Painting Developments

I began my painting research by looking at different images from Live Camera Girl sites, but not specifically eating fetishes.

I decided to photoshop myself into them eating my breakfast sexually, and they actually turned out rather humorously. I wanted to begin generating things for what I wanted to do with these ideas by painting them, and see where that lead me. My aim during this process was to look further into how Camera Girls eating could lead to an unhealthy obsession with food, like binge eating. For a more sexual effect with these images, I used strawberry and running chocolate that have sexual connotations to them, from advertisements in particular, making the chocolate drip onto my chin which could signify semen.

I chose this image to paint because I found that I could play around with the comment section.

I began by painting an MDF board a dark purple and then slowly built up the face to match the picture of me. As an end result, my aim was to emphasise the dripping chocolate and tongue touching it, as I believe this was the most sexual part. The comments are all related to eating and are sexually driven.

I was fairly happy with how it had turned out, as it was the first of the trio I made during this project. It took me a lot longer to paint than what I thought it would because I found it pretty hard to blend then acrylic paints. I do, however, think it served its purpose as a piece that represents where my ideas were at, which was highlighting the fetish of sexual foods and what it means to film yourself eating, being large or thin, a woman or a man, and if you make money from it or not.

Throughout the year, I became very interested in the idea of food as being sexual. By using emojis as the comments in the first painting, it had opened up endless possibilities for my next paintings. I think it’s fascinating that people, including me, send these emojis, whether it be as a joke or taken seriously, as a way to say something sexually. We then see these foods as something sexual, although some have always carried sexual connotations. They might have even been designed specifically to look sexual, which I also find really interesting. Most relationships are spent online at one point or the other, especially young ones, and this culture of sexting which include these emojis was incredibly fascinating to look into.

While researching into fruit machines, I was really interested in using the “Chav It” machine because it included catch-phrases and interesting designs, as well as humour that I thought I could potentially use for this next painting.

I decided to copy the outlines of the fruit machine and change it by adding a painted bit of me eating a banana from my camera girl experience and using emojis as the fruit, with comments I documented from the live stream on the side, correlating with the original image I found online of a fruit machine. I also included comments I received on my tinder profile as “Peaches”.

The end result, which is above, turned out successfully for this stage of my project, though I do feel like my painting isn’t amazing, however the context and its desired effect, I think, is apparent. It took me over two weeks to complete, and I do think it was reflected in the detail and size.

At the Get Loose exhibition;

The final painting was a close-up of a fruit machine, but with emojis instead of fruits, in-keeping with the theme of the series. I first sketched out a few ideas, until I concluded with this one;

I originally thought that making a closer version of a fruit machine might make the painting process a little quicker, but it took just as long as the first two. The amount of detail I planned to put into them was the reason behind this, due to wanting them to resemble the emojis as much as possible. The bright, animated emojis contrasted with the background being very painterly, which is what I particularly enjoyed about this painting.

At this stage, I could see a difference in my painting quality since the first one, and was very excited about showing the trio at the Get Loose exhibition I held in November with a few other students.

They were all accepted well at the exhibition by my peers and looked great in the space of a conservative club, where there were already fruit machines. I didn’t think of the significance of this until I was setting up, but I was really glad that I could make the link to the place I was exhibiting. This will in turn help me figure out why I’ll be exhibiting in other places in the future and bring the importance of it into the context and research of my work, something I didn’t necessarily think of doing before. The importance of the work being displayed in the Cathays Conservative Club was that I could then see the paintings where a fruit machine is traditionally placed, which is in the environment of men. The “gamble” of my machines were if the phrases used by people who messaged or commented to either my Tinder profile or on MyFreeCams. The idea was that the correct use of emojis to create the “best” sentence, or the “best” comments” might win the person’s time. On Tinder, I was really intrigued by how this is often played as game to win a “booty call”, just by the right use of emojis. The turning of a fruit machine wheel, replaced by emojis, reflect this game.