Working from artist influence

I looked back on my initial portrait research, ‘bright’ by Jim Gingerich was one of my favourites from the selection as i liked his use of vivid colours to portray the figure’s flesh and hair movement. From this I tried to implement the spectrum of colour to define dad’s face from a photo I found whilst using a plain background in the same effect.

My attempt is no where near as effective but this can suggest glowing fleshy tones amongst rather drab colours which, personally, is a nice representation.However, not something I feel would be along the lines of what I aim to produce for a final piece, so I completely turned this around and created a contrast in both use of colour and technique. This above drawing was very linear to begin with followed by tonal values by smudging and pushing the pigments around. On the next page, i smothered the page in an inky/pigment mixture of vibrant blues and purples, and then began to work the portrait by focusing on light areas taking inspiration from “subcultural smile” by Cornelia Es Said…

I liked the broad strokes of colour to show the contours and features of his face. I particularly felt more successful in portraying his eyes compared to previous exercises where I have struggled to differentiate between using line and simply using highlights to bring out the eyelids. My chosen palette brings a cold feeling to the drawing but I feel that there is innocence in his eyes and highlights of yellows and pinks may attract the viewer into the warmth behind the figure rather than the coldness in the surrounding space.

At this stage I feel that I am coming to terms with certain ideas for my final assignment:

• to work with a defined palette of blues with warm highlights to evoke feelings of sympathy/sadness with an older figure in comparison to the warmth of the person, as inspired by Huisman’s dementia series
• combination of both tone and line technique to create my final piece
• to draw my father as my figure for a final piece and to create a narrative that is representative of a personal subject to myself, regarding an ongoing battle of dementia and the general developments during elder years

My aims will now be to experiment with various materials baring the above points in mind: using inks, charcoal, pencil, possibly markers, and pastels. Hopefully this will guide me towards the most suitable medium where I can then begin to work with compositions and piece my final assignment together.