Above: Final Major Project..... "I"
https://photos.app.goo.gl/VQAFTLRghFAf1ARD6 - Progress shots of "I"
As I mention in my proposal for unit 6, I would have much preferred -in hindsight- to start my final major when everyone else did because with all the knowledge I have now, it’d take half the time to complete and could be even better. There have been lots of struggles and mishaps along the way but now I’m at the end of the road, it was all worth it. The biggest challenge has been the overwhelming patience I’ve had to develop in order to not abandon or ruin the piece. There were many times I wanted to give up and start something new, many times I wanted to tear it off the wall and burn it. However, what kept me going was visualising the final result, the complete outcome. It excited me so much, knowing that I’d have a photorealistic composition that I’d be happy with, that I knew I could persevere until the end.
There are, however, things I’m not entirely satisfied with. If I was to redo my project, I’d take a whole new approach to drawing skin texture. My process for it in ‘I’ has taken too much time to develop fully and has not produced the best possible results. Looking at an artist such as Chuck Close at the start of this project may have been a hindrance. His method using acrylic to make highlights and skin involves adding layers on layers on layers. My techniques, however, simply involve the addition of tone then the taking away of certain parts of that tone to create the desired effect. In addition to this, the recreated pupils are a great improvement to the ones I had initially created and they took a fraction of the time, using a new technique. It seems that as I’ve progressed through this composition, my refinement and development processes have increased in quality exponentially and it feels as though my final major is only a start to something more. With time, I believe I could develop compositions that are truly hyperrealistic and with that, finally feel I’ve achieved my goal of drawing faces to flawed perfection.
As this is an evaluation of pieces outside my final major, I'd like to draw attention to some of the smaller pieces from my portfolio. I'm particularly fond of some of the smaller studies in biro and fineliner. The biro studies stem from my Unit 4 work "Disproportionate" where I composed pieces based off that word and how I felt I could translate it through my art. The works are slightly more supernatural/paranormal as I chose to follow the path of what 'disproportionate to reality' meant, hence the backwards eyes and absurdly large fingers manipulating eyes. Drawing in biro is quick and easy due to the immediate dark tones you get. Coupled with the dark tones, is the dramatic contrast in the compositions which further add to that semantic field of the paranormal art. The artist that influenced my ideas around this was Stefan Koidl, a digital artist I found on pintrest. He takes regular snapshots and creates a horrifying composition demonstrating the juxtaposition between the natural and unnatural. The link to my work around this is here >>>https://mattsfoundationblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/stefan-koidl-and-horror-art.html
Something to add about the 'horror' art. The chosen selection that are displayed in that post are the highest quality compositions I produced out of around double what's in there. This being said, I could have chosen one or all of these pieces as my final major, given I presented them in unique ways; maybe developing spooky backgrounds or settings, or finding a way to link them all. However, as I chose not to present them in idiosyncratic ways, it has left me with high quality pieces to add, as a show of various processes. I'll always try to create the best compositions I can and thankfully it opens endless possibilities into the prospect of final majors and gives me the opportunity of having a plan A,B and C. If I hadn't chosen a large scale self portrait as my final major, designing a more realistic and terrifying creature would have most certainly been something I looked heavily into.
Anyway, enough of the horror talk, I'd like to discuss some more in depth processes I used for developing my actual final major. More specifically, the hair. When it came to drawing hair, I'd always try to avoid it if at all possible. I simply didn't enjoy the process and wasn't skilled enough to find an easy method. For "I", however, this was an obstacle I was going to have to overcome. As there is so much depth and contrast in the reference photo of my hair, I knew it'd be a marathon, not a sprint, in order to achieve the best outcome. Looking back, it was probably one of my most efficient processes as it seemed to develop very quickly. The start of the process involves squinting at the reference photo to get the most basic of tones as the focus. Then, I'd apply these tones to the drawing and blend them into each other, creating a soft effect. Once I was happy with the tone, I'd take an eraser and create, in swift motions, thin lines to emulate hair and in certain areas, highlights. After that, I'd use my HB mechanical pencil to sketch in some loose hairs over and around the highlights, effectively blending them into the surrounding areas and adding detail. Then it's just a rinse and repeat process, until the hair is developed enough to call real.
To conclude this evaluation, my final major "I" has been an overwhelming success and allowed me to progress as an artist in both skill and knowledge. I now feel I can create much higher quality compositions in much less time. It's left me asking a question, a question that I ask after every finished piece or unit or project. "what next?". What next indeed. I want to use this final major project as a stepping stone into the genre of hyperrealism and try and push my skill to the next level of drawing. Essentially, I want to take "I" and say it is a first draft in a long line of large scale compositions that I'll develop over the next few years. This stems off the mindblowing satisfaction that creating "I" has left me with. Whilst I woudln't say it's complete, it's a project that I'll always be happy with.
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