Ok so I’ve been partying a bit for the past week, but it will be nice to have three weeks off. I say three weeks off, but I will be working during the holidays. I still have some work I want to get done, but for the most part I shall be relaxing. I’ve been so busy that I have no Christmas shopping done, not that I mind that much as I detest shopping…with a passion…and it’s worse at Christmas. Let’s just say it’s a good idea to keep my away from people whilst going through this process because it’s not pretty. I digress. Today was a pretty relaxing day at college. There were songs, chocolates and general shindiggery. I went in an bought Christmas party hats, earrings, hairclips, etc., to get me in the festive mood, because although I hate Christmas shopping, I love Christmas. It was a really fun day and I got heaps of photos of my class mates. Let me introduce you to some of them:

On the bottom left is Ana, me in the middle (looking awful I may add), and Sophie on the right. She’s my daughter’s friend, but the two of us have an absolute riot! At the top is Sooz and Hugh. Every one of them is an amazing person, and an extremely talented artist. Of everyone in the class, Hugh is in my mind the most talented artist. His work is incredible and never fails to astound me.

Now, going back to my work: I worked on my last two pieces required for assessment in Creative Composition. My brief was to create a piece where the emphasis is to be found through a focal point, and one where emphasis was due to lack of focal point.

Emphasis through absence of focal point

I tried to make this piece so that it was difficult to ascertain exactly what the subject/focal point of this piece was. There are various ways to do this, such as repeating a pattern. I chose to make the colours so muted and close together that it would be difficult to know where the painting started and ended. First of all I carried out my underpainting using yellow ochre for the dark tones. I used ultramarine and cerulean blue in the background, then added sandpaper, tin foil from a biscuit, card paper from a leaflet that came through the door, and felt floor protector. I then painted over using various shades of blue, green and yellows. I actually really love this piece, and is one of my personal favourites.

Emphasis through placement

This was about trying to create a focal point using direction lines, pointing objects towards the main focus. I’m not so keen on this image. The colours are a bit bright for me, and I’m not keen on the placement, but it is only a demonstration of this method. For this piece, I used sandpaper and a leaflet again, this time painting in tones of scarlet, deep red, ultramarine, cerulean and white. I wanted to guarantee that the eye would be drawn to the focal point, so I made my direction objects cool colours, whilst making the main focus a warm colour.