PROPOSAL

SECTION 1

Throughout this project, I have been interested in experimenting and improving my skills of collaging, as well as drawing or painting portraits. My starting point of this project was researching into different artists that inspire me and give me ideas. I’ve been inspired and influenced by several artists, three of these being Marcelo Monreal, Magdiel Lopez and Adam Hale. Marcelo Monreal makes deconstructed and digital collages, where he manipulates the faces of contemporary icons and fashion models, and fills them out with lots of flowers. Monreal was the artist that inspired me to experiment with collaging. All of his work is created digitally through Photoshop, however to make the work my own I want to create pieces using different materials and techniques, however I also want to experiment doing my work digitally as I never usually do my work digitally, especially portraits. Magdiel Lopez creates posters, which have a unique style, he uses bright neon colours, photography and he includes a lot of fragmentation in his work, his work is similar to Marcelo Monreal’s, in the way he cuts out sections of faces, but is different as his work is a lot more vibrant and not as ‘pretty’ as Monreal’s. Adam Hale is a collage artist, who uses newspapers and magazines which are left behind by fellow commuters on the London tube to create a new collage. All of Hale’s work looks like it is done digitally, but all of his work is in fact done by hand. A lot of his work includes fragmentation and many different compositions. These specific artists have influenced me and gave me the ideas of adding fragments into my work and to experiment with collaging and a variety of compositions.

SECTION 2

The title for this project is going be Growth and Decay. I am going to be working on producing portraits of a few of my family members and fragmenting the portraits in different ways. I will be experimenting in the way that I lay out the composition and the materials and techniques that I use. After researching the artists, I have found out that when fragmenting the portraits, it is important to make sure the face is facing a certain way to get the most realistic and effective outcome. This all relates to my own practice as I rarely draw/paint portraits, so this in itself will be something I get to extend my knowledge on. I also want to experiment in trying to fragment the portraits digitally on my iPad, which I have been inspired to do by Marcelo Monreal. To extend my creative ability, I am also going to layer and create different levels in my work to make it look three dimensional and to give it more structure.

SECTION 3

As a result of the college closure due to the corona virus, it has meant that I am having to improve on my time management skills. To do so, I have been noting down every week what I want to achieve and my goals to keep myself on track. Due to there being no lessons now, Zoom calls with my teachers and art class has also kept me on track and motivated with what I am doing. Throughout this project, I’m going to experiment and venture out into a variety of different materials and techniques and push myself out of my comfort zone. I never work with coloured pencils, so I will be experimenting with those, I am experienced in using acrylic paints, however not for portraits, so I will try using those too. When using acrylic paint, i have found that it doesn’t take long for me to create something when using them, therefore I know that it wouldn’t be very time consuming when creating a piece of artwork. For doing digital work on my iPad, I will look for an app which does what I’m looking for, and then I will follow tutorials on YouTube and learn how to do this, so I have an understanding on how to do it in my own work.

SECTION 4

Critically analysing my work thus far, I have been working and experimenting with a wide variety of materials and techniques, these being: Prismacolor pencils, gouache paints, pencil and acrylic paint. With each of these I have experimented doing portraits, to figure out which works best for me to use. I have found so far that I work best with acrylic paint, as a result of being able to layer as well as blend the paints with ease. With paints I am also able to mix and get the most accurate colours and shades of paint that I need, which was very important to me when getting the correct colours for the skin tones.