I chose the work of Beardsley as I have always liked the style of the work and producing the PowerPoint was relatively straightforward. Creating art in his style however is a different thing. The style is quite unique and his subject matter is quite racy, but I have looked at going back to his roots and influence by Japanese wood block printing.
next issue is to choose the media and also the imagery. The red orb is evocative of Japanese woodcuts (though some of Beardsley’s influences may well have been more figurative and less abstract, so starting there seems a good idea. First effort was to use conte as its a medium i am comfortable with, and should produce a fairly uniform color. of course the usual problems come to light with smudging using conte – though i should hopefully be able to address them or switch to wax pastel,,,,
Next option was wax conte – not happy at all with how that was looking and wondered if I could get a richer red – so decided to have a go with red food coloring
am happy with the mask imagery as it is consistent with Beardsley’s style but want to have several different images and therefore took a look at using watercolor
quite like the watercolor but don’t feel it goes well in combination with the food coloring
so have decided to overpaint the pastel which hopefully means i will be able to place another image on top without smudging, plus another watercolor sphere, planning on using the mask imagery on one and a raven on another, even though the raven doesn’t feature much in Beardsley’s work, that gothic feel i think is consistent with some of his images. then am planning on adding some sweeping ink lines in the style of the peacock skirt
