Project Evalutation

Project Evaluation

My theme for my A2 fine art personal investigation has been 'abstract landscapes of Lithuania'. In the beginning around August and September my ideas were to paint either city landscaped of Lithuania from the photographs I have taken or very bright and unrealistic in colour paintings of nature landscapes in Lithuania.

After I had gathered photographs that I needed I began experimenting in the styles of Scott Naismith, Vytautas Kasiulis and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both by observing their paintings and my own photographs.

At first it seemed that there were a wide range of landscapes I could paint, which seemed worrying as I wanted to focus on something more specific.

In the beginning my main drawback was my own perception of what landscape paintings should look like, I had a thought that they have to be very detailed, clear with a specific subject matter even if they were abstract. This in some ways prevented me from expressing myself to my best abilities. However whenever I tried painting a city landscape with lots of buildings in the style of Turner (image bellow) I realised that I was focusing at the wrong kind of landscape paintings as I was too focused in getting my images right that the however all result would not look creative, I realised I needed to allow myself to just experiment in the most expressive ways, without being afraid to mess something up or have a unclear subject matter which does not particularly define anything.

After this I let go and began to focus a lot on colours and textures and how they combine together.

As I already mentioned I looked at three artists in particular.

In the beginning I believed that Scott Naismth was my main artist and that I wanted to relate my work strongly to his style. I also wrote and artist analysis about him and one of his paintings in particular called Sisters of Glencoe’. This analysis helped me understand the reasons Naismith paints the way he does and the techniques of his mark making as he published a lot of videos of himself painting online. It was also interesting do discover that one of his artist influences is Henri Matisse, which exhibition was on whenever I visited Tate museum. I did paint quite a few experiments in Naismith's style, however as I progressed through this project I slowly departed from his style and developed it and changed it in my own way to create my own style and techniques.

(Above some of my artwork inspired my Naismith's style and artwork.)

One artist that I chose because he represented my project in particular was a Lithuanian artist Vytautas Kasiulis, I liked his bright and unrealistic paintings mainly because he created his own world within his paintings, with stories and meanings behind them. In his artist analysis I analysed one of his panting called 'Mulen Ružas’ (Moulin Rouge) and compared it to Antoine Blanchard ‘Le Moulin Rouge ' panting to get a real understanding how unique Kasiulis can make the same subject or place look in his style. I also had a chance to visit his Museum and see a large amount of his painting from up close, this really showed me ways artists paint as well as understand that larger scale makes paintings look more spectacular. Here are some images of my work in his style bellow.

The artist Joseph M.W. Turner I did not think of as my main artists, mainly because I had a bad start working in his style, as I found painting in watercolours (as he does in some of his work) unsuccessful, however I later realised that his influence is not about using the same media as he does, but understanding his painting process and his beliefs about art. For instance whenever I had a chance to look at his painting ‘Yacht Approaching the Coast’ in London Tate museum, I found out that he often layered and repainted sections of his painting to such point that the main subject matter would no longer be clear. I also researched that he followed the movement of Romanticism which focused on nature being seen as a natural environment and focused on individuals their originality of imagination and experiments, it allowed organic development and emotion. This gave me some inspiration and confidence about my work, as I realised that art does not have standards of what is right or wrong, and that I can paint however I want if that is how I see or imagine that something had to be shown, I don't have to make my work state a clear subject matter as ambiguous paintings allow more freedom and imagination to the eyes of the viewer, hence over time Turner became my main artist influence. I also carried out some further analysis where I analysed one of his paintings called “Norham Castle – Sunrise”. Bellow is some of my artwork inspired by turners paintings and style.

After carrying out sufficient amount of artist experiments, I discovered that in fact my initial idea of painting unrealistic coloured and bright landscape paintings that show a distorted reality has changed. I now started to consider that subtle in colour and textured paintings, can look as effective and yet still abstract and unrealistic in my own way.

This is when I decided to start painting larger scale as my sketchbook was limiting me. I began painting on larger pieces of board inspired by my own photographs.

I also narrowed down the type of landscape paintings I want to paint, being sea side beach scenery and forest areas with rivers or lakes, as I find these subject are more interesting and open to more possibilities in terms of techniques.

Throughout this project I have had the opportunity to use a large variety of media such as: acrylic paint, oil pain, watercolours, board, canvas, ink and other media too. This allowed me to narrow down to the media that fitted my theme, style and work most effectively in relation to the scale and size of my art work

My final piece

For my final piece I had to reflect on all of my work and plans that I have created during the course of this project.

I had to look upon my strengths and weaknesses in relation to my work, and choose the most successful and refined techniques and styles.

Below are examples of my work that had the strongest influence for my final piece.

Including the large board paintings shown in the previous page. Also I decided that the best way to show all my learnt skills and techniques would be by working from three most influential photographs of natural landscapes, as all of these images have helped me discover new techniques hence focusing on them all, hence for my final piece they allowed me to really focus on the best aspects of my work and create a strong final piece. Here are the photographs bellow:

When creating my final piece I went through a long process of layering media, to create a textured in depth painting of a sea like landscape. Here is the process below:

One of the harder challenges in creating the final piece was making sure all of the media and colours would blend together in harmony, instead of standing out all over the place as this would draw too much attention in non specific parts of the painting. However as I had carried out a sufficient amount of experiments and refinements of work, I had a better understanding what media to mix with what, and what colours compliment and blend well together.

As a whole this final piece painting is meant to look quite blurred out and subtle, as I didn't not intend to bring out a specific feature of the painting that would define the subject mater in clear detail, but rather create a abstract surrounding, meaning every viewer can use their imagination as to what they see or feel when observing my painting, in a way I want to pass out what I remember and feel about my home country for those who haven't seen it, hence making it personal to me.

Overall I think the time taken in this project has allowed me do develop my art skills and understanding in a strong way, which was all down to research and continuous experimentations, it will also benefit me in preparation for my exam, as I am now more confident with my art work overall. It is interesting how my initial expectations and ideas for my final piece of a landscape painting have changed as I progressed with my work.

For my A2 Fine Art exam I would like to improve by;

• Continue to work outside my comfort zone, to challenge myself for the best results I can achieve and to allow me to be creative and expressive.
• Focus on areas in art that I find more difficult to do, such as pencil drawings so that I could improve my weaknesses and gain skill, and once more challenge myself.
• Instead of focusing on painting only, look into other types of art, such as collages, to diversify and differentiate my work.

Landscape textures

I have now begun working in my second sketch book. In this sketchbook my main focus is relating every piece of work specifically to the final piece, rather than experimenting new techniques, I am now refining my strongest techniques. It has especially helped that I have painted 3 successful board landscape paintings, as they have allowed me to think of the most appropriate media and techniques to used, which is very helpful in my final piece plans. Unlike in my first book (in which I made a slight mistake) in this sketchbook I am working in horizontal pages  not in portrait.

In my board experiments, I noticed that layering paper with various colours of acrylic paint is very effective as it creates not only depth from the different colours, but also a rougher texture in desired areas, which mean greater detail and precision can be shown. In the image above I used acrylic paint, PVA glue, pen, hairspray, paper. To make it more personal to me the writing you can see in the image, is section of a photocopied letter I got from my closest friend in Lithuania about 7 years ago, it relates to my theme because every time I read it it takes me back to my home country and the places there. 

These two pages I focused on my older technique where I select appropriate oil paint colours and apply them on a plastic wallet and then press the paint down onto a surface, However this time I decided to try it out on a black acrylic paint background rather than plain white paper. I have done this once before, however last time I did not apply enough oil paint, hence the colours did not stand out as well. The media I used was oil paint and black acrylic paint on paper. The reason I like this technique is the way the oil paint dries, because it is a thicker amount of oil paint, it does take a little bit longer to dry,  but the end result is rough and matt finish texture which looks very effective. This technique also allows to be creative in terms of combining different colours and shades that compliment well with each other, and see how they also mix up in the process to create other colours. The only down side to this is that the outcome is very unique, hence although I can try to use the same colours, so each time the outcome can be different, in terms of texture, thickens of media and colour visibility. 

This experiment relates back to another experiment I have created some time ago (image bellow) For some time now I haven't really thought about the process of applying thick amounts of paint onto a surface for marks and texture. So I decided to once more try it out. This time in more relation to greenery and ground, unlike my other experiment which focused on the sky. 

The main photograph I got inspiration from is the image bellow.  For this work I used white and black acrylic paint, pen, hairspray, and a mixture of ink on paper. 

As you can see in the close up photograph of my work, this technique surely creates effective detail with a colour contrast that compliments each other, however I'm not too sure if this technique fits in with my final piece ideas and intentions, one reason being that it lacks something else, there is of course the possibility of incorporating this with other techniques or only applying this technique in a small section of whatever will be my final piece, however I do want my final piece to be detailed, but not overdone which would make it overwhelming, hence it is important to balance everything out. So although this technique is successful, in terms of my final piece, I may have to depart from it, as it isn't exactly suitable in my opinion.

The two most effective surface and texture pieces of work
Referring back to the technique in which I mix oil paint onto a plastic folder/wallet and then press it down on a surface, I have recently discovered hot to take this method even further, to create a texture that can be used in painting a specific subject such as the sky or water.

This first experiment is created using the method described above, I only used oil paint on paper for this art work. The only alteration I have made for this is that when I pressed down the oil paint onto the paper, I covered the page with tinfoil and just left it to dry. Later when It was dry I removed the tin foil and ended up with this result. The surface hence was quite rough and both smooth in some areas and the paint looks quite matt. This is one of my most favourite pieces of work, mainly because the colours look as if it is a small section of a painting, personally to me it looks like a cross over between two paintings by Vytautas Kasiulis and Joseph M.W. Turner. It tricks the mind, it both reminds me of a blurry image of a lively street in the night, or a boat (bottom brown paint near the centre) in the sea with the city lights further behind  reflecting into the water. Although everyone's imagination may think of a different landscape scenery I think this technique is effective to paint soil, sand or other rougher non shiny surface or the sky.

These are the two paintings, that my artwork reminds me off.  Above on the left is a painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner ‘Yacht Approaching the Coast, oil paint on canvas, London Tate Museum. On the left painting by Vytautas Kasiulis 'Mulen Ružas’ (Moulin Rouge) oil on canvas, 1980’s, taken in Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum. Both photographs have been taken by me. 

Lastly the images above are of my second attempt, for which I also used oil paint on paper applying the media in the same technique, however this time instead of covering the paint with tinfoil, I used a clear plastic wrap. Because the plastic wrap is very light and creases quite easily if not applied smoothly, as seen in the image on the right, it leaves marks in the oil paint. I like the way this technique creates a surface that tricks the eyes to thinking the plastic wrap is still on the paint and like the paint underneath is still not dry, when in fact it is just dry oil paint. This type of technique is effective for painting water surfaces, as the surface appears glossy and reflective of light as well as smooth. The only downside about this piece of work is the turquoise green colour does not really bled in nicely with the other colours, and it looks artificial and unnatural to me.

Overall I believe these two methods will be useful for creating my final piece, as I will be able to create a texture that matches the surface I am painting which will add more detail and make it more realistic, and interesting ass it will not be the same type of surface all across the painting. 

Canvases

Other than experimenting in paper in my sketchbook and before creating big board paintings, I have also previously experimented on canvases.










The images above are of a canvas painting which focuses on layering texture. For this work I used acrylic paint, ink, pen and hairspray on a canvas. I began from the base, by applying white acrylic paint in circular motions making sure the paint is applied thicker than usual, so that once it dries the surface becomes textured and uneven. I then got orange, purple and white ink and mixed it all together, then I poured the ink all over the canvas to create free flowing marks and lines, once it dried some of the ink colours such as orange stood out from the whole painting making it appear more highlighted.

I also tried out a different technique on a canvas, firstly by using white acrylic paint to create a base background, then I followed the technique of using a plastic folder and oil paint and folding the plastic folder, in order for the oil paint to mix, I then pressed down the paint onto the canvas to create this painting.

 For my next piece of work my main inspiration came from these two photograph above.

To begin with I got a square canvas and cut out the middle of it just a little bit smaller than the transferred technique photographs of the sky and the beach which I combined together fro a more in depth result. I then glued the images down from the back of the canvas so that the images would appear like a framed photograph. I then glued down different pieces of paper onto the canvas for a more textured effect, Using oil paint I began painting a background similar to the colours of the sunset sky photograph, In my opinion the colours turned out quite bold and dark which in some sense prevented the middle photographs to stand out from the rest of the canvas.

To make the painting look more subtle I dipped a paintbrush into turp substance and went over the oil paint on the canvas creating streaks which created these in depth lines of different colours showing through, I then also applied some white acrylic paint round the edges to make the whole canvas look as a single piece. Lastly I went over some sections of the canvas with  some coloured acrylic paint.

Although some of these experiments did turn out quite interesting, I didn't feel like they matched my theme ideas and restricted my abilities, as for instance unlike board, a canvas is more limited to size and scale that I would have needed for successful pieces of landscape artwork. Also the technique of cutting out the middle of a canvas, has not proven to be successful as it is tricky to cut out a perfect square or rectangle, as well as gluing down the image onto it. Also by cutting out a part of a canvas it becomes weaker and harder to work on, hence being able to apply a generous amount of media as I do for my work.

Further Development

After focusing on the two landscape paintings on board which gave me greater understanding and sense of direction, I decided to paint on a even larger scale.

The photograph I used was one of my few taken in Lithuania during the summer.

I chose this photo because it consists of very subtle colours that harmonise the whole image. In my previous two paintings, one focused on the sea whilst the other one was a  forest surrounding, which meant I used differer painting techniques, Hence I like how this image contains the combination of both, as this will allow me be combine the techniques I learnt from the tow previous paintings together more effectively, hence resulting in a more refined and unique painting. I must note that when I printed out this image the colours were even lighter and less bright as seen originally on the screen, hence my painting was also painted according to the colours from the printout.

As you can see from the images above, I started off by painting the whole board with white acrylic paint and a large paintbrush, for a light and clean surface. I then began painting sections of the sky also using a mixture of acrylic paints, however this time I applied it with a damp sponge as this is the technique I have previously used with Joseph M.W. Turners inspired experiments, This way unlike when using a paintbrush, it allows the colours to softly blend together and this is exactly the type of technique needed to recreate the very light and soft looking sky. Although looking back at my image the sky in it is fairly light and not as in depth as some of my previous painting photos are. From the images you may see I did in the beginning apply darker blue tones, that however I later covered up with white acrylic paint. The whole idea of this was to layer different tones of blue to create an undertone for the fairly light sky and give it some subtle depth. 

I also started to glue down pieces of paper (both white paper and glossy book paper) this way I wanted the painting to build up some texture and not make it all just a flat smooth surface. I took this technique from a previous painting bellow; 

As you may see the paper in the lower left side brings out some detail and depth from the painting making it less flat. 

After finishing painting the section of the sky, I began focusing on the forest area both in the distance of the image that is less clear, and the trees closer to the sand area.
Like in my previous painting (image bellow) I used the technique where I applied a stroke of oil paint onto the board and then pressed down onto the colour with turp substance which then caused the colour to leak down. However because I was only painting sections of the forest I did not want the colour to lead down all across the board to begin with, hence underneath the colours I stuck down some masking tape, which would stop the colour dripping down further down the board. Because I found the oil paint colours too intense, after they have dried, I applied a thin layer of white acrylic paint over the oil paint to tone it down and allow it to blend with the rest of the painting. 

As I mentioned the painting above, is the painting from which I initially discovered the layering of dripping oil paint technique. However the whole inspiration to achieving this came from refinement of an experiment in the style of Vytautas Kasiulis.

After doing some initial painting on the tree sections, I went on to start painting the sand area of the painting. The trickier part of this section was the fact that the sand has a lot of different shades and colours, that were harder to mix up, as I did not want the whole of that section to consist of a singular colour which would make the painting look 2D and unrealistic. Hence once I would mix up and appropriate colour and paint it on to the painting, the remainder of the paint I would tint with white acrylic paint to get lighter shades of the colour. For some very light sections of the sand I smeared some tea stain over the white acrylic paint, as the tea created a thin golden yellow translucent layer which slightly highlights the lighter areas and makes them bled in with the whole context of sand. Once I painted the base background of the sand, I repeated the technique of dripping oil paint with the sand, by mixing a light sand brown oil pain colour and applying it all round the lower part of the painting.  This added some extra detail that does not stand out too much but compliments the other details and colours of the painting. 

To finish the painting off on the lower right side of the painting I added a clear paint mark which I then layered over with white and green paint, to create a beginning focus point for the viewers. This works effectively as all the other colours in this painting are quite light a subtle whereas the bold green paint line highlights and makes a section stand out. Whereas if I would have painted the whole painting bright, it would look overwhelming and intense, with no specific focus point.

Above is the image of my finished painting. Overall this whole process of painting has allowed me to refine and gather my ideas, skills and techniques. Working on an even larger scale has proven to me that scale does matter for landscape paintings, as it allows the image to appear more spacious, making it feel like the person observing the painting is actually there. It is also more comfortable to work on a larger scale as it allows more space for better mark making and more possibilities of incorporating a larger variety of techniques. I now know that for my final piece I will not go down in scale, as the results will not bet as effective, and not as visually appealing to the eye. I also think the actual photograph that I used in this painting works very well with my landscape theme, and I will most likely paint inspired by it again, possibly for my final piece too. 

Looking back it me previous evaluations and thoughts of my other work, thought this creative process I realised that in the start I intended to make my paintings and other artwork bold and possibly unrealistic in colours like my artists Scott Naismith and Kasiulis do, because I thought it was a very abstract and unique way to paint, because the artist have painted this way too. However after doing plenty of artist influenced experiments and  painting series of successful paintings I now understand that being inspired by an artist does not mean painting with bright and lively colours like they do, it is more about understanding their mark making and technique, even the reasons they paint this way,  that then influences me to find my own techniques like the dripping oil paint and the blending of acrylic paint with a damp sponge, I feel like my abstract landscapes do not need to be bright and unrealistic in colours anymore, I actually noticed that in the beginning I wanted my work to look more like Scott Naismith's, but now as I progressed I understand that more of my work now relates and is inspired by Turner, both in terms of his techniques, art movement and the use of natural, subtle colours. Even then I still adapt Naismith's and Kasiulis's techniques into my work too.

Now that I feel sure about my style, media and ideas, I will continue to focus working towards my final piece. 

Larger Scale paintings

This week I have decided to gather all my current experiment ideas together in order to begin painting large scale, focusing on a specific photograph. I have gotten to a point where my style is independent and personal to me, however my artist still have a high influence on my work, as it is through their style experimentations I was able to discover ideas and style's of my own.

To begin with I used two photographs for this set of work (bellow) is a scenery of the sea side in Lithuania, and a image of a river in a woodland area. As I have done before, I am more concerned and interested in the light and colours that this surrounding creates my idea was to create two sets of board paintings of the same image. Both of which are strongly focusing on my theme however for my first paining I tried to choose colours very similar and realistic as to the ones in the photograph (this in a way representing a more realistic image of the landscape) however for my second painting I have edited the colours of the photograph to make them have a stronger contrast with colours which are unrealistic and unusual for the environment, quite similarly as Vytautas Kasiulis changes colours in his paintings creating his own world of art. The idea of editing the photograph and then painting according to that distorted reality, is express and emphasise feeling or memories towards a certain place which change over time, and become less clear as to precise details, and in a way the first painting should reflect what we may see and remember from looking at a photograph, and the second edited painting is what we remember and feel ourself.

 This is the original photograph used as inspiration for my second painting
And bellow are two edited images of this photograph, which are distorted in shapes and colours.

For my first painting I began by preparing the board, by applying acrylic paint over an old background to get a clean background. I then started to focus on the sky for which I used  blue acrylic paint which I tinted when I needed lighter shades. At first I applied quite smooth straight lines of various shades of blue, that were quite defined yet not flowing together, hence I decide to use a technique which i previously have used with Joseph M.W. Turner inspired work of using a damp sponge and white acrylic paint to dab and blend as well as smooth the paint together, This was very useful technique as it made the sky look more realistic and in depth, yet smooth and flowing.

I then continued my painting, by staring to focus on the section of the sea which is hitting the coast. In comparison the colour of the water has a lot of different colours and undertones that the light reflects. Hence I started off by applying purple and green coloured tones as the base, once again blending them in with a sponge, using different shades of blue acrylic paint, I went through this process several times, as I aimed to built up the tones, to get that deeper blue sea colour. It was harder when it came to painting the waves, as in the photo they are quite sharply defined adding dimensions to the whole image. However because my theme and style of painting consist on the idea of general light,texture and colour, I wasn't focused about recreating perfect sharply defined waves, but instead used some light acrylic paint to highlights specific areas where the waves are more defined. In result the painting still consists of blurriness of unclear landscape, yet displays beauty of light and colour conveying detail from a different perspective.

This whole process of layering tones and colours does have some rebalance to the way Turner used to paint. As he used to paint over areas of his detailed paintings to perfect them, which in result lead to overbuilt amount of media, causing the detail to be change and slightly distorted making the painting look more ambiguous and unclear. Even so Turner was doing so to create a painting that represented his thoughts and ideas the strongest, emphasising that perfection and beauty of a painting is all down to what the Artist sees as perfect, and that viewers should think outside the box because any kind of painting has perfection of its own in the eyes of the Artist. With my paintings it's a similar idea, I layer the paint over and over so that it becomes something unique, although unlike Turner who may have taken a long time changing his work, I am building up the media in shorter space of time. I want these paintings to  make the viewers understand the concept behind it by examining it to form their own ideas of what they view in the painting, and not just from first impressions which may be misleading.

I then continued to the last part of the painting which was the sand. It was quite challenging to create tones which varied as they do in the sand of the photo due to light and water. This is why whenever painted the sand it did blend with the rest of the subtle colours in the painting (as seen in image on the left bellow) The main aspect of the painting causing this was the obvious colour change almost like a barrier between the brown and the blue colours (sand and seas) because they didn't collide or blend in together. To fix this applied more white acrylic paint round the are where the two colours meet, to even out the obvious colour change, I then hanged the painting side ways and applied light blue oil paint in only a few areas and then pressed down turp substance with a paintbrush to make the turp substance thin down the oil paint and cause it to drip down to the sand are, I then similarly some this with a small about of black pen and hairspray. This overall resulted in a blended effect which makes it look like the sea waves are hitting the coast line more naturally and organically due to the free flowing oil paint (result can be seen in the image on the right bellow)

My overall inspiration for this piece of work was this piece of work I have created in my sketchbook, which had originally been inspired by Joseph M.W. Turners work.

Lastly for this sea painting I wanted to add some textured surface detail as in the work above, by making marks on paper with various media such as coloured pencils, hairspray, pen, acrylic paint and paper.

Bellow are two textured pieces of collage that it stuck down to the board with masking tape to see which one would be most suitable.

In the end I decided to use the collage on the right side (photo above) although it did rip the paper a little bit to fit in better with the painting, after ripping the paper I glued it onto the board with PVA glue and then using white acrylic paint and a sponge went over the edges and the are around the paper to allow it to blend in with the rest of the image. Bellow is a photograph of the finished painting.

For my second painting I started off by painting a white base using acrylic paint. After allowing the paint to dry I started applying green and soft brown shades of oil paint. The main idea was to recreate a similar style I have previously discovered during Vytautas Kasiulis research. Initially I wanted to apply smooth defined paint marks which stood out individual yet combined as a whole together. However when I started painting I discovered that the oil paint did not apply the same way as it had on the paper in my sketchbook, despite that the result was even better, as due to the board being hanged up to the wall, as I would press down the paintbrush with the oil paint and the turp substance the whole mixture would start leak down the board creating organic, bold and lively colours. Hence I discovered a new technique which I found excellent for the purpose of this abstract landscape painting.

As seen above I started to gradually build up the dripping effect of the oil paint, which started to associate a lot with the trees in the photograph. However there was a certain point at which the media and colour built up became overwhelming and the whole painting look harsh, which in a way makes the whole painting look brash, with no real focal point. The dark paint around the edges of the board made the whole painting look framed, rather than spacious. Also in this painting I used acrylic paint to highlight some areas, however the undertone in the green paint looked quite artificial compared to the other earth green tones, which made the whole painting stand out in a negative way even more.(Here are the pictures bellow)

In order to correct this issue, I decided go to over the areas which seemed to have too much media, and gently using white acrylic paint and a sponge covered them up. (Image bellow)

It straight away made the painting appear lighter,  lively and more fresh and subtle. I also made sure the overwhelming green tones weren't showing any more, and instead started to apply more earthy green and brown colours. Instead of applying any more paint to the top of the painting (as it would have made the painting look dark and framed again) I gently applied so tea stain to give it a soft warm yellow shade.

 As the majority of the colours blend and compliment each other in this painting, I wanted to add a detail to this painting that would stand out from the rest, hence as you can see in the image on the left bellow, there is a section of grass by the river that is bright orange. Hence I painted a piece of paper with red/orange toned paint, and the stuck it own with masking tape to see if this would look effective, so that I could then later paint it on using oil or acrylic paint. Overall I think the paint looks effective as the redness of it draws the viewers eye to that specific area, making it the staring and focus point of the painting.

Bellow is the photograph of the finished painting, after I have applied red oil paint onto the canvas. Unlike the image on the right above, I chose a less intense and more naturalistic red tone, as I still wanted it fit in with the whole idea of earthy colours.

Overall the process of painting these two paintings has allowed to to stretch my ideas as well as discover and refine new techniques. It has also allowed me to express myself through more abstract landscape art, which takes away the obvious details, replacing them with detailed marks and colours, which can emphasise a lot about a painting, just by looking at it. I think these two experiments have really helped me in terms of considering the main ideas of what I am going to be creating for my final piece, and I now know that painting on a larger scale using board is what I want to continue as well as refining these skills even more, possibly combining them together as well as adding some other techniques from my sketchbook that I have yet had a chance to transfer onto my board paintings. I still look back at my artists for guidance and inspiration, but I believe my experimentations have allowed me to become more independent and expressive in my own personal style.