Here is the finished painting Caput Mortuum. I am having an exhibition with the some name, Caput Mortuum, at Kina Gallery in New Plymouth on February the 12th.
Dale Copeland oil on aluminium 100x100mm This is my partner Dale. She is an assemblage artist, website writer, mathematician, teacher and a long time friend, and mother to our daughter, Toby. She doesn't approve of social media sites. Despite this, she gets far more likes and attention than I could ever hope for. When she learned I was painting my Facebook friends she immediately changed her profile picture to this one. I was tempted to paint the old one, but I'm happy with the way this one came out.
I wanted to try a monoprint using the slow dryng Open Acrylics. I used a rectangle of white perspex as my plate. Being white this made it easier to see what I was doing. I spent quite a while working on the plate, probably as long as I would on a regular painting. Regular acrylics would not allow you to do this as they dry too quickly. Here is the image I pulled off it, printing on a small ethching press. The image is of course reversed. I wasn't too happy with it really. I thought it looked better o the perspex plate! However, regarding it as a learning process I perservered. There is usually a ghost of the image left on the plate after printing, so I reworked the image more loosely this time and produced the two further prints below. They are a bit more lively, but I still wasn't happy with them. I was wiping the plate clean when I thought I'd give it one more chance. I like this one the best of the lot.
I have made an initial start on the large portrait of Anne Sitting. As is usual when painting, your present work will spawn new ideas for further work and exploration. While I was painting Anne's portrait last year, I realised that a more complete picture with her sitting in the chair would be a truer and more compelling portrait. She habitually wears many layers of dark clothes and has these lurid orange plastic shoes. The shoes became a problem for me on the last portrait as they kept distracting my eye, and I asked her to wear different ones. It became something of a joke between us, and we both agreed that for this painting she sh ould wear them. I began our first sitting by making a few preliminary drawings. Drawing is always a good way to get to know a subject. It doesn't matter that they are rough or crude; they are not intended to be finished artworks. They are working drawings and you start to get a feel for where potential p...
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