As In Life, Also in Death

This was the skull sculpture that I made for my daughter's partner. I thought it would be interesting to show a series of photographs so you can see how I built the sculpture.

I can't seem to rotate the pencil drawing above! I used a medical annotated picture of a skull to copy.

This was the first couple of layers. The idea was to put a candle behind it for effect.

This is the finished version on its side for you to get an idea of how far it stuck out from the canvas. The material I used took some time to dry, but at certain stages you could manipulate it with your fingers to obtain the correct shape.

This is the finished version. I broke up glass mosaics and stuck them around the eye socket and around the painting. It represented the character who died but was still 'shining' as in life. The character had been killed by a blow to the head; that's why I put a dent in the skull's head on the right-hand side. They wanted to put candles behind it, but I had obviously done too many layers for it to show through, so I punctured the painting in various parts. I then bought some lead weights to put in the back of the painting so that it could stand up.

The Universe

'The Universe'

I copied this from a nasa photograph like the others. Similarly using layers of paint - dripping them on in this case - and pastels in places. The picture was then finished with many layers of fixent to give a glossy finish.

The Wide Earth

I used to say to my daughter 'I love you all the wide earth, the stars, and the universe', so when thinking of an idea for a present for 'daughter's day' (I invented it because she said it was unfair that mothers and fathers get a day but children don't), I decided to do 3 paintings on that theme.

Again the photograph doesn't do it justice, but similar to the other paintings, I used a layering technique, pastels, pens and added mediums to the paint that gave sections of it the look as if it was highly varnished .

'Favela'

My daughter named this painting as she said it reminded her of the 'Favelas'. The photograph doesn't do it justice really. The black divided parts are highly glossed and very textured, sticking out a few mm from the canvas, whilst the various shapes are either flat or are similarly textured. I was able to paint this quite quickly compared to the other paintings, and got the idea basically because I wanted to use up paint that would otherwise have become useless.

Abstract 1

10th June 2014

Unlike my other canvases this only took about an hour to paint. I just wanted a bit of fun with colour after spending months just on one painting. I painted a rough tile affect using a mixed dull green jade colour, cadmium orange, ultramarine blue, and primary magenta II. I then used to brush to bleed in the colours. Afterwards, I scraped pastel turquoise, red, and orange onto the canvas, sealing it afterwards with a sealant. Not sure if it will stay that way but it looks quite effective against my dark blue walls.

Earth Spiral

'EARTHSPIRAL'

This is the last painting in a series of three. Similar to the others, this painting was inspired by the photographs available on the Nasa website. This particular painting was from the photograph and article named 'A 'Rose' Made of Galaxies'. I originally used coloured pastels to produce the affects which were very subtle, and although this did look affective and more accurate as a whole, it seemed rather bland from a distance, so like the other 2 paintings, I decided to use a mixture of pastels and thickly applied paint to make it really stand out. The hues are deeper than the original photograph for affect. I again used unconventional tools to apply the paint like needles, pins, and a cotton pick. The wispy original pastels are made to stand out by just slightly outlining the areas with a white pencil. The painting was finally blacked in, but extensively used to delineate the different areas for affect and contrast.

Saturnine

'SATURNINE'

The different features of Saturn from the Cassini Nasa project photographs inspired this stylised representation. At the north pole for example there is an amazing phenomenon of a hexagonal storm. There is also a storm in the northern sector along with the well known 'eye' storm in the southern sector. The chevrons are also represented along with the colour banding. The actual colours of Saturn are far more subtle of course, but for effect, vibrant contrasting colours were used here along with various pastels in places to mirror the blending of colours on Saturn itself. Different techniques and implements were used due to the detailed nature of the painting and also to produce the thick layering. Paint was dripped and placed onto the surface with heavily loaded but fine paintbrushes, and also sewing needles and pins.