Monday, 29 October 2012

Portrait of Melissa 3

This is the third painting based on Melissa's 'Bring a Cartoon Character to Life' series, which are inspired by Roy Lichtenstein and Japanese anime/manga. This is when she was completely painted and is wearing a wig in contrast to the others where she were still in the preparatory stage. I particularly like the way the eyes and hair turned out. I usually don't put so much detail on hair when using oil paints, but I think that they turned out better in this painting. The eyes also look more 'real'. I also like the contrast between the flat dots and ''3-dimensional'' skin. It took me around 7-8 hours to complete.
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Friday, 19 October 2012

Collaborative Photoshoot with Melissa

Yesterday, I went out with my good friend Melissa and had a photoshoot at Hatfield Old Town. We also took some photographs in our studio space beforehand. I had the idea of wanting to photograph myself with white hair for a long time. I mainly just wanted simple portraits but then after I told Melissa about it, she suggested we try to do something collaboratively and that the theme of black and white would be interesting. She dressed up in black clothing and I in white. We were influenced by Japanese anime and manga, ball-jointed dolls and fashion. I noticed that working collaboratively with other people can give rise to many interesting ideas and results. It was a very fun, playful and exciting photoshoot.

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Portrait of my Father

While in Cyprus, I asked my father to take some photographs of me. I was trying to explain and show him what kind of photographs I wanted to him to take so I used him as an example to show him how zoomed in I wanted the photographs to be. I ended up really liking the photograph and decided to turn it into a painting. It took me around 8 hours to complete.
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