The Initial Research

To start my project I looked at an artist who paints portraits and landscapes of beach and holiday themes. I was particularly drawn to the composition of Stephan Shankland's paintings, he doesn't just concentrate on the human figure but also spends a lot of time on the landscape and backgrounds. Vincent Giarrano is a similar artist who I was attracted to because of the more traditional sceneries. 
Shankland, in contrast to Giarrano, tends to use more vibrant colours to creating a more eye catching painting.



This is a photo of the landscape I painted by Stephan Shankland.
The use of a flat brush enabled me to mix colour and tone while creating texture. 



I used coloured pencils to draw this portrait. I used
 a cross hatch technique to create the shadow on the
face and to give the cheeks more of a three dimensional
realistic look.

The Third artist I researched was Richard Geraint Evans. I wanted to look at a more portrait based painter. I love the way Evans portraits show emotion and how he experiments with different angles of the face. He uses a very realistic technique when painting, with a lifelike colour palette.



This is a painting I did of one of Richard Geraints portraits.
I found painting the faces with a thicker layer of paint easier
then layering up watered down acrylic.

All of the artists above inspired me to take photos while I was on holiday. I wanted to not only focus on the stunning landscapes but I also wanted to capture the natural facial expressions and emotions of different friends and family members.