Emulation

I decided to try and emulate and experiment with the watercolour style with my own subject matter. I first drafted out some ideas I could trial within this technique, allowing me to gain some more skills in a wider range of media.

I then used a watercolour set and canvas paper to get started with the painting.

The first trail I did of the technique proved to be slightly out of proportion and colouring slightly off, even with the various layers of colours, so I decided to redraw the outline and re-piant the piece.

After reaching this stage of the project I decided to trial it out with the dark outline on the watercolour, to see if it looked good with blank parts on the piece.

I drew the outline of the figures I wanted to place in the front of the image, giving the impression of the boy being watched by ominous figures. I also thought that black would further empahazie this point so I decided to use the 'paintbrush' tool to colour in the outline.

After pacing it onto the watercolour backdrop I thought it was too contrasting with the fainter colours of the watercolours, so altered the colour levels of the piece to help emphasis it more.

Although it deviated from the original copy of what technique I wanted to use within this emulation, I thought that the dark figures looked too solid against the background, not allowing for the correct perspective to take place. Because of this I used the 'motion blur' tool to 'soften' the edges, making them blur slightly to get the focus more on the watercolour.

After this I thought I would further develop the piece by finishing the colour in the background, testing whether further colour would enhance the whole peice.

Once gain I used the levels within the watercolour piece to alter the colour balance. This helped make it not look too bland against the concrete black outlines.

This is my final emulation.

I decided to further develop the peice by trying to make the dark silhouette outlines more realistic and not so fake looking to get a more ominous, threatening aura to it. I repeated the same process I used for the original silhouettes but this time added more realistic imperfections, whilst also adding the same motion blur option onto the final versions I created.

And finally I added some darkness into the bottom of the watercolour as I thought it looked too bright for the topic and for the impression I wanted the audience to feel when they saw it. I also slightly altered the levels of the image to make it just that little bit more threatening.

By completing this piece of work I learnt how to correctly layer up colour when using watercolours and also gained knowledge on how colours correlate with each other within paintings such as this. I think that overall this piece helped target key themes of my topic, with the ominous black outlined figures giving off the correct feelings I wanted from the emulation, highlighting how dark the realities of child labour are, which consequently gave me further ideas to develop and use within my final piece.