For this exercise, I wanted to put my own twist on the brief, as I have already experienced painting outdoors in a space where the public have peered at me and stared, which has made me feel very uncomfortable and exposed. This being so, I wanted to work in a private area, but still work outside in order to experience the weather conditions and so I actually chose my back yard. With the small space of our yard the lighting changes constantly and in the cold weather can be freezing and so I thought the experience would still be something I could learn from. That being so, I went out into the yard and produced 4 sketches which I later drew over with black liner. These were quick and fast just to be able to figure out which angle and view of the yard would be best.
Picking the view with the washing, I thought that the addition of clothing drying on the line would be a domestic twist and an insight to a Lancashire yard. As the day was freezing and I wanted to be able to paint fast without any lighting changes, I made a quick colour study, using minimum watercolour just to block out where the areas of colour would lie in the composition.
When beginning the painting I chose to continue with a watercolour palette as this would give me a much wider choice of colour and opportunity to create depth within the towels hanging on the line. Within the piece, I kept everything quite simple and stylised in order to paint when the lighting was good and blocked out the shapes and shadows in watercolour before dding liner to bring the objects out. During painting I also noticed that there was a certain degree of linear perspective, which offered a great spacial awareness within the composition and also created distance as the yard went further away from me.
My final painting is shown below, which I believe is good as a colour study, but needs much more time and care to become a complete painting. With using watercolour, there was a weakness and I believe that if I were to paint it inside with acrylic, the piece could look far much stronger, and have a much clearer narrative. For my second experience working outside I enjoyed using the raw natural daylight and enjoyed the fresh air, until it got too cold, and would like to experience it again, in another area, in a much warmer climate.
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 