Art is Hard: Truck: Update 04

I just finished putting on the layer of modelling paste and the surface is textured the way I want. I'll sand some areas that are too rough but mostly I think I'll leave the texture. The modelling paste/paint mix is very satisfying to use but because it is made to dry textured it is very thick and not so precise. As you can imagine with this painting I need to be fairly precise and with the thick paint it's taken me a long time to get the textured layer finished.

I apologise for the blurry photo..

Next step: Sanding, re-painting yellow bits.

News here: Waiting for an interview; working in Irish pub; looking forward to Dan coming over on Wednesday. Byee!

Art is Hard: Truck: Update 03

So I've finished the basic undercoat. You will notice that I have once more changed my mind and now I'm back to mostly yellow (not for aesthetic reasons but because I think it makes the message I want to say more powerful). If you have a look at this reference picture I'm using, you can see how I want the different coloured areas to appear (more or less) in the finished painting. I will also be adding oil stains to parts on the left hand side.

My next steps will be to build up a thick coat of coloured modelling paste to add some texture to the rusting layer of yellow paint. Without this layer the blue and rusted areas seem more elevated, like the rust and blue have been painted on to the yellow. Obviously this is not the effect I want.

Once the texturing is complete I will work into the rust and steel areas. After that I will add stains and dirt to the yellow and wash out areas that I want "bleached by the sun".

I suppose the final stages will be adding gloss and glazes to the shiny areas followed by sanding and light rust stains and oil dripping effect. I would like the oil to have a organic quality like blood dripping form a wound.

Art is Hard: Truck: Update 02

Hey again...3 posts in one day. Sorry for anyone who is obsessive and needs to read everything. I'll keep this one short. This is the style (roughly) of the final painting. I like the bold colours but I will definitely be washing parts of them out and the rust will be less symbolic than in the photoshop version.

Off to paint again and apply to more jobs.. Bye!

Life Update

Photots:
Largest doughnut I have ever eaten. Also the tastiest..
Fede suprised me with a breakfast. Italy is great. Look at all those tiny little cakes.

Ok, I forgot to post that blog post earlier so I have actually done the photoshop work now.. I'll post that in a few minutes once I have finished a little bit of an update as to what's going on here.

So last time I talked about my life I was all set to go to college, I had received my Italian ID and was looking forward to a life of pub work, teaching English, freelancing for Ion, studying Italian and generally painting and enjoying myself.

Then I realised a few very important things.
1: The first that I am increasingly poor and dependant. The idea of being this way for at least 3 years before I finish my degree followed by who knows how long suffering as a poor artist is too much for me at the moment so I decided like my grandfather before me to work at something I love at the same time maintaining my painting.

2: In Italy to work is very hard, to succeed and rise some sort of metaphorical career ladder is nearly impossible. So for Fede it would be much better to get out of this crashing economy.

So we decided together that I should get a job in computer games and that Fede explore her own ambitions in whatever job she chooses. And everyone knows in Europe computer games = the Uk, so off we go!

PS I am applying for a few jobs at the moment so wish me luck!

Finally a post about Art is Hard: Painting 01

Hi all. It's been a mad week. I'll tell you more later about that but before I'll give you a sneak peek into how the painting is going.

Slowly is the right word for this one but I think the care I have taken will translate well into the final version. For example I have a clear indication of the dark and white areas which are easy to confuse if you just outline them. I also have decided to change the colour I originally thought of (acid yellow) to a more washed and pastel blue. I think the yellow is too obvious and crass and a little too pop art for the themes I am exploring.

The blue I want will have a subtlety, a blue to remind the viewer of something maritime. A rusting blue you might see at a harbour on a boat or old barrel. I think this will contrast better both with the red/brown colours of the underlying rust and thematically with the setting of dessert Iraq adding another twist to the memory. Constantly inverting the memory until it's barely perceptible.

Next stage will be to test out some blues in Photoshop. After that I want to start laying down the rust undercoat and the blue paint undercoat. I will be using modelling paste and a lot of glazing and varnishes later which I will describe as I go.

Oh and a lesson learnt already: If you use a lot of pencil on your gesso to block out areas of a painting make sure you use fixative or all your colours get muddy. :(

Lulu Mae

Hey all. Sorry about the lack of posts. At the moment I'm organising moving back to the UK so things are on hold. For the moment in case anybody hasn't seen it I'm reposting Lulu Mae. this also for the ease of use for potential employers who don't want to search through Youtube..

Art is Hard: Update: Competition Winners

It was tough to pick one so I picked two. Here's the who and why in brief:

Winner 1: Rick with his Iraq picture. I'm going to turn this inside out in a graphic style. This will be abstracted slightly but not beyond comprehension. It will have a strong base colour with a line drawn in dripping paint highlighting the details. Possibly with some flat areas to give a bit of form.
Final output: Painting for transfer to T-Shirt.

Winner 2: Sebastian with his Thailand picture. This will be fairly heavily abstracted with a lot of use of texture and layering. Dripping and sanding may be used as well as thickener.
Final output: Painting.

Thanks a lot to the other entrants, it's really helping to keep my mind busy, full of analysis. I'm sorry I can't do everyone's. This month's theme is memory, please enter again!
J Out.

PS Become a follower of my blog if you like (You can do it down there somewhere on the right sidebar).

Sono un italiano!

It's true!
Now I'm a resident of Italy, well almost, I still have to wait for the final bureaucracy of proof that I'm actually living in my apartment (via a police raid). So in just a few weeks I'll be signed up to university and I'll start the application process for getting a full driving licence for the moped.

In all it took over 3 months for this application to be compiled. The last addition was working somewhere with a legal contract (hence the factory work). In the county council office it took an hour and a half to compile the form. Check it out. It's the size of a broadsheet. I was laughing when they showed it. They also gave me a receipt to prove I have it all filled out officially. At this stage I was ready to go but no.. i mustn't forget the all important second reciept.

Not a copy but an entirely different reciept to prove that I have recieved a copy of the first reciept which proved I completed the form. I was wondering where this was going to end but luckily it was just the two. The reciept of the form and the receipt of the reciept of the form..

Lavoro and Art

First off thanks to all the entries for the first Art is Hard competition. I'm still debating which of the photo ideas I'm going to paint.. Perhaps I will choose two as there are a couple that gave me ideas as soon as I saw them. I will have decided by tomorrow and I will post which and why along with what I plan to do with the image(s) I choose.

Secondly, I have started working in Italy. In case anyone isn't aware, it's in a cigarette filter factory at night from 2 until 6 in the morning 6 days a week for 700 Euro a month. I get to clean the floors, windows, walls and machines of the largest producer of filters in Europe. Glamorous.

I'm also starting to work in a pub in two weeks two nights a week and I'm just finishing studying how to teach English in preparation for October.

So that's it for now, I better get changed for work.. Oh I spent the weekend in Trieste by the way on the beach in the sun and ate beautiful fish and drank beautiful Friuli white wine for free.. Just in case you thought I was a bit miserable, sorry to disappoint you but Italy is still great.