This is my most recent drawing, I think I can see some progression in my application of colour and shadow, for this I used soft pastel on a slight ground colour.

interesting article

It is interesting that I have looking at a comparison between two paintings from the bp portrait award in 2010 and looking at the relationship between the painting that one first prize 'Painting of Mother' and that of third prize, 'Tim' third prize being a photo-realist painting, and the first prize is one where the paint is clearly seen. I made links with my own work, in the belief that seeing that paint in portraiture is important in the representation, this is something I will be further investigation in critical positions.

External Agency relevant to me

If I can advance in my technical ability i would like to work towards being able to paint from life so that i can eventually be able to exhibit in a large scale exhibition, if I could ever get my work to a standard that might be selected to exhibit in the BP portrait award, it would be a huge exposure and it would certainly advance my professional development.

another print

Printing

I began to think of other ways that I might draw the face, on my BA I did some dry point printing and really enjoyed it, so I thought dry point print might be a good way at trying to depict the face, because you etch out the feature you have to look closely at the shadow therefore this could be really apt for what I need to learn to do now.

Skills

Skill progression and understanding

What I am doing

• Drawing from life
• Placing importance on creating contours of the face
• Study of other artists who are doing this
• Digitalizing my work to put it online
• Getting life models to sit for me
• Photographing people from all different angles from which to paint and draw

What I need to do

• Look into how I can do some dry point printing, find out days the studio might be available
• Stretch more canvas's
• Make a website for my work
• Begin to decide which external agencies might be appropriate for my work
• Think about what would be my artist statement, what do i need to verbalise about my work

Strengths

• Brainstorming, collecting research and gathering together idea and interests
• People skills, development of relationships with others, and interest in people, which compliments the fact that portraiture is my area of creativity, so therefore i should use this to my advantage and try and ask people to sit for me so i can draw from life
• Imagination, perhaps a strength as long as i don't let it stop me from thinking clearly about sequences of things/skill/people/tools i need to do and obtain in order to become more professional in my practice

Weaknesses 

• Ability to be over sensitive and emotional, therefore when i get criticism it can be crippling rather than motivating 
• Ability to go off in a tangent and try and do too many things all at once, perhaps over ambitious so that as a result all things get delved into but none completed 
• Painting skills, are perhaps the biggest weakness, i need to find a style that suits me

Artists influence

Certain artists have inspired me, informed my work, helped me to understand certain things, what I will do here is just highlight a particular relevant aspect about this artist that has been important now, in my working practice at the moment.

Jenny Saville who explores the manipulated body and flesh in all its forms of brutal manipulation, and horror, is someone I feel I must look at as a reference when looking at flesh and skin, she is the best painter of flesh in its raw, true and confronting nature. In my portraits I want to convey the vulnerability of skin and I want to learn how to create fleshiness through paint, to illuminate the blemishes the wrinkles and the aspects of the persons face that makes them individual.
Jenny Saville creates these paintings through thick layers of paint, she almost moulds them. What I read recently in her book is;

"I'll have photographs of my body, and sometimes I take photographs of bits of my friends bodies, and i have lots of medical text books that I use as reference, for instance if I want to paint stretch marks, then I'll look up in a medical textbook to find what causes them. Because if you can understand what makes them, you can understand how to paint them better"

Jenny Saville in the book 'Saville' p14

This highlights the importance of understanding the features of the face and what muscles and bones cause them to move, or what causes the shadow on the face, this is extremely relevant to my own work, and shows the connection between this and the style in which old masters painted, where studying anatomy is of great importance to the painting.

Jenny Saville www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artist/jennysaville.htm

Colour sketches, and further sketch work

These are some more studies I have been doing concentrating on

• Working from life
• Transferring skills gained from the sketches from life into sketches that I still want to make, drawings of the people that cannot sit for me but who's faces are of interest to me.....

Key points of professional practice...

Having identified some of the external agencies that are available to us here in Cardiff, the talk we had at Howard Gardens by Hziz and the 'Godmachine' really helped to identify fundamental points that we should all be considering when it comes to our professional practice, his talk really helped as although his subject matter is in now way related to my own he made the talk relate to all areas of art practice, he talked about how we all might promote ourselves, these are the key point I want to remember and try to follow up in my own practice:

• How you can teach yourself to digitalize work, and to put work on line and document it (which I think I have began by doing this blog, and by beginning to scan in work, which help to see progression.
• You can create an on-line persona that is faceless and can begin to get response from others 
• Importance of showing people your work
• PERSISTENCE-is the key, to be wholly vicious in promoting and not letting people get you down
• Identify agencies or people that a pertinent to you own practice
• Utilise TOOLS especially those online like; Social networks, Blogs, Twitter, get connected with other artists
• 'bigcartel'  an online site where you can sell work

Learning and informing...

By looking at the book Portrait Painting Atelier which gives demonstrations of Old Masters' techniques and traditional portraiture I have learned some of the important skills I now need to work on, I have gained knowledge in what I essentailly lack, I need to learn more about structuring the composition and grounds, of creating softer tones rather than the harsh layer of colour I have been using.

Robert  Liberace, in a workshop December                                           Robert Liberace


By looking at this book it lead me to the work of Robert Liberace who is an astounding painter, drawer and sculptor, and who teaches many classes on technical painting, and how to create these portraits. He has also posted a video on youtube.com which shows how he paints a portrait, it is a quick demonstration of the type of technique he uses, this was very informative. Here I include some of his works which I think demonstrate the process behind them, and also depict what I strive to try and achieve, I would like to somehow find my own style that draws upon some of these old techniques. He too encourages his students to vigorously study anatomy. 
www.robertliberace.com

PORTRAITS In April of 2003 Robert received the Portrait Society of America's
Grand Prize Award in their annual International Portrait Competition. The previous year he placed Best of Show. The winning portraits were featured in International Artist Magazine. Another of his portraits graced the cover of The Artist's Magazine, April 2007. Robert has been commissioned to paint portraits for clients such as Marc Pachter, long-time Director of the National Portrait Gallery, George H. Bush, Senior, and Ambassador Sol Linowitz. Rob's portrait demonstrations have become a favorite for students attending the Portrait Societies' Portrait Academies. One is written up here. For more information go to www.portraitsociety.org. 

Progression of work

Looking first at structure and anatomy of the face and its features, I had a go at drawing the anatomical face

                These are the sketches I worked on from life, each one taking around an hour to complete.

Sketches

These are the beginnings  of my studies of the face, all of  these are from life.......this was very challenging to draw from life, as I am so set in my ways of painting and drawing from photographs, however I think I can begin to see progression, I hope eventually this will translate into my paint work.

From paint to pencil....

After painting in the studio for the past three weeks, I arranged a tutorial to see how my work was progressing. The tutorial brought to my attention my painting technique, or perhaps lack of as it seemed was the opinion, to look at it positively, as my skills audit demonstrates I can become over emotional or sensitive to things...I will take from the tutorial that the way to move forward is to go backwards and start to work from life, work on my drawing ability. My work maybe is only reflecting the photograph and not what I essentially want it to depict, which is the personality of the sitter/person/friend. The work is perhaps flat in appearance, and in order to move forward in portraiture I should look at the structure of the face. So these are the things I now need to do:

• Start sketching from life
• Look at ways that other artists show the face and understand the difference between their representation and my own, and see how they make the face project out of the canvas, how it is not a replica of the photo
• Understand the structure of the face itself, so that it is easier to comprehend where light and dark, shadowing is coming from, the contours, and flesh structure. 
• Gain this knowledge from looking at anatomy. 
• Make a catalogue of photographs from all different angles of some important faces I want to paint from, so that I can then see the face from all the angles at once to paint from. 

The importance of recognition.....

On our site tour around Cardiff, we began to locate different people and places around Cardiff, that would help us if we want to further our practice now  outside of the university, but also in helping us navigate our future opportunities, and by aiding us in having contact with these people, we can now decide for ourselves who and what is more relevant to our practice, so in my case in terms of portraiture I might want to get in contact which I have done with fox studios to arrange gallery space, however I might not want to move into outside studios yet as I believe what is important to me at the moment is the ability to be around other students, and also to get the opinions of tutors, so for me my studio at the moment is ideal. However it is important to map out now where I might go to after this year is ended, to envision the course as a small component to our whole profession.
Address's to remember:
G39-Warp (http://www.g39.org/)
Chapter Arts Centre
Milkwood Gallery Roath
TactileBosch (http://tactilebosch.co.uk/)

A question of paint??????

In the first few weeks of the course I am struggling with talking about myself and the 'work' I find it hard to keep going over why it is I paint what I paint, it begins to feel like justification, and I am constantly worried that less is more in the art world, and that if I only had a mark on a canvas it would encourage more discourse, perhaps people want to see more conceptual art, but where does that leave me?
I include a quote by Jenny Saville, who at some point even she felt the same, and considering what an amazing painter she is I am slightly reassured.

"the very act of painting is a potential embarrassment-something that can only be justified by assosiation with more up-to-date practices.....painting is difficult to rationalise and when you put paint down, its an intuitive process, so in art school where things have to be justified, painting falls behind. In art school there's a guilt loaded onto painting."

At the beginning, there was paint....

I began as a starting point on the MA, with painting a guide that took me around south east Asia, Manny, he became a friend, and became very important to the whole traveling experience itself, he became the symbol for me of freedom, and of experience. I began painting him on linen canvas in the studio, with oil, painting from a photograph I took in Cambodia at Angkor Wat, I think the photograph captures him really well, and the background of the stone at Angkor is great against his skin.

It was important that the subject of my painting was of this person, he represents to me a moment or time, that is unforgettable. It was pointed out to me that you could not tell his ethnicity  through the paint, that although he is half Italian and half from Saint Lucia you could not see this. This worried me, and I include the photograph as a way of showing him, maybe the photograph should have been left as it is, and in this case, I have not translated what I wanted to through paint.