Painting.

When we were first told what this weeks task was I was so excited. I love painting, I find it very relaxing , especially watercolour. Although some elements were challenging, I found this week to more of a good refresher rather than learning something new. The only difficult part was adapting to different artists styles, rather than going off of instinct and muscle memory with the materials. I chose to look at the work of: J C Leyendecker; Ivon Hitchens; Eric Ravillious, and Peter Blake. This was to give myself various styles to emulate.

J C Leyendecker.

I knew when I saw Leyendecker's work that I wanted to do self portraits, as his own portraits are so sleek, and I love his style. The first painting I did start with an initial sketch, but this was the only one of all of the paintings I did. To begin, the paint was a lot more difficult to work with than I remembered, due to how fast it dried, but as I went, I figured out what worked out for me to get around that issue. Overall, I am very happy with these, especially the second painting, and I loved creating them.

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Ivon Hitchens.

Ivon Hitchens' style was so much fun to replicate. His work is full of freedom, character and feeling, with imperfections, because of that, I didn't have to think too much about what I was doing when painting. The approach I took was going from place to place on the image, not worrying too much about elements matching up or looking exactly what they were based on. After trying this method, I believe that this is the key, and the magic to his style - the fact that it is so feeling driven, rather than being calculated. If anything, this freedom is what I learned most to appreciate in his paintings, and it is something I would like to try and adopt myself.

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Eric Ravillious.

This style I actually found quite difficult to adopt, despite being in watercolour. Eric Ravillious' work seems so simple upon the first look, however, this is rather deceptive. There is so much work, and detail in his pieces, and I really struggled to replicate that. I think I also took too childish of an approach, as I made everything rounded, which also takes away from his style and imagery. Overall, I'm not very happy with this painting, but I did gain a better sense of how marks can be used to create texture in a painting.

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Peter Blake.

This was my favourite painting to create by far. Initially, I didn't think much of Blake's style, but once I began my piece, I soon realised that his technique was very similar to the way that I enjoy working in watercolour. He focuses on layering and depth in with colour rather than large amounts of individual marks. His style and technique is bold and striking, using large amounts of bright colour, which is extremely difficult to create with watercolour. I don't think I managed to do this perfectly, despite this, I am very happy with my painting , and the overall look of the image.