Friday and Monday the 15th and 18th

Well the work has stalled.  I decided that I wanted to add some more conceptual ideas into Nicks painting. I was thinking about frameworks and the way that his dad and I help to construct his reality. I was thinking that even the things that I choose to photograph, manipulate how he looks back at his life. In a way I am "mapping" his life for him but it is a bit of an illusion.  So I started to go through the pictures that I have of him on my computer, mainly hockey and soccer pictures. I decided that I wanted to use some of these to do a photo transfer on to the canvas in the dark areas. It was my intention to glaze over them and have them be just hidden within the painting.

I printed off the pictures in thumbnail size and cut them all out. I talked with Stephanie about the process of photo transfer. I carefully chose the areas that I wanted them to be and using gel medium and a blow dryer and a palette knife I transferred the photos over. This first one I did on his neck looks alright the rest looked terrible.
 They were in colour and they should have been in b/w. They were all the same size, the scale should have changed, they distracted from the sensitivity of the painting. Oh well, that process only wasted about four hours. So I have been working at covering them up. Now some of the interesting transparent water colour effects that I was playing with have been wiped out. I am going to continue to work at the values in his hands and feet and in the trees a little more. Then I will start glazing. I wonder if I have the patience enough to glaze in oil paint? The paint is here. I guess I can always wipe it off with turpentine if I don't like it. Experimenting on Nick's portrait is a little uncomfortable.

Unsuccessful composition

I did really enjoy the process of transferring the photos to the canvas. It gave them a really interesting texture and changed the values. The actual act of transferring them was way more successful than anything I have tried in the past. I will have to try this technique again. I think I will choose a more experimental subject matter and try to work on how the photo(s) would relate to the paint or other media a little better.