23 March, Witchmarks and painting

 Attempted to finish the big canvas frame but its just not going to work - the woods to weak and it's easier to start again and restretch than to reinforce what I have.

Added witch marks to my proposal and tested the idea in the studio, ran it past MD to make sure that it was something that I could do.

 

Took a look at Poppys' testing of her exhibition piece and took/shared some photos.

Had another go at this painting - I've put it down for ages and when I started was working off a traditional religious reference but have since painted the apples after thinking about Ian Moods' practice and wanted to apply some of that thinking to this - I've left some lines in and kept it simple (arms and clothes/outlines) but I've pulled out the hair in the way that I'd paint an actual child's hair and changed the face so that its almost contemporary Clintons card design - mixing modern aesthetics with the original image. It's not as easily recognised as a religious image now and the gender isn't clear - but the halo, fingers pointing to god and witches hat and daisy mark are also still in there. 

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I'm working over a pretty overexposed photo for this and her face looked really white so I've changed the colours in the image and am trying to work some tonal skin shades in - it's going to mean reworking a few areas and popping the hair in again but I think its going in the right direction.

Had another play with this one -I'm trying to keep this really loose, playing with the colours tones and textures and keeping the brush strokes really gestural.