Semester (Sr) 2, Blog entry 1:
Over the long summer break, I have decided to start considering how my journey with the arts will progress when I leave University. Before the end of term, I took on my biggest commission to date for a charity called Me&Dee. Me&Dee is a charity dedicated to making time precious for families with members with terminal conditions, a charity for which I have personally given my time to volunteer due to my deep feeling that this charity provides something that should be both respected and admired. I feel that working for something that as an artist I feel strongly about is very important, and I found that due to my personal feelings I felt more motivated to create the work to the best of my ability: I feel that the passion I held for this particular project has reminded me why I decided to study art in the first place, because I wanted to feel that my work was making a difference and striving towards some good in the world.
The commission came from Maria Hanson, the charity's founder. Maria asked me to do the commission after finding out through Facebook that I am an artist; Maria was not aware prior to seeing my Heavy Duty Illustration Facebook page, that I was striving to work within the arts, and only knew me through my volunteering. This reminded me that networking and social networking are very important when working in the arts, and that opportunities can lie in unexpected places.
The commission was to paint a mural onto a panel 72x177cm in a beach hut in Mablethrope, this clearly would be the largest painting I had ever done, however I did not let the size deter me, as I had been intending to try painting on a larger scale last semester, but worried that it would take too much time. Whilst planning the mural, we found that it would make much more sense for me to find a suitable wood panel the same size and paint the mural in the studio space I was currently building in the extended room in my home. I managed to purchase a wooden panel and have it cut to size at the University studios.
Another issue I encountered early on, was due to the target audience of the mural, this piece of artwork was intended for children, and was to consist of two fairy mermaids in the Me&Dee colours, pink and blue. Anyone who has seen my work before this mural will be aware that my style is anything but child orientated, so this was a huge hurdle for me to overcome. I started by making a small rough painting designed to be used as a maquette:
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| First rough maquette - Colours too bright |
Due to my work only usually dealing with black and white or muted colour, I found that with the first rough painting (above), I overcompensated with bright garish colours, not at all what one would consider peaceful or serene.
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| Second rough maquette |
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| Second rough maquette |
After getting over the initial disorientation of using colour, I created a second rough maquette or design using pastel colours and muted tones, this worked much more successfully.
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| Wooden board cut to size and initial rough design mapped out on paper measured to the same size |
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| initial rough pencil design |
Once I had to some extent worked out colour, I stuck together and cut down several A1 sheets of cartridge paper to create one long sheet roughly the same size as the wooden board was to be. I them constructed my design into a rough pencil sketch. I decided to do this pencil sketch at a similar size to the actual mural, so I could see how the juxtaposition would work and the space left around main aspects of the piece. Due to the my studio space at home not being suitable at this developmental stage, I used a large table at University to map out my design.
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| Wooden board in studio space on makeshift table, primed with blue emulsion and white gesso |
Due to my studio space having no furniture at the time, I had to fashion a work space out of half an old desk, a wooden art board supported by a toy box on its side. This although resourceful, made me realise that it was desperate that I had somewhere to work that was fit for purpose (see sr 2 blog entry 2).
I soon realised that the wood would need to be primed and a background colour added, so I made the decision to use a blue emulsion, which I selected to be slightly too dark: I wanted to prime the board further with white gesso, which as I researched in detail last semester, creates a surface which paint can grip to easily, white gesso however would make any background I used it over slightly lighter due to its translucent white appearance when dry.
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| preparation of work space |
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| preparation of work space |
When the board had been primed and left to dry, I carefully traced the outline of the design on separate numbered A3 sheets of tracing paper. I then prepared my work space by attaching the rough sketch to the wall for constant reference, and preparing my paint and palettes. For the mural I had decided to use an unorthodox mixture of acrylic and gouache paints. Both paints while water based are rarely used together, however, form my experimentation last semester, I found that the use of these paints together would achieve a good result.
Once the primer was dry, I transferred the design onto the board using the tracing, which left me with a strong pencil outline to work with.
I used the acrylic paint the fill in basic areas of colour, the acrylic was the thicker of the two paints allowing me to create a base, which I would then build up detail using a mixture of gouache and acrylic. From my time at university, I have learnt, that until a sketch has been filled in with some sort of shade or colour, it is difficult to distinguish clearly what the composition as a whole will look like, this is the main reason I decided to fill in the basic colours for the whole composition first rather than building up a particular area.
The mural overall took 5 weeks to complete, this included working 20 hour days with some days off. I feel that this has been one of my best and most challenging experiences working as an artist This commission changed all of my preconceptions about my work and what I wanted to achieve, especially due to it being aimed at children, which is something I never thought I’d want to do. If one person sees the image I created and finds comfort in it I have done my job.
Finally I added the Me&dee logo and my own logo, through the use of emulsion print.
This commission is to be installed in Maplethorpe, so keep posted for the exciting unveiling.
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