FMP

Although I have pretty much decided my final piece designs and images I am still carrying on with my research because this only brings my knowledge and development in my sketchbook. I recently found another article related to makeup and models/stars, Lydia Bright, Towie star did a campaign against makeup for a company.  She put on one weeks makeup in a matter of 2 hours, ofcourse makeup was done my makeup artists, however the irony of getting a celebrity who lives with makeup day and night to campaign against makeup was the point I found really interesting. I have bunged that into my research just as a finding that supports my project.

FMP, final piece ideas

Of course I have not been updating my blog as regularly as I am required to however I have been working on my project,  especially FMP. I have been settling my ideas for the final exhibition, for this I want to display a number of paintings. My focus will be around the idea of manipulation and how this can distort the beauty of models if it done a step too far, mixing this in with the idea of plastic surgery. I am using images from the internet, not because I don't have primary sources but because my focus is on professional models which can be found on the net. The reason I want to use this medium is because it shows my skill and passion, I can't wait to paint, lots of painting to do and good results to show!

Self promo

Abit of a late update on my blog about my self promotion project, however I concluded the project last weeks session. During the past two weeks I have been working on designs and fonts trying to put together something really simple and bold, I used Dafont to get my text and Microsoft word to put it altogether.  The reason for me not using Photoshop or illustrator was because I haven't used it before and it is not something I an comfortable using, however the results I achieved using word were just as good and praised by my tutor. I think I have succeeded in the project brief as I have managed to pull out all the required documents for the promotional materials in a good design that is relevant to my specialism. 

FMP

In the two weeks Easter holidays I haven't been working much on my FMP as I have been focusing on my self promo,  but the first day back in the studio I decided to work on my FMP. Based on my research of artist Phillip. T who has done a series of photographs on extreme plastic surgrey, from this the idea of plumped lips spurred in my mind. It is now becoming a trend to plump lips so they are enlarged, ofcourse this can be done using botox or plastic surgrey however currently women are finding other temporary ways to plump their lips; using bottle lids. Using this method means you get enlarged lips in the matter of  some minutes and no permanent or expensive treatment is required (however it only lasts about 4hours). I tried to plump my own lips as ab experiment, I wanted to photograph and see what the difference is. Although I am completely against plumping lips because I think natural lips look much more beautiful than fake puffed up lips which look sore. Anyway my experience was awful, it was really painful to plump my lips, as I was sucking my lips into the bottle lid it really hurt my top lip. I continued to do it till I was satisfied with the difference and then photographed myself with rather enlarged lips, I wanted to paint this as one of my pieces for the final result however I may use a digital version of a model as my project is based around the manipulation of models and how they are altered.

FMP/Uncanny exhibition

For my FMP I have been looking into distortion and how beauty is manipulated by the media therefore our perception of beauty is distorted; this development was based on the advertisement I found made by Dove beauty campaign. I really liked this and created some similar experiments with eyes of models flipped upside down, this made them looked very uncanny and strange, distorting the entire perception. I then went on to paint this edit I made on the computer because I want to produce more paintings so that I can present my portfolio with the style that I wish to take foward. Once I had created the piece (which was not yet quite finished) I was told about the sublime and uncanny exhibition that Mark held at the college, so this my work fitted in perfectly so I decided to enter it for this small exhibition within college. I was great to see people looking and admiring work, it was also brilliant that my work was on the poster for the exhibition advertisement.

Painting
The painting side of the work was amazing as always, I used oils for the work which worked great. I have been using oils for a couple of my paintings now and I feel like they work amazingly well. At first the picture looked very strange because I was painting the eyes upside down but towards the end of the work it began to look normal, as an experience I found this very odd abd disturbing to think how something so distorted can start to seem 'normal'.

FMP

For the past two weeks I haven't updated my blog as much but I have been working constantly and regularly on my fmp work. Mainly doing experiments and looking into developing my work; recently I have looked into artist Wes Newman and Ahmad Rubat's work and then produced my own experiments inspired by the pair. I really enjoyed working on Ahmad Rubats style, maybe because it is a little different to my normal style which is painting; it gave me a chance to play around with some computer skills and making powerful edits which I was impressed with. I have also been working on some new ideas for development, focusing not much not painting but other mediums, I want to experiment with the following ideas:

- photographs with Barbie/thin model images stating 'am I perfect now?' (Body parts like:- stomach, breasts,  thigh gap)

-tearing the face off your own face (taking makeup off based on an image found over the net)

-video myself putting makeup on then wiping it off continuously (preferably lipstick)

-photograph people with plumped lips, achieve this with lip plumper (based around the idea of surgrey and botox)