Hirsute you sir.

The Bee and The Beard

So, for the second year running I've had some work accepted for the Sock Gallery Open Exhibition 2019 at Loughborough town hall.

The painting in question was a self portrait I decided to name The Bee and The Beard, and if you have visited my website you may noticed him lurking around the place.

Having put forward three paintings this year, only one was picked. Looking around the exhibition, I did notice a lack of illustrative work, it was more reliant on fine art to fill up it's walls, and the standard was very good, so I'm happy to have been chosen at all really.

Here's a couple of photo's showing the process of building up my ugly mug. I began with a photo and enlarged it using a grid, from an app on my phone. Not sure why I went with a blue 'underlayer', but in an effort to add some realism and 'grit' to my skin tones I thought it worked ok. I should have worked on this a little more with other colours, but that's a process I may explore later. The final touches also added a little pencil work - especially the grey in my beard, which is more prevalent with each week!

I knew I wanted to add a 'story' to this painting - you can see in the photo my stupid expression, but only hit on the bee later on. I think I was going to have my beard transform into some sentient, writhing mass originally but thought that might be a little OTT.

Anyway, the exhibition runs from the 3rd to 31st August, and there's plenty of fantastic pieces on show - not least from Suzanne and Jane, 2 other members of the fantastic Charnwood College Art & Design Department.

Pete