Something in His Eye

I am not sue what happened here - I will leave any interpretation up to yourselves, but I think I have given you enough clues in the past few weeks. If you want some help then you will have to email me to ask.

Obviously this is Vic again. I really am enjoying this rather anal dedication to the study of his face, as well as his neck musculature and also his lapels. Great lapels there!

Ears as well. i have always had trouble with ears, but through dedication and close study I am starting to get the hang of them. When I am brushing my teeth and applying my face cream in the morning I find myself studying the parts of my own ears very closely as well and find to my amazement that there is actually very little difference between my ears and Vic's. Although ironically this painting has no ears in it at all - which rather makes this paragraph a bit pointless!

The progress with each painting is of course the most important thing to me at the moment. If I was not looking for improvement then I would have moved on to the next thing by this time, printing or medal making, but for some reason I seem to have the bit well and truly between my teeth and working really hard at the laying on of paint. Also I am trying to whittle away the caricature look in these portraits and I am happy to say that I think this one succeeds in this where the first ones definitely did not. Progress is always so satisfying don't you think.

Other progress is in the laying on of paint - I was especially happy with the jacket in this painting. I found it very satisfying to combine the reds and blues together and create one unified whole - or so i think. i did use a bit of pen and ink at the end, just along the bottom of the picture, but that was more to create a balance of ink across the whole picture. For the colour it was not necessary.

I have just finished a book about a little girl who throughout her growing up spends a lot of her time drawing and making things and basically living in a visual world. I was impressed with the way the author managed to describe a lot of things that I describe in this blog on a regular basis and also some of the things that I have yet to speak about, but have experienced and feel. She too spoke about the development of her art, not in such an aware way as I do here - because obviously I am much older, but in the way that most of us experience life and living at the time we are doing it - much more intuitively. As I dwell on it the book impresses me more and more as I can completely identify with the girl's development as an artist. Not her life, as that was a million miles away from the life I have lived so far.

I mention this here because reading about the journey (so well articulated) of another artist validates the importance of the work that I do. I could see how important it was in her life and that helps to make me feel that my life and my work is important too.

Sometimes I do not feel so worthy - but today I do and when i write my blog it makes me think about what I am doing in my work, which must be good.

So, if this picture is called "Something in his Eye" then this entry and indeed my whole blog and my whole life really could be called "Something in my Mind's Eye"

The Many Faces of Vic

Luckily my Victor has a very good sense of humor - As you can see he also has a pretty rubbery face!

This relief was made by way of an experiment and a bit of fun. I wanted to practice my portraiture and facial expressions in relief sculpture - which is very important by the way.

For those people who know Vic they might be able to recognise bits of this. I myself think that some of the portraits do capture a resemblance and most of them do capture the strange facial expressions which he is capable of achieving.

A friend of mine called by when I had just begun the sculpture and when she saw the photos I was working from she actually thought that some of those did not look like Vic either. I suppose photos are like that - they don't always capture the essential likeness of the person either. With that in mind I concentrated more upon the various expressions and face pulling that he made, instead of worrying too much about getting a good likeness. The two work together anyway - so the better sculptures do capture a better likeness I would venture to say.

I think that I have had some success with this piece. Most of the strange, twisted expressions are well observed and capture some sort of feeling (madness springs to mind! x). As I have already said I think there are some moments of likeness too, so it has been a very worthwhile exercise. Some of the very smallest faces were very difficult. It was easier to get detail and likeness in the larger faces, so that is good to know. I imagine though working very large you would also encounter problems making all parts hang together without distortion. So I think there is probably a comfortable optimum size to work with. Good learning!

This plaque is approximately 20cm in Diameter, so you can visualise the sizes I was working with.

When I worked i worked my way around the plaque, roughing out the forms first and then slowly building the faces up and finally fine tuning them. This helped to keep an even balance of finishment across the whole surface and design.

I did think it might be nice to put some strange amorphous jester's hat onto the heads, but it would take a bit of working out and I might save that for another time as i have rather a lot of other stuff to do at present - and this was after all just an exercise, so for now Vic must remain hatless. I can see this plaque turning up in some quirky little corner in our new home!

Jimmy's Girls - a commission

This is a bit of a change of direction.

Every so often I get a chance to do a commission. Sometimes it is a medal or a sculpture but this one was for a drawing of 'Jimmy's Girls'

I was really quite pleased with this. Portraits are not always easy, but this one turned out well.

I admit - it is not a real portrait, as in from a live model with sittings and all that - that is really difficult, but of course gives far more interesting results.

This is a simple copy from a photograph of the two girls.

Still - I was happy with the likeness and happy that the figures came out looking quite round - working from a photo often results in a flatter picture.

I wanted to include this in my blog just to show that there are more strings to my bow than just what i am currently doing. I can turn my hand to portraiture should the commission arise. I enjoy the challenge and enjoy trying to get the likeness. However, I would prefer live sittings, however frustrating, in order to be able to try to capture the real person rather than just copying a snapshot - because that is all you get - a copy of a snapshot. That said, this was a very nice snapshot - the girls have an aura and distinct personalities.