Hey all,
I have finally finished my creative project after a long experience. I am studying a major in graphic design, so I decided to do an acrylic painting on a large canvas, approximately 1 x .5 metres. I enjoy painting although I haven’t painted in as much detail since high school. My idea developed from my own personal views on today’s society, and I wanted my design to look simple to most, although have a deeper meaning which you’d have to look hard to discover.
Okay, to start with how I view our society.. I have strong views of this world, and how much better it could be. There are plenty of top issues globally recognised and argued over everyday, although I wished to elaborate on an issue which, I believe, are the causes to many teenage emotional illnesses. Anorexia, depression, anxiety etc. are all mental disorders commonly associated with the teenage mind, where kids, teenagers and even young adults are bullied by others and the media into believing they’re overweight, hideous, disrespected, alone, and in danger. The result of medias impact on society, at this current time, has lead to girls and boys starving themselves to death, teenagers committing suicide because they don’t feel perfect, happy, loved etc. and then, of course, is the fear people have to leave their houses as a result of bullying. My question is, will this stop? Everybody looks to escape and conquer in this world but we can’t have our eyes closed forever.
So working around this issue, I came up with a few ideas. My first idea was to create a split personality on the canvas, emphasising the world we wish to live in and the person we’d like to be (ourselves), and then there’s also another side depicting the media influenced reality we are forced to live, and everything that’s stopping us from being ourselves. I know I sound a bit whiny trying to describe how we can’t be ourselves, even when we can, I just wish to elaborate on how difficult it can be for our generation to “fit in”. I planned to have one person with a split through the middle separating the two personalities of worlds, where one side is a happy teenage girl, healthy and relaxed, whereas the other side had a skinnier and boney figure, covered in make-up, straight and blank facial expression, unhappy with cameras in the background. In the end I decided against this idea because painting people’s limbs etc. is really not a strength of mine, and I didn’t believe I could complete it to my satisfaction.
My second idea was the one I proceeded with. I wanted to paint a realistic enlarged human eye, depicting the same issue as above, and I thought of various ways I could manipulate this idea of the tormented and ridiculed society. I began drawing an eye, and decided I wanted to reinforce the function of the human eye, seeing. As I said, we are ridiculed by the media into transforming ourselves into the stereotypical “perfect person” and focusing on the media, I wanted to paint what we perceive in everyday life; thin beautiful models in magazines and outside of our homes. But now I was excited to put a twist on it, I wanted to make these issues really stand out as an issue, instead of being always dismissed, so in my drawing planning process I chose to put an evil spin on it, having it look as though Barbies are crawling in and coming out of the eye trying to “fix” you.
Unfortunately I have misplaced my original sketches, but allow me to talk you through my stages of painting.
My reason behind painting the canvas black before I started painting the eye was my first and biggest mistake, which made this experience so much longer. I originally had painted it black because of another idea I had earlier in the year for my personal work, although by the time this assignment came, I didn’t want to waste what had been laying in my room the past few months. As you can hardly see in this image above, I have drawn the eye quite largely filling up most of the canvas, and I have begun to draw the Barbies that are forcing the eye to stay open pressuring us to digest all the media influences of society. I whipped up some browns and pale yellow creating a base over the black for the skin tones, and I have painted where I would usually see light falling on the eye and where the shadows of the brow is.
This next stage had me mixing more yellows, pinks with light browns with blue etc. trying to find the right tones for the eye lid and above. These stages we quite difficult with the number of coats and little amount of water I had to use because of the black background, and by the end of this stage I was very disappointed at the result so far, it was too messy and the colour weren’t right. My aim was to make the eye as realistic as possible and at this stage, I was beginning to doubt myself and my ability to mix and paint skin tones to a high standard. I continued painting..
Finally I was getting somewhere with this painting. I had experimented with a new range of colours, mixing reds, green, orange and yellows with white to get the dinner shades of the skin colour. I was happy with how the skin was beginning to work together. I felt it was important to make the spheric shape of the eye ball to still have it’s realistic effect, which resulted in the use of different shades of grey on the out part of the eye and more light and white at the inner corner.. I believe this stage allowed the eye ball to stand out and look spherical beneath the eye lids and I was now excited to move on to the next stage.
At first, I was considering leaving the background black because it would save me a lot of time, but after staring at this painting for so long, day after day, I decided that it really did not complement the subject of the painting at all. After contemplating what to do with the background, and not personally wanting to do more skin colours in the background, I thought it would be best to continue on with a similar colour to the skin although not continuing the tones throughout the face, since I was running out of time. After finishing the background I was happy with the outcome, it made the painting look more realistic and interesting. Now that I completed the background, the Barbies were my next goal to accomplish. The Barbies being so small, it was a pain to have to paint them to look somewhat decent. I used more of a pale orange for their skin colour since the shine on the plastic give more of an orange effect, also relating to the “tanned” stereotype of society. I definitely would say painting these figures was my biggest challenge as I am hopeless at painting anything in detail, especially when it’s something small. At this stage, I was happy with my design so far and knew that I had a lot to go back and improve on, and having more than two Barbies was one.
Finally, it came time to paint the iris and I commenced by painting the top of the iris, whether the shadow from the eye lid appears. Originally I was focused on painting a blue eye, which is the reason behind why the shadow is a blue/black whilst the rest of the eye is green. I wanted the blue eye to have green through it somewhere although after I started with the green paint I decided I liked the idea of a green eye more than a blue eye; secretly because i always wanted green eyes. This meant that I had to go back and change the colour of the shadow and apply different shades and tones of green to this iris. It might be just me, but by this stage I definitely could start to perceive the eye more realistically, although I noticed the circle iris wasn;t the best circular shape it could possibly be. With this in mind, and with no tools to create a perfect circle, the next and final stage involved the touch ups, including eyelashes, Barbies, etc. which allowed me to fix this problem of the circular iris and the detail within it also.
After a long journey, I am proud to say this is my completed creative project. I had added two more Barbie-like figures, one crawling up and out of the iris, and the other climbing up the side of it with a rope as assistance. Basically, my aim was to create something unique and intricate, yet simple. As you can see I have touched up the green in the eye, in hope, it would have a greater affect and I have also painted on the eyelashes. Now, if anyone ever tells me eyelashes are simple to paint on a portrait, I’ve definitely had the experience to argue that claim. This design, for me, depicts the impact media plays on society and how the pressure to satisfy peers is destroying our generation. The two Barbies on the right are holding the eye open, forcing you to look at the world ridiculed by the media, and the two on the left are climbing up into your eyes as if they are going in to attack and make you perfect. Basically I used the eye to symbolise what we are being forced to witness in today’s society, and how we see the “perfect” stereotype raising many issues of everyday life, such as depression, anorexia etc.
Thank you for visiting, and taking this journey with me. I hope my painting interested you.
world of pure imagination 