Initial experiments with watercolour - in the style of Amy Hamilton

To start the more abstract side to my artwork, I have started to look at the work of Amy Hamilton (as shown by my analysis of her work on a previous blog post). I created some initial experiments to see what kind of marks I could create with the watercolours and then went on to replicate the pieces created by Hamilton so I could get used to her style and find what part of her work I want to take inspiration from.

I first created these marks so that I could get used to using watercolours as I have never really used them before. Some of the marks I prefer to others as they are more abstract and expressive. For instance I really like marks number 2, 6, 8, 11 and 13 as they are all unique and would be used to represent something quirky, which links to the portraiture photography that Andy Gotts creates. Meanwhile, some of the marks created formed a block of colour which would really only be useful for figurative work.

In order to get comfortable with her style and technique, I created a transcript of her  "Orca" piece and then painted an extreme close up of the fin on the orca. To create these marks , I used water to mark don the shape of the whale and then I applied the paint and it dispersed out and blended with other colours. Hamilton uses colours that reflect the nature or lifestyle of the animal to create a slightly surreal piece - she used blue in this piece as the natural habitat for this whale is in water. one main aspect that I wanted to capture was the fact that her lines aren't crisp, they are free as it is clear that some of the watercolour has bled outside of the drawing. 

This transcript is a part of Hamilton's "Deer" composition. When it comes to painting fur on an animal, she uses less fluid marks when compared to the "Orca" painting. I used a very light wash as the base layer and then built more marks on top of them with a darker shade of the same colour; I built the form by building the contrast of the piece with layering darker tones on top of the lighter tones. In a similar way to the Orca piece, I marked out the shape very lightly with pencil and then dampened the page with water and applied the paint so it would bleed slightly and spread.

Next, I am going to work on using one or two aspects from her work and link it into my work whilst also comparing her work to that of Sarah stokes (an artist who's work I found in a gallery in Leicester).