Painting Elective

So I started my first elective this week, and I really enjoyed it. We did some blind line drawings in paint and then painted with small squares of card. I found this really hard but they turned out ok. This week I painted completely differently to the way I normally would. We were taught about technique and only used the three primary colours.
On Monday we were told to pick a painting we found interesting and create an installation inspired by it.  I chose 'Wood' by Annie Lapin. It took me awhile to get my head around what exactly it was we were to do but on Thursday we all spent the morning setting up our installations and they looked great.

From these installations we did some quick line drawings and then planned out some zoomed up areas by drawing a few thumbnails. We then painted these sections using a palette knife.

For the weekend we had to pick a Lucian Freud painting and make an exact replica of it. Whatever size it was in the book we had to paint it that size. I chose his portrait of the Queen and the photocopy I got was less than A4. I found this really difficult to do! It took ages and it's still not finished or close to being perfect but I found it pretty impossible! The idea of this was to learn technique, see how Freud used his paint and brushes, figure out what colours he put down first and to learn to paint background first then middle ground, and finally foreground.

I gridded it out first and drew it as accurately as I could. 

There's still a few bits left to finish before the morning, and then I'll take of the masking tape! The colours came out a lot brighter on mine, so I'm going to try tone them down now. I'll post a picture of the finished one in the morning.