{Canvas}
For this piece (as well as many of my other paintings) I created my own canvas. First thing I did was to create the skeleton of the canvas, meaning that I put together the frame of the canvas (which was 1ft by 2ft wooden frames connected together). Once creating the frame, I then rolled out a decent of amount of canvas and cut the amount I wanted to use out. Cutting the canvas material, I began to fold the edges of the canvas cloth over the edges of the frame, starting on one edge at a time. With the first edge I folded over, I grabbed the staple gun and stapled the canvas cloth to the frame so that it would not budge. I repeated this all four sides of the wooden frame.
However, when stapling each side of the frame I had to make sure the canvas was tight and then would have to staple it. Once I finished stapling the canvas to each side of the wooden frame,I turned it over and made sure it was tight. After checking if it was tight, I then began to cut off the excess canvas material. After, I gessoed my entire canvas and this is where I began to the process to paint my choice piece. |
{Painting}The beginning of my choice piece is pretty simple. To start off, I began by gessoing my canvases, making sure that all the brushstrokes are all going in the same direction. After I finished gessoing the three canvases, I let them dry. Once they were dry, I began to paint the background of each canvas. This process was simple as well. I used blue, white, yellow, and green for the first canvas and for the remaining two canvases, I only used blue and white. To paint the background, I did not mix prior to placing the paint onto the canvas. I just placed a good amount of paint on each of the canvases and began to mix all the colors together with a 3in paintbrush.
After doing the background, I began on painting the figures in the front. I wanted my piece to something negative but also positive. So to do that, I decided perhaps I should include a monarch butterfly since they are seen mostly in a positive light. I drew the butterfly using a light wash of paint, and then began to fill in the drawing of the butterfly with black, white, and yellow paint. To draw or have a reference to what butterflyb looked like I used a fake one that I had within my house. I placed it underneath the figure and used that to see what colors I should use, etc. To paint the main I used a picture of a model's upper torso, To do this I transferred the image from phone, to my computer then to the projector. I only used the torso I really did not have a picture of the naked male form. So, I winged it and drew from what I remembered the male form looked like when my sister took nude figure drawing classes. I did the same thing for the male figure as I did the butterflu, which was to do a light wash of paint to outline the figure and then begin painting. However, my piece technically is not complete because I had wanted to painting the male figure with a lot line, and distorted forms but in the end I left how it is now. I do plan on continuing and further adding more to this piece as part of the series I intend on completing over this summer. |