As an artist, I believe colours can really represent emotions and thoughts. I have used this concept for many years within my art practice. My personal style is very abstract and very colourful. I enjoy applying this into my research and practical development.
One of my favourite artists must be Marion Bolognesi, a watercolour illustration artist born in Bonaire in the Netherlands. Marion Bolognesi uses watercolours to paint and illustrate portraits, including many different angles and facial expressions. She has always studied facial expressions and has been fascinated with them since a young age. Her artwork is very colourful and perceptive. The details, texture and depth employed into her practice are exceptional and hauntingly beautiful. I have often used Marion Bolognesi’s work as inspiration for my own practices, especially when working on themes such as; mental health, domestic violence and now rape culture.
I decided to use some of Marion’s work to inspire me to create my own pieces, using watercolours and biro pens. I also used myself as a model and my own photography to create the facial expressions and positions in which Bolognesi likes to illustrate. I recycled some of the photographs I had used and taken for my previous projects such as the mental health project and the domestic violence/abuse project. However, I also took new photos that were free of makeup and applied the watercolour themes to the drawings afterwards. I really wanted to get a mixture of styles in my work to truly experiment with the ideas and see which methods worked best for me. So far, I am obsessed with my watercolour art and would really like to continue with it. I also really love the biro work as ballpoint pen is one of my best and favourite uses of medium. I do want to continue to experiment with mixed-media portraiture, but I want to add more media and experiment with more methods to create a wider array of work. I feel I have not yet reached the maximum results that I can get out of this and I am genuinely interested to see how much more I can push the boundaries with it. Overall, I made six watercolour and biro portraits so far. Each two have been different from the last two as I wanted to test the aesthetics and develop my creative ideas and techniques. Number five and number six below, have been pure watercolour with Marion’s techniques.
5 - Inspired solely by Marion Bolognesi, I used watercolour pencils for this piece. Modeled from my own personal portrait. I mixed fleshy/warm tones with very harsh cold tones to replicate Marion Bolognesi's artistic expression. I then used a bright and warm pink for the lips as she also likes to do for her own paintings.
6 - Inspired by Marion Bolognesi, with a little of Bayani De Leon. This particular piece is modeled from my own self-portrait. I used watercolour pencils and obviously, water. I used warm and fleshy tones to create this and then black/dark blues to outline. While I loved creating this, I feel the topic of rape culture had started to fade off and I was becoming astray from the main goal.
I also wanted to use Bayani De Leon and Agnes Cecile as inspiration for my work, so the other four paintings have a mixture of their techniques with my own personal touch to create the artwork and make it my own.
2 - Modeled from a domestic abuse angle. I used watercolour pencils and black biro pens for this piece. I used canvas paper so the texture of the canvas paper actually added great depth to the piece. My finishing title actually came from this piece and the one beneath it as people in my group said it looked very anatomical and one person commented that "it looks like the figure underneath the skin, as if someone has torn off bits of skin and you can see the muscles and facial structure underneath". This feedback gave me the great idea of "My Anatomy is Not Your Property" - I was originally stuck on a name and though of "My body is not your property", however, I feel it is already overused so I went with the more scientific name.
1 - This is the first one I did. I used watercolour pencils and black biro pens. I loved this piece. While this would have been excellent for domestic violence and abuse, it wasn't necessarily good for rape culture. Due to this, I've decided not to use this piece for anything other than experimentation.
4 - I really favour 3 and 4 because they feel so detailed, yet so simple. Both modeled from myself using watercolours and black biro. The red colour symbolizes the blood dripping from a broken nose and a busted lip - I did form this from photography used in my domestic violence project done in the previous year. I thought it was a great idea to reuse old work. However, I feel 3 and 4 may be too into the violence category, rather than the rape category. Which is a shame because I like these two the most from the portraits. My tutor mentioned the work was beautiful, but perhaps too beautiful for something as dark as rape culture. She was right, I don't want to beautify the subject.
3 - Broken nose, busted lip and black eyes. I used reds and pinks for the blood. I used purples, browns and slight black for the bruising around the face. I had the same technique in the one above but this one shows the bruising more clearly.
As far as experiments and testing out techniques go, I also used Photoshop to test out some effects and ideas I had. Shown below:
Photoshop images: I did these just to test out textures and colours as I had every intention of using them to draw and paint, then somehow incorporate them into my final development. However, as mentioned in my reflective posts; I chose a different route as portraits weren't getting across the message I wanted to spread. The portraiture gave off the vibe of domestic abuse and violence, which is great and fits very well with rape culture as most rapes occur domestically, between family members and friends. Statistically, you're more likely to be raped by someone you know, rather than a stranger. Yet, nobody in the group tutorial could pick up my chosen theme; Rape Culture. Thus, leaving the portraits invalid for my project.
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