My mate Dave

I emailed my friend Dave who is a budding artist to ask him a few questions for my blog. Although his style of working isn't very similar to mine he deals with the face a lot, and any feedback is good feedback. I also sent him my Muhammed Ali picture to see what he thinks about it.

Hey Gabby,

Nice of you to get in touch, its a privilege just to be thought of as an "artist"!

I like the Ali piece and I'll do my best at some constructive criticism. First off I noticed that the likeness isn't quite spot on. Now I know from personal experience that can be hard to hear as you have created an image that looks like Ali so when someone says its "wrong" it doesn't quite fit. The major problem with portrait likenesses is that we're all so used to observing faces that we can all spot when something is a bit off even if we can't say exactly what that is. While the face looks realistic the body less so, therefore it confuses the eye. Personally I love painting faces so much that my focus tends to drop on the body (I've addresses this problem by limiting the amount of torsos included in my work)

I really like the composition of the whole piece but maybe try and end Ali (at the bottom) with something more intentional as it looks like a sketch and not a final piece. I like the butterflies but it maybe would have been nice to introduce some paint on the butterflies as a literal splash of colour. Ali was always very expressive and confident so you could interpret that with some expressive and confident strokes of colour. I also think the bee's are a little too cartoony but that might just be me!


I'll move on to the questions now

1. I mainly work in acrylic paint on canvas. I use acrylic over oils as I prefer the quick drying time and like to keep all my colours clean and bright. Some of my work includes florescent colours and so I'm drawn to the synthetic tones you can find in acrylic. While my canvas work is exclusively acrylic its hard to deny the freedom offered by working digitally so I do most of my design work (such as posters) in Photoshop with a Wacom.

2. My favorite project is the one I'm working on right now. It's for my first solo exhibition so it's really the first time I've truly tried to say something (albeit a bit trivial) with a collection of new work. Normally each piece is painted in isolation with whatever current reference I'm obsessed with at the time but with Lost in the 80s (that's the title of my exhibition) I've put together a collection of work with both a shared aesthetic and single idea in mind.

3. My advice for getting on any artistic ladder would be to try and put yourself out there as much as possible. I had a few months of sitting back waiting for people to come to me and it just didn't happen. You have to put in the work to create the opportunities and let people know what you can do. Oh and keep the momentum going, I'm more creative when I'm at my busiest, just be sure to note any ideas down and remember to follow them up.

He has his very first solo exhibition coming up soon, 14th November to the 5th December at The Forum in Sheffield. It's my birthday on November the 14th so i might go as a birthday treat.