With this exercise after a bit of thought, I had a clear idea of just what I wanted to paint. As a lover of classic literature, I was inspired by Charles Dicken’s ‘Great Expectations’ first scene where Pip and Magwitch meet beside Pip’s mother’s grave. This gave me the idea of producing a morbid dark interpretation of a graveyard and a spooky atmospheric piece. After finding a photograph on the internet of the perfect view point of gravestones, crucifixes and a church in the background, I knew that I wanted to create a monochromatic painting, and so painted two tonal studies, one in black and the other in pthalo blue, as it proved a perfect colour for my portrait in the last part of the course. Whereas with the portrait the blue had proved itself a great colour, the landscape genre did not give the same effect and so I decided that black would be the colour that I used.
After sketching the basic shapes, I began painting washes of black onto the page to produce the mid tone and then painting the details and highlights with white and black once the washes had dried. once it came to painting the church, I found that painting all the detail would detract from the overall painting and so painted an impression using the outline of the church.
Overall, I believe that this painting turned out quite well with the combination of the subject, colour and the surrounding clouds, and having wanted to capture the Dicken’s look, I am happy that this could be a recreation of the first chapter of ‘Great Expectations’.
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 