I am really pleased with the outcome of the finished painting, I feel that by having the paint quite thick and using bright colours it changes the texture and appearance of her skin making her body look more like a mannequin. If I were to do this again I would like to paint more of her body creating a more dramatic effect.

I decided to use my best friends back as a blank canvass and to paint a picture of a local scene on her. After researching more of Upton’s work I especially liked his paintings of local views around Swansea and wanted to try and create an image of one of my favourite places to go, Swansea pier.

John Upton

John Upton’s work stood out to me greatly as I entered the exhibition, I loved the detail within the painting making the mannequin look more realistic, I instantly thought about what it would be like to paint on a real person and making their skin look unnatural.

Nick Holly

I really enjoyed my visit to The Nick Holly Studio Gallery in Swansea and looking at many different talented artists.

For my visual response to Wilson’s work I bought a mirrored bowl and filled the bottom with soil from my garden, I added four miniature model trees, I did this so that when I looked inside the bowl then the trees would reflect of the mirrors creating an illusion of a forest. As the mirrors aren’t smooth the reflection is distorted which I like because it also reminds me of Peter Prendergast’s painting Summer Trees. As the light hits the reflection it enhances the distorted shapes and colours creating an unnatural, abstract world.

I went back to The National Gallery to re-vist Richard Wilson’s show and thought back to my initial reaction when walking in fro the first time. I felt over whelmed by the scale of the images and having so many of them all together, I felt surrounded by trees and landscape and wanted to try and capture this emotion through my visual response.

After visiting the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff and seeing on of welsh artist Peter Prendergast’s paintings, Summer Trees Tal Y Bont inspired by the surroundings of his Snowdonia home, I felt inspired by his bold expressionist painting technique and its vigour and energy. I remembered that art can be abstract and not always look like whats expected.

I went for a walk along the river to try and feel inspired around the trees. I noticed a few similarities between the painting and natural landscapes and I felt that all Wilson’s images looked very similar, I wanted to try and capture a photograph of the trees in a way similar to the paintings to show that a tree is a tree and no matter who captures it, it was always look the same.

Richard Wilson

Another artist that stood out to me while I was at the Cardiff National Museum was painter Richard Wilson. Wilson’s work stood out to me because of the quantity of images within the gallery space rather then how good I felt the images were.

Walking around the gallery I felt overwhelmed by the images and felt like I could just climb into the paintings. As there were so many images i expected them to have more variety within them, where as with some I struggled to spot the differences.