Gehenna - Creating a thumbnail

In order to render the image to to a degree I'm happy with, I want to create a thumbnail and create the painting using a transferal grid method, sectioning the thumbnail up into squares with corresponding letter and number co-ordinates. As I haven't created a large scale figurative painting with a surrealist style and an in depth narrative before, I feel as though working with a proper gridded thumbnail reference (rather than just my sketchbook draft) will help me feel less out my depth and make the piece more approachable and not so intimidating and daunting.

Much like the painting aspect of the piece, I've not ever created an in-depth thumbnail image for a painting before, and so I am very out my depth in this entire creative process. However, I'm really enjoying the fact that pursuing this will push me out of my comfort zone and teach me new lessons in regards to my approach to my practise and the materials and methods I'm using.

It seemed logical to me to begin by collecting jpegs and images of the features within the draft in my sketchbook of 'Gehenna'. For example, there is a reference to 'Anubis' in the painting draft, so I began collecting images of Anubis masks, Dobermann dogs and Anubis statues and paraphernalia to potentially incorporate into my thumbnail. I repeated this process with all the other elements within the draft such as the alcohol bottles, food wrappers, dying plants, furniture etc and narrowed down my findings to the best options for the image. Next, I needed to assemble the separate elements along with my red nude reference photos to create a working thumbnail that closely mirrored my initial sketch.

 

Taking reference photos

In order to do my painting ideas justice and bring them to life in a way that aligns with the images I have planned for them in my mind, I need to take photographs of myself that mirror the figures in my sketches. To do this, I asked my friends to help photograph me in certain positions so that I have the exact reference image needed for each painting idea I have planned out. In addition to this, I also purchased a collection of body paints in several different colours, as I like to paint the nude figures in my paintings bright colours such as reds, blues, oranges and pinks; again, to give the image an abstract essence and a celestial feeling of belonging to another world. 

For 'Gehenna', I painted myself red all over and posed nude for the photographs while wearing a dog lead (as this was another vital part of the reference image in aiding in visual symbolism for the final piece). It mattered to me that the reference photos were both of me and directed by me, as this added an authenticity to the process. The stories being told within the images are extremely personal and having somebody else as the focal point/ reference would have felt somehow wrong. The process of painting myself and posing for the images felt as though I was partaking in a performance of some kind, which made me intrigued to potentially venture into performance art in the future.

My friends and I eventually managed to take several hundred photos as I flicked through my sketchbooks along side, getting myself into the appropriate positions to mirror each sketch. For this painting in particular, I wanted the subject (representing me) to look particularly dishevelled, hopeless and lost. I am now in a position where I am able to start drafting the painting onto a much larger surface with a reference image to work from along side. 

Ideas and preparation

Researching into artist's work, visiting exhibitions, reading and reflecting on my own experiences through out life is generally what inspires my painting ideas and when they come to me, I either jot them down in my notes app on my phone or even better, sketch them down as a visual aid in my sketchbook to visit at a later date and render on a larger scale in much more detail. I roughly draw out the image in my mind with a plethora of annotations crammed around the page that act as notes to my future self, telling myself what to do with the piece, what colours to use, what symbols to use, the positioning of the elements of the piece, the composition, etc. 

As I have been doing this for many years now, I have a large backlog of planned out paintings ready to go and with my mental health finally at a place where I'm able to study again and create work, I feel ready to tackle some of those more detailed and emotional pieces on a much larger scale. I know that in order to do this, I will need to get organised in regards my materials, working area/ space, time and reference images. The latter being a seriously important aspect of the creative process for me, as I am unable to draw and paint the human form from my imagination alone, I need visual aid to ensure the proportions are correct. Even though I'd like to warp the human form somewhat in my images and create surrealist scenes, I still need the reference image to be able to do that. I need to learn to paint realistically to be able to paint surrealistically. I need to learn the rules first to be able to break them, so to speak. 

The majority of my painting ideas are slightly surrealist, abstract and generally other-wordly. A simple image search on google very quickly dampens my hopes in finding the perfect reference image to aid in me painting the sketched out images in my sketchbooks going back over the years. And because these images are so precious to me and speak so loudly of my very personal experiences, it matters to me that they are rendered to a quality I am satisfied with. Because of this, I'm deciding to proceed in taking my own reference images for a painting I've planned titled 'Gehenna', a scene relating to my darkest moments during my PTSD episodes over the past few years. 

"Named in the New Testament in Greek form (from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, meaning “valley of Hinnom”), Gehenna originally was a valley west and south of Jerusalem where children were burned as sacrifices to the Ammonite god Moloch."

Although dramatically dark, Gehenna relates to concepts such as the underworld, hell, purgatory, suffering, punishment, condemnation, loss of the soul, spiritual destruction, eternal damnation, torment and the abyss; which feel appropriate to the themes of the paintings I wish to bring to fruition. 

There is a reference to 'Anubis' in the 'Gehenna' sketch; the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld and dead souls, which feels beautifully aligned with the under current of the painting and what messages it entails about the focal point of the image; the human nude figure. I also use Anubis as a visual metaphor for the 'black dog' trope, relating to a decline in good mental health - representing conditions such as depression and anxiety, which are closely related to conditions such as PTSD.

Continued research

Due to lock down and it's social and physical limitations, it has been difficult to gather research and inspiration through many means other than online exploration. 

As well as following artist's work online via blogs, artist websites, online exhibitions and virtual tours; I have also been watching artist documentaries and interviews to gain a deeper understanding into their practice and general philosophy as a creative. I find that by delving into the minds of your favourite creators, you can begin to understand their process a little better and find new ways of kick starting your projects that you might not have previously thought of. I think it's important to get out of your comfort zone as an artist to halt any brewing stagnation in your approach to your practise and to hinder any repetitiveness that could be unhelpful within your work. 

I have watched interviews of Jenny Saville, Lynnea Holland Weiss, Francis Bacon, Naudline Cluvie Pierre, Paula Rego and many more in an attempt to observe different ways of working and thought processes towards the creative process. 

In addition to this, I have watched artist documentaries featuring Francis Bacon (A Brush With Violence), Marlene Dumas and Salvador Dali to gain a contextual and cultural understanding of their career as an artist, again, to challenge me to think differently and get outside my comfort zone, in the hopes of creating work that is new to me and my practise and finding new ways to combat the artistic dry spell that sometimes hinders me.