Working out which path to take-

Firstly, as I wanted to start looking into volcanoes and their eruptions, I researched some artists work who I thought resembled lava flow because there was lots of movement and appropriate colours. All the pieces were abstract which I thought was a better way to express the type of picture I was trying to show for my personal investigation. Despite this, these artists (Jacqueline Swann, Destiny Womack, Jack Vanzet) didn't have much information about their materials or techniques and their work wasn't displayed in any galleries or exhibitions, therefore it was really difficult for me to interpret their style of work.

Due to this I turned to my peers for help in terms of which materials would be effective and how to apply them. They suggested that a good experiment would be for me to use  photographs from my Fogo Island holiday and gentle burn the edges to create a background that related to the volcano. Then to add more layers they advised me to use red candle wax melted and dripped over the top in order to resemble the lava flow. I was really grateful for this feed back and I acted upon it.

Although the idea itself was really creative, the experiment was difficult to create and inefficient as the minute it dried the wax began to crumble completely off as you can see in the photos. Despite this, in the top photograph I think the burning effect has worked really well to create a smoky look round the top of the volcano which I did by holding the lighter underneath. 

Moving on from this I then started my genre study which I quickly decided would be based upon abstract expressionism as this was a style that showed my skills best and I also had lots of artist evidence for it as well as experience from my first year and gallery visits. My genre study is in my evidence folder as you can see below.