Micro Exam

Reflection of practice piece

I feel like my practice piece was successful. It’s given me a better idea of what I need to change and tweak. Firstly, for my background, I created a wash of yellow with acrylic paint because when experimenting I found that watercolour paint showed up better on lighter background colours. I do think however, that I need to tone the yellow colour down as it is too bright. I then stuck down a newspaper clipping to link to my love of writing and how Hoffmann is inspired by writing. For my actual exam piece, I will use a clipping from a book instead as it would relate more to who I am. After this I added brown and white acrylic paint and used the brush in different ways to make more expressive marks. I feel like this process worked pretty well.

I drew a pigeon in the style of Watson; I don’t think a pigeon links to me or reflects who I am so I am going to change what animal I draw. In my actual piece I am going to leave a white space where I draw my animal because I didn’t like the yellow undertone coming through after adding watercolour but I think using Watson’s style worked well; the style of the drawing worked well with the watercolour drips I put around it as it was hard to make the drips perfect and Watson’s style involves loose marks.

After this, I created drips with blue, green and purple watercolour around the bird, the watercolour ran into the watercolour I used on the bird. For my actual piece I will need to make sure all paint is dry before adding more. Some of the watercolour also dripped more than I wanted and didn’t drip in a straight line, to fix this I need to make sure the watercolour drips I have already created are dry before creating another drip.

Finally, I created scribbles in black and white pen to represent my inspiration from writing, these overall worked well but I need to make sure all the paint underneath it is dry before adding pen on top of it. I am happy with how my ideas for the piece turned out and I think the main think I need to change is the animal I use. I think it would be more appropriate to draw my dog or a horse as I do horse riding instead of an animal I have no connection to. I drew a pigeon as it went very well when drawing in my sketchbook so I knew it would work and it had more life to it than my dog and horse drawings. I am also thinking about drawing more than one animal, one in the piece in the style of Watson and one in the style of Cross. Despite this, I liked the composition of my practice piece and don’t think it needs any changing. I would have to change everything around if I were to add in another animal drawing though.

Reflection of Micro-Exam Final piece

Compared to my practice piece, this piece was much more successful. I displayed my work this time on a board instead of on paper because I used spray mount to stick down newspaper for my background and paper would have stretched and not stayed straight. I used spray mount because it dries fast so I didn’t have to wait for it to dry for a long time and it makes it easier to stick down large amounts of newspaper quicker as opposed to using glue which can be messy and is overall a slower process. It also would have made the newspaper wetter which could have made it rip easier. I think using a background made of newspaper looked more aesthetically pleasing than the yellow acrylic background I created in my practice piece. I also used newspaper because I am looking at mark making and newspaper print is a type of making marks. This time I used newspaper for the entire background instead of just using a small clip because I felt like it worked better and made more sense. I didn’t draw scribbles like I did in my practice piece because I didn’t feel like it fit or made sense with the rest of the piece. I didn’t create marks with paint like I did in my practice piece either because I didn’t feel it made sense with the rest of my piece.

I wanted to draw a bird as I drew a pigeon in my practice piece but I wanted to use a more exciting picture so I used a picture of a red kite in flight. In my practice the pigeon was just standing still whereas the bird I used in this piece is flying which is more exciting and interesting. I used the same techniques as I did in my practice piece. I used Watson’s style of mark making with the bird but made it more subtle as I felt it worked more with the piece I was creating. I used watercolour as Watson does also but used the water colour more heavily than Watson does and in a more realistic style. It did this because my own style is more realistic than Watson’s and using the watercolour more heavily meant that the bird stood out against the newspaper background more. I still feel it could stand out more so I would need to experiment with different mediums to see what works best. Using watercolour on the newspaper made it wetter than I would have liked and so I couldn’t truly see how the colours were going to turn out until they had dried because the water darkened the newspaper when wet. The water also made the newspaper more susceptible to ripping and meant it was very easy to overwork. To combat this I could seal the newspaper with something like PVA glue. I didn’t do this because it would have taken too long to dry.

I created blue, purple and green drips around the bird’s wings much like how Cross creates colourful drips of watercolour around his pieces, however I kept my drips confined to the wings so your eyes wouldn’t be drawn away from the overall piece like they were in my practice piece. I think the composition of my piece is much better than my practice as there isn’t as much going on and the only bright colours are the drips instead of the entire piece being bright like my practice.

Finished Piece.