level 2 painting update (in lockdown!!)

 Covid-19 has blessed New Zealand with another lockdown so here comes another few weeks of trying to finish my portfolio at home, much like last year. One of many issues that comes with lockdown is a lack of proper art supplies, not having access to the art department paints and brushes I'd usually use. I do have my own supplies hanging around but I'm not wasting my expensive oil paints on my NCEA portfolio (sorry).

What I do have is watercolour, so after ordering wet-strength paper and brushes that turned out to be absolutely terrible, I've been working on a few paintings I hope to put on my portfolio. I think at school I've really been focusing on my more 'grunge' artist models - Jim Dine, Mimmo Paladino, so my goal for lockdown is to continue on the more pretty, bright paintings inspired by Van Gogh, even Marilyn Webb, etc. Remember I'm aiming for my portfolio to look like a story in sequence, going from these bright pretty flowery paintings to the way more grunge, dark, rotting flowers look: kind of representing how flowers themselves slowly die. 

This painting I am a bit reluctant to put on the final portfolio as it does look similar-ish to the reference I used, and it doesn't actually have flowers on it, only bamboo. But I really liked the style I ended up using. It's a fine-tip black pen with watercolour on top, it sort of looks Japanese inspired so I might research some Japanese artists to continue this sort of style. 

This painting I'm definitely more proud of. Again it was created using a fine-tip black pen and watercolour on top. The colours have sort of faded since I painted it so I might go over it again with a few more coats, you can hardly see the blue sky. This is definitely making its way onto my portfolio. I didn't even have an artist model for this one, I just used an assortment of reference photos of flowers and joined it all together into one. I should stop doing that.

Of course I had to go back to my favourite style of painting, the really grunge, dark, sort of abstract ways. Jim Dine is a really prominent artist model in my portfolio/inspiration pinterest board. He uses negative space and really dark colours to create really grunge works which I love. This was created using a fine-tip pen with black watercolour on top. As you can see I've used that pen to depict some little figures on there just to make the painting more interesting while still keeping the flower the focal point. I think I'll have to add a few more coats of black once this one dries because it's not as dark as I'd like it, I definitely want to add more dimension. 

My next steps are to continue creating more of the bright pieces as well as some transitional pieces (i don't want the portfolio to go directly from bright and sunny and vibrant to sudden black and dark and death pieces.) Also researching some more artist models as well as the work of my current ones just to get more ideas and references. As much as I love making really dark works I have to get the pretty ones out of the way (ugh)