Assignment 2

For this assignment I chose to do the interior of my bedroom as seen through the doorway. It’s such an emotive subject for me – I love my bedroom, the colours and the light and all of Ottilie’s stuff amongst mine – it always gives me pleasure as I pass the doorway. I had a fair idea of how I wanted it to be so did some experimenting with mixed media to see if I could get the effects I wanted and did a few drawings of my room in preparation trying different view points.

I tried a bit of very simple collage in this marker drawing to see what impact that would have and really liked the effect – I considered doing something similar in the assignment piece but decided against it in the end which I think it was the right decision for the media I’d chosen. It’s great with marker though and I like the drawing both with and without colour in different ways. A3 (2 x A4 pages)

This one were it to have a name would be called “The marital bed” and was drawn on the first page of the first draft of our separation agreement! It seemed apt. Markers again and oil pastel, A4.

This is my final piece! It’s around A1 on very nice drawing paper I was given a little stack of – much better for mixed media than the paper I’d been using previously. I am SO pleased with how this has turned out, it has so much of the feeling of my room and is by far my most successful use of pastels – the loose style that I really love works really well here, it felt much more natural after the previous few exercises. I used mixed media – pastel with a wash and watercolour as a base, then pastel over the top with some working in with paintbrush and water and then ink and brush and marker pens to finish.

Assessment criteria:

Demonstration of technical and visual skills – I hope I would score well on this criteria, I feel like this is a very accurate depiction of my room right now but has maintained the liveliness of my style of work. I think I chose an interesting and challenging composition and the right mix of media to draw the attention in to the room and pay homage to the colours there. I think being critical I might look at the door frame and door again – I wanted them to be be more simply done and less sharp so that they’re almost out of focus to the eye and I liked the slight wonkiness to all of the lines but I think looking at it scaled down on the computer that a little less wonkiness on the lines of the door frame and a sharper line on the door edge itself would only improve it.

Quality of outcome – I really love how this has turned out so I would hope to score well here. On this point I often try to think “would I buy this” and in this case I definitely would, which certainly isn’t always the case! 

Demonstration of creativity – I hope I would score well here – I It feels like my style is very present here and I really like the way it’s come through. I tried to experiment and to use media that before this course I had little-to-no experience of and I feel it’s worked really well.

Context reflection – I think this shows influence from the artists I’ve been researching, particularly in the still life research and also from the recent Van Gogh exhibition I went to. I’ve found that a lot of the art I’m most interested in made me really want to paint and probably as a result this has come out with the feeling of a painting! 

Looking back at Part 2 as a whole I think could have experimented a lot more in the exercises themselves. I found that I got so into pastels in the last bit and so focused on getting the exercises done in time that I just forgot to try other media and other paper a lot of the time, remembering towards the end and suddenly re-discovering ink but a little too late! I would have liked to do some proper collage work too but can take that into part 3 which I think it will suit very well anyway. My head has been all over the place for much of this section as I’m also in the middle of buying my ex out of our flat which will be ongoing throughout the summer. I’m finding the art incredibly therapeutic which is great but I think that also means that I am doing it all unthinkingly and that probably has its downsides as well as upsides.. time will tell!

EDIT: Realised the stupidity of submitting an assignment piece where I could see areas of improvement so have neatened the doorway and it’s looking much better for it – here’s the improved version. It’s all going in the post today so no more edits!