John Hancock BA Studio Practice Research

(12/4/23) Today marks yet another day painting at home. After looking at the second head / face painting I had done I began to dislike how it was looking, so I decided to spray the background to the head with silver spray paint, this covered up everything I had previously done to the background, streaks and all. I liked how bright the silver spray looked and the king of light and live it gave to the painting, but I still felt somethijg was missing. Out of frustration and an attempt to make the head stand out more from the silver I outlined the head with a line of black paint applied with a brush and then brought a through line from the skull painting with not only the mouth but the black bar over the eyes. I feel this adds an element of mystery as the face is to an extent anonymised and there is a pained expression to the face with its teeth out (that i newly added to add an extra element to the piece)  and it’s mouth as if it is screaming in pain, either physically or mentally. An...

(11/4/23)  Today I worked at home again and attempted a different direction with my painting and decided to try to paint a self portrait of sorts from a picture I had taken of myself. Not out of vanity but out of curiosity of how I would interpret a camera interpretation of me and how I would react to having a reference point to draw and paint from as I am usually very process driven and in the moment when creating, only taking time to step back and look at my progress rather than looking at references. I liked the picture I took of myself as I had a clay face cleaning product on the it  Accentuated parts of my face and made very interesting lines and I wanted to try and translate this to a semi proportionally abstracted piece. And if it weren’t for the face cleaning product I wouldn’t have take the photograph. So I got my roll of calico and primed it with white emulsion then set to work trying to get the basic lines down on the calico using charcole and a yellow pastel, drawi...

(2/4/23) Today I painted at home for the first time since starting the course, it felt odd to not be in the somewhat clear studio setting that accommodates painting and to be set up in my kitchen with precautions such as rolls of lining paper under my calico as to not get paint of the kitchen floor. Nevertheless change in surroundings can be good sometimes. Today I began by priming my metre square calico with white emulsion paint. As I was letting the white emulsion dry I spent some time looking at the calico letting myself imagine what I was going to paint to see if any outstanding ideas came of it. As I was thinking I couldn’t get the style of painting I had done in my last one I updated in my previous post (skull with blacked out eyes and colour around it). So I decided to try not to copy what I had done, but create another painting that feels part of the same family as the other with gestural stroaks and mark making with a naive flair and raw energy to it. And this is the first spa...

(21/3/23) Today I felt extremely ready and almost jumping out of myself to paint. During the week i had been building up a lot of tension within myself due to life circumstances and my emotions as a result. I started by hanging up a fresh sheet of calico and primed it lightly with white emulsion paint to start the new painting. After that I did not have in mind an outcome for the new piece so I started making wild gestural sporadic marks over the calico with Oil pastels, soft pastels, charcole and wax crayons. I implemented this process in order to throw myself into the painting,  adding raw energy through my physicality while creating. The result was a swirling and colliding mix of multicoloured lines and marks that appeared as if they were tangled with one another to create one unified ball of chaos. The colours I used were fairly random as I was merely using the materials I had with me at my work station which was a mix of various pastels I have acquired along my travels and stu...

(7/3/23) Today I made very nice progress on the piece I had made a mistake on last week. Now this piece feels a lot more full and as if it has an energy to it. This is in part due to how I painted on it, as I splattered varying tones of muted greyed colour on the outsides of the ovals that I had painted grey, then around the ovals I painted with yellow oil paint with my fingers to give it a unique effect rather than having a consistent effect with brush stroaks, then I applied a lighter Ochre yellow lining the bright yellow.  This painting seems to be blooming and forming itself right in front of my eyes as I chip away at it piece by piece. I also enjoy that the layers are visable as you can still see the mistake I spoke about in the last blog post peeking through the splattered and gesturally applied paint of the outsides. Below I will attach a picture of this Piece.  A point of inspiration for the addition of the yellow paint and flower like appearance are the paintings of V...

(23/2/23)  Today I had a small window of time to do a bit of work on some paintings. I stood and sat for a while looking at the painting I had started a couple of days previous pondering what I should add. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head of a red line on the outside of the black ovals I had already created, so I grabbed a pot of red enamel paint and set to making a line on the outer left side but as soon as I had done it I realised that I did not like it at all, so I managed cover it up with some gestural marks in white paint that mixed very nicely with the red to create a pink blending into white with some red leftover. After this I took more time out to asses what I had done and how I could amend it, but the stress didn’t weigh on me too much as the painting is currently at a loose end of sorts as it does not at this dime have a specific direction. Pictured below is the mistake and coverup in question.  Today wasn’t meant to be a full practice day so I wasn’t prepared...

(21/2/23)  For the second part of my studio practice module I will be setting my focuses  on creating a set of paintings. I do not yet have a number of paintings in mind that I will show at the end of the module in my FMP, and I also do not have a fixed theme in mind for these works. I do have some freely floating ideas and emotions I want to convey, but at this point they are far too abstract to convey in writing. At this beginning point my intention is to create some process based paintings that are free flow and free forming in the moment as I am creating them. My intention is to be more painterly in these pieces implementing energetic brush work and mark making, primarily working with oil paints and emulsions as well as various pastels I have at my disposal. Today I started work on a new selection of paintings for the second half of my studio practice module. After the first collection I produced painting on wooden boards and using fillers and liquid latex and paints, I ma...