Field – More Paintings/Final Piece

I have embraced painting as my dominant medium for this project and have been continuing to paint throughout. Here is one of my paintings at it’s starting point. It is painted on a very small chunk of MDF board and by this point it was made up of blocks of colour.

Below is my painting in it’s second stage when I began to add different colours and textures to bring it to life.

And below is the finished version of my small painting.

Much like my the first painting of my series, it has an unhealthy orange glow. Along with the various marks I made to give it more life and character, the orange shading hanging over the blocks looks like some kind of toxic sludge, this is exactly what I intended it to look like. I think the contrast in the lightness of the orange with the dark shading at the bottom affectively centres the painting and emphasises the detail of the blocks in the middle.

Here is my final piece (unfinished)

Based on my favorite compostion from my entire project, I (once again) took inspiration from James Jessop, specifically his ‘Horror’ train painting (below).

The sickly unnatural yellow of the sky clashes with the reds and browns of the buildings below, and I think this contrast is what makes this painting so terrifying. I wanted to experiment with these colours in my final piece to see if I could recreate this feeling of terror I feel when I imagine myself in Jessop’s painting.

I stencilled the word ‘CAUTION’ near the top of my painting, only faintly visible so it wouldn’t be too loud, I liked the idea of keeping it hidden. This technique was extracted from Ben Eine’s works on the streets of London.

So far I think my painting is rather boring. I think the stencil helped bring it to life, so perhaps another stencil woud work…? My initial aim is to make my painting just as terrifying (if not more so) as Jessop’s painting as my entire project has been based on my feelings toward the city, mainly overwhelmed and wary. Perhaps it could improve with some graffiti? Or a colour change in some areas? Either way I need to both change and add something in order to call my painting finished.