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.