School work 3rd entry

Continuing on from sculpture we have been looking at installation.  Mine is still a work in progress at this point.  Again thinking about space and what inhabits that seemingly empty space I have been creating models of viruses (generic) to install somewhere suspended in the college.  I also thought it might be fun.  Tiny worlds within worlds, and I believe nature has created duplicates of universes in different scales.  There seem to be parallels in nature for example, the look of a nebula looks like the close up view of an iris, microscopic structures look like other much bigger things and it goes on.  All apparently complying with a mathematical pattern, for example the golden ratio Fibonacci sequences that shape forms proportions and patterns in nature.

Plaster and wire virus

painted virus

I'm really keen for painting to play a large part in my future art work.  The painting session we had I found was not one of my most successful ones though.  This was mainly due to the fact that prior to this on my distance learning course I had been learning to paint with acrylics, oils being an impractical choice to use at home, (kids' inquisitive fingers and lack of space not being condusive to leaving paintings lying around for months to dry).  Anticipating the long drying time of oil paint I brought in some Alkyd fast drying ones in the hope I could use them more like I had learned to use acrylics.  I think an improperly prepared canvas and also lack of time to prepare something properly that I really wanted to paint further added to my lack of satisfying outcome.  I've since been reading some articles on oil painting as well as buying a great book by Kevin Macpherson called 'Painting with light and colour', and although he paints mainly landscapes the principles in it could equally apply to other subjects I'm sure.  Can't wait to have a try but research and writing seems to be getting in the way of creating art.  All but a couple of my paintings in acrylic I previously did had to be done from photographs but what I am really keen to gain experience in is painting from life.  It's more spontaneous, and I find photographs, although they capture detail, don't capture the light and colour the way the eye sees it.  I think working from life would give me so much more experience and understanding of colour.  I think also because I have had to rely on photographs so much I have tended to paint in a more technical and less responsive way.  This is an example of the type of painting I was doing before now:

self portrait Nov 2013

 I know I like narratives and again want to work figuratively.  I love people watching and want to capture life as I see it.  The humorous side, the injustices, the beauty, the not so beautiful, the differences.  The only problem i can see is getting the reference pictures without getting hit or arrested.  Ewing Paddock overcame this in his series of paintings of people travelling on the London underground by asking people to pose in his constructed carriage replica.