Elesym VI - XI.

These are kind of a series within a series. They are clearly unfinished and all still works in progress. God forbid if I called them finished, I would be told what is wrong with them straight away! I am still working with using shapes from the elephant skull and transforming them into even more so unknown forms.

I hope to finish them over the summer; I should be able to. With the lack of space I have back home for working, nothing usually is achieved, but these are only little. Maybe you will see them again sometime, keep an eye out.

I also learnt that hanging things up is quite helpful...

Elesym V.

Not a great final picture, sorry! There is a better image in a later blog post.

This piece is very different from the previous painting. I wanted to work in an opposite way, after it was suggested that I try to work freer and oil paint was the best way to do this. I also decided that I would not use a flat colour and chose to blend coloured patches, as I have not quite managed to master that technique with oils. However, yes, I know, practice makes perfect…

The only same part of this painting is that I used the stencil tracing for the skull again. I then worked up layers of washes on it and in doing this, I realised why I used to have a small select colour palette. Too many colours makes it really complicated and you have to think more about which colours you are using for shadows etc. I still kept building them up until I was satisfied with a point to leave it at.

It is a recycled canvas, which I think I have mentioned before, from a friend. You can still see some of the previous painting that they had painted within the white space. After the washes on the skull shape, I thought it would be best to stop. To cover it I would have had to use white acrylic, which would have been better to do before starting the painting and it would have left it a flat colour. I feel this would have looked out of place. With how it is, it possibly looks like a porthole and a foggy landscape outside, then obviously the strange shape floating in the middle.

I think it appears unfinished and I am fine with that. I can still go back to it at a later point if I wish to.

Elesym IV.

This piece may be 4th in the 'Elesym' series, but I feel as though it really started the next lot of paintings. It was where my work really began to succeed, I think so anyway and I definitely received more comments that are positive after painting it.

You will notice that this painting is not just canvas stapled to the wall and worked on, my friend gave me some stretchers that he no longer wanted, so I decided why not change it up a bit. I worked straight on to the primed canvas that was already on there, this way it was not going to be as perfectly ready to paint on, as I would usually work. The colours I have used are very similar to a painting I did back in high school, which still appeal to me, It was mainly the blue metallic paint, because who does not like shiny things… I suppose that says something about me.

Many people have said to me that the red outlined disk, if you stand a certain way, looks as though it is coming out from the surface. Obviously, I meant to do that – haha! I guess that was the best achievement of the painting. On the other hand, a tutor (one who does not teach me for studio practise) told me I paint wrong. Not a great thing to say to someone who is still trying to find their way and needless to say it annoyed me greatly. He is of course entitled to his opinion, but wording it better would have been a better option. According to him, my lines of the circle were not perfect enough, or not imperfect enough to appear as if they were meant to be that way AND the technique for the metallic blue was not painterly enough, if that makes sense. Yup, thanks.

Of course I did not have an answer for why it was that way at the time, he court me by surprise and I had no idea what to say. Then you know how it is when you think of a comeback after the moment? That happened to me the next day. I decided if I wanted it to be how he said then I would have made it that way. The metallic blue paint to me looks as though there is quite a bit of paint on there and makes you want to touch it. However, when you do, you are disappointed, as the surface is rather flat (I am not sure if I should work further with this notion…). Also, in reply to the lines, it is a painting. If I had wanted it to be absolutely flawless, I would have used a different medium. His comments made me think about my work, clearly that is a useful thing. Nevertheless, it was a time when I needed help with my dissertation proposal, not how I use paint.

Rant over.