I tried to carry on with making new works, continuing with the knowledge and lessons I’ve learned throughout the weeks in studio. I found it really difficult working at home, with limited space and materials. I did not really have the same stamina as I had in the studio and was struggling with artist block.
Car flames
For this I washed watercolour and and scribbled a loose sketch of the cars dimensions, and then painted over the top with quick and short brush strokes.
I really love how fun and animated this work is. Being able to see the washes of grey watercolour and the black coloured pencil. The quick and short frantic brush strokes looks like animated movement- like you’d see in a cartoon or a stop motion.
Boy and a girl
Wanting to carry on using thick paint, I painted a quick, minimal image. I found that the quick gestural movement of the paint brush did not quite work in this painting as I didn’t use that much paint on my brush as well as there was nothing to contrast or compliment the bold brushstrokes. But, I do really love being able to see the bright orange/pink underpainting. In my next work I want to use a lot of bright colours and use a thicker paint or use heaps of layers of a thinner paint.
I think this work was very successful is using bright colours and layering brushstrokes. I really like the short brush strokes and is something i would like to continue with.
Painting of a woman
I used gestural stokes of thick paint, mixing the paint together as I moved the paint on the paper, rather than preprepared on the paint palette. I really love how I can see where I moved the paint brush and how the paint blended together. Then, I drew a loose sketch and painted over the top with quick brush strokes.
paint brushwork 
end result
For the painting of a woman, I liked the work better when there was not much on it- before I painted on top of it. For example. I prefer being able to see the brush work and the mixing of colours of the painting rather than the the end result where I have painted in the lady. I think it’s too distracting- the bold and quick brushstrokes. I feel like I overworked the artwork- trying to do too much and they clashed. So in my next work, I want to see the first layer and the brushstrokes and have the layers compliment and balance each other rather than have the clash.
Mushrooms
For this work, I wanted new eyes and perspective on what I was creating, so I thought picking a new reference image would help- especially something that was organic as suppose to a figure or a car.
First I did little drawing, trying out different ways to use watercolour and focusing on the flow of the mushrooms (the lines and flow of direction.)
Then I moved onto combining different ways to paint and to draw. As I said previously, I liked seeing the brushworks and seeing how paint mix together while moving the brush around the paper. I discovered a way for the techniques to look harmonious was by have the layers of paint to be of different viscosity
I had the background layer a wash of paint and then built on top of it with a thicker paint.
I really love how this came out and how the different brushworks worked so well together. And prefer this work to the end result as I had layered more on the thinned paint and lost the brushwork and movement.
I had wanted to add more to it, I did more brushstrokes in the mushroom. I don’t think this was successful as now the brushstrokes are to similar to the background- so next time I’ll keep the brushstrokes different from the foreground and the background.
