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This year I focused on portraits .It all began when I tried painting one which was quite to my liking and a sudden interest grew in me to do them. At first combining them with my fantasy theme .As i kept going I felt i wanted to try something different and so I moved on to using Erasure where I erased facial features..Erasure seemed interesting to me at first, but as I kept going in that direction, I started to be less interested in it and then started painting with facial features.I even painted on text to experiment. At this one point I was interested in the colonial era , which made me do works related to it.Taking family pics for reference and somehow change the theme to colonial era. Like, I’d paint them wearing colonial era gowns. I’ve done few works doing that. Later I started painting portraits of just my family and friends , as it is.

I mainly painted with Acrylics, even used oils in some works and soft pastels. Using soft pastels was a first for me, which I enjoyed a lot. Having good control using soft pastels mad e it very convenient and easy to work with and so I plan on using them more in my future works as well. Working with Acrylics has always been my main medium of colour, although its only downside is that they dry up faster as compared to Oils.

Artists that I look at are Manet, Luc Tuymans and Harding Meyers. I love Manet for his use of colour in his works. The use of black in his paintings , gives his work a feel of elegancy in a way I find really intriguing. Manet painted people he knew.Some of my favourite works is, ‘A bar at the Folies-Bergère’,(Fig 14) ‘Luncheon in the studio’, cause of his dark use of colour and the texture .As for Luc I like how his paintings have a ghostly feel and have a faded theme to them, like ‘The flemish intellectual, ‘Portrait’(Fig 15). I love the techniques, and paint used by Harding Meyer in his works. .

The use of colour has become an important aspect in my project. I’ve been focusing on how to how to use colors and what colors to use. Similar to Manet and Luc I paint from from people I know and from photographs. Not to forget to mention my sketchbook being my planner. Letting go of fantasy I do not feel regret or sadness as I did before cause I feel that I’m going down the right path doing portraits.What interests me are the facial expressions, colors used and how they're used . I tend to and find it really intriguing to paint in layers.I’d like to think that I trust the paint as I build up layer by layer.Trying to bring about realism through my paint is what I aim to do now and in future.