After a slap 'round the face at a tutorial, I got my groove on and started making some mess with paint, ink and love!
I went to see a gypsy jazz band at La Bastille, a french restaurant, as part of my research for this project and just sat there making primary sketches and taking photographs and drinking wine.
I took the rough sketches I'd made here and blew them up to A2..and I wanted to experiment using sponge brushes and here's the result...
and interesting effect but I don't think it fits right with what I have in mind...
I then tried using masking tape to make an outline..
I then painted over it in ink..the masking tape obviously resisted the ink and when it was dry, I peeled it all off to reveal this illustration...
I like this, he looks very content with his accordian! However it is quite time consuming and would probably look naff on a large scale!
Therefore, I've decided to stick with paint as it's the easiest media to use when painting a mural..
I started developing each figure for my mural.
I took inspiration from classic jazz divas such as Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, to come up with this final idea.
I felt that giving her a blue skintone would make the image a little more sophisticated, and gave her a costume that made her look slender and elegant.
I feel like I am more drawn towards the fine art approach in my illustration. I still enjoy messing about with media and I'm getting into working really big! Which is a total change from what I used to do when I worked on the computer a lot. It is more enjoyable this way
