Experimenting With Textures
After experimenting with painting textures, I wanted to experiment with how I could recreate these textures on the skin. Here, acrylic paint has been used with cling film on top, the cling film helps to create the glossy look I was aiming for. I was also able to score into the paint to create the reflection of the muscle fibres similair to when I sculpted the muscle. As the edits on the images of the body paint worked effectively I played around more with editing these pieces and tried to imagine how I could re create this kind of a texture on the skin.
I began my next body paint on the leg area to see how it would differentiate from the upper body. I have noticed during my researching phase that men are mostly concerned with working on their upper body to look more masuline and give a bigger appearance- In contrast to my historical research of anantomy drawings of the muscles of the body look more in proportion, therefore, I used an anatomy book as refernce image to paint the muscles in the thigh and calves,
Goldfinger, E. (1991) Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form. United States: Oxford University Press Inc.
Simblet, S. (2001) Anatomy for the artist. 1st edn. United States: DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley).
I used this reference image as a guide as it explains the muscles when relaxed and when tense, this helped me mark out where the muscles are, It also prompted me to ask my model to tense so that it was easier for me to paint in the muscles.
I used illustrator for the intial painting to see how its transparency translates, the more I painted the more I liked how it gave a more washed out look, I like how you can see parts of the skin underneath.
I really liked the effect this created, the colour of the fullers earth altered the colours I was using so I had to use darker warmer shades to cancel out the green/grey colour the fullers earth had created.
I experimented with painting fullers earth onto the illustrator to create a different texture, and fiurther down on the leg I used latex. With both materials i dragged a fine tail comb through to create muscle fibers.
I came across this image in my research phase, the image is a plaster cast of the corpse of a smuggler found in 1775. The body was delievered to William Hunter (anatomist). Corpses became a profitable commodity as science developed they became in high demand from medical schools or eminent surgeon's house.
I found it interesting to see the body in this form, the muscles look particularly different and extremely dry and possible shrunken. I wanted to use this as inspiration for my next piece so I began to consider materials that could create texture like this.
As the cling film worked well in my experiment on paper, I tried to create something similar on the skin. Firstly, I used cling film over the fullers earth to see how this looked to take away the matte effect the fullers earth creates. I then encapsulated some acrylic paint inbetween cling film (so that the acrylic paint did not come into contact with the skin), which worked really well, if I made several of these shaped like mucles and left to dry I could apply them to the skin with adhesive to give the impression of the muslces popping out from the skin.