This is my Final Major piece. Whilst experimenting with different techniques and materials before starting my final piece, I found that acrylic paints would work best for the portraits, due to how well they blend, and how easy it was for me to mix different colours to get the accurate shades and tones for my painting. It took me two attempts to do the portrait of my Grandad, in the first attempt, I found that I was using the wrong colour palette, the tones I was using were way too brown toned, whereas in the original photograph of him his skin is more red/orange toned. Another issue I faced was once the portrait had dried, the grid guide I had drawn underneath the paint was still visible, so I decided to start again, however this time taking those issues into consideration. The second and final attempt I was much happier with how the painting had turned out, I also found that the painting turned out much better also, as a result of me focusing on one area of the portrait at a time, as when the paint is still wet, it is able to blend and this mean no harsh unblended lines are visible. Once I had found what works and what doesn’t work when working with acrylic paints, I made sure I took this into consideration also when doing the portrait of my brother. When painting the hair on my Grandad’s portrait, I found it difficult to create opaque, fine white lines with the paint brush and paint, therefore I decided to attempt to use a white ink pen, which I thought worked really well.
I initially planned to paint a plain solid colour for the background, like Marcelo Monreal does with his pieces, so that the attention isn't taken away from the actual portraits and so that the painting overall wasn't to busy, however I noticed that in the original photographs, the backgrounds only have nature in, which was fitting with the concept of my work. The colours that are involved in the backgrounds are very similar as well, so once they were next to each other I knew they matched and complimented each other.
When looking back at my piece, if I was to do this again, I would consider painting the portraits at a larger scale, now that I am comfortable and know that I have developed my skill of painting portraits.
I would also think about how I could make them more three dimensional, my raising the sectioned pieces more, which I think would make it look much more effective. Another option I thought about afterwards, was to use more real pressed flowers, and bringing real nature into my artwork.
