Exhibition Pieces

These are the two conclusions that I will be using for the exhibition. These two piece differ in terms of the composition, the techniques and even the materials but share an onsite experience.

I have chosen to develop a response to the landscape by using natural seascapes and coastal landscapes as my inspiration, based on images and sketches that I recorded on a trip to the beach and pine woods. I made the decision to work on a larger scale then I ever have before (in acrylics), which is why I chose to use A2 paper for these pieces. I started by giving each piece a simple composition, in watered down acrylics, responding to the photographs that I took at Ainsdale Beach. When I returned to the beach, the weather was extremely windy and dark, I found that the clouds were very heavy and full of rain. I used lots of dark greys and slate blues, to convey this in the painting. I used many layers for this painting because the colours of the sand were very difficult to capture in the acrylic paint that I used. I wanted to use many layers for this piece because I wanted to clearly show that there was a background, mid-ground and foreground. This meant that I had to work in a particular order, starting with the sky, then moving onto the grass/dunes, the sand and beach itself and then when all of the painting is dry I painted the fences to model thier shape and structure.

In the right hand seascape, I did not use any brushes in this piece but only palette knifes. This left the strokes rough and textured, which is the complete opposite of the smooth surface of the sand dunes painting on the left. To make the paint act more like the oils that are traditional use for this painting techinque, Polymeric Thickener was added to make the acrylic paint more buttery and easier to apply with a pallette knife. I began with blocking out the basic composition (strata, high horizon) in watered down acrylics. I then mixed a light slate blue colour for the sky, and let this dry. Later on I mixed a darker and a lighter shade to add in some rough tones, that I hoped showed the type of weather that was going on in the beach, which was windy and very cold. I ued untreated acrylic paints in various shades of brown, greens and blues, layering with brush and palette knife to create a rough surface on the seascape. I later put white acrylic paint on the page and scraped it off to reveal small amount of lightly tinted paint on the sea. While painting the sand area I used the polymeric thicken to give a texture that made this section much in contrast to the sand on the sand dune painting.

When both these pieces were completed and dry, I varnished both of these pieces to seal in the paint and give them a glossy texture that helps pick up on the brush marks and tones.