The corridors of gender.

Hello all. With Traces now firmly closed and mounted perhaps its time to show you the final pieces.

tow sketches that were going to go into the (now scrapped) notebook. There have been blown up and frames and cropped.

These two paintings are the final pieces. The first features the organs seen in a keyhole hysterectomy and the second of mastectomy scars and cotton stitches. The paintings I feel convey the angst and fear that inspired the project instead of accurate depiction of the subject matter. The two main influences of these pieces are Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville, both of whom drew inspiration from such intense feelings that plagued them, creating moving and uncomfortable imagery and works. As far as my paintings go the latter is more successful although they both do compliment each other; The heavy red imagery of the hysterectomy with highlighted shapes of blue along side the heavy blue imagery of the mastectomy with highlighted shapes of red set each other off well. However the first painting has become blurred and difficult to read due to lack of accurate detail although it leaves room for personal interpretation and in turn has become less gory until one looks into it in great detail, whereas the second painting has quite blatant imagery but the way in which the paint is applied is the main focus, conveying a struggle and patience from smooth palette knife strokes where the torso seems smooth and subtle against harsh rigid brush strokes in areas with a wide array of colours eg, around the neck and scar tissue. 

Whilst it is a shame that I had to scrap a lot of things that I had planned into the exhibition such as the wire sculpture and notebook, the sketches are so much stronger and stand well beside the expressive paintings as anatomical drawings and give a little context to them and inform the viewer who may not quite see the medical process undergone by transgender people, perhaps missing the whole point of this piece. 

Personally this project has been a journey for me. I no longer feel restricted by my physical state and I am a lot less scared to be open about my true gender. I am afraid still of telling my family and will not be mentally ready for a long time as I feel it will be throwing their whole beliefs and my upbringing back in their face but my friends and individuals i trust are happy about the progress I have made into correcting myself but as I said before, I have a long road ahead  through the corridors of gender!

Thank you to all the people who have supported me, not just by encouraging my progress of this piece but looking deeper into it and helping me reflect the personal struggle within. The words I could conjure are not enough to really convey my true thanks, I am eternally grateful to you all. I have so much love towards you all and I hope I could give you the same kind of support to you all in all your endeavors.

Thank you all!

Searching for inspiration.

Here are a few things that have captivated my inspiration and began bubbling ideas in my head for future prodjects. 

Tateshots: Kusama's obliteration room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xNzr-fJHQw
A really sweet little video explaining and exploring Kusama's obliteration room.

Another weirdly inspiring video is to one of my favourite music videos, 'Black Tongue' by Mastodon. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwgqenxNUfs
This video features the process gone into making the bull on the the cover of their album 'The Hunter'. Intriguing carpentry and sculptural work.

Another music video by Steven Wilson, 'The Crow That Refused To Sing'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XevlloPY4
A sad little story about a man whose mourning for his sister has engulfed his life in darkness animated beautifully, complimenting the story behind the music.

Final sketches.

Traces is drawing to a close so all that is happening is me cracking on with the two paintings and the 'doctors notebook'. Here are some little bits going in, some are anatomical drawings that a doctor may have relating to his specialism. Some are just part that are some what more personal, conveying that this 'procedure' is a journey for me. 

Anatomical drawing of the organ arrangement in a male's torso.

Anatomical drawing of female's interior organs.

Anatomical drawing of an open incision on male genitalia. 

Quick self portrait.

Quick study of a boy. His weirdly proportioned...

Quick study of the boy's (above) chest.

All of these are in the process of being stuck into the notebook that'll be displayed between the paintings.

Digital repainting.

To try and capture some of the raw emotion and angst in Bacon's peices, I have started digital studies of his works. This is to try and recreate this 'raw-ness' and try to get a feel for palette and technique for myself. 

Digital repaint of 'Portrait of Isabel Rawsthrone'

(more in process of painting)

To see more of Francis Bacon's work, check out this link to his Tate biography and work. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francis-bacon-682

Pewter studies.

As part of my material studies, I've been playing around with a myriad of things: latex  denim and other fabrics, different applicatons of paint and wire and pewter maquettes.

Here is the process I went through to create my first pewter study.

1.making a lost wax maquette of the desired sculpture. You will need to make a 'neck' underneath it so that it'll be acting as a funnel when your cast is ready. The neck must be secure to the bottom of the container and your sculpture and strong enough to hold it as plaster gets poured on it.

2. Making a container for the plaster to be poured into to create the mould for the pewter to be poured into later, making sure theres no leaks and that its secure.

3. Mixing the plaster. The powder should always be poured into the water. Mix using sweeping motions through the layers, making sure you don't introduce anymore air into it.

4. When the consistency of the plaster is smooth but thick enough to stick to your fingers (like double cream?) its ready to be poured. This must be done fairly quickly as the reaction has already started and will be hardening very quickly.

5. You must remove the air in the mixture before it sets. You shake the mould gently or tap the base quickly and gently onto a hard surface. Do this until there are no more bubbles rising to the surface.

6. Leave the mould to set completely. it'll take a few hours or maybe longer depending on the volume of your mould. I let mine set overnight out of lesson.

7. When its solid, its time to melt the wax out of the mould. take the plaster out of the container and put it into the kilm. The wax will be melting out of the bottom, leaving the hole where it was attached to the container, which will be the shape of your sculpture.

8. Once its completely melted and just the plaster is left it'll be ready to take out and leave to cool.

9. Its now ready to pour the pewter. You must heat the pewter until its completely liquid. Pour the liquid pewter into the 'funnel' that you made with the wax maquette. Do this quickly as it solidifies quickly but be careful as it may spit molten pewter and is very dangerous. 

10. Once the pewter has set you'll have to start chipping off the plaster with a chisel. I left mine for 30 minutes before chipping away, just to make sure.

11. Chip away all the plaster and let the small stubborn bits soak off in warm water.

12. You may want to saw off the lumps of pewter where the 'funnels' were underneatehr your sculpture. Pewter is very soft so you can easily saw it off with a fine hand saw. Be sure to put it in a vice and secure the area that is being sawed off so that it wont move. Once you've sawed off the unwanted lumps you can keep them to be melted down and use again. 

*This part is completely optional but it does help the overall appearance of your piece and its what I did and I feel it was worth the extra couple of hours.*

13. To reduse the matte effect the pewter has, use steel wool wrapped in cotton wool (to protect your hands) to buff it off. You may want to use a dremel tool to help enhance the sheen too.

Return to Traces.

Hello again. We've returned from half term with a extension of the previous brief, so no new themes or goals to tell you about. However, not to just waste a post with just bland text I'll be sharing some interesting drawing techniques and mark making used in observational drawing. 

This first drawing was from holding the far end of an 8B pencil from an arms length. Whilst I still had a lot of control, it became very chaotic and the marks were very scratchy  encouraging me to make multiple marks overlapping so to get detail though multiple marks of the same observed detail.

8B pencil on the end of a stick. Even less control here so there was no point in trying to document every observed detail, i tried to capture the shape of the skull and significant details. I need more practice with this one technique.

Charcoal held between index and middle finger (like one would hold a cigrette? I can't describe it any clearer). Much like the first drawing I was loosing a lot of control but not so much that i found it difficult to capture observations. I would like to explore the other two techniques previously stated in charcoal and see the effects.

Charcoal in left hand. This was very interesting, having never seriously attempted drawing with my wrong hand before I was surprised at how much control and how well it turned out. I obviously wasn't physically able to capture the precision I would (try to) with my right I found myself making 'striking' marks from just making quick concise marks or quick controlled 'scribbles'. These two types of marks ended up creating very bold lines and helped convey depth and curvature, for example the texture of the marks behind the jaw show that the facing surface is not flat but curves slightly towards my view as well as in then out along the back of the bone.

Back to work again, so hopefully less sporadic posts. I have more experiments with materials to be uploaded in the next post. 

Further oil studies and digital repainting.

last week's post (featuring the digital repaint of my hysterectomy study) was a start of something interesting. I'll be exploring this further in this post, using different styles and techniques and various other Photoshop bits to see how i can produce more effective paintings of one of my best studies (so far) of the current 'Traces' brief.

Original study of mastectomy scars. This study focuses on using complimenting colours to emphasize shading, contouring and depth.

Using colour bending brush, blur tool and corresponting colours to repaint the basic image. Theres a nice fluidity to this peice although a lot of the depth is lost with the paint's texture.

I really like this! I used the 'watercolour' filter. The filter is fairly self explanatory and works really well. It reminds me of one of Francis Bacon's paintings as it creates a lot of depth and most of the green tones are lost, making it very fleshy and raw.

Here I have just used an angled brush tool to give an impression of the colours. I have mixed feeling about this. I dislike how flat it has become however i really wish to explore this kind of paint application, perhaps usiong oils with no medium or thinner with a palette knife to give it more depth and texture.

Digital studies of studies..?

If such a thing exists. 

Original oil painting.

Quick Photoshop 're-paint'. I feel there may be potential here... Apart from looking like and LSD fever dream this piece is quite delicate whilst difficult to  look at due to 'too soft' blending and edged that make my eyes bleed. 

More to come, stay tuned!

Port Folio Prepping.

This post will be detailing my best bits produced from the course I'm currently on. I shall not be adding final pieces  more so studies and bits from my sketchbooks as without them, the final pieces have no meaning and it fairly worthless. I feel that the (good) grades I've received this far are reflected  in the critical analysis and practical skill displayed in my sketchbooks which make them better than the final pieces, to me at least.

The current project is 'Traces', exploring what this could mean to an individual. I chose to explore the traces of my gender, looking back on it from the hindsight in the future. What would be left behind from surgery, what was the process into changing into the correct person, what was the story behind this transformation. As my project expands, I'll keep you updated, its ever expanding as into a full blown instillation.

Study of mastectomy scars. Oil paint. The focus of this painting was to capture raw emotion featured in Francis Bacon's paintings by using exaggerated colours and marks. I feel that it has captured it somewhat as the model has blue and yellow pigmentation as if dead or scared or conversely as if cold, unconscious and has been prepped for the incision with iodine. The figure of the model is obviously meant to be a male which speaks through his broad shoulders, strong neckline and jaw, however his stance is awkward as if trying to adjust to his new gender and ribs jut out quite far (which is just part of the model's body as they have been broken from attacks), which pull in his waist quite far giving the impression of being incomplete and obviously at this point of gender reassignment, the patient may not have had the 'bottom' surgery, chest contouring and may not have even started testosterone yet.

Study of a hysterectomy, the removal of the uterus. Oil paint and fabric. This study is an effort trying to capture a realistic process that would almost compliment the expressive scars painting. However I feel the fabric is a little out of place, more mixed media studies in progress.

Study of internal female reproductive organs. Oil paint. I find that just from observation, it isn't completely obvious that the subject is of organs, more sort of symbolic shapes and patterns. The peeling of the paint, a fortunate mistake, adding an interesting texture on top of (kinda) smooth blending.

Basic Photoshop editing.

Here is the orginal drawing, prior to photoshop manipulation (do excuse the deviantart watermark, I like to keep it on there to try and combat plaugerism). Today our task was to explore these basic techniques and analyse their outcomes.

This image, shows what changign hue, saturation and brightness can do. I personally quite like it, its gone kind of a vintage sepia colour and the heavier blue guiding lines help emphasize dramtic movement in his hair and soft feminine features.

 Here I've used the 'cutout' filter. I quite like the way it's made him almost 64bit, but then again he looses a lot of his soft features and the shading is lost because it was too subtle to be changed in the filter.

This is the inverted colours of the original image. I quite like it as its just an interesting adjustment where nothing is lost from the orginal image. However if I wanted to have this effect I would've drawn on black paper in the first place.

Here I have adjusted the 'curves' of the image. I don't like this, it weighs the image down in the wrong places (around the face) and looks too 'dirty' compared to the quite delicate original image.

So whilst most of these didn't really work for this particular image, I certainly would consider using photoshop to enhance future pieces. After completeing the four set experimentations I decided to have a play with more photoshop manipulations. 

Layer transparency. This is just my own experiment using multiple layers. I really like this, despite its simplicity, its a very nice effect making the subject very ghostly and reminds me of Alexsy Titernko's photography.

If you would like to see more of my work, please do feel free to check out my deviant art.
http://biohazard-harree.deviantart.com/

And if you'd like to see some of Titerenko's wonderful photography and graphic design here is a link.
http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/

Research post, Francis Bacon.

Along with personal progression posts, I'll pop in a few artists that inspire me or whose art I really admire.

Francis Bacon 1909-1992.
In the early 1950's, Bacon's success began to grow as his first post war instillation showcased his 'Portrait of Pope Innocent X', inspire by Velazquez's works.

Bacon's work typically features macabre, ghostly, corpse-like figures. His palette features deep reds, sickly greens and blues and other 'ill' colours, which stemmed from his fascination with diseases of the mouth. 

From seeing some of Bacon's works in the flesh, the feeling of suffocation, paranoia and almost haunting surrounds them, captivating the intense pain he felt which lead to his best works. From that experience from seeing his work and having this chilling aura surround me really changed the paintings' subject matter and meanings for me, captivating me since. 

'Three studies at the base of a crucifixion' c.1944

'Study of a dog' 1952

'Portrait of Isabel Rawsthone' 1966 

"Being young and dipt in folie, I fell in love with melancholy."

To see more of Bacon's work, here's a link to the Tate modern's collection of his works. 

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francis-bacon-682

Traces

For our current college brief  we have been given the title of 'Traces' to interpret it as we see fit. I have chosen a subject very close to my heart, the journey into my my (eventual) gender augmentation into a male, leaving behind the traces of a body that does not belong to me. 
I have done a few drawing techniques for drawing studies so far. Whilst it is minimal right now, I'll be updating this blog as and when my sketch book fills out.

Simple straight line study. I'm sorry for my messy presentation  I don't obsess over neatness, I find it difficult to be expressive and raw if I worry about smudges or whatever.

 Continuous line study.

Gouache study. Semi continuous lines, if that's even a thing? I find the way the two colours conflict each other reflects the raw flesh intertwining with surgical experimentation. I don't know, I'm grasping at straws.

Gouache and ink. I got a little bored and it lead to this study, which may have been more useful that i originally thought. Just daubing the gouache, mixing the colours has created R.E.M like movement, conveying fear.

Ink and water contaminated by gouache. I'm scared of the surgery. Need I say much more?

Hopefully, studying into more detail the surgery, process, rehabilitation stages will make me more confident and enlightened about the benefits of the process of ftm gender reassignment as apposed to just imagining Leatherface in a gown and scalpel...

Water, water everywhere.

'Untitled' Summer 2012, watercolour and ink.

 'Stormy weather' Summer 2012, watercolours and gouache.

Autumn's coming round again. Everything's getting a little prettier... my portfolio isn't. These were the last significant additions to it that weren't embarrassing and I've even had interest from people wanting to buy prints of them. Yuy.