SECOND REFINEMENT

---Materials;  a crafting knife, Pages from sketchbook, a sponge, a cutting mat, a paint brush, blue, black and white acrylic , blue charcoal and white charcoal dust.

>Firstly, I will be developing my previous abstract piece. My aim today is to paint the background of the piece black instead of blue so that the building stands out more but is still slightly camouflaged. I also want to compare the first refinements I created to the one I will create. Furthermore, I will also try to create the abstract using a smaller scale so that I can explore the different emotions that can be created through size.

 

To begin with, I cut out the outlines of buildings from plain pieces of paper. However, I found this hard to do on the third page. The reason for this is because the buildings I cut out were too big so I changed the scale of the buildings and decided to cut out the outline of four buildings instead of six. I then started applying my abstract unto the plain cut-out building- this was hard to do as the black background mixed with the blue abstract when I added the blue acrylic on creating a grey colour. To overcome this challenge, I added more of the colour blue unto the buildings and used my technique for adding white acrylic unto the blue; I did this in order to make the blue fade out a little as there was too much blue on the piece of paper. I then mixed some of the abstract on top of the black background but as you can see the abstract was hard to recognize on the black background. Using my finger to create the technique was unique and even though I used my finger, the abstract still looked like it was made using a paintbrush.

This piece went well because the black background worked as I expected it to which was to make the building stand out. Now we are able to see the skyline of the building more clearly. However, I did not like how unbalanced the colours were- black, white and blue are opposite colours on the colour wheel. Using the colour black for my background made my piece look less camouflaged which was not my aim. I prefer using a paintbrush instead of my finger because it creates a nice texture and the brush marks look interesting as you can see how an artist built up a piece and some of the processes and techniques they went through. In my opinion, using your finger makes a piece to look plain and as if something is missing from the technique. When doing my next refinement, I will paint the background white and continue using my abstract technique but this time using the stencils of the buildings I have been cutting out. I will use the stencils of the building as negative space, inspired by Michael Tompsett, and add the stencil over the buildings I have already cut out in my sketchbook.