art portfolio

Sunflower Print September 2023

Print of a dried sunflower done in layers, orange and red mixed with details done in fine liner on top.

Unfinished dragon and beetles sketches

The beetles are drawn from reference in a nature book, the dragon is from my imagination. The dragon’s head is completed in fineliner.

Experimental sketches:

I started with little scribbles to see where the shapes would take me. I had never tried this before and i also avoided rubbing things out as much as possible.

This was a really fun process as I had created things I never would have thought of.

Jellyfish:

Done using references found on the internet and my imagination

Here I started by just drawing shapes, the two top flowers just formed, so I looked up references for flowers and drew the bottom 3 from a photo. I coloured them in with alcohol pens and coloured pencils. The alcohol markers were really good at creating base colours and the coloured pencils really added some depth. It was exciting to play around with the use of different mediums together and how the colours would work out.

This is a copy of a Brambly Hedge illustration from a book. I started of with light sketches and then used water colours, white gouache and coloured pencils.

Unfinished.

Here I used a reference for the owl, I started by sketching it lightly and then used watercolour on top, with white gouache and a fine liner. The tree stump could have looked a lot more natural and less solid in terms of colour.

This was a very quick painting I did as a gift to someone.

The inspiration for these fish came from a nature book, they were sketched on with pencils and i used mainly gouache to add the colour. Some parts, such as the fins were painted with watercolour. These are still unfinished.

I like how the fish look like they are swimming across the page.

Fish. Summer 2023

I very lightly drew these fish in pencil but quickly went straight to using watercolour. I added the blue accents as I felt they lacked movement and this developed into a pattern.

This might look interesting on a tile or as mosaic.

Mosque in the mist

This mosque was painted using a reference from google. It is acrylic paint on a small canvas. I am unhappy with the misty clouds in front, as they are too literal and look a bit out of place. I could also have used a wider variety of colours for the sky in the background to make the composition on the whole look less flat.

I started this mask with a pattern on one side and added the same on the other side to make it symmetrical. It could have done with more variety in colour, possibly a warm toned blue to match with the orange.

This mask was the first I attempted and was inspired by a butterfly character from a popular TV series called Shinobu. It was fun to do and I learned a lot from the process in terms of which colours work well together.

This blue mask is my favourite as there is a bit more variety in the colour, with the white and the 3 dots of red on the right hand side. I like the asymmetrical shape.

However it could have done with some more red.

This one is the most simple and boring of the 4, as he colours are not eye catching. They blend in with each other too much and the patterns are fairly simple.

I did enjoy experimenting with all the different patterns.

GCSE year 9: (2020)

This is a Georgia O’keefe pastiche the name of which i could no longer find. I should have used more water to make the blending process easier.

This is a tonal sketch of a photo of a flower. It’s hard to tell what it is but it was an interesting process. Back then, I focused more on shapes rather than the different tones found in the flower.

Now i would focus more on dark and light areas and let the shapes form themselves, without focusing on creating a nice piece of artwork.

This is a GCSE final piece. The flower looks pretty, but there is nothing interesting about it. I could have used a lot more colours, like blues and purples, the paint was too thick so I should have added more water to make the process of blending my colours easier.

Turner pastiche: This was from the start of my A level course where I was still using really thick acrylic paint. This is one of the pieces I dislike the most.

This is a piece inspired by Turner and Monet, it is a painting of a photo i took of the countryside. I like the sky, but the paint is still too thick and the composition overall lacks interest. There is slight texturing at the bottom. At this stage I was too focused on producing ‘perfect’ paintings, instead of testing different techniques.

Here I started to use a little more watery paint, though still not enough. It is more Turner inspired. I had fun painting it but it was very challenging to get the colours like the photo I was referencing. I should have layered my paint in thin watery layers to add more depth and variety of colour. It is still a nice piece, but there is a lot I would do differently now.

Media Trial:

Here I was starting to get the hang of painting with more watery layers, as I was painting water. I layered this up very gradually but also experimented by removing some layers with a wet tissue, as seen on the rock in the middle, and adding more shapes and a variety of different colours. I was starting to get more abstract with my painting and I had a lot of fun playing around with the colours and mediums I was using, such as ink and acrylic.

This is the final piece, the first picture was taken after 5 hours of painting. I started with a bright orange background in order to make the colours pop more. I then used used light layers of watery paint and built up the colours gradually.

The next day I added further colours, such as cyan, greens, blues and some pinks. To make the water pop more I added highlights in a very pale blue, with white accents. To create the bubbles on the surface, I splashed on the pale blue and white with super watery acrylic paint.

These are abstract interpretations of a sea cave I photographed in Sicily.

This is an Initial Outcome of the sea cave. I started by layering lots of colours, like blues, greens and purples. I then also used inks to create luminosity. I find the painting lacks depth and I didn’t achieve what I wanted to, which was to create the feeling of being transported and immersed into the cave.

This is the first developed outcome and it is a more ‘natural’ approach in terms of colour. I like the perspective created in the water by the terracotta paint, however the charcoal and terracotta colours don’t add much to the actual cave in terms of depth and the bright yellow overwhelms.

This is the second developed outcome, here I took a more abstract approach as I wanted to make the cave more luminous. There are lots of layers to this painting. I layered up lots of inks and Brusho on top of my acrylic paint. I like the terracotta but there is too much of it. Had I used it more delicately it would have been a subtle way of drawing the eye into the cave.

The water is mainly ink layered on top of a bright, textured, orange background, which looks very nice on the left, with slight accents of the warm toned blue, but is then taken away on the right hand side, as I painted over it completely with the blue. I enjoyed experimenting with the inks in this painting. I also added charcoal to create more depth and sharper edges in the cave.

This is the beginning of the Final Outcome. I wanted a layer of terracotta, but the colour is not as dark as I wanted it to be. I sketched the cave on top to get a rough idea of where everything should go.

This is the painting after 3 hours. Like in my initial and developed outcomes, I layered watered down acrylic, letting the colours drip to the bottom of the canvas, making sure to create darker areas for depth using a deep blue mixed with some brown, and then added highlights in gradually. I also added some detail into the middle part of the cave, as I wanted that to be the focal point.

After 5 hours, I got a bit carried away in adding lots of detail to most parts of the cave. This slightly takes away from the focal point in the middle. There is a lot going on in the painting and I find it a bit overwhelming.

This is a much looser, more abstract interpretation of a section of the painting. I started it upside down with a base of terracotta, in order to have a different perspective of the cave. I then blocked in the dark areas with a dark blue, creating the shadows. I deliberately left some areas blank in order to keep the focus in the middle of the painting. I felt an unfinished version of the painting made a nice contrast to the previous completed painting. I really like the contrast of the two and they were really fun to paint.