Leo 😵‍💫

I didn’t do this painting in college but i feel like it fits in with the current brief :) I cant remember exactly when i did this i believe it was over the reading week? The painting is based off a picture i took of my boyfriend and my cat, it was just a nice moment and i took a picture which i ended up really liking so obviously i had to paint it. I love taking pictures of people around me in random moments to look back on later even if it is such a simple moment like this

I started the morning doing a painting. I started with an underpainting and a simple line sketch. I kinda wish i kept the final painting similar to the simple sketch it just looks more pleasing to me idk… but im still happy with how the final version turned out nonetheless.

In the afternoon we did some quick 30 minute poses. I wanted to experiment more with these and be looser with my paintings. For the first one i used a palette knife to block out the basic shapes and went back in with a smaller paintbrush for some details and shadows. I was quite happy with how this turned out because the beginning was definitely a HUGE trust the process and i wasnt sure id be happy with the final result… The second one i did was just a close-up as i wanted to focus more on the smaller details and experiment with shadows and highlights again I was quite happy with how these turned out.

I used my sketchbook for the inspo for these paintings

After doing some drawings in the smoking area i went upstairs and tried a self portrait by looking into a mirror. Not a fan of the mirror i think i spent too long looking at myself and it kinda hurt my brain but i tried it nonetheless. I also started with looking at different body parts i have a drawing of my hand here i think i might experiment more with looking at body parts through the mirror.

While painting sections of the construction we created I was really inspired by Irish painter Mary Swanzy. I studied her for my leaving cert and have always found her style and use of colour interesting and as i was mainly trying to focus on colour this project i was thinking of her work.

Swanzy was one of the first Irish painters to emerge from the cubist movement. Her paintings have lots of variation of colour and shapes. I found it really interesting to look at her perception of colour and shapes in her landscape paintings while i was trying to develop my own perception of colour and shapes during this project. I found these paintings in particular to be really interesting and a big inspiration to the development of my work during the project.

Todays paintings!! The first one is one i finished off from monday. I was quite happy with this one and ive found ive become a lot quicker with how long it takes me to do my paintings. I wanted to focus more on the colour of this one instead of the little details which i did previously.

After i finished this one i wanted to do a monochrome one to try focus on tonal values instead of detail or colour.

This still isnt fully finished hopefully ill find a bit of time this week to finish it off but i think the start of it gave me some good practice for tonal values

I also wanted to get a bit more still life practice in today so i did a quick little sketch of a flower. I went straight in with marker to try and challenge myself again to be looser with my sketches.

I ended up being quite happy with the sketch so i used acrylic markers to give it a bit of extra colour yay

Some quite miserable doodles from peoples park 😔 Felt like i didnt get enough done there so i sat out today and did some paintings of things in my back yard which turned out much better yay

I did these in gouache which was a PAIN bc im not very good at using it but whatever

Sketches for painting. Was tryna convey what dysphoria is like for me personally cuz its dookie 👎👎👎. I do a lot of paintings and art stuff related to being trans outside of college cuz its such a huge part of my life and i wanted to do another one recently.

Stayed on later today to finish this up huzzahhhhh finally

Yayyyy painting progress. I was happy with how this one turned out but again i work at the pace of a snail and im also a perfectionist so i spent majority of the day doing this I just reaaaaaly wanted to get the colour and shape right 😔

Also started this one tried an underpainting and sketch with this one which helped speed it up soooo much because i had guidelines to work from instead of just eyeballing it so i think this is the way to go in future 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

After i became confident with quick sketches i focused in on two compositions i really liked and took more time to get detail and shadow in them