Painting Practice

I wanted to apply some of what I’ve learned so far, but without the ‘seriousness’ of a ‘real’ composition. I grabbed a photo of some baseball player, and set to work.

To be clear, this is far from finished. But felt it merited some notes so far.

I did this in stages, and each stage I approached what I was doing differently. I’m not trying to create a cohesive, finished work here, but rather to practice different methods of paint application. Necessarily, this will lead to something a bit disconnected from itself.

I’m generally okay with my rendering of anatomy, though skin tone looks kind of dead or plastic-y. I shouldn’t be so afraid to push these tones more, away from “brown/pink”. I can see how tightly I was holding the brush for these parts and I can also clearly see where I need to go back and fix things. Eyes need to be completely repainted — they are rather too tiny.

I was thinking about impasto in the background and I definitely need to revisit. I think I need to try using cold wax, or some other medium, to boost the properties of the paint in this regard. Something to come back to.

The blue pants. they are a bit loud — you can almost hear the blue — but I love how I painted them. I mixed prussian blue with burnt sienna, and a good amount of medium to make the paint quite liquid. With just three mixed tones, and general understanding of cloth folds, I feel like I created something quite effective. I could use some simplification — fewer brush strokes to accomplish the same.

I want to do another piece entirely with this pants-method — skin tones and all. I can feel my anxiety there, but there shouldn’t be any — I can’t ‘fail’ at a study.

Cold Wax Experiments

I like the texture possibilities of cold wax medium. In Drawing Skills I experimented, a little, with reaching off the page and into the viewer’s space in my part 4 assignment. This came about following my listening to the The Lonely Palette podcast episode 48: Anselm Kiefer’s Margarete and Sulamith (1981) ¹. If you have not encountered this before, I recommend a listen.

In that episode I was introduced to one of Anselm Kiefer’s works, and how it came off the plane of the support. Invading the viewer’s realm and forcing engagement.

Here, in this first cold wax experiment, I was thinking about the opposite. Going further into the plane of the image by carving down the paint. Just experimenting, really, with no clear purpose except to explore. Paints used: Venetian red(Gamblin), Ercolano red earth (Rubilev), Bronte Brown (my own homemade paint)

I liked how the tools were able to inscribe clean lines, or create depressions. If I mixed the right consistency of paint, I could then lay that back into those inscribed lines. A weird form of etching, perhaps. I imagine a very messy piping bag experience, and a lot of cleanup.

With careful layering, could I then carve down to reveal coloured layers? What would happen if I put solvent onto this before it had oxidized and hardened? What would happen after oxidization?

The second image here is seeing if I can ‘draw through’ the paint and wax using graphite. Another interesting effect to perhaps continue exploring. Venetian Red (Gamblin).