Painting Evaluation
For this painting I wanted to combine a variety of techniques and styles both including my own personal goals with suggestions made to me by others (such as tutors and peers).
I am really enjoying experimenting with skin tones and I wanted to focus on getting quite a realistic shape and colour for the figures, whilst still using a fairly loose technique. I didn’t want to aim for photorealism as such, but more of an idealised version of reality.
After speaking to a photographer I worked with years ago I was reminded of the creative and inspirational work we did together and a number of these shoots involved working with another model, Camilla-Rose. Back when I modelled full time I frequently got the impression that other models were very bitchy and back-stabbing as it is a very cut throat industry, however, Camilla was the first model I met and worked with that I built a friendship from. She was creative and inventive with her posing styles but she was also very friendly and passionate about creating beautiful imagery. Her attitudes have stuck with me ever since and still see her as an inspiration, even though I haven’t seen her in a number of years. Steve (the original photographer) gave me full permissions to use the imagery from any of our shoots together for my artwork, and after careful consideration I decided to use this piece for both a hand embroidery piece and a painting.
I chose this image as I felt it summed up the friendship/relationship I had with Camilla, we were close but not intimate, and share a love of art-nude modelling and beautiful landscapes. Camilla is very definitely representative of my “feminine ideal” in terms of her body shape and personality and I wanted to explore this without it being too personal, therefore I chose a pose that combined anonymity and our love of the outdoors!
I combined several techniques, including those learnt in my first rotations when looking at artists such as Bob Ross for painting landscapes. I also referred back to my very first landscape paintings that I did in privately taught classes. I wanted to create a dreamy, fantasy type landscape in which to place the figures, as this is representative of the way I feel about the photo sessions we had.
Although there are certainly areas for improvement in future works such as perspective (landscape) and anatomy, in particular proportion (the arms on the right figure are completely wrong). I am overall very happy with this painting!!
I think the skin tones are a vast improvement on any work I have done so far and I am really beginning to feel comfortable working in oils. The wet-on-wet technique gives something I just couldn’t quite achieve in acrylic paint and the colours are much more natural rather than being plastic-like.
Before painting this, I did prime both sides of the canvas in case I wanted to add any stitch work embellishments. Given that I am so pleased with the results I am hesitant to work further into it, but as my project progresses, I may come back to this piece and work into it further!
