My 'muse,' Andy, yet again...

I guess after my thrilling account of the life-drawing exploits at school, you are absolutely DYING to have a look at some of the sketches I created in those traumatic after-school sessions. It was quite hard to photograph sketches so this was the best I could do.

Now all my artwork has stories attached, so these are no exception. I thought that I would describe what it was like to be in one of the life-drawing sessions. Now, you already know that Andy would disappear into the art cupboard and emerge in his loin-cloth and flipflops, and as you can imagine, during winter this was no mean feat. This meant that in every session it would get oppressively hot as heaters blasted hot air around the room to keep poor Andy warm. One of our art teachers, who I shall call Lord G for the purposes of this blog (Ellie, remember the grapes?) always got extremely giggly whenever Andy was around, and used to offer him several cups of tea and biscuits in the brief breaks we had between sketching.  If we were doing a long pose, then another art teacher would enter the kind of 'pen' we created with our desks and draw around Andy's feet or his staff with chalk, so he knew what position to get back into later.

I used to wonder whether the few boys we had in our art class felt more uncomfortable than the girls did, but I think it was the opposite. We had two other models during the series of sessions, an old man (a session I missed) and an overweight  and eccentric middle-aged woman with long red hair. They didn't last long though, because for us, Andy really was the one. Haha :)

Andy (the Neanderthal) vs Cubism

This is my newest painting and the largest canvas I have done before. As you can see, it is pretty big, about 120cm x 100cm, and it was so exciting when it came in the post!

This is my first real life proper commission...basically, the company I used to work for (Cox Costello & Horne in Rickmansworth, a firm of accountants, they are very nice) knew that I sold my artwork, and they asked to have a look at my portfolio of work from school. I lugged all my massive folders into work the next day and the partners all had a look. It was really weird showing them all the stuff and explaining it, but I am glad I did, because the next thing I know I was being summoned into the boardroom with all of them, and they asked me to do a painting for the reception area. I was sososo excited!  The best thing was that they said I could do whatever I liked, my style, so it wasn't just a reproduction, it was a chance to design something myself.


This, however, proved to be more difficult, because there's nothing worse than having no starting point! I decided to revisit some of my folders for inspiration. The partners had liked a painting I had done, it was a copy of Picasso's 'Les demoiselles d'Avignon" (so impressed I remembered that) so cubism was a given. I like the deconstructedness of cubism anyway, and I teamed it with bold bright colours because I like painting with them :)

The design for the piece was based on a life-drawing sketch I had done. Life-drawing. Ahh what good times those were...

When we started A-level art, we were told that we had to do life-drawing, as it would give us practice for our drawing skills and would count as reference material for our projects entitled 'the Human image'. I talked about it a bit before, I think, as the second part of the project meant we had to focus on a certain aspect of it and I chose 'Adornment'. Anyway, those life-drawing classes were hilarious. It would be after school, and all the tables would be arranged in a circle around the edge of the room. The blinds were closed and the windows in the doors covered with sugar paper. The first time was painful...Andy (our life drawing model) arrived and was extremely ugly...he disappeared into the art cupboard and emerged wearing a loin cloth and some flipflops, and the proceeded to pose with a stick/staff thing in the middle of the room while we drew him. SO awkward. Everyone didn't dare look at anyone else in case we burst out laughing. I mean, wannabe Tarzan much? The second painful thing was the fact that he looked at us while we drew him, and sometimes even looked at the drawings. If the sketch wasn't flattering then that's pretty embarrassing... To be honest, after the first time it wasn't so bad, you forgot that it was a person and just looked at him in terms of lines and shadows. I might put up some of my sketches soon..they turned out pretty well eventually! Everytime I am in college and I see framed drawings on the wall of the human form I think to myself...well I know how to do that :)

By the way, this painting was oil on canvas, and it sold for £250. I took a life drawing I did and deconstructed it, making the lines angular and rough. I then added the little 'curly' bits to break up the shapes further, because that is a typical 'me' touch..and my friend Harmeet then suggested that it looked like a broken heart. Which I love :) The name for this painting was suggested by Ellie Miller, who shared the life-drawing experiences with me and recognised the 'human form' in the painting as soon as I uploaded a picture to facebook..she also shared her sour skittles with me during those long life-drawing classes <3

Cross-section of a Rose

I haven't posted on here in a while, and so I think an update is now well overdue :) Apologies for the picture quality, my camera is dead and my charger lost in the depths of my friend's car :(


This piece here was inspired at the very beginning by my cousin Krupa (who is now working in fashion and who I am extremely jealous of) and more particularly by a piece of textiles work she did for A-level. It was beautiful, like a piece of fabric stretched out over a frame and embroidered all over. I am not that great at textiles, not going to lie, but I thought about how I could achieve a similar effect through painting...


At school, most people painted amazing canvases as their final pieces, but I always tried to do different crazy things that didn't always work. Hence in my earlier posts, sticking bolts onto my canvases and stuff. This was one of my experiments. It is a huge piece... maybe a metre and half square... and it is a silk painting strung out across a wooden frame. It was inspired by a project I had done on flowers, and also by Mackintosh, who created stylised glass paintings of roses. I love roses as much as the next girl so it seemed fitting :)


When I was making it, in my usual fashion, I left everything to the last minute, and in this case, the day before it was due in. I had stayed up practically the whole night working on it, spreading all my art rubbish over the lounge floor, watching bollywood movie after bollywood movie to keep me awake and so it wasn't so creepy sitting alone downstairs. The next day (the day it was due in) I spent every spare minute I had between lessons finishing it off, and I owe the fact it was finished in time to Hindusha, Ellie and Jankee, who all helped me sososo much. So thanks guys :)


It has been displayed at school, even though I left 2 years ago now, and I went to pick it up yesterday. It is now hanging in pride of place in my dining room :) It is a little worse for wear after so long, so I shall repair it and make it better...sometime soon ;) 

Adornment - sketches

I am currently working on a couple of paintings but it takes a while to finish them, especially seeing as the one I am doing right now is my most massive one (size wise) yet!

So I thought that I would post sketches that I have done in the mean time :)

These sketches are ones I did while looking at 'adornment' in India...

Discord

This is another A-level piece, this time for my exam. It is a whole lot less prettyful but for some reason it is one of my favourite paintings.

The title of the exam was 'Discord' and I decided to look at discord between Man and Nature, but more specifically, in the sky. So I compared human flight machines...planes...and natural flight machines...birds. Simples.

Cue a trip to the Science Museum: that massive hall where there's millions of planes and cars and weird stuff. And then to the Natural History Museum to take pictures of creepy stuffed birds. And then I combined the two together to create a kind of mechanical bird, as you can see here. It is an oil painting on canvas, but I stuck little tiny bolts around the edge of the 'metal plating' and I went mad in Hobbycraft choosing feathers to stick on as well. It makes it more interesting to have real stuff on the painting so I always try and add something 3D.

The background is very influenced by Picasso, as is most of my stuff, really. I loveee cubism because of the bright bold colours matched with dark dark black and because it is so fun to make curved rounded shapes more interesting my breaking them up with lines. Very geek and very paintbrush!

Adornment

This piece was one I did as part of my A-level coursework. It was the product of manyyy long nights sat up watching Bollywood DVDs to keep me awake while I did each individual section of the patchwork design..

It basically started off as a project looking at the human imagine..which involved life drawing (eek!) and I used one of the drawings I had done in the sessions and stylized the shapes. By doing this, I created a pattern in which to put my different fabrics and beads. You can spot the initial pattern if you look closely at the dark blue lines on their own...see it? Clue: it is a male form, with one leg folded and one knee up, and one arm is stretched out and resting on the knee. Massive clue but you'll need help finding it!

I then focused on a more specific part of the human 'image': adornment. This was largely inspired by a trip to India where I went mad shopping for fabrics, trims, sequins and beads. The shop was amazing..tiny and packed full of so much different stuff...rows of tubes filled with fancy coloured gems and buttons and ribbons and everything! I also looked at paintings of indian women, and how jewellery is SO important in India...and the fact that even the poorest woman will be wearing a brightly coloured sari. All of this made me want to try and convey the colour and richness and texture through a painting, and so this was the result!

Each section is made up of stuff that I bought from that shop or something I designed and made myself. So one section is a batik painting (you dribble hot wax onto fabric and then dye it with ink, and when you iron the wax off it leaves your patterns behind), a few are just paintings I did on watercolour paper, some are beads I sewed onto fabric...a whole mess of stuff.

It now has pride of place in my lounge...my Mum loved it and it fit with the colour scheme so there we go!

Ganesh

This was my first venture into selling my work, and is a kind of painting of a real-life object. As with all my paintings, it is an oil on canvas, slightly larger than A3.

The story behind this is kind of funny...I made friends with a boy called Akash last summer, and when he saw some of the artwork I had done, he showed it to his then-employer, who I shall call Bob-the-Builder. Bob was so impressed with the picture that he asked me to reproduce it on canvas for his house, which I did. But then lots of drama happened involving a bathroom and Bob vanished, never to be seen again. So I still have this painting, which he was going to pay £75 for...