A2 Anatomy Self-Portrait - Watercolour 1

This is an A2 watercolour self-portrait based on the anatomy of the hands and arms.

I liked the idea that what was underneath the skin helps us to move our face and body and wanted to create a piece based on distortion and the movement of the muscles, fat and tissue under the skin.

In this self-portrait I did include the facial features, unlike my other paintings. However I did still include the white and green flowers for continuity and that fact that I like them.

I feel this piece worked really well and became an interesting and unusual piece, and the fact that it is A2 meant that I could include more detail than the A6 and A3 studies.

 

 

 

Experimental A3 Watercolour

With this piece I tried experimenting with a slightly different way of applying the watercolour paint. However I didn't really like the out come at all, as it really didn't work and became way too messy. It also kind of looks like she had a nasty accident and part of her head is missing and some of her face is falling off.

Part way through doing the pen outline I decided that it was a waste of time to continue as I wasn't going to include this in with the rest of my work and I wasn't going to create any more pieces in this style.

I fell that part of the reason I don't like this piece is that I feel that I rushed it a little as I really wanted to see what it would look like. However I think that even if I had taken a bit more time creating it I still wouldn't had been happy.

 



A3 Anatomy - Watercolours

These are some more of the A3 watercolour studies that I have created during this project, that are based on head and neck anatomy.

I really enjoyed painting these pieces and I think that they work well as a series of painting. I think this is because I have made the green and white dead flowers a feature in each of them and the fact that they are very similar in colour and composition. 

 

 

 



Dissected Neck - Watercolour

This is another A3 watercolour piece, this painting is based on an image of a neck being dissected that I found on Pinterest. I really like how this image turned out and I think that the image looks really cool and unusual.

However in this photograph of the piece, the flowers look like they blend into the skin of the face, but in real life there is much more of a distinct colour difference between the two.

 



Neck And Chest - Watercolour

This is an A3 watercolour painting based on what is underneath the skin of the neck and cheat. I thought this image was really interesting as it has a lot of different aspects and elements to it such as; bone, muscle, tissue and fat.

I created this piece using the same technique as my other, smaller A6 pieces, using watercolour and a fine 0.25mm liner pen.

I also included the dead flowers like I did in my small work, however I feel that this piece was much easier to paint as it is much bigger and I could include a lot more detail into this piece.

I feel that if you saw this (someone with their skin removed and their muscles and one showing) in real life, or if a painted it in a photorealist style, it would be pretty gross and gory, however I feel that this technique and the inclusion of the flowers makes the image/subject almost delicate looking a quite beautiful/pretty.

 

 



Veins Of The Human Heart - Watercolour

This is an A6 watercolour painting of a human heart stripped of all its fat and muscle, to expose all the veins. I really liked this image as I had never seen the veins of the heart exposed like that before and thought that it was a beautiful and delicate image.

I found that this pieces really lent itself to watercolour and the technique that I used to create it. I created the thin lines for the veins by blowing the paint around the page using a straw, this worked really well and meant that the lines became very mess and intricate, just like the veins in the image I painted it from. It would have taken me a long time to paint all the lines individually with a paint brush and I don't think that it would have had as good of an effect to it, as it would have been a little to neat. 

 

 



Grey And Green (Head And Flowers) - Watercolour

This is another small A6 study based on anatomy and muscles, focusing on the muscles of the face and neck. This is slightly different to the other A6 pieces I have done so far, as the flowers I have included in this composition are alive, where as in my other studies they are dead and dried out.

I feel that this piece worked well and I do quite like the use of the live flowers in this piece, however I feel that it looks slightly misplaced when it is along side my other pieces and the flowers look strikingly different to the dead ones. This piece is mainly black and white, with just a small amount of green in the centre of the flowers, which is similar to my other pieces. However most of the other pieces I have created so far include the red/brown colour. I feel that makes this piece look a little odd when all my work is displayed together, as it doesn't have that colour to tie it in with the other pieces. It may have worked better as a series of paintings if it had the red/brown in it. Saying that I feel that it works really well on its own.

 



MRI_Brain Experiments - Watercolour

As I was researching into medical and anatomy illustrations I came across images of MRI and brain scans hat were really interesting as the brain sort of becomes like an abstract pattern. And has some similar shapes and forms to the circular experiments I created based on the images of cells and stills from 'Fantastic Voyage'. So I decided to create some experiments similar to the ones that I did before but based on the brain scans.

I feel that these worked really well, they became like weird little patterns and they are oddly visually satisfying.

I don't really know if I will develop these any further though as I am unsure how I would include these images into my other works/style.

 

 

 

 

Little Cell Illustrations - Watercolour

These are a mixture of different cells that I painted in watercolour, I think that these worked out really well and I feel that watercolour was the best technique for these images as I could build up and layer the colours, but it is still transparent enough for the colours underneath be visible.

 



Circle Experiments 2 - Flowers

 

These are some more circle experiments that I created using mixed media, however this time I created them from images of plants. I found that magnified, dissected flowers look similar to zoomed in human cells and vessel.

 



Circle Experiments 1

 

These are some mixed media experiments that I have created based on stills from the film 'Fantastic Voyage' and images of cells and blood cells.   

I created them all in a circular shape as most of he human body is very flowing and natural in shape and form with no real straight lines of sharp edges. The fact that zoomed into the images and magnified them when I was drawing meant that the outcomes became really abstract and pattern like. They also ended up looking like mold and bacteria growing in a petri dish, which was quite interesting. 

I also used some map, to collage on some of the experiments as it reminded my of veins and vessels, I think that this worked out quite well.

I created half of the experiments in black and white and the other half in colour, this was interesting as the black and white samples became a lot more abstract looking than the coloured ones, as it was mainly the red/brown colour that kept the coloured samples more real looking.

 

Dissected Throat - Watercolour

This is a painting of a throat that has been dissected, however I feel that this piece didn't really work out as well as the other paintings that I have created so far, as it is quite difficult to make out what the painting is of. I think that it would have worked better if I had done it on a bigger piece of paper, as I think that that is the problem. The A6 paper was too small for this image and if I had done it bigger I would have been able to fit the whole image onto the page and it would have been a much more clear piece.

Also I think that the flowers are not defined enough in this piece and that they blend in with the image too much and there is no distinct end/edge to the flowers.

I still like this piece, as I know what it is supposed to be (as I painted it and saw the original image that I painted it from). However I do think that it is my least favourite I have painted so far during this project. 

 

 

Two Dead Flowers - Watercolour

This piece is also an A6 watercolour, I really enjoyed painting the dead flowers as they were a lot more textured and varied than the live flowers. I found that they really dried out and the petals shrivelled up into interesting and delicate looking shapes. They also became very distorted, however still look like flowers.

I plan to make the green and white/grey flowers a real feature in a lot, if not all of my paintings, and have them become a kind of motif, and to create a sense of continuity through out all of my paintings. So that they can be displayed well as a series, but they should still work on their own too.

 

   

A6 Heart And Flowers Illustration

The image below is an A6 (postcard watercolour paper) watercolour, I found an image of a dissected heart that I thought was really beautiful and decided that I wanted to include it in a painting.

I was inspired by some of the illustrations and drawings, that I found while I was doing my research, to add in the flowers to the composition. And I feel that this worked really well and made the image a lot more interesting and intriguing than it just being a watercolour painting of a heart. However I made my painting different to the illustrations I had seen by painting in dead flowers rather than live ones.

As I was collecting images and things to draw from during this project, I bought some flowers, with the intention of painting and drawing from them, as I thought it would be better to draw from life rather than photographs. However I decided that I actually preferred to draw from the flowers when they were dead more than I did when they were alive. I feel that the dead, dried out flowers are much more interesting and have a beautiful texture to them. Especially with this piece, I feel that the juxtaposition between the flowers and the heart works really well and that some of the shapes and patterns in the dissected heart are mimicked by the shapes in the flowers, and they really complement each other visually.

 



Open Mouth With Flower - Watercolour

My idea for this piece came from the research I had done, looking at images from 'Fantastic Voyage' and on Pinterest.

 

I liked the idea of the flowers growing inside the body and the being able to see them once the body was dissected. (This reminded me of the stories that you get told as a child about the kid that ate the orange seed and then an orange tree grew inside them)

I also found these images on Pinterest these Lynn Skordal images (Flower Torture - You Must Eat This Marigold) and thought that they were really interesting images, and inspired this watercolour painting.

 

Lynn Skordal:

 

 

My Watercolour Painting:

 

I think this painting worked well and this technique make the painting more interesting unusual and striking.



Life Drawing 1

Evaluation So Far:

On Thursday mornings I have been attending the life drawing classes, and so far I have really enjoyed these sessions. During the classes I have been incorporating my initial project ideas into my work and I feel that this has worked really well and I have created some really interesting and unique pieces.

I have incorporated flowers into my life drawings and paintings, in a few different ways (see images below). I particularly like the line drawings, as I think that they are quite unusual and I feel visually they work really well. (In some ways they are an extension and development of some of the pieces/collages that I created for my obsessions project last year (see images), yet they fit well into this years project too). I think that they make really cool/weird little illustrations.

I also created tis watercolour painting in a similar way (during the same session). I drew in flowers instead of including the head and face within the piece to add a little mystery to it and to keep the subject/model anonymous. I feel that this makes the painting more interesting than it just being a traditional life drawing piece, and this anonymous technique is something that I would like to experiment and continue with a lot more during the rest of this project.    

 

 



 

A piece from my project last year that is visually similar:

 

 

Main Technique - Watercolour

 

For this project I plan to create most of my visuals in watercolour and fine liner pen.

I have experimented with this technique in past projects, however it has never been a main technique and I would like to experiment with it further during this project. 

 

Method:

I start by drawing a basic line drawing of what I want to paint in pencil. I then start adding the colour, I use watercolour in layers so that the colour becomes more varied and not as neat. I finally outline the whole piece using a 0.25mm fine tip pen, (outlining all the variations in colour too).

 

This one of my first experimental pieces for this project:

 

 

Research

I started doing research for this project by looking at video clips and stills from the film 'Fantastic Voyage'. Doing this helped me develop some visual ideas and the type of work I wanted to create. I also started looking on Pinterest at medical and anatomical drawings and illustrations, for things like skeletal and muscle structure and cells. On Pinterest I found some really interesting and unusual pieces, this did slightly change some of my ideas, as I wanted to look more at want was under the skin (such as the muscles and bones) rather than deeper inside the human body (like blood cells and the inside of the stomach and lungs). This took my ideas slightly away from the 'Fantastic Voyage' images/idea, however I still want to explore the human body. And looking at the Fantastic voyage imagery was the starting point for all of the research that I have done so far, even though the work I plan to create isn't a direct representation of the film imagery, it is where my ideas started.

Fantastic Voyage Images:

 

Pinterest Research:

 

 

  

Uni - 2nd Year [New Project] - Painting

 

Fantastic Voyage - Painting Project

 

At the start of the year we were give the choice of four projects to take part in over the year, out of the choices I chose the painting project, and the sub-theme of 'Fantastic Voyage'.

The 'Fantastic Voyage theme was based on the film of the same name, and explore the inside of the human body.

 

My plan for this project is to explore the human body by looking at what is underneath the skin. As I have been researching this theme I have looked at a lot of anatomical and medical illustrations (mainly on Pinterest). And by looking at more fine art and abstract illustrations I have come across many images and collages that incorporate floral aspects, this is something that I would like to explore and experiment with in my own work, as I thought that this was an interesting concept as human and floral anatomy is very similar.

To make my work different to the images that I have seen during my research I plan to incorporate dead and dried flowers into my drawings and paintings. This idea was formed when I was researching, and that when the very first anatomical drawings were created there wasn't any of the technology that we have today to help us look under the skin and inside the body, this meant that they had to draw from dead bodies to create accurate images. And I wanted to have a link to the history by including and drawing from dead flowers in my pieces.

 

During this project I would like to create beautiful, detailed and accurate anatomy and ecorche illustrations that incorporate flowers in an interesting way.