Quite a while ago, before I launched this website, I posted my archive art on social media asking for critiques. I want to occasionally revisit old art to learn from it and maybe do new versions.
Well, I didn't get many critiques on those posts, but I'm going to self-critique anyway!
News just in!
I am interrupting this blog post to tell you that I added a new exhibition to the events section of my website! I will be posting a blog post about it later, but if you want to find out more right now go and check it out here.
The archive art
First up is Time from 2010. I remember I painted this from the prompt "Steampunkism" (Steampunk and Expressionism) for a DeviantArt competition.
With that being the brief, I think this is semi-successful but could be better. It's not fully Steampunk (just biomech-ish plus Roman numerals) and not really expressionism (just, fluffy?). But it has interesting nods to both.
I love the orange colour. I love orange in general. The textured painting style is interesting and not something I would normally do. As much as I love paint texture, I find myself trying to smooth things out when I'm actually painting. Once the paint has dried, my favourite parts are often where I've missed a spot when smoothing. Trying to paint in an Expressionist way allowed me to play around more.
In saying that, when I decided to do a new version of this in watercolours I thought I'd make it more refined.
My favourite part is the multiple hands on the clock. Which is a bit ironic because I forgot to put hands on the new version completely. At the time I'm drafting this blog post, the new artwork has been "completed" for months. I'll put the hands on before I post this - this will be a good reminder.
Overall, I think this artwork is eye-catching and conceptually interesting. I think the execution is just ok. It's definitely something I feel I could revisit (and obviously did revisit, as you may have seen me posting it on social media).
The new artwork
This is way more in my current style, while also being different to something I would draw from scratch. That was really cool to put me out of my comfort zone. I like that I can see the relationship between the two artworks.
I like that the orange is still there while not being the entire background. I generally like doing darker-background work at the moment but I also love colour. I do wish I had more of the bright orange, now that I'm looking at this again.
The clock is a million times better. I love the detail I did, especially the skull. I think the first painting was just "Steampunkism" but working through this new one I feel like it has themes of life and death that weren't all conscious but make it make more sense.
Where it's not as successful is the technical skill. I'm perfectly happy with how it looks but I can also recognise that it's stylised due to being unable to paint the cogs/metal realistically. I like how I've painted the face but also think it's not the best face I've done.
I also think I may have taken subconscious inspiration from a painting of my Dad's (his is way better though!). I didn't realise the similarities until I'd finished mine.
Overall, this was a fun exercise and definitely something I'm going to do again with other artworks.