Interdisciplinary Practice: Study Task 6

Oil painting was something that I did a lot of at school, in foundation end still do in my free time when I am at home. My interest in oil painting is definitely something that has had a huge impact on my practise in many ways. This is on both my concerns and the themes that I am interested in as an illustrator and on the way that I like to make images.

 


In terms of image making, layering lots of thin washes and slowly building up an image/ blocking in tone is something which is really important in oil painting. This is layering definitely something which is apparent in most of the illustrations this year. I like to build up images in loose layers rather that starting in one place and expanding outward. This attributes for the fact that a lot of the images that I make are mixed media because using different media allows for this layering. I.e. thinners, ink, colouring pencils/ resist. Blocking in the lights and darks at the start of making an image is also something which is important in oil painting and is evident in the way that I make images today. One of the reasons that I have used resist so many times this year is because it allows me to do this. However, this love of layering and blocking in tone does mean that I have a tendency to often overcomplicate my images and I have found that recently I have started to digress away from it.

When I came to this course having only done painting before I also became obsessed by what separated painting from illustration and this was actually the focus of my final major project on Foundation. Looking at what the differences between the two are is definitely what formed my understanding of what the term illustration means. This distinction between the two and how it relates to how illustration is valued (in contrast to fine art) is a concern which has remained with me and became the focus of my COP project this year. This questioning of what an illustration can be and why a painting hanging on a wall can't be an illustration is something that I have continued to think about.

With oil painting conceptuality is also quite important and this very concept based approach to image making is something that has also remained with me. I do always spend a lot of time thinking over my concepts and they are often very layered. To me the concept is as important as the aesthetic values of an image.