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Oil painting for my personal investigation on dolls and identity

For this piece my plan was to make a large scale oil painting on wood, my idea was having a broken doll on display for the viewer. I focused a lot on the parts of the doll rather than any facial features and purposely made her look slightly unfinished at the ends. I struggled a lot with the colour choices for this, at first the colours I used look very faded and delicate, I then changed my approach to look more vibrant and lively like my plans.

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Cloud Strife and Sephiroth's soldier belts

This is my most recent and ongoing project - remaking my soldier belts for two character cosplays. The right image is my old belt and the left image is the current new one (still in progress). To make this belt a thin layer of foam is cut out and then ther leather is cut in the same shape but larger, the leather is glued to the foam and then folded over the edges. To improve on my work I have first used a more accurate colour of leather, it is also thinner than the previous leather used. To make the pattern in the centre I have previously cut the shapes into to excess leather material and then stuck that on, however I wanted to make a more defined and neat look. To achive this I cut the shapes first in foam and then covered each piece in leather and wrapped that around the foam. The pieces are then separatly stuck on the belt. I think this looks a lot more finished, My next step is making the straps.

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Cloud's shoulder armor and gauntlets

I made the shoulder piece with four pieces of thick foam. Two pieces were heated with a heat gun so they curved together and were then glued - this was repeated with the other 2 pieces, so the 4 pieces came together to make one whole piece. As the character's armour is quite battered I wanted to give some texture to the foam. To do this I applied thick amounts of white acrylic paint. I purposely used a lot of paint and left it to look messy and overlap. Then once I spray painted the deep blue on top it allowed for a bumpy textured look. I then made fake bolts out of foam to stick on. These tend to break of during conventions and need redoing. To avoid this and make the piece more durable I would like to look into 3D printing to make a solid bolt.

The gaunlets I have made twice, my most recent ones are on the left and the old one is on the right. When I first made it I made the whole gaunlet as just one piece of layered foam however this proved to not hold out well when wearing it as it was very stiff and hard to wear all day. To improve this I remade them as two separate pieces allowing for wrist movement. In the first gauntlet I also used a top coat paint that made the armor very hard and durable, however it was almost too durable and stiff, so for my remakes I used a top coat spray instead that allowed movement but kept the spray paint in place.

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Childe's water blades

I made these blades with two pieces of thick cardbard and covered them in a thin layer of EVA foam. I used smaller pieces of foam to create the detailing. I then spray painted the entire thing in a light blue. Given more time I would have made a gradient of blue as the blades are made out of water in the game.

I made these props with a small time limit therefore they are not my neatest work but I am still happy with the outcome as seen in the image of me at a convention.

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Maki Zenin's naginata polearm

For my Maki Zenin cosplay I created this long spear using a mop from my local store. I cut off the mop end of the pole to add on my foam. I cut out the shape of the spear in paper first and then EVA foam. I used ISOPON P38 polyester filler for the first time to ensure the foam would stick to the pole. As it was a new product for me I found it a bit tricky to learn, however once heated up the filler is extremely sturdy. I then sanded down the mess on the pole to create a better finish. This was then covered with a piece of white fur material after the foam had been spray painted silver. I also sprayed the pole brown however I should have sanded down the pole first as after taking this prop to a convention the paint chipped away quite a bit. On the bottom of the spear I cut out a red t-shirt and tied it to the bottom. I am very pleasaed with this prop as it cost me very little to make and I got to learn how to use filler.

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Experiments with Ink Printing

I thoroughly enjoyed working with ink to print my own images. I started off drawing my stencil of a pair of shoes. I then mixed up my paint to make a lilac color and then painted this over the stencil. I loved the faded effect it created. I then combined two stencils of the shoes together, using a darker purple for the background and a lighter one for the shoe.

I then carved a new image I had sketched out into lino, this made my print a lot more defined compared to using a stencil from paper. I rolled the ink onto the lino and transferred this to paper. I repeated this with different colours also. I thought this achieved a similar effect to the Andy Warhol arwork Marilyn Diptych using the same lino without adding ink over and over with more and then less ink. I also printed my image on magazine papers and manga pages.

Finally I painted my ink directly onto a sheet of clear plastic and transfered it onto paper. This method meant I had to be very quick with my painting in order for the paint not to dry and to have a successful print. It came out quite faded, however I actually liked this effect a lot. In this way you also have two pieces of artwork, the faded paper print and also the more vibrant paint dried on the plastic.

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This is the final piece for my personal investigation on dolls. The idea was creating a box of body parts for the owner to choose and take from. This project also stemmed from my own identity of being a trans person and experiencing gender dysphoria. I wanted to be able to change my own body parts when I wished therefore I created this box. The torso includes stitches underneath the chest to imitate top surgery scars. I cut the shapes using felt and stuffed them with polyester filling to make a 3D effect. I then stitched the parts to my background using a cross stitch of a contrasting colour to the felt. With the help of my dad I created a box made of plywood. The piece was finished off with clear plastic on the lid. The final photo is the box hung on the wall of my dad's house.

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This is an example of artist research taken from my personal investigation in my fine art A-Level. I looked at the tumblr artist 'gd783hh' and made my own artist copy combined with inspiration from the artist 'Roricomplex'. The simple and pixelated lineart was taken from Gd and the pastel colours are taken from Roricomplex.

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A redraw of a scene in the game Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth of the character Tifa, I used Clip Studio Paint for this piece. I experimented a lot with a more realistic shading approach as my style is usually quite cartoonish. I also used a soft blue toned gradient map.

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Cloud Strife Buster Sword

This is my most impressive build as of yet, I have remade this sword three times in total and to do this day adding finishing touches to complete it. I used a polystyrene insulation board for the inside of the sword, a metal pole was inserted into this and then covered in foam. On my first try of this sword I simply painted the details onto the foam however on my second try I added a new thin layer of foam cut into shapes to create the indents.

To paint the sword I sectioned of the two sides, to make one side a bright silver and the other black. I then purposely scratched up the sword to create the illusion of a sword having been used in battle a lot.

The gems were bought from an etsy store and then the backs of them were painted white to get more bright color out of them. The handle was wrapped in a brown leather material.

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With this piece I wanted to go for a more realistic form of rendering. I used a lot of real images for reference. This also links to my interest in J-fashion and how it can be incorporated into my art.

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A digital drawing of the character Yasuho from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. I explored my use of colour in this piece, I like to use contrasting colours with my shading for example using a very light blue almost cyan color against the bright pink of the hair.

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Fanart of characters Ayato and Arlecchino from Genshin impact.

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Fanart of the character Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan

The character I chose to draw is very melancholic, I wanted to show that in my art of him, I used muted colors and minimal backgrounds. I tried to add texture in the image in the right to emulate an oil type painting.

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Fanart of characters Ganyu and Fischl from Genshin Impact

These are a few of my first pieces using gradient maps more dramatically. I like the almost iridescent look it gives to my art particularly in the character with blonde hair. I also was experimenting with the poses to make my art more dynamic and less static.

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Fanart of the vtuber Kenjisun

I tried a lot to make this piece have a lot of texture by drawing over the original image with textured pens in a lighter colour.

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Painting with acrylic

For this painting I wanted to portray a person being stuck inside another body, unable to show their true self. They are trapped in a defult idea of themself, with their true bright self peeking out. This was part of my personal investigation on dolls and identity.