Weekly Work-In-Progress

Each Thursday I plan to share part of my art-making process with you and give you an insight into how and why I make my work. I’ve been doing a bunch of different things this week but I thought I’d share a few sketches on a common theme. Self-Portraits I got this stupid $10 luchador’s mask a couple of years ago for a costume party and it has been the only costume I’ve worn to any party since, whether it was relevant or not. Over the course of so many parties, the thing has become tied to a lot of memories. The mask has a strange effect. It frightens some and it attracts others. It brings out aspects of my character that aren’t necessarily my best qualities. It’s a symbol of a chaotic and self-destructive part of my personality that these sketches are trying to come to grips with and, perhaps, put to rest. I’ve included the full colour palette from the digital sketch which I thought was interesting. If you look at the palette on it’s own, you see a range of warm colours- reds, browns and ochres. It’s basically the same palette as my crashed cars series. The third grouping in the palette are the colours that make up the foil pieces around the eyes and other bits on the side of the head. If you compare them, you’ll see that they look vastly different to the colours in the sketch, particularly the darkest tone in that group which appears much cooler in the sketch, almost like a blue-grey. In the palette you can see it’s a warm brown-grey! I’m a complete amateur at colour tricks like that, and if I wasn’t working with a limited palette in a digital environment I probably wouldn’t have achieved that. But I love the way the eye mixes colours in relation to each other. It’s something I’ll have to experiment with further and I’ll most likely use the palette I’ve got here as a starting point for my palette in oils. What do you think? Leave me a comment below if you have any thoughts or constructive criticism, thanks!