Development sketches

It is time to start practicing my skills and trying my ideas out on canvases. I used gesso primed A5 plates that were given to me by my tutor. I used my friends as models and started sketching with acrylic paint from life. 

This is a painting of my friend from Kazakhstan - Aruzhan. She represents the Kazakh nationality portrait as well as asian features. It is a complimentary colour scheme including yellow and orange tones and complimenting them, blue and purple. During the process I got scared multiple times because it wasn’t looking like I wanted it to, but I learned to trust the process and when added details, everything came together.

This painting was made by looking at myself in anger, although it is just a sketch, I still put my heart and feelings into it. I drew myself very different from reality looking scarier, older and in a sense, uglier. I drew clown face paint with pink accent colour that also appears as a fading effect strokes on the right side of the painting. The clown face was due to me feeling insecure and angry at myself for not being myself, playing a role like a clown. 

This is a candid painting of Fidelis, my classmate in a working state. I drew from life with acrylic paint again. First, I started with the background like the rest of the preparatory paintings, and drew the subject on it. I don’t think I replicated his look well, it doesn’t look like Fidelis at all and that is where I failed. On the other hand, the painting looks very artistic and abstract, just like I wanted it to. It pushed me to experiment and let go of my unspoken painting rules and just paint with no thought.

This is a painting of a friend of mine. His features are very distinguishable and structured, which made it much easier to paint and make it resemble the person. I used complimentary colours again, including green and pink, one of my favourite combinations. I like the alien look, paired with the abstract background it makes an eye-capturing look. 

My sketches study helped me decide to have the backgrounds be abstract because I really enjoyed the process as well as the visuals of them, but maybe add more depth by a concept or a message that will tell about the subjects’s ethnical backgrounds. I also decided that I want to make the subjects a natural skin colour rather than an alternated “alien” colour, because I don’t want to hide their prominent features that make them beautiful and it also will not fit my concept quite well.