Final piece process

Gonkar Gyatso

Shangri La, 2014

Mixed media collage on Aluminium backed honeycomb panel

76 x 76 cm (29 9/10 x 29 9/10 in.)

  My first piece was done on A4 sized canvas. The piece was influenced by Gyatso Gonkar, the materials I used were pencils (H, HB and 2B), marker pens, technical drawing pens (0.3) and Acrylic paint. The artist's works often use variety of materials and most of his works are considered mixed media, so I decided to apply the same style for this piece.

I drew the lotus from a bird's eye view using HB and 3B on paper. This was a rough sketch of the lotus, it is going to be outlined and coloured later on.
On the actual A4 canvas for the piece, I painted it blue with acrylic paint. I mixed the blue paint with water to dilute the colour and make it more translucent.

The image on the left is the plan I made for this piece on Photoshop. The Buddha statue would be at the centre of the canvas and the gray-scale is image is the lotus in bird's eye view, I changed the lotus because both image had strong colour and I wanted the statue to stand out the most.

After I sketched the lotus, I outlined the lotus using a red marker. On areas where there is shadow, I used the colourless blender marker to make the red marker colour spread to the area, the blender diluted the colour so it would not look too strong.

After outlining the lotus, I used acrylic paint again. I blended red, white and yellow together (red with little bit of yellow and white) in to create a light red/dark peach colour. I started off with translucent light red colour formed by mixing the paint with water for the base layer. After I finished the base, I applied the same shade of colour but with less dilution so the colour in areas where there is shadow are more opaque.

Start of the Buddha's silhouette part. I drew out the body of the statue and boxes where I will write down the scripture.

My original plan was to write the message up to the face of the Buddha as well but I changed this and painted the head in a darker tone to make the statue feel familiar yet foreign, create a distance for the audience and the artwork as if the well-known figure is being forgotten. For the corners of the canvas, I made four acetate lotus using the sellotape method, I used sellotape instead because with the sellotape I can scrub the print more and make the lotus look more faint and worn out to create an aging effect.