My Coursework Progress

This was my progress. I made some changes along the way. Eg I originally planned for streaks of colour (Affandi-style) in the back ground, but ended up painting water. I don't have photos of the final- what it is right now - but here are some thoughts.

This coursework marked some firsts and seconds for me.

-First time using acrylic on such a large scale and so realistically!

-Second time using oils, first time on such a realistic basis, another first in terms of scale. (my first time painting with oils was that failed 18" by 24" experiment of that boy standing in the same pose as Svena (before I asked around for people to model in place of that boy) which I included in my prep boards, it's there for all to see how failed it was... That first left me very discouraged and kind of took away my motivation to paint with oils, so I happily took the challenge of painting with acrylics.) (By the way, the different lightings in the photographs are because I took them at different times of the day, and I leaned them so sunlight fell onto them, so naturally they'd look different on camera.)

this is the failed experiment. my very first time using oils. turned out so bad T T. I think it's because I had the wrong approach. So because I got discouraged I started doodling on the canvas.

By the way, I was attempting to jump straight into trying out a traditional painting technique - and probably that was too big a task I sought to undertake, which only led to disappointments and realisations that perhaps it wasn't as easy after all.

This failed tryout led me to realise I needed a model. Else how would I know how to paint the skin tones?? So then I started asking around... people said no... and finally Svena agreed.

Acrylics made it hard for blending. I didn't think it would be so hard with the Extender, maybe it was my technique. But after I switched to oils the change was so great - I could do a lot of blending easily and quickly, as opposed to the frustration of rubbing furiously trying to get tacky paint to blend. This made it easier for me, allowed for more versatility in the facial expression which consequently did not appear so stiff and dull as it had with acrylics.Oils gave the face a life that is unequaled by acrylics (at least for my abilities when I use acrylics. It just looked dead...) So yes after this liberating revelation I realised that oils, for portraiture, are much easier to work with.

One good thing about using acrylics as my base layer was that the oils formed a very smooth layer with minimal application of paint. And oils are more expensive than acrylics.

Portraiture calls for very serious and in-depth observational skills. Throughout the whole course of making this work, I had to constantly analyze what went wrong - constantly scrutinize the photograph and compare it with my painting and search for the problems. A very slow, very tedious process that took me weeks to muster - weeks of adjustments, adjustments and more adjustments, before I was able to understand how to paint Svena's eye properly in a way that made it look real enough. I hope my powers of observation have been honed slightly more through this vigorous mental exercise...

I wish I had more time to work on my painting, but since it's over, well that's my effort and I'm just glad I can finally concentrate on studying after all this.