Crab Claws and Fish

Using different techniques to render claws and fish.

Messing around with oil pastels

Experiment with oil pastel using heavy blending and graffito techniques. I was really apprehensive using oil pastels as I haven’t had a great deal of success with them in the past. But this actually turned out ok and has given me some encouragement to persevere with them, The texture of the pastels matched the run down feel of the old pipeworks well.

Playing with ideas after exercise 1.

I decided to try and use the idea of mark making to add feeling to a picture and check out the results. I had the idea of depicting a punky character in a toxic environment and kept it simple. 20180909_160835

I used a piece of old card I found at work to add to the dystopian idea plus the fact it had some thickness allowed me to scratch into the surface adding to distressed feel. I used oil pastel, ink and correction fluid (I’ll use paint next time, the fumes from the correction fluid gave me a cracking headache!) I used the sgraffito effect to add some idea of light hitting areas of the characters top.

All in all I can see how the marks and choice of ground can enhance the mood of the picture and look forward to taking these ideas forward.

Where to begin?

So I’ve started the course and am working my way through the 2nd exercise, so far so good. Now I need to decide on an artist to study and that’s when I started to worry. There are so many artists so many art movements will the first one I choose be a “good” artist will they be “worthy” will my selection impress others or alienate them? why does that question even bother me? These questions may sound ridiculous but I was having a real rabbit frozen in the headlights moment. That was until I discovered the helpful getting started study guides on the OCA website. Including the useful Looking at Artists guide www.oca-student.com/study-guides/looking-artists which pretty much answered all of my questions. If anyone else is having similar problems or questions I hope this helps.

Heh I’ve started a Blog

So here is where I’ll be putting all my research and study stuff. Hopefully others may find it useful too. Oh and constructive criticism is always sought so feel free to have at it, I may not always agree but I will always respect your opinion.