it too, has the viewer done something? Are they looking to the viewer in response or for help for something that has just happened?

I think it's very clear that you're given no details or suggestions of a story here, or none that can be figured out at least. There is a response going on with the figure and their expression, but as the viewer you aren't allowed in to know what that is, and I like this aspect very much.