I got a lot of interesting feedback form my tutor Emma which pushed me to reflect and rethink some of my work. I loved some of Emma’s takes on my drawings and how they can be perceived outside of my own perception that maybe I hadn’t really thought of and how these ideas can help me build a clearer picture of what I want to purvey within my work.

Firstly when it came to my drawings of my model, Joe, she saw his poses as confident, strong and bold. She felt he was a very confident person from how he is presented within my work, which is far from the truth. While he is very confident around me and a close friend, he is actually quite insecure about his body and masculinity. When we discussed this aspect it became apparent that I created a sense of comfort when working alongside people with their insecurities. It was something I wanted to delve into deeper, men being vulnerable and comfortable with me. So I came up with an idea while looking at an old photograph of Joe sleeping. In this position he is both vulnerable and comfortable, he’s not posing and aware or insecure of being perceived, he’s just quiet and him. So I decided to look closer at this position and what it could mean for looking into the vulnerability of a person while keeping them comfortable and safe. So with his consent I took more photos to work from when he slept over at mine and began working.

For this first image taken in the dark, I began with a sketch before applying bold and dark colours with watercolour, building up layers of colour to create a simple, striking image. I like the simplicity of the the composition and how a darker background helps to make the colours pop. I think the closeness to the face helps to provide a closeness and intimacy with my model, it also shows him in a vulnerable position which I think is quite effective for creating a female perspective. I like how my initial sketching shows through the translucent layers of watercolour, it adds some texture and detail which combines well with the texture created by the smooth layers of watercolour. I think it all ties in well especially with the combination of the darker colours used and the bold, black background.
Overall I’m really happy with how this came out and I love the effect of the layered watercolour on top of the sketch, it helps to create a dark and intimate atmosphere.

For this next piece I again started with a detailed sketch before moving in to apply layers of watercolour and gouache. For the background and bedding I used gouache for the base and went in with more detailed shading using watercolour, whereas for the portrait I solely used watercolour on top of the sketching. The difference between the gouache and just watercolour helps to define the difference between these two sections in this piece. I like how the final outcome with the washed look from the paint helps to create an almost dreamlike quality within the atmosphere, which fits with the model sleeping. With this position of of sleeping I feel I have captured an vulnerable moment, creating a vulnerable and intimate piece which again, fits into the female gaze. I absolutely love how this piece came out and how I’ve built upon the ideas of my previous piece into something I am very proud of and is my favourite piece I’ve ever created so far. I love how real the portrait looks and how I’ve captured the shadows being cast on his face, but also the the comforting feelings this piece gives me, it shows my close friendship with the model. This piece is everything I wanted it to be.

I am really happy with what and how much I’ve explored and created within Part 5 and feel I was really able to reflect and improve, but also refine my ideas with feedback and I love the finished outcome. I can’t wait to build upon my skills even more with Painting 1, and how I can apply my skills with watercolour and look deeper into what I can create with a focus on painting mediums. I also hope to continue my work on portraiture and my ideas surrounding the female gaze and masculinity as well as my own femininity.

I had my model come over and we worked on some poses where he was lounging, comfortable and making the eye contact I wanted. We played around with how he should lay and came up with the idea to have him point as well. It looked eye catching and would help draw in the viewer and initiate that dialogue and interaction between the viewer and the drawing.

I began with a detailed sketch before moving to watercolour washes on the pillows, I then worked in gouache for a thick pigmented background. I finished off the piece by applying watercolour over the portrait sketch. I love the final results, I love how the pencil is still very visible on the body under the washes of watercolour, making the drawing properties of the piece really stand out. I think this is one of my favourite artworks I’ve created so far. The composition works so well with establishing some sort of communication with the viewer to have them engage and really look at the piece. While I love the skills I’ve executed I think I’ve lost some of my intended female gaze. There is a sense of power in the way his expression isn’t so friendly and how he points, it can come across demanding maybe rather than inviting, so I think maybe working with the model to establish a more friendly and inviting expression could have worked well.

I’m really happy in my choice of mediums as well. The gouache, having very similar properties to watercolour works well to be different but work with the watercolour to make a cohesive transition from the portrait to the background. The thick consistency adds to the weight the blanket and pillows would have, compared to the translucent and delicate feel of the watercolours.

I’m really happy with this project outcome, and I think I did well at working on my own ideas and expanding them into some great drawings. I really developed my drawing skills as well as dipping my toes into painting. I think I could use some work creating clear intentions and themes within my work, because I don’t think they are so clear, but I think it works well for a first attempt at this.

After experimenting with ideas, concepts and different compositions and mediums I was ready to start taking steps towards my assessment piece. I wanted to create an interaction between my portrait and the viewer, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the model depicted. To create a shared sense of intimacy and understanding. I want to project a female gaze onto a male figure. To create a sense of empathy and humanity rather than depicting the traditional idea of a painting of a man being used to showcase his wealth and power. I want to show a person with feelings, thoughts and emotions that can empathise and relate to the viewer.

These were my top 3 drawings when looking at composition, so they’re my go to’s to revisit when considering what composition to settle on for an assessment piece. The sitting position in Drawing [1] did resemble somewhat the ‘Morning sun’ piece by Hopper that inspired me so much in this Project, but it just didn’t feel as right as the lounging positions. In those positions he’s truly relaxed and comfortable within himself and his surroundings. I liked the idea of combining eye contact, to create a direct connection with the viewer, with a lounging position to create a sense of comfort and intimacy. So a combination of Drawings [2] and [3].

For my choice of media, I wanted to sketch out the scene in detail first and use watercolour for the portrait of the model to achieve a realistic look that this attempt gave me. And I thought incorporating the gouache into the background would work well at separating the two to drive a focus onto the portrait but not so different that it doesn’t fit into the drawing as a whole. The watercolour will allow some of the original pencil work to shine through as well which is ideal for what I want.

So I think having my model over again to work on a pose and getting started would be the next step.

I had a few modeling sessions to explore this and setting them up took work and time. I found a different model to work with for my first experiment to try a fresh new face. It would give me some new facial features to get my head around, as I was getting used to Joe’s (my previous model) facial features. So I thought it would be interesting to look at my friend, Jay’s, sharper facial structure.

I began with a pencil drawing, a medium I’m used to, as I looked at capturing a face I haven’t before. And I really like the result. Jay’s face is very different to Joe’s so it was interesting trying to capture his distinct, sharp features. I decided as I moved on to trying out a new medium for this project, a sharp and bold medium could suit capturing his bold facial structure quite well.

I think I achieved the bold look I was going for and I think it works well for my models face here. Although I think it looks good, I don’t think it fits into the vibe and style I want to go for, and what would work best with what I want to create. Something softer like gouache would be ideal. But I do want to keep some of the lines from my original sketch, to emphasise the drawing aspect rather than the paint.

For this piece, I began with a pencil sketch before coating it in a layer of orange watercolour paint. This would be the base for capturing my models warm skin tone, the orange colour would peak through the pink and blue gouache paint to create a balanced skin tone. I like the thick effect of gouache paint, however it doesn’t allow for the original pencil work to shine through at all. I also think I need to practice at effectively blending all the different skin tones so the finished effect isn’t so blotchy. The eyes could have been executed in a more delicate way to achieve a more real look. It’s something I’d have to work on to use effectively on a assessment piece. But the softer approach the medium provides creates a more friendly comforting style to the piece which works much better than the ink.

For this next experiment I began with a very detailed drawing of a headshot of my model. Using HB for the skin and finer details and 6B for the thick, dark hair. I really love the detail I was able to capture with this drawing. I chose a closer head shot to allow myself space to practice the facial features as I would be working on a larger scale for the assessment piece. Again I think his facial expressions add so much character and fun to the drawing.

What I like about this is it allows the original drawing to shine through. Unlike the gouache it doesn’t cover up the pencil work but adds to it. This attempt also looks a lot more realistic than my gouache attempt. I began with my placement of shadows using a dark blue to lay this down before going at the skin with skin tones as a hole. I left areas without paint for highlights and used a thin brush to add finer details and shading where needed. I love how this came out and was going to be my choice for my assessment piece no doubt. Thinking about how to approach the background with the bed and sheets, I thought gouache could work well there being thick and bold. I wouldn’t need too much detail and being a slightly different texture and consistency it could emphasise the portrait rather than take away.

Without a doubt watercolour was going to be the best choice moving forwards. Now all I had to do was decide what position out of the few I looked at would work best.

I was so excited to finally work with a model again as it had been a lonely lockdown. I had him lay in relaxed positions on my bed to create a similar composition to that of Edward Hoppers ‘Morning sun’. Slowly as we worked together he became more relaxed and loose in his body language which was ideal for me to work with, with what I wanted to create.

With my first attempt I was very happy with how it came out and how realistic the face and some parts of the body looked. His left arm clearly could have been done better with a softer approach to tone, but I think the details of his hairy chest is what really brings the body and the head together. I love how this piece came out, he seems so peaceful and lost in thought, which is what I was aiming for. I wanted to continue looking and trying out different positions to see what would work best for my ideal composition for an assessment piece.

I think this was my favourite out of all the sketches I did, I love the lounging position as he looks off into the distance, clearly in thought. The way his body is positioned towards the viewer while he looks away creates a sense of openness and intimacy as he is holding his body towards you, inviting you in to meet his gaze and join him in thought. I think this really fits into the female gaze, while also working quite well with playing off the composition that inspired me in Hoppers ‘Morning sun’. I think my pencil work is great here. I particularly love the detail in the face and hands, they look delicate and real, they really make him feel alive in this drawing. The pencil work also flows well throughout the drawing of him, it looks whole, not a body and then a head loosely connected. I really feel my skillmanship has improved here. The details of the chest hair really complete the body and make it feel real. I think out of the sketches this is most likely the composition and positioning I would like to include in my assignment piece. It just perfectly captures what ‘Morning sun’ depicts.

I’m not so happy with the outcome of this next piece. It’s very similar to my first drawing, him looking off into the distance however this time at a different angle. I like that concept and idea, but the drawing and the facial proportions are very off. I think I captured the nose and mouth very well but the eyes seem lazy and looking into different directions. The shading on the arms however has definitely slightly improved.

I tried a different pose, one looking straight towards the viewer and making eye contact. I think his added smile was a great touch, and allowed his personality to shine through and connect with the viewer. Again its like his pose and expression resembles listening to the viewer in conversation, it creates somewhat of an interaction and intimacy between the model and the viewer, which is something that I am interested in maybe incorporating into my assignment piece. To create a direct connection through eye contact could add to the female gaze I want to push within my work. In so many traditional portraits of women they make eye contact with the viewer in order to make them seem guilty of their nakedness for being so self aware. So this can be a take on that but with more of a positive spin, personifying that act of being self aware. Although my model isn’t completely naked, he is in a vulnerable position of just being in his underwear, so to have such a positive response to his situation, which did take him time to get used to, adds to this positivity of being happy and confident in ones own skin. And I think it is always such a wonderful thing to see someone really embrace themselves.

For this final sketch from this session I wanted to look at a close up and tackling a portrait from the shoulders up and really work on getting my facial proportions right. I got him in the middle of yawning and I love the character it adds to this sketch. Its just a relatable, vulnerable moment. I did forget to add his stubble in this drawing, and that might have helped really push a more realistic look overall. I loved working with the head and I really like this drawing, however I think a body focused image like the drawings before would be ideal for an assessment piece and would really push this idea of flipping that traditional male gaze approach to the female body on its head. Twist it into something more positive while allowing the person behind the model to shine through as a person, while celebrating that body confidence instead of pushing to shame them.

I am really happy with my sketches here and beginning to explore and develop ideas of what I want to achieve with my ideas and drawings. I think next it would be great to delve into different mediums and combining them to see what would work best. I would like to look at gouache again and maybe ink.

I began to think about where I could go next with the female gaze and I thought it would be interesting and new to look at the male body through a female perspective. We see women all the time through a male gaze that sometimes its difficult to distinguish between our own point of view and our internalised male gaze. Women are sexualised and commodified for male consumption. Where as men are interesting characters, if they are flawed it is for good reason. There is usually substance to men in media where as women are mostly to be seen, ‘Men act and women appear’ as John Berger says. So what are men through a female gaze?

I began thinking about this in what women want from men. The male gaze looks at women as what they can offer to benefit them. So what do we want from men? What do I want from men? I feel we often personify things as women. We romanticise things. In our heads we end up looking at the potential of what we want, we give them thoughts but not only that, empathy. We imagine men caring about us and our needs. We care about their needs and them. So why would it be so far fetched to put this on the men we romanticise. This gave me good ideas of where to start and what I wanted to create with this and my male model, once lockdown rules eased. I thought about positioning my male model in ways similar to Hopper in his later pieces

In this stunning painting, Morning Sun, I looked at in my Artist Research I love how the woman isn’t performing the artist. She is simply existing and living that moment, thinking in the sunlight. You can tell she has thoughts and feelings running through her head, she isn’t existing just to be viewed. This unusual approach could be due to the fact the woman portrayed is Hoppers wife, he doesn’t view her as just a model but also as a person. He has a lot of appreciation and empathy for this person. I would love to be able to capture something similar. A person with thoughts and feelings existing alongside them, not just to be looked at but to be felt and empathised with by the viewer. Romanticised by the artist. An ideal, lovely moment to share. This will not be a man ‘acting’ or sharing his wealth and power. He will be a person. A person with thoughts and feelings that the viewer can relate to. A person captured in time in a peaceful, ideal moment.

I will have to wait for when I can work with a model again, but I can’t wait to play around with capturing the person that he is, not just him visually. I think I have been able to capture this before in some previous drawings, bits of his personality coming through as I draw. That would be ideal and is what I want to achieve.

References

Painting- Morning Sun– Hopper, E. (1952). Morning Sun. [Oil on canvas] Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/morning-sun [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].

I began my drawings looking at my body in the nude. I wanted to explore that subject matter as I had seen so many feminist artists explore the female gaze in this way. Its bold, daring and brave. It’s also meant to be empowering. I thought it would be a good way at depicting myself on my terms.

I began with just one medium, mechanical pencil, keeping to a simple monochromatic approach. I really loved playing around with tone in order to realistically capture my body within these quick sketches. I think I did well at capturing the curves and details of my body using cross hatching as a simple yet effective technique. I really like the compositions I had to work with here as they provided a unique look at my body from an open and intimate perspective. It felt empowering to draw myself in such a confident way and I felt like my body wasn’t being sexualised but rather becoming the confident person that I wanted to capture and be. I feel these drawings captured myself in a female gaze.

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I tried more challenging poses continuing with my use of the mechanical pencil. I looked at less revealing poses, covered in a silk blouse. I really love the first one, as it just shows myself in a moment of buttoning up my shirt rather than posing, it is more natural and feels more alive because of that. Depicting the silk fabric wasn’t too much or too intense to do either, I usually find fabrics frustrating and tedious which is why I prefer to draw skin, but I think I captured the smooth texture very well. The second drawing, while I like the pose, I didn’t do well accurately capturing the proportions of my face at all. The eye placement and positioning looks very off, and the mouth should be a bit lower. I find it very difficult to draw my face even from photographs but I don’t have as much trouble drawing other people. I think this is due to struggling to physically perceive myself and how I look sometimes. If I want to pursue drawing myself further, Ill need to get better at understanding my facial features and how they fit onto my face.

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I tried to be more experimentative with my pencil drawings and began including pops of colour with coloured pencils. I mixed together around areas with cool purples, oranges, reds and greens in order to make a skin tone effect. Using blues in the shaded areas I made the shadows on the face and body pop. When working in areas that contained shadows, such as my boob in drawing [1], I used cool purples and blues with the pink and orange tones to help accentuate that the area is darker and shaded. I liked keeping wider areas absent of colour to help certain areas, shadows and details stand out for a more stylised drawing. The colours are not meant to be realistic but add saturation to an otherwise colourless drawing. I think it works well but I feel other techniques and mediums might be more effective visually.
I went back to a nude pose for these drawings, but more covered and less open. I think the direct eye contact works well to create some sort of relationship with the viewer. With Drawing [1] I think the tone is a lot more serious because of my face lacking in expression as opposed to Drawing [2], where I have a slight smile on my face while maintaining the eye contact. I think that creates a sense of intimacy and closeness, which I like. I think this composition does fit the female gaze, the idea of lying on a bed reminds me of a sleepover setting with girl talk, or sharing secrets late at night. Intimate discussion perhaps with a partner. I look like I could be listening in the drawings creating some sort of safe space for the viewer to talk or share. It’s a nice positive thing I feel.

I switched up my approach, trying gouache and watercolour together on top of a pencil sketch. I began by laying down a watercolour base, washing over my pencil drawing in an olive green. I then began mixing my skin tones out of gouache, with red, blue, yellow and white. I liked working with the thick consistency on this relatively quick gouache study. I think I got the colours quite accurate just maybe I need to blend and work them more, rather than have areas of blocked in tone. I was inspired by my previous drawings from Part 4 where I layered watercolour underneath oil pastels. I think the oil pastels worked better but I thought about maybe limiting the amount of mediums used, something thinner as well so the pencil work can show through.

I liked looking at myself for subject matter, I think beginning my work on the female gaze using my own body was best, and also the only option within a third lockdown. I had some strain in my personal life while working through this, which is why I took so many breaks and took so long to get it done. While I find sharing my body and my experiences to be empowering, it could also be dangerous and put me in a vulnerable position. I was under scrutiny for talking about my personal experience with sexual harassment. My mental health plummeted while I dealt with the backlash online in what I thought was a safe space. Suddenly I didn’t feel brave or empowered about my drawings and painting studies of my nudes, I felt vulnerable and judged. Its a hard balance to make such vulnerable paintings and works of art and also being strong enough to put it out there and not be phased by other peoples opinions. It knocked me back and I couldn’t continue looking at my body and myself as subject matter. I didn’t feel empowered. Maybe that would be something that comes back with time when the situation at hand faded. Or maybe I wouldn’t be comfortable in myself for a long while.

So I began to think about where I could go next with the female gaze and I thought it would be interesting and new to look at the male body through a female perspective. We see women all the time through a male gaze that sometimes its difficult to distinguish between our own point of view and our internalised male gaze. Women are sexualised, commodified for male consumption. Where as men are interesting characters, if they are flawed it is for good reason. There is usually substance to men in media where as women are mostly to be seen, ‘Men act and women appear’ as John Berger says. So what are men through a female gaze? That’s what I wanted to look at next.

I began my journey by looking at my own female experiences and creating simple artistic responses in order to think about which direction I wanted to head in with my work.

I began looking at a recent experience of dealing with a miscarriage. Losing a foetus or baby, it was very early on, was hard even if it was something I wouldn’t have been able to go through with. But it was the reactions of people around me that hurt the most. My then boyfriend (21) refusing to come to abortion clinic with me because his parents said no. His mother yelling and berating me down the phone, telling me that I had brought shame on their family or that if he ever hurts himself it will be my fault for getting pregnant and finally that I am not looking after my body because I am not on female birth control, specifically the pill. I can’t go on the pill because I am prone to blood clots, but she didn’t care. This was so much more painful than anything I had gone through before. Not to mention the permanent changes to my body. My hips are wider, I have new more intense symptoms with my period now and my depression and anxiety worsened.
I thought this would be a good place to start for developing artwork on my personal female experiences as this experience was still so fresh. So I made a quick gouache painting to get things out of my system and to begin thinking about where I wanted my work to go.

I did a sketch with gouache and watercolour of birth control pills before writing on top the horrible phrase that was spoken to me; ‘You’re not taking care of your body’. It did feel good to paint this and express my frustration after keeping it in for so long and not knowing how to deal with it. I hadn’t done much work as I was struggling to cope but this piece helped me get back into the swing of things. I wasn’t sure if this was an idea I wanted to pursue so publicly with my art but it felt good to begin exploring there.

It also allowed me to begin testing out a new painting medium I hadn’t yet explored; gouache. And I quite enjoyed it, as it felt like a mix between two paint mediums I was already familiar with, acrylic and watercolour. I quite like the almost gooey texture and how well it works when thinned out with water too. It was something I wanted to apply within my drawings which would also help me build up to my next module: Painting 1. They have quite a similar effect as layering oil pastels with watercolour but less texture and less messy.

Collages

I wanted a quick way to explore other female experiences of mine and I decided collaging could be a cool way to do it and test out a new way of creating art. It would be like a visual mind map of ideas relating to my experiences. I teamed up with photographer Benny Chui to collaborate on some pieces, using his amazing photography work to explore my experiences as a woman and his as a foreign student from Hong Kong. And I really loved the results, it helped me explore emotions and feelings on traumatic or touchy experiences in a safe way, with the support of a friend as well (Benny was wonderful to work with).

For this first piece I channeled a lot of frustration over the Sarah Everard case and my own experiences getting home on public transport. I found that my Cards Against Humanity cards worked well in adding catchy or snappy bits of text that express my frustration and hurt on the topic. I really loved how this piece came out and that the monochromatic theme I stuck with just added to the effect. It has an almost ‘film noir’ vibe to it which works well with the narrative and theme I am trying to express.

For this collage I kept a focus on the silence surrounding sexual assault and harassment. Using flower images from postcards, containing a dissected fruit that looks like and represents female genitalia. I kept a focus on the silence of female pain and trauma, mostly by men. There have been so many times for me where my male friends have stayed silent while I suffered harassment and assault, mostly due to the fact that I am not perceived as theirs. This is a generalisation, but I have found most men only care about women’s struggles and accounts when its a girlfriend or a relative, a woman who they are in someway possessing. The amount of times guys only supported me when they expected more than a friendship to come out of it and when they realised I didn’t want that, just friendship, they stopped caring, some even going as far as calling me crazy and siding with the men who were actively hurting me.
A lot of this is also frustration from the lack of men speaking out on women’s issues during the height of the Sarah Everard case, a lot of men condemning women, calling them liars. This piece helped me to work through frustrations and express myself as well.

For this collage I circled back to my miscarriage again, opening up and expressing myself in more detail about the traumatic experience. I was left feeling silenced by my ex boyfriend, as he had asked me not share my experience online in artwork as it was ‘his experience too’. And while I agree he was affected and hurt by what happened, it was not his experience also. Not when he had a choice to come and support me, and he chose not to show up. He chose to let me go through it alone. So there was a lot of anger and hurt in this collage, which I explored. I am left not able to explore my body and this experience further in my artwork to respect his wishes and keep the peace, but I feel I will want to explore this in my work in the future when I am ready, as I am left still in quite a vulnerable state currently. I used lots of imagery of destruction to represent how my body has changed. My body has underwent some changes from the experience as mentioned when talking about my first piece. This was also the incident I feel destroyed my relationship, nothing was the ever the same after this. And I am relieved to be out of the relationship but the hurt from everything still lingers. And I hope the collage captures all of these emotions.

The final collage was done with Benny Chui as we worked over a video call to discuss his experiences with racism as a Hong Kong student studying abroad in the UK. It helped us to discuss traumas and experiences we’ve both went through and created a safe space for us to do that and explore our experiences with art. We both found an appreciation for each others artistic skills and worked together to create a collage that would help express Benny’s experiences as I have done with the previous collages. We worked together on the playing cards to create phrases and statements that Benny felt were accurate and true to how he felt. He chose photographs of his that he thought would help represent his feelings of isolation when it came to his experience of racism surrounded by a lot of white students who he felt would never really grasp or understand what he goes through. We came up with an idea of taking the image of the ‘Creation of Adam’ as religious paintings form the renaissance period often white washed these biblical characters that should be People of Colour, and we stuck traditional Japanese paintings over the faces in order to paint over the whiteness, which we felt was inaccurate representation.
I asked Benny for a statement on the piece:

“While the university handles racial attacks very well and try to include meetings with the victim as much as they can in order to let them keep up with the investigation with services available to the students, you never feel as safe walking down the street by yourself again. I feared I would receive racist remarks in broad daylight, let alone walking at night. Discussions with my international friends never goes anywhere since its just a group where we talk about our own experiences and racial attacks. Talking with my local friends rarely goes anywhere either since they are rarely the victim of a racial crime. Days and weeks go by and the numbers of hate crimes towards Asian Communities has not gone down but instead soars up in cases, knowing this makes me feel very helpless and hopeless. This feeling of being targeted, harassed and attacked solely because of my skin colour and facial structures never fades. My gender being feminised by western TV shows and movies made me realise that this matter could never be resolved.
It is nearly impossible to fully eradicate racism in all walks of life, it is in our human nature to investigate the differences between you and I, where skin colour comes as the first thing in our observation. Knowing the current matter could not be resolved in the coming decades, I decided to channel my feelings through the lens of my camera and collaborate with Simona Hopewell to express my personal feelings in an art piece, of which I hope my friends around the globe will find its relevance.”

What I’ve learned and my next steps

Working through on my thoughts, ideas and themes in bite sized pieces like these where I don’t have to think too much about drawing my subject matter and what composition for a figure I should draw has really helped me to think about my experiences, what I’d like to capture and how much I would like to expose myself within my work. I think with my drawings I’d like to keep a simple focus on my body and expression of my body and look into the female gaze and myself before approaching drawing men from a female point of view. I am not sure about being as vulnerable with my audience yet as some of the topics are still hard for me to approach in a more public space, but in a smaller, safer space like this, it is almost therapeutic to make artwork about these experiences.

I also enjoyed the new experience of collaboration, something I have never fully tried and I rather enjoyed it. Working close with someone like this helps create a safe space to discuss personal ideas and themes for art pieces where you can bounce and build ideas off of each other but also together. I enjoyed working with Benny and also seeing his practice and exploring it with him. It was also incredibly eye opening to learn from him about his experiences and also to teach him about mine. It would be something I am open to exploring again with the right person of course.

After exploring ideas and creating emotional, visual mind maps to work from with the collages I feel ready to dive in and begin drawing and expanding on my ideas and themes of feminism and the female experience in relation to art.

I have looked into this topic before in Part 4 The nude- What it means to be naked. Looking in detail at the male gaze and what that means for the female subject of the painting. For my Personal Project I want to look at the other side of the fence in more detail and what it means to look at a person, male or female, within a female gaze. I will be looking at the female body to start with and then will advance onto a male body. I want to look into female empowerment along the way, and what it means to be an empowered woman, and a good place to start with female empowerment is looking with a female perspective.

The Male Gaze and Male Artists

I will keep this part brief as a lot of this topic I have already covered in the linked blog post, but as John Berger says, ‘Men act and women appear‘ (Berger, J. (1972))It is extremely common in historical pieces that women are presented in an objectifying way. They are not people, but prizes to be earned by men, to be looked at for pleasure. Men depict naked women in their work because they like to look at naked women, and then shame the woman in the painting for being such a way. Women are objectified in so many pieces, and then blamed for it when it is the vision and creation of a male painter. As looked at in my linked blog, many men place the blame on women by painting them looking into a mirror, shaming them for supposed vanity.
However, one of my personal favourite artists, Edward Hopper, has a more unique way of painting and portraying women which I have always been drawn to. He is a magnificent painter, who creates scenes, a lot of his work feels like you’ve stepped into the middle of a movie and are left to figure out what is happening.

This piece here sits within the female gaze. The woman portrayed is not objectified or sexualised, she is depicted in a relaxed state, just enjoying a peaceful morning to herself. This romanticised and empathetic point of view, which fits very well into the female gaze, is most likely due to him often modelling the women in his paintings after his wife, Jo. So that feminine lens of care and love that fits into the female gaze is from a place of real affection. And its such a wonderful take from a male painter from this era, where men like Schiele, Klimt and Picasso were beginning to explore the female form in a more sexual manner, using their art as a way of expressing their fantasies with the female form. We can see to these two pieces by Klimt and Schiele to the left that they overly sexualised women in their drawings, and I find it uncomfortable due to the context that these drawings come from male artists who get pleasure from depicting women in such eroticised ways. The women aren’t seen as people here but their sexual organs, vagina and boobs. They don’t have feelings or their own desires, they exist in these drawings just to please the male viewer.

However, with this piece ‘Night Windows’ by Hopper we can see a more objectifying portrayal of women. The piece is stunning with Hopper’s approach to light and tone, with the bright yellow colours luminating the dark surfaces of the building outside. However with the context of this being a male painter, while this does portray a woman just living and not necessarily objectified for male pleasure, we are still looking from a predatory perspective from outside the window. And predatory behaviour can appeal to men in a sexual and inappropriate way. We do not have the woman’s consent to be looking into her room while she changes. This painting takes a creepy and predatory look at an unsuspecting woman, it feels wrong to watch her as she is unaware. This definitely fits into the male gaze, not the female gaze. This painting could also fit into the male fantasy of stalking and harassing women.
We can see here with Hoppers earlier work, even with his later approach to romanticising the women in his paintings, he still fell into the a common practice for male artists to objectify women. It’s great to see how much his work has progressed to fit more into a female gaze. His later approaches are a refreshing take on the portrayal of women and fits very well into the current climate of Lockdowns and social distancing with people alone in rooms and scarce streets.
Hoppers approach to women living and and being themselves in their own space is something I’d like to carry into my own work. I’d like to do similar portraits to his paintings like ‘Morning Sun’ and look at romanticising the person in the piece rather than objectifying. Empathy is a key characteristic of the female gaze, which I will look into shortly, and I want to create a sense of that between the subjects of my drawings and the viewer. I want to create a connection and relation rather than objectification. And Hopper clearly does that well in his later, less objectifying pieces.

The Female Gaze

The Female Gaze does not have a Google definition unlike the Male Gaze, which is quite interesting. it is much more open to be widely defined by female Artists. Although some of Hoppers work fits into a female gaze, some of his work still heavily holds onto a male gaze (some points of view making him look more like a peeping tom on women), he is still clearly views some women in his work as sexual objects to be viewed rather than people. A lot of what the Female Gaze can be boiled down to is female frustration of the Male Gaze, how it exists beyond women being depicted in art and how it takes control of our life. Florence Given talks about this well in her book, how the Male Gaze deeply affects women, it festers inside of us as internalised misogyny, it makes us so we can’t live our life normally. When we’re outside we are always aware of our surroundings and concerned for our safety. She explains how our bodily autonomy is questioned due to the perception of men; ‘I have a very confusing relationship with my body; there are times when I feel as though it doesn’t belong to me. Equally there are times when I genuinely do not feel safe in my own body’ .’Maybe it’s because the perceptions I have about it are based on hetero male gaze standards and not my own’ (Given,F.(2020)) . This is practically a universal experience for all women. And Art History with the strong Male Gaze has heavily influenced our view on women.

‘What kind of a relationship are we expected to have with our own bodies, if not a conflictual one, when we are socialised to believe that they exist for male consumption?’ .

The Female Gaze is intended to turn the Male Gaze on its head. Women are to be viewed as people, not objects or as Berger says ‘to appear’ , we are more than a pleasing image. A lot of female artists tackle this subject matter by graphically displaying the female form in a natural or even grotesque way, rather than something perhaps conventionally beautiful, easy for a male viewer to consume and sexualise/objectify the women depicted. Katya Lopatko describes the idea of the Female Gaze well in her website article; ‘The opposite of the male gaze is what we call the female gaze: an empathetic, empowering gaze that emphasizes the subject’s agency and rich internal landscape.‘ . The Female Gaze is an interesting approach, filled with empathy and understanding for the people depicted, mostly women. It is about regaining that control over a female image from men, and often looks at personal experiences. Often sexual.

This work by Helen Beard is a unique approach of lively feminist art looking from a female gaze. She doesn’t shy away from the typical feminist approach of looking at nude female body, but her colour palette of bright pastels helps to reinforce that the female body is a positive thing. It is lively and fun. She takes graphic depictions of the female body and sex and blows them up painting them in bright colours, loud and proud. Her work narrows down the body to loose shapes that make it up and promotes and celebrates female body positivity as well as female pleasure. Her works empathises with the female body and experience rather than objectify, which is what the female gaze is about. Helen Beard says of the Female Gaze and Art, that “Art should seek to tell the story of a female protagonist, through female eyes and garner some parity in a continually unequal world.”. The Female Gaze is truthful and seeks to show women the vulnerabilities of being female without the shame. Without the objectification.

Samantha Louise Emery’s approach is different, she doesn’t have a strong focus for the female body, but what is beyond it. She maintains a deep focus on women’s auras which is evident from her piece ‘Laurie Anderson’ shown above. Emery says about her work that “When I look at my subject, I see another version of myself, as I do believe we are all mirrors. Woman to woman, I feel that I can relate on a much deeper level.” She looks at exploring the female form beyond the traditional Male Gaze, to look at the identity of her female muse, not just the outward appearance, but exploring the relationship between outward image and the inner character, portraying women with a strong presence rather than just to appear for men.

Jenny Saville, one of the most famous female painters in contemporary art, has a more grotesque and real approach to the female form. It is reality of the human body, and was groundbreaking at the time. Looking at an unappealing take on the female form. This piece, ‘Shift’, looks at dismantling the idea of what the ideal female body has been portrayed as by the Male Gaze in art and media for so long. There can’t be one ideal or idea of what the perfect female body is, when every body is different and unique and everyone’s body is imperfect, and that is setting a real standard for female nude. Bodies have curves or are skinny. Thighs are big and stomachs are never flat. Her work on the female body shatters the expectations men have for women and their bodies.

While for many women and female artists this work can be empowering, there is a problem with the Female Gaze, the depiction of a naked woman, regardless of context or meaning is open to be objectified or sexualised by a male viewer. It makes me question if I can still make work like this and be empowered if I am to be sexualised too? Its difficult as drawing my body after a lot of abuse and trauma surrounding it can feel freeing and powerful for me as a woman and as an artist, but there is still a discomfort of being sexualised against my will and the intentions of my work. You cannot control how your work is received by the viewer. For me I still feel strong creating work surrounding my naked body as I have learned over the years to not care about other people and how they view me. But it is still something a female artist should come to terms with when creating this kind of work. I think if the Artist find it empowering then it simply is regardless of how the male viewers take it. But it is open to discussion.

For my work I want to look at exploring the Female Gaze in a variety of ways and mediums, and look at using art depict my traumas with my body and experience with men. I want to create empathetic pieces of work that look at both the female and male body in a more intimate and loving way rather than being objectifying. I want to make art that is personal to me but is relatable to my viewers. I want my viewers to look at my work and empathise and relate to the people of my portraits. I will be working on a lot of self portraits and how I view my body and also looking at a male body and depicting it in a romantic way. Through a female perspective. Using friendly colours like Helen Beard could be a good way of achieving this, as it adds a friendly layer to graphic female content. Or trying to depict the essence of the person through mixed media as Emery does with her work looking at women’s aura.
To start I want to make artistic responses to personal female experiences of mine but also current events surrounding women like the Sarah Everard case.

References
Ways of Seeing: John Berger-Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. [online] London, UK: Penguin Books Limited, p.176. Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ways_of_Seeing/QxdperNq5R8C?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=overview [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].
Painting- Morning Sun– Hopper, E. (1952). Morning Sun. [Oil on canvas] Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/morning-sun [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].
Painting- Night Windows- Hopper, E. (1928). Night Windows. [Oil on canvas] Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79270 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].In-text citation: (Hopper, 1928)
Klimt Drawing- Klimt, G. (1913). Reclining Nude with Drapery. [Graphite] Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/334903 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].
Egon Schiele Drawing- Egon Schiele (1918). Reclining Nude with Boots. [Charcoal on paper] Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reclining_Nude_with_Boots_MET_DP-1597-001.jpg [Accessed 8 Mar. 2021].
Women Don’t Owe You Pretty: Florence Given- Given, F. (2020). Women Don’t Owe You Pretty. S.L.: Cassell Illustrated.
T+heArtGorgeous (Website)- TheArtGorgeous. (2019). Three fresh takes on the female gaze. [online] Available at: https://theartgorgeous.com/three-fresh-takes-female-gaze/.
Painting- Helen Beard- Beard, H. (2019). Syntribation. [Oil on canvas] Available at: https://www.helenbeard.art/portraiture-1/2019/4/10/2019/4/10/new-beginnings [Accessed 16 Mar. 2021].
Painting- Samantha Louise Emery- Emery, S.L. (2018). Laurie Anderson. [Latex, acrylic and embroidered gold, silver and copper on canvas.] Available at: https://www.samanthalouiseemery.art/ikona-gallery [Accessed 16 Mar. 2021].
Painting- Jenny Saville- Saville, J. (1996). Shift. [Oil on canvas] Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/jenny-saville/shift-1997 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2021].

I want to maintain a focus on Part 4- The figure and the head, and look more into the concepts of a portrait, not just the technical ability to capture a realistic looking body. I am interested by the historical objectification of the female body by the male gaze and how I can turn that on its head. I want to be able to create portraits that empower women and look at what the female gaze can be but also how to effectively convey it. I want to be able to make interesting pieces of art that speak from an non objectifying nor sexualising point of view.

By starting by investigating the Male Gaze, I can try to determine what this is and how the female gaze should differ, as the female gaze is not as defined as the male gaze. I can think about what the female gaze means to me and I how I want to explore my own body within that. I feel it could also be interesting to go back to my male model, and look at depicting him through this female gaze, and see if there is a difference to depicting the two genders from a female point of view. As the male gaze depicts the male and female body differently.

I plan to look at the historical, classic paintings and drawings done by Male Artists and begin looking at feminist literature and contemporary female artists and what the female body means to them. Work that really interests me is Edward Hopper and I would like to take a closer more in depth look at how he portrays women, as I feel there is some sort of romantic element there that makes his depictions of the female body more unique compared to that of other male artists like Picasso. Then moving on to look at how some contemporary female artists use graphic nudity in their work as a sense of female empowerment. I want to look closer at that kind of work and how it compares to my ideas of female empowerment and where I want to take my work from there.

I want to experiment a bit more with oil pastels and drawing before starting to incorporate paint into my drawings. I want to look at using watercolour and acrylic and the types of effects I can create with those mediums.

I want to begin with a bit of research, and really develop some of my current loose ideas into something strong and clear for me to work with. With Covid restrictions, I may have to work from photographs of my model if I want to finish Part 5 at a good pace.