What techniques did Sonia Boyce use to create the artwork?
- Before starting the artwork, Boyce made a series of separate small line drawings, around 10 x 10 cm, for each figure as well as for the different background elements in the composition.
- She then projected the drawings using an epidiascope (a type of projector) onto a large sheet of paper fixed to the wall and mapped out the outlines of the different elements of the composition. We can see the blue outlines of these drawings in the finished work.
- She initially added washes of thinned watercolour to the paper. These watercolour washes in red, purple and orange provided a base colour for drawing dark skin and meant she could achieve the tones she wanted.
- She then meticulously added the details using pastels – taking two weeks to finish the drawing.
How has Sonia Boyce used formal elements such as composition, colour, pattern and mark-making?
- The composition is dominated by the two figures. The close-up view makes us focus on the faces and gestures of the figures.
- The centrally placed sofa and cross, with the repeated birds on either side, provide a sense of symmetry and order to the composition. The geometric patterned wallpaper and still, upright, kneeling figure add to this order.
- The recoiling figure with her arm flung out cuts across this orderliness creating a diagonal line and dynamic movement that disrupts the composition.
- The bright colours, with very little shading, make the image seem flat. The patterns on the wallpaper and carpet add to this flatness.
- Boyce used a combination of mark-making. The yellow jumper of the praying figure is smooth. Boyce may have laid the pastel on its side or smudged it to create this smooth, flat effect. She has also smudged the pastel in areas of the drawing to suggest shadow.
- The rest of the clothing, the skin of the figures, the carpet and the cushions have been filled in using a dense mesh of marks and lines. Dashes of cream suggest the pattern on the red dress.
What is pastel and why did Sonia Boyce use it?
- Pastel is a drawing medium.
- Pastels are usually in stick form and look a bit like crayons. They consist of powdered pigment combined with a binder (which holds the powdered pigment together).
- As well as enjoying working with pastel as a medium, Boyce had a political reason for using it. Through reading feminist histories of art, she discovered that female artists were generally excluded from art school and learning oil paint techniques. They also usually didn't have studio spaces to create large artworks. So they turned instead to other media such as pastels and worked on a small scale at home.
- By adopting the medium of pastel, Boyce consciously referenced the position of women artists in the history of Western art. By using pastel to make large-scale drawings she subverted the general perception of it as a small-scale medium.
'I actually like doing large-scale work. When I say large scale, I mean large scale for pastels, which is why people often think that they are paintings. It's not particularly large for painting but it is for pastel. I mean, you're talking about a millimetre at a time: it's a large area and it's very tedious, a very tedious method. But I liked the prospect that people would be confused.'