FINISHED!

There have been times when I really doubted this day would come, but I am now pleased to announce I have finished my outcome piece!!!!! All that's really left to do now is finish off my final evaluation and I've finished this project. I really really cannot believe that after a year and a half of work I'm pretty much done, I thought I'd be over the moon to be finished but part of me is sad it's over because I really have loved doing it! And now I present to you, my final piece:

Final piece

Outcome - Stage III

It turned out I ended up making so many changes to my final piece after having had feedback from my tutor. She advised me that I should have used more of the unusual  and interesting techniques I'd used throughout the project so I set to work planning out how to do this. I'd thought including too many techniques would over-complicate things but I can now see that if I'm careful it can still work.

Messy Sarah

For the air section I wanted to include spray painting as that had been one of the prominent techniques I'd used for air in the rest of the project. I designed and cut out a variety of stencils of birds and butterflies, which I then spray painted on in the same colour scheme I'd used previously in this project. I'm quite messy when it comes to spray painting, and the fact that it was windy didn't really help me either so I had to paint out some of the background with white acrylic paint, where the paint had blown.

Birds and butterflies

I'd also drawn in a flame shape, which is shape of flame I'd initially planned to paint around the lion. Instead of painting straight onto the mural, I did a practice painting first on one of my previous lion drawings. For this I used oil paints over a base of melted wax candles which I'd molded to shape - a technique I've also used previously in this project.

Lion emerging from the flames

Although I liked this painting, it would've been too overpowering to go on my actual mural design so I sketched out an idea with smaller flames before adding it on to my mural, along with the wax. The way I've painted on the flames make them look more like an extension of the mane and they merge much better with the drawing style of the lion.

Lion and flames

I also painted in a smokey effect around the lion, using the spray paint that had blow into the surrounding areas, to help it blend into the air area above it.

Air and fire areas

The next thing I did was some water experiments with bleach and ink, but they didn't work so well because the surface of my mural was hardboard which was too porous and therefore too absorbent, so the ink just soaked into it and practically disappeared. The photos below show the ink before it was absorbed into the hardboard, but I didn't wash it off and it can now barely be seen on my final piece. Leaving the ink and bleach on the surface just added a little bit of an extra water-like appearance.

Water experiments

I thought drip painting would work well to enhance the appearance of the jellyfish so I did some experimenting with this technique before adding it to my mural.

Jellyfish experiments

Drip painted jellyfish on mural

Following this I planned how I could link the areas of water and air together a bit better and thought that some spray painting would work well. I drew out and cut out some stencils of starfish and combined these with some stencils of birds and butterflies I'd used previously and laid these out as a plan on my mural design before spray painting them on.

After I'd done the spray painting

Planning the spray painting

The last few changes I made were changing one of the mushrooms to a jellyfish - surprisingly enough it was the one in the water area; changing the drawing style of the mushrooms so they had a less cartoon-like style to them, which I did using conte crayons; adding in some colour to the background of the lion; and drawing in some more flowers. So my outcome piece is now FINISHED!! But I think I could maybe squeeze in one more post, so check out the next post to see my COMPLETED outcome piece!!

Outome - stage II

In my previous post I'd got to the stage where I'd planned the location of the background images and following on from that I drew them all in using mainly sharpie marker pens to achieve the result shown in the photo below.

Addition of background images

I'd left the gnomes arms unfinished because I wasn't certain of exactly how I'd draw them and wanted to take the background images into consideration. I drew these on next, as well as extending the fairy's arm so that it doesn't look like it's just been cut off and adding in extra pattern in the fairy's wing in a similar style to the pattern on the butterflies' wings.

Changes made to the fairy and gnome

At this stage I originally thought I had completed my mural, but after uploading it for my tutor to see, she thought it could still be improved so there were more changes I made to it, which I will explain in a third post.

Outcome - stage I

I started my outcome piece with a massive piece of hardboard measuring 85cm by 135cm, which with help from my dad, I covered completely in white emulsion. Following this I drew out the four main images of the mermaid, fairy, gnome and lion in pencil and drew out lines of where I planned the four sections of colour would go. I went over the pencil outlines in black marker pen so that my drawings could be painted over but would still show through.

Initial 4 drawings in black marker pen

I started with the water section, which I painted the background of using acrylic paint in blue tones with spray paint drips for an extra water effect and then drew on the mermaid using a combination of blue sharpie pens and fineliners. Apparently textured acrylic paint seems to be one of the few surfaces sharpies don't want to draw onto though!

Mermaid drawing and background

After I'd done the background of the mermaid I did the background of the gnome,  which was also done using acrylic paints - brown, green and white - and drew the gnome on using twig and ink based on the drawing I'd done previously. I omitted the pipe because I thought it would be more appropriate at the location of a family friendly music festival.

Gnome drawing and background (and you can can also see my messy working area)

Following the gnome I painted the background for the fairy using mainly white acrylic paint, mixed in with some pale blue and grey-ish shades too and then drew on the fairy with pencil.

Fairy drawing and background

Before drawing the lion I had some experimenting that needed to be done. I had originally planned to draw the lion in sharpie pens so needed to experiment on a separate page whether this was something that would actually be achievable and my outcome of drawing the lion with sharpie pens wasn't great. Once I'd decided I would use conte crayons for this lion drawing too I experimented with different potential background colours on a separate page. The conte crayons didn't really show up against any of these background colours so I just chose to keep the background white and then possibly paint round my drawing of the lion at a later stage.

Lion drawing

I hadn't done an exact plan of the locations of the background images and motifs to this was something I did next by drawing them onto my mural design with pencil and painting some areas out in white acrylic paint.

Planning the locations of background images and motifs

This post seems to be getting rather long and picture heavy now, and I've come to the end of the first stage of how I designed my mural so it seems like a good time to move onto another post.

Planning my outcome piece

My outcome piece ended up taking so long to plan. I sketched out a lot of different compositional ideas on different shaped canvases, including various aspects of each of the elements. I had no idea where to start so thought I'd sketch a potential separate composition for each of the four elements and then start to see how I could bring it all together.

Initial 4 composition ideas

I included various aspects for each of the elements and then also looked at how I could include pattern. Following this I did some more sketches, inspired by some of my mural research, that tried to link all of the elements together, but ended up over-complicating things as can be seen in the images below.

Composition ideas

Further composition ideas

Idea of incorporating all the elements into the fairy's wing

Idea incorporating all the elements - too busy

Once I'd done all these sketches I could see that the ideas weren't really that successful. My favourite idea of these was incorporating the elements into the fairy's wing but my tutor suggested I looked back at the compositions I'd used for my initial mythical research sketches and use these to inspire my final outcome instead.

Using the four main images I planned to use in my final piece, which were the lion, the gnome, the fairy and the mermaid, I experimented with various layouts of these until I found one I liked.

Experimenting with layouts

I was happy with this layout idea so I went on to sketch it out and to start planning colour ideas and the materials and techniques I'd use for it.

Final compositional sketch

Initially, I was going to use oil paint so the first colour swatches I did were with oil paint. I knew it took a long time to dry but had forgotten quite how long and seeing as I would be drawing on top of the paint and adding layers over it, I needed something much more fast drying so did some further colour experiments with acrylic paint.

Oil paint colour experiments

 The oil paint colour swatches were to experiment with which colour choices I would use to represent each of the different elements and to experiment with potential background colours too. I wasn't quite happy with the background colours so used acrylic paint to do further experiments for these.

Acrylic paint colour experiments

Then using the relevant media I also added on drawings of the gnome, fairy and mermaid to see how they would word against the background colours.

The Little Mermaid

Continuing with my development of the water section and influences from my mythical research, I thought an appropriate thing to draw would be a mermaid as that's the first mythical creature that comes to mind when I think of water. I firstly prepared the background of the page with bleach and ink.

Background in bleach and ink

Then using an image I'd found in my research as inspiration I drew out the mermaid outline in pencil, before adding in all the details in blue fineliner. The fineliner was just a really cheap one from Asda, so I think it's quite good how well the drawing has turned out and shows you don't always need expensive equipment.

Outcome of the mermaid drawing

One thing I'm quite proud of in this drawing is the detail in the detail, especially since it took forever to sit there crosshatching it all! Something I'm less pleased with though is the outcome of the face as I've drawn on too many lines, making the mermaid look old/weathered.

Under the Sea

Moving back onto the water section now... and back to the use of the unusual materials of bleach, ink and wax.  I started by drawing out jellyfish shapes onto the page and rubbing over them with a white wax candle to use it as a resist against the ink, followed by covering the whole page with blue Quink ink. Below is a photo of how it looked at this stage. It was difficult to see where on the page I'd put the wax as it's the same colour as the paper so I missed some areas, meaning some of the jellyfish had blue areas when they should have been white all over.

I painted out the blue areas within the jellyfish with bleach and then also used the bleach to add in more tentacles for the jellyfish and to add some detail to the background. As the bleach soaks into the page it creates an almost luminescent effect, which I feel is relevant for the jellyfish.

Before the bleach soaked in

Final outcome

I'm pleased with this piece of work and like its abstract nature as it's different in style from a lot of my other pieces of artwork.

Drawings influenced by the Chinese elements

The Chinese elements were ones that particularly stood out to me as I felt they had the most potential for developing into interesting drawings due to all of their symbols that link to the elements. Below is a piece of work I did researching three of the elements further. I chose those three elements as wood and metal (which are the other two) don't overlap with my original four elements of fire, water, air and earth.

Using this information as inspiration I went on to do two illustrations based on the elements of fire and water. Although in reality I did the illustrations before writing out the research work, the ideas and thought processes were still all in my mind.

Completed illustrations

Mythical Research

Throughout the research section I had been doing a small amount of mythical research and created the pieces of work below, which are inspired by the ancient ideas of the elements.

Water

Air

Earth

Fire

These didn't link that well with the rest of my project as I hadn't done much other mythical research so proceeded to do some more. This began with an in depth work document, which I went on to summarise with an illustrated mindmap, that explored the elements and their meanings in a variety of different cultures. 

Mindmap

Wave collage

I went back to do more research work on the element of water and wanted to continue using the materials of ink and bleach on a variety of papers to create a wave inspired collage. I covered textured wallpaper with ink and planned to bleach it too but liked the effect without ink so left it as it was. I experimented using different dilutions of ink in order to achieve different tones of blue.

Wallpaper effect

Wallpaper effect using diluted ink

I covered a page half in concentrated ink and half in diluted ink and then experimented with different dilutions of bleach to see what patterns I could achieve. 

Diluted ink and bleach

Concentrated ink and bleach

Using all these papers cut to different sizes and shapes, I then created a collage of a wave inspired by a research image from my original visual research.

Wave collage - final result

Bleach and Ink

One of the more unusual techniques I've been using in my art has been bleach and ink, which is where you paint the page with ink (I used a bottle of quink) and then bleach out areas with household bleach. I had used this technique before in the earlier stages of this art course and had enjoyed it and wanted to explore it further. It also felt relevant to the work I was doing and seemed to have a connection to the element of water.

I was inspired by artists who had done drip paintings such as Jackson Pollock and combined this style of painting - as I felt it linked to water - with the technique of using bleach and ink. Below are two paintings I did in this style, which I did on my table top easel to make them easier to do.

Bleach painting 1

Bleach painting 2

The work I did for this section, which is the water section of the research, was not actually done in this order as I messed up my timetable slightly so the next bit was done at a later date.

I did further research into artists who used bleach and ink in their work and whilst I wasn't successful in finding any professional artists, I did find some amateur artists whose work inspired me. In particular I liked the idea of using wax as a resist before painting the ink across the page, so this was something I tried next. The image I chose to use this technique on was inspired by Hokusai's wave printing.

Hokusai's Wave Printing

My bleach, ink and wax interpretation

The research continues

Next for each element, using the leftover images I had printed off, I did a page of thumbnail sketches using mainly pencil and a few in fineliner pen too. On the page opposite the sketches I did a more detailed piece of artwork that i felt had a connection to or represented the element.

For air I prepared the page using an acrylic wash of black paint, before drawing on the silhouette of 2 birds on an electricity pole using a black sharpie marker and a black sketch stick.

Bird Silhouettes

For fire I did a more experimental painting than those I have done in the past. Firstly I drew on the outline of a flame, using one of my research images as inspiration and then painted the negative space black using oil paints - I chose oil paints as they have more of a matte finish than acrylics. I then diluted acrylic paint in firey colours and then did a drip painting by splashing on the paint and allowing it to drip down the page. This made a massive mess!! Especially when I spilled a pot of black paint everywhere and left black splatters and splashes all over the kitchen floor, but I am really happy with the outcome. (And the colours look much nicer and more vibrant in reality.)

Fire Drip Painting

I haven't yet done a picture for earth, so lastly is my drawing to represent water, where again I wanted to do something a little bit more experimental and unusual from art I have done in previous parts of this project. I liked my inclusion of silhouettes in my drawing of the birds, so using that idea again, drew a silhouette of a person under an umbrella and coloured it using black sketch sticks - which are way messier and dustier than I anticipated, so not sure I'll be using them again. I drew the raindrops in a geometric style and outlined them in fineliner. Having a black silhouette and black outlined raindrops left the page looking too plain, so using orange ink that I had anyway, I added in a wash of colour to the raindrops. This gives them a firey feel and therefore connects them with the other element of fire.