31 March. Frames are expensive. Essay, and "Young girl (after Munior.)"

 My budget for framing is under review. The £177 I was potentially quoted is potentially with a student discount -down from £190 for a box frame for A shadowy stroll.

This changes things.. It's not worth me paying this much - at this point it massively exceeds the value of the art it holds and it would have been cheaper to get a fancy pants off the peg pre primed canvas - rip the plastic rubbish pre treated substrate off and cover it myself. The wood, time to get in and out of places for timber and tools just isn't worth it if the framings just going to push costs off a cliff at exhibition point. 

I know I generally make my own canvas's but I've been really financially careful - and was reusing the boards to keep costs manageable - any pdf, untretched work, paper or board, needs either a frame or box frame.. Canvas does not. So I'm canvas all the way now - even if I just buy crap ones and customise them. I'm not working at a huge scale so I may as well go for it.  My best so far has been the one I salvaged from a Next print - with a strong wood and deep edges so - yeah, todays financial implictions have sealed that for me.

I'm going to go back in and discuss alternatives but I'm tempted to whack it on mdf board myself and glue my own edging on.  MD suggested making my own but I'm always really restricted by time and space - thats before you factor in going to different sites for supplies or workshops. 

I was feeling really positive yesterday - I've got loads of ideas about how to pull everything together but it's all in making new or revised paintings. And this is the wrong point to do START to do that so I need to pull this together.

ACTIONS for paintings when I do get time.

• Nim & Jaz in middlport bedroom with the book (photo- I know which one this is) 
• relates to coercive control and the bible being in the backdrop on the side table. Me being 18 and naieve to how this was aiding my abuser reassert gender roles and expectations of my behaviour.
• Me & W in the matching outfits 
• relates to presentation of children /sisters with home made clothes.

 

Had another pass at this - changed the shape of the face on the left (I always make the left cheek larger ) softened some of the tones to make them less cartoonish. Added black back to my palette to mix with other colours to get the depth I wanted for the top of the eyes without using Paynes grey again.

I'm using a long slim 1 or 2 brush for the detail I like the square edges for sculpting the image together and then the fine detail that I can get from these.

Aiming for really soft subtle differences in tones and an expression that says - I'm doing this but I'm not comfortable really... ACTION The detail in the face makes the hands and arms need more attention now - one hand is still very sketchy and just looks wrong. I also need to tidy some edges but want to keep the background and clothing the same.

softened under the eyes and removed the white highlight from the eye.

Took some measurements and photos to amend my exhibition proposal following yesterdays tutorial.