Paintings – The Namaste Series

This semester’s painting was really one of the most enjoyable modules I have taken. It was like being able to take a break from the hectic life of everything else and just being in a calm space with just music and paint. I loved the assignments week to week and being able to try out different techniques and methods and not being afraid to go out of exact realism with the help of Miss Kelly. Surprisingly, at the end of sem show, all the paintings seemed to mesh together really well in terms of the theme and style. I felt that all the paintings had a sort of still and deathly look to it (Which I was not sure how to react) but I guess I kinda like that deathly look.

 

Self Portrait: Selfie

Going into this self-portrait painting, I wanted to do something which captured motion but not do something too experimental until it becomes an abstract version of myself. I decided to do a selfie portrait because I love selfies.

 

Spirit Self : Spiritual Self

I painted myself as a monk because I believe I was a monk in my past life since I’m so kind-hearted. Anyway I loved painting the aura behind the head and I felt it really gave it that extra pop. The drips were happy accident and I felt like it worked well.

 

Portrait Painting #1 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For this painting, I decided to do an impasto styled painting which I used thick slabs of paint and scratched it out to give a sort of textured movement to the skin. I thought it gave him a 1960s look which I loved. Miss Kelly and I agreed that the green background wasn’t really working out and so I tried out different cool colours and felt that a black background still works the best.

 

Portrait Painting #2

For this painting I wanted to blend and make everything smooth and also capture the details on the face. I felt like this was the more realistic painting which I painted.

 

Portrait Painting #3

I LOOOOVEEE this painting of Wuyou. I departed from the previous styled and went for a more light-hearted animated style and I thought it came out really well. With the pink polka dots and the light yellow background and the contrast on the face. I loved all of it. This is my favourite portrait painting.

Portrait Painting #4: The Warhol Inspiration

 

This was unexpectedly fun to paint. Although I was a little worried at first trying to paint the model as she kept moving and sleeping, her decision to fall asleep was able to give this painting a sense of zen (coincidentally her name) and calmness yet still have a great sense of evil and menace. I didn’t know I would be able to capture two opposing emotions at once but I learned that it was the contrast between subject and colors. For this painting, I decided to try a more graphic technique using the colours and create a sort of 3D model of the model and use contrasting colors and I was really happy with the result because not only did it turn out looking different from my other portraits, it was striking in appearance. I decided to play with the colors to come up with a series and all of them worked really well and I felt like it resembled Warhol’s prints.

Vanitas : Life After Death

I worked on this vanitas over the recess week and loved working on it. It was a painting which I really wanted to spend time on and I had to plan before execution because I did not want to miss out details. This was also my first time painting reflective paper and it was hard to see the shapes in the reflected light but in the end I felt I managed to capture it. The concept behind this painting was the Chinese traditional offerings in which I grew accustomed to growing up. Whenever me and my family would go and visit our ancestors we would set up the offerings for the deceased and I thought I’d inject some culturally inspired set-ups into this still-life painting to exude death.

Experimental #1 : Still Energy

The painting before was very different from the final outcome. The consensus I got was that it portrayed a sense of misery and depression from the dullness and stillness of it. After adding a splash of contrasting colours I felt it really popped.

 


   Experimental #21: Burning Serenity

I loved the colours in this. How the warm colour juxtaposed with the cool serene pinks and purples really made this calm yet energetic.

Still Life #1 

The first still life was exciting for me because it was one of the first time touching oil paint and surprisingly I like it more than acrylic because of the smoothness of it and I really learnt how to deal with the paint in the first lesson. The important notes I needed to take which differentiated oil from acrylic was that it was easily smudged (good & bad) and that the textures were smoother which I loved to be able to handle shadows.

 

Still Life #2

The second still life once again featured my favourite red shoe. This lesson I tried to learn how to incorporate the background to make it look less dull. I felt that the first still-life had more life in the background than this but I tried many variations but it just didn’t seem to match the stillness of this set-up so I kept with the brown.

Night Landscape #1:

 

The ADM carpark. LOVED THIS because of that one light and in the end I loved how that one light source gave life to this painting.

Night Landscape #2:

This was the hardest painting for me because of the many details in the window sill to the different variations in lighting. I think there were about 7 layers to this painting because everytime I added a colour I had to wait for it to dry before I could do the appropriate tweaks for the next colour/layer. But I really loved the outcome.

 

I really enjoyed this class and sadly I can’t take it again but would love to join future lessons.

Painting was awesome!

Morandi

In Morandi’s paintings, the lines which stand out from the lightness of the objects seem to not only serve as a outline to emphasise the shape but also creates depth. He uses soft edges with subtle greys to hint at curves and when he partners that with the shadows it creates a soft gradation of colours to create shape, depth and perspectives. What was interesting to me was that object in the forefront were painted with darker, more obvious outlines while the objects behind them had softer lines on the edges and this is very reminiscent of the Linear perspectives used during the Renaissance. Another interesting thing I noticed was that the usage of lines also creates visual repetition and seems to create a sense of claustrophobia when the lines between the objects become one. In this case the thickness of the line affects the amount of visual space created between the objects and the darker/thicker the lines are, the closer the objects are to one another.

Image result for morandi painting

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1951, Oil on canvas, 28,4 x 48,9 cm, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

The sense of depth can be seen through the lines segregating the table top from the wall at the back. Not only do the lines suggest the amount of empty spaces on the table top, they also separate colours of the various objects painted, acting almost as a shadow and shape.

 

All-That-Life-Contains-Contained

All That Life Contains, Contained, Still Life,  1941, Oil on canvas, Met

 

This is cute. The lines also act as shadows in this painting and I found it interesting how the objects at the back had more faded lines which kind of mimicked brunelleschi’s linear perspective.

 

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1948/ 1949, Oil on linen, 26 x 35 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

In this painting the lines to me seemed to serve more as to define the objects in the forefront from the objects at the back. Creating a separation from the dark objects and the light.