Category: Uncategorized

Object Painting

At the start of term, my painting tutor suggested that I paint objects without thinking of them as a still life. With this feedback I then went on to portray two paintings, one a rosebud, and the other a Murex shell. While painting the Murex I decided to video it using my phone as a time-lapse. This is the first time I have filmed the development of my paintings. As odd as it may sound, I found it interesting to see myself work. There are some painting decisions that I can’t remember making, some of which I regret. For example, I repainted the shell after destroying it when painting the background. In hindsight I should have focused on the backdrop before detailing. Despite this I am glad I made these mistakes, through this experience I have learned more about my process. Please let me know if there is anything that you think I should have painted differently.

Object Murex

Tags art, dottiemayaston, Painting, paintingvideo, stilllife

Drawing Painting Uncategorized

Effeminate Watercolours

Recently I have had an obsession with using watercolour for figure drawing. This burst of colour was somewhat unexpected from my usual medium of the graphite pencil but not an unwelcome one. The vibrant colour and fluidity of these recent drawings contrast with the sharpness of my previous grey studies.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. Effeminate Watercolour

I found it challenging to use this medium in the life room. I had grown used to going at my own pace at home with online resources making it difficult to finish my drawings in the five-minute period of the short pose. With the longer poses I was left with too much time on my hands!

Due to COVID-19 I was only getting a quarter of the time that I would normally get in the class, the remaining hours being self-directed. I ended up making the difficult decision to drop my Life Drawing module. With my painting module being self-directed and all my written work I have, I couldn’t motivate myself to produce live drawings when I couldn’t go to class.

Drawing Uncategorized

Dissections

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. *Nasal Cavity*.

At the start of this term me and Jonathan sat in on a horse dissection. To begin with it was horrid! After the initial shock of the situation and the overpowering smell, I was put at ease to be told that the animals had been ethically sourced. That is, they died from natural causes and their bodies used for educating future vets for them to better care for the animals. This information helped me get over the fact I was watching students cut open an animal. I was then able to focus on my sketches. The environment was no different from that of a painting workshop, people chatting about mundane subjects, giving the class a fairly normal vibe.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. Insides on the Outsides.

Attending these dissections over several weeks had improved both my paintings and drawing ability. Drawing something that I have never seen before in person was an exciting challenge and it has changed my perception completely. After the first class my eyes had started to see differently, making me more conscious of what’s under the skin, and how movements are made in mammals.As the dissection is a continual process, the whole composition could change in an instant. This has forced me to look even harder than I would normally. I’ve found that it has made my abilities with mark making as well as my drawing skills from life and imagination have both noticeably improved.

© 2020 Dottie-May Aston. *A Horse Kicking In the Bucket*.

The studies are all from my A5 sketchbook. To see all of them visit my sketchbook gallery. Most were done standing up which was somewhat intense, although I am used to standing up for art workshops. It is difficult to drawing without an easel, not to mention arriving at the dissection tiers due to it being a long steep walk to the campus. Like the smell, I slowly got used to this. I hope you found this interesting! Your welcome to share your thoughts in the comments, thank you.

Tags anatomy, art, artgallery, artstudent, dissections, dotmaston, Drawing, femaleartist, fineart, horrorartwork, house, housedissections, studio, surrealhorror

Drawing Uncategorized

Life Studies at Home

This is a little insight on what it’s been like as an art student doing life-studies at home. As you may know life drawing is image-making from the human figure in-person drawing form the slight movements of the human body as it says still – something that you and only do from life. So trying to do this from life when you’re stuck at home leave you with the following options, do still lifes, self-portraits from a mirror or you could abduct someone! In my case, I have my fiance, Jonathan, who I abducted a while ago.

For one of first classes at home, I decided to follow Jonathan about and draw him, He was very patient with me, I don’t think I quite made the 6 hours. But, I spent a long time on them, playing about with what to leave out. Not having a fixed time for each pose made me lose track of time.

This a long pose, I’m not sure exactly how long I spent on this painting as I had to set the pose up witch took a long time, I also had to have breaks, but I started at 9;00 and ended at 6;00. So me and Jonathan ended up quite tired!

I miss the life class, I hope it will be up and running next term! Do try to stay safe and happy, Dot.

Drawing Uncategorized

Life Drawing Live

Sometime in February I participated in the BBC’s Life Drawing Live, TV production! It happened to be on a Tuesday which is my usual life drawing day at the school of art, which starts at ten o’clock and goes on till five – but it didn’t end there for me! At the end of my class, I packed up and headed straight for the Arts centre (up a somewhat steep hill). It was quite nerve-racking waiting for the production to start, but after a little glass of wine on the generosity of the Arts Centre, I felt much more at ease.

When the show started we were presented with posses that consisted of three to thirty minutes. I expected the last pose to be much longer, this new layout was challenging, not that I’m complaining, I’m just more familiar with five-minute posses or three hours.

It was also interesting having these BBC tutors that didn’t like styled drawings and was much more interested in you getting the figures completely accurate and lifeless. I think I’ve been very lucky with my tutor Paul Webster who encourages both accuracy and artistic license.

In hindsight this was a good experience for me, I find working from a screen much more difficult than drawing from life, your naked eye picks up more details than a lens. I would recommend drawing from a screen immediately as, I think it makes drawing in the class feel significantly easier!

Also the BBC featured this drawing on their website!

Painting Uncategorized

The Inhabitants of Nacre

I’ve recently been reading Greek mythology after my painting tutor said that a few of my paintings reminded them of some of the creatures. Although I’d like to do some mythology paintings, I want to do it in a nonconventional way. Because I’m painting from imagination, I’d like to just read and reflect on the mythology stories and see what images appear in my mind. See from my series of paintings called The Inhabitants of Nacre, featuring Mikros and Bios, Detritus, and Capsid – they have the appearance of mythical creatures. When I was painting these I was picturing the inside of an empty shell and imagining what beings could inhabit the empty space. After Painting them I started to research what creatures actually live inside a shell, and I started to look in to different microorganisms. Remarkably the names of them sound similar to the names of the greek gods!

I have a habit of giving miscellaneous objects personalities and names, and yes people do fine this unsettling even my fiancé, who I think was worried about my mental health when I decided I wanted to keep a slice of a tangerine because it had a siamese twin and he had to wait until it went mouldy to throw it out. I think my attached with 3D objects may be why sculptural work comes more naturally to me, opposed to painting. But I think I’ve found a way to apply my natural sculptural process to painting. By picturing some obscure objects I’ve studied and moulding them together with my imagination as I paint, sometimes this happens as a reaction of a mark I make on the canvas.

I’ve titled this series The Inhabitants of Nacre for those of you that don’t know Nacre is the name for the inner layer of the shell, also more commonly known as mother of peal, possessing an iridescent and metallic quality. A surface that resembles the silver gilded canvases that I often work on, some Nacre will have sheen of blueish colours that is similar to the blue paint that I am currently addicted to working with. This resemblance of my work to this mother of pearl is what brought me to name the series The Inhabitants of Nacre. The inhabitants bit is referring to the microorganisms, witch I have used to named the life forms of my paintings. I have only three paintings in this series currently but I have no doubt that they will led me on to more paintings relating to this subject matter and new method of painting.

© *2020 by Dottie-May Aston*. *The Inhabitants of Nacre*, *Capsid*.

Tags artgallery, cronavirus, darksurrealism, dystopian, fantasyart, horrorartwork, mysticalart, popsurrealism, psychoart, reanimator, scifiart, surrealhorror

Painting Uncategorized

Me and My Blue Devils

I don’t say everything, but I paint everything.
Pablo Picasso

© *2020 by Dottie-May Aston*, *Blue studio.*

My blue period is a series of paintings where I have used the human body to express personal traumatic experiences featuring things that are otherwise sensitive for me to describe…

But because I decided to use the human figure and not random shapes, my tutor’s disregarded these paintings as “college art” and not “real art”. I found these comments difficult but I know there is truth to these words, so after their feedback, I have decided to let go and lose all care of if the future viewers understand my work. I will be posting these blue paintings regardless, explaining the concepts.

Tags art, blue, dotmaston, fineart, oilpaint, Painting, studio