Busy busy busy

I've not posted any progress with my work for a while, so here's a gist of what I've been up to before I upload the finished work along with the development on it.
I've been working on 3 Oil paintings on boards based on my Daredevil work. I chose Oil paint because there's a colour scheme I'm trying to work with that's best achieved using oils. I've brought my own oil paints in from home. I've also experimented with collage on my boards after producing some texture experiments in my sketch book.
I chose boards to work on because I've scratched into them for texture using a knife, something you can't do on paper or canvas without damaging the piece.
I'm also working on all 3 simultaneously, the reason for this is to create a connection between the work like a transition so that they all look like they belong together.
Until I upload all my development photos there's not a lot I can say about these paintings yet other than they're looking great and are nearly finished.

I've been up to some other stuff in this time as well.
A few weeks ago the teaching staff of Blackburn college had an exhibition in St. John's Center where we helped set up. I've set up the exhibition last year for my course, so I already had some knowledge on what to do. Me and a colleague worked in a room painting the walls using Matt White Emulsion paint and sanded and filled the walls. The room was a mess when we got there with paint all splattered on the carpet, filler roughly applied to walls, boards half painted and just a mess. We spent almost a full college day sanding down and re-filling and painting the walls to get them to a decent standard and spend another day cleaning the paint from the carpet using some brushes we found, soapy water and elbow grease. With the room finished, we helped hang a few pieces of work where I learnt that Wall Plugs are handy in mounting work, because if the wall isn't very secure or the piece is heavy the screws could slip out or bed, so wall plugs help secure the screws. I also learnt that initiative is important in mounting work because, based on the environment there could be something that would make your exhibition look ugly. In the case of this exhibition it was an electrical box placed in the center of a wall. To tackle this problem, Jamie screwed a few pieces of wood together like a ledge, and balanced the work on the wood. This way the electrical box was covered by the painting.

I also attended some lectures over this time, one just being a units talk by Jamie followed by a university talk, another which was a media lecture by Dave Griffiths that I didn't really enjoy. There wasn't really anything I found interesting about the work or inspiring, this is just my personal opinion. I also attended a punk lecture last week which I really enjoyed. Based on current interests, the next character that I plan to tackle for my artwork is a Vertigo comics character called John Constantine. This was a thought I had since the Kitchen Sink work was brought to my attention because the character is a grumpy old British bloke who drinks and smokes when he's not hunting supernatural creatures. The history of the character stems from punk influences and Sting, so I thought he'd be a good rich character to work with. I've been researching punk for a while listening to the music and understanding the movement, after Sally's lecture I watched the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and The Fury as well as the film Sid and Nancy. I have an idea for a family member to model the character and some ideas I plan to sketch out that attribute dark humour, eerie paranormal paintings and punk.

Progression Routes

My plan for progressing on after FAD is a lengthy endeavor but one that I am enthusiastic about and could prove to be very successful. Towards the end of last year I inclined that University was not an option I wished to take, the reason behind this is mainly personal preference. I've been in education all my life so far and after having tastes of work life I've found that a job is better suited to me whilst maintaining my art life as a hobby. My dream however would be a job that entitles both creative aspects as well as a career, a university degree would put me on the right path for this, but I wanted to do things on my own terms. Self-directed artwork jobs come quite scarce especially for fine artists and freelance pays well but is hard to come by, so I came up with a solution to make a job for myself with the help of some colleagues.
I like the idea of teaching art and design to people of all ages, children's classes through to adult classes. The experience would be rewarding, enjoyable and a good sustainable business provided the right steps are taken.

The first step was the Foundation course, this allowed me to make the decision if I want to stay in education or not as well as being my last free opportunity to take in enough art and design practice to impart on others later in life. This has included setting up exhibitions, talking to visiting lecturers, doing crits to boost my public speaking confidence and helping out colleagues with their own work (how to stretch canvases and some drawing and painting help).
Over the course of the year I aim to do well and learn as much as I can from my experience so that I can put that knowledge to use and pass it on.

My next step after this is to get a job, not as glamorous an approach as university, but it's purely as a source of income to get the ball rolling. This step will take a while to move on from as it will be used to provide funding for: Driving lessons, Moving out and accumulatning money to fund the studio.
Driving lessons are important because they are currently standing between me and art shows and conventions I could be selling work and commissions at. Moving out is less of a concern for myself at the moment but I think the independence and relying on myself would be a good experience for life lessons. My free time will also be limited during this time, so my art is likely to suffer from lack of working on it. I plan to look into a way to make time for this, such as a rota or simply a part time job rather than full.

With enough money for the art equipment, the first place I plan to set us up is in community centers and schools. I don't think this should be too challenging but I will need to look into demographics for the most ideal locations for the classes. I also plan to look into grants for funding and places like Bootstap. A visiting lecturer gave us an insight into entrepreneurial funding and management, which has been noted down for reference.

If all these steps so far are successful then the plan is to move into a studio we can rent. Again location would be something needed to research, however we should already have customers by this point. To help fund this business, more prospects came to mind. These include:
Hosting open exhibitions, where a small fee would be taken for people's work to be shown to the public and to sell,
Renting studio space and equipment, again for a small fee
Providing community activities including a graffiti wall (which we hope would encourage youths to spray paint on our wall using spray chalk, rather than outside) and drink and draw kind of events
A cafe of some small description in order to keep spectators (parents or guardians) and people renting our space and equipment happy.

I don't think there'll be too much trouble setting all of this up, a friend of mine has bought his own studio and my partner's parents own their own business teaching martial arts, which I have used as something of a template. My main concern is the reaching an audience, but I think we can do it. As Jamie taught us, art's about being brave.
I hope we can make this business idea not only work, but also grow into something we can expand, including hiring our own visiting lecturers and setting up dark rooms and graphics equipment. If it becomes clear that this idea isn't going to work, even with a fight to keep it alive, then University could become an option.

So in summary for my progression research, I need to:
Research local jobs:
Using the job website Indeed.co.uk I have been regularly checking for new jobs in the local area and applying for ones most suitable for myself.
I have a CV which is regularly updated based on awards which I have recieved over this year as well as a personal statement.
Ideal locations to set up our business
Grants that we may be eligible for
What our Market is going to be
Any other businesses similar to this
I also will need a CRB

Where I'm at on my Daredevil project

I've reached my last couple of steps for my Daredevil work just before I get on with my paintings. I plan to produce 3 oil paintings on A2 Boards with some collage incorporated into it. My choice for this is because from known experience, the colour range I want is best achieved through oil colours, I also think Board would be more appropriate than canvas because board can take more force than canvas can so I can scratch into the work after. I may also use some water soluble oil pastels in my pieces because I used them in my development and they worked really well.

I created plenty of concepts of how to create my Daredevil using my research into sports wear and here are my drawings.

Head designs:
Using the boxing helmets I looked at I designed 5 helmet/mask styles.

Torso designs:
Using the chest armour I looked into, I created these torso concepts

 Hands:
Using the fighting gloves I researched I produced these designs

Legs:
I produced these two designs based from the shin pads I looked at

 Looking through my combination of designs, I assembled a few concepts of how my final costumes would look.

After creating this design I was happy with the result so I didn't create any alternative red suits, but used this design as a basis for the yellow suit

I like this design for the yellow suit, but it's not too different from the red one, so I made the decision to add boxing shorts later on. The reason for this is because in the comics, Daredevil wears the superhero style underwear on the outside, so I adapted this.

This suit is the pre-daredevil suit based on the Frank Miller book 'The Man Without Fear'. The design isn't much different to how John Romita Jr drew, except my design uses the boxing gloves from my research rather than just black gloves.

This is my chosen yellow suit, the shorts are an adaptation on the superhero costume Daredevil wears with the underwear on the outside. My adaption changes this to boxing short, it's splits the colours better and also looks more boxing themed.

This was a quick concept to see if the pre-dd costume would look better as a hoody. I decided against this because the original mask design for pre-dd looks better.

 Using my 3 choices I created 3 concepts on a posed model to see how it would look in action shots.

Pre-Daredevil

Yellow Suit

Red Suit

I also created 2 oil pastel drawings working from some profile photographs of the model I was using as an experiment of how he would look in the costume I designed.

I really liked using these watersoluble oil pastels and I may use them in my final paintings to make them mixed media pieces. 

This process took a long time to complete but with all these resources I now have my design ready and all that was left was compositions. I talked to my friend who is an illustrator who gave me some

 help with creating compositions for my work to fit them into my 70's research. Here are 5 ideas I came up with

Group scene working from a 70s new york photograph

working from famous photograph of Mohammed Ali

Working from both the Etan Patz disappearance as well as a Daredevil graphic novel where a child is kidnapped, tying the two together.

Here is a boxing themed image of daredevil throwing an uppercut knocking a thug towards the viewer

Here is a manipulation of another 70s new york photograph where Daredevil is stopping two looters.

Working from these designs, I then had to take location photographs as I've mentioned on a few occasions using Accrington as my interpretation of Hell's Kitchen based on how I grew up in the area. Here are these photographs

This factory is just down the road from where I live and growing up I often played along this street with my friends. A lot of these locations reflect on my childhood but mainly the dark times, for example a friend of mine was threatened with a pen knife along this street.

This area is quite significant to me, growing up there was a field on the other side of this wall, so a run up would be required to climb over it and climb trees on the other side. The dark side to this place is as me and my friends would visit here often growing up, we'd occasionally come across broken bottles, syringes and on one occasion a bullet.

This location is known commonly around my area as 'The Black Path'  notorious for crime. Whether it's just local legend that was spread around the kids like myself growing up around there, The Black Path was or is the most dangerous route around my area. From experience me and some friends had a petrol bomb thrown our direction along this path and ask anyone local to the area and they'll have their own horror stories of this path.

This location for my photograph is significant because growing up I almost fell from this bridge during a foolish tree climbing escapade. I won't be trying that again.

What I like about this photo is that there is just a couch left outside, resembling the rubbish left in the streets of 70s new york

This doesn't fit too much into my work for either 70s New York or boxing themes, but this building was really nice for a photograph

To reflect on the themes of 70s new york, I chose to photograph Accrington's Adult Book Shop for that seedy kind of vibe

With my locations complete, my next step of photographs were my model. My model owns a studio in Darwen where he's building a boxing gym there so he drove me and James Taggerty there to photograph him. After some quick sparring, we got on with photographing reflecting on his own boxing training and my composition designs.

From my photographs these were my best selection, I then used these photos along with my townscape photographs to create compositions using a photo editing software called GIMP.

Here is a video of this development

Here are those photographs

Reflecting on the disappearance of Etan Patz along with Frank Miller's graphic novel "The Man Without Fear" linking the two

Reflecting on boxing imagery as well as 70s new york

I really like the pose for this photograph and wanted to use both this and the background building in some way, so I created this image similar to the cover the #1 of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns

This image uses similarities to a famous photograph of Mohammed Ali as well as linking to the 70s new york theme

These two images reflect on a photograph from 1970s new york. The two variations both work but I can't decide which works better.

I'm not sure which 3 compositions to work from yet, so that's my next step to work on