When starting a new painting, the first thing I need is to make a sketch. There’s no point in starting a painting without some sort of plan, It will just wont end up the way I want it too. This sketch doesn’t need to be anything amazing, just a little pencil drawing to get my ideas on paper. More often than not I will include a few sentences giving some information on the painting. This may be what medium I will use as well as any additional information I will need to remember when creating the final painting.
For this project I have chosen to include humour into my paintings, most of the time, in the title. For this painting I came up with the title ‘Anyone up for pizza?’ to represent some sarcasm. In this sketch it shows a group of young people watching the city in front of them as meteors fall to earth. My aim for this painting is to show the lack of connection we have towards chaotic events like we once had. It is as if we have become numb to the idea of the apocalypse as we’ve been it throughout media such as films and TV shows. I also want to show a sense of peacefulness we may have towards these events, where we are able to accept that we have no control over something so powerful.
My next step is to develop this sketch into something that shows a little more of what I want the image to look like. Sometimes at this stage I will take inspiration from other artists’ works and the style they work in.
For this sketch I was influenced by the artist/creative director Choi Jaehoon and his team. I first discovered Jaehoon’s work on a music video called ‘Forever Rain’ By RM, which follows a similar message to my own. The video holds the idea that young people are less scared or affected by events that may be sad or scary. Instead they are able to view them as beautiful and can enjoy their unique qualities for what they are. This is ultimately the message I want to show in my own work, that scary events can be viewed as beautiful. It’s the reason why many people enjoy scary films or films about the apocalypse like ‘2012’. It’s because there is something mesmerising about something we have no control over, we just have to simply watch in awe. Instead of spending our last moments being scared and panicking, we can enjoy the beauty of being at peace and accepting the fate of our world.
After this sketch I will attempt my first real oil painting on this idea, meaning finding a canvas. As an art student you tend to accept any canvas you can get your hands on. It means spending less time and money making your own stretcher and buying your own canvas. Therefore, I decided to use a small A1 board to create my painting on.
However, I knew as soon as I started, that this painting wasn't what I envisioned it to be. I had used a palette knife to create texture in this image, which helped to add to the substance o the image. Although, I knew the board wasn’t the right size, the image was too squished and had no room for impact. I knew I wanted to create an image that was both intimidating and beautiful at the same time, this small board wasn’t allowing me to do that.
So, I decided to use a bigger board……a 6 foot board to be exact. I had never worked on such a huge canvas before so it was exciting, I knew it would create this intimidating painting that I wanted.
For the actual final piece please see my next blog as I will write more details on the actual process of painting and how I went about this project…..
Comments