Note

I decided to combine my efforts across Project 1 and 2, due to the selection of subject matter. It seemed to make more sense to me this way.

Reflection

• Sketchbook
  • I’m putting additional effort into working out ideas in my sketchbook.
  • Crucially, I’m also focusing on showing this work.
• Paint coverage
  • Based on tutor feedback, I’m trying to avoid covering the surface in paint unless I specifically have a purpose in doing so.
  • My first image suffers from this paint-coverage issue. I clearly need to build this intentionality, instead of tripping up, each section.
• Oil Pastel
  • A very imprecise medium. I initially tested on a couple small boards. I liked the result of the first test (see Experiments in Supplementary Material section), and so attempted to overlay pastel atop my cityscape sketch. I greatly disliked the effect here for a couple reasons:
    • The colours were wrong. I don’t have enough pastel colours to match the washed out greys I had in the painting.
    • The texture was too rough. If I want to have straight solid lines, I’ll need a very smooth surface and probably a much larger area to work with.

Table of Contents

• Assignment Reflection
• Exhibit Review: Denyse Thomasos
• Exercises
  • View from Window or Doorway
  • Hard or Soft Landscape
• Supplementary Material
  • Notes on Perspective
  • Influences
  • Experiments: Oil Pastel
  • Student Collaboration
  • Lecture: Contextualization

Exhibit Review: Denyse Thomasos

This is captured in a separate post. You can find it here: Denyse Thomasos: Just Beyond

Exercise: View From Window or Doorway

Sketchbook

I really like the bottom right. It gives that inside/outside perspective, and makes me think of Japanese Edo period prints. I want to explore that further, but not as part of this exercise. It feels like something that needs significant time.

A watercolour exploration. A few things I like:

• The birds form an interesting triangle. They’re looking at each other, across the hard divide of the tree.
• The colour variation in the tree is intriguing. Too complicated, but really intriguing.
• If the washes were done better, the buildings would work better

Intent

• Take some notes from Canadian impressionists (Group of 7, Beaver Hall Group): I want to focus my brushwork on the important details. I should feel content to leave areas rough, or unworked. This will likely help me with aerial perspective to convey areas in the distance, or otherwise out of ‘focus’.
• Create the sense of complexity in the tree, through colour.
• Keep the birds, looking at each other, but allow them to drift towards the abstract.
• I’m thinking here of A.J. Casson, and David Milne, in terms of the rendering of the buildings. Letting the roofs stay bright — snow laden — provides interesting framing.

Reminder: Take my tutor’s advice! Draw through the painting.

To do:

• Keep the brush strokes going in the direction of the surface
• Bring more lightness back to those roofs, and perhaps the sky — though gloomy grey is our world right now.
• I want to bring the next layer of brushstrokes on the tree to be vertical and blocky. Then bring in the bluebirds.

I’m doing the thing my tutor keeps telling me to avoid. I’m painting for the sake of painting. I’ll come back to this painting.

What I like:

• The second roof, on the right, speaks more of form and presence.
• The school — reduced to simple shapes — in the back looks like it is speeding by. I’m not sure why that amuses me.

Revisit

Mid-way through my assignment, I came back to this painting. Instead of repainting, I decided to bring in the elements I’d left off but also bring in some high values to bring the tree into the foreground more.

Exercise: Hard or Soft Landscape

Sketchbook

Process

Working on a piece of masonite, where sales stickers were applied to what I’d consider the ‘painting surface’. Very annoying, as they don’t clean off well and damage the surface in the process.

But, in this case, provide an interesting texture.

• I’ve leveraged the surface, in the background, to give me the impression of further buildings. I may tighten that up a bit with some line, later.
• From Denyse Thomasos, I’ve drawn in an architecture through foreground and background. The buildings, abstracted, are various institutions that fit this artist’s general theme: courts (both municipal and provincial superior court). I added the blue building on the left to help make this composition claustrophobic.
• The labels, and sticker-damaged surface, remind me of pentimento. The concealed history of a work has always interested me. Things hidden within or behind, or things hidden in plain sight.

Reflection

• I liked the squashed perspective, and decided to add to that, and how I treated the far off buildings.
• I liked old city hall (brown clock tower) before I added pastel.
• The line work doesn’t work at this scale. I’d need a more precise tool.
• I’m inclined to repeat this at a larger size: I can’t pull out a 0.3mm pastel, or equivalent paint brush, and get ridiculously fine detail.

Notes on Perspective

• Linear Perspective. Lines receding away, and the decrease of relative size the further things are from the viewer. In contrast: hierarchical sizing (Egyptian art, medieval European art). 1-,2-,3-point (etc) perspective frameworks assume there are only a few fixed vanishing points. Careful observation of buildings suggests each building has its own vanishing points based on individual layout and geometry. this makes sense: the horizon is a line and the eye shifts along it — moving the vanishing points.
• Aerial Perspective. Blue light scattering by water in the atmosphere. Haze. Yellows, oranges, reds move toward browns then purples and blues. Imagine the atmosphere haze progressively glazing thin washes of blue over everything.
• Combined, we see detail loss. Blurring. Shapes simplify to masses. Birds become dots. Distant rain and snow simply become white/grey blur in the distance. Windows lost from walls. Trees become like distant mountains.

Influences

Material Experiments

Oil Pastel

My tutor suggested I experiment with texture and noted an artist who combines paint and oil pastel (Rachel Jones). I thought to try the same, but before I did that, I wanted to get a feel for what I can do with pastel on its own, and so took it to an old panel that I’d sketched a face on. I like how the hatching shows over the flat blended areas.

Student Collaboration, Round 1

This is captured in a separate post. See here: Student Collaboration: Visual Broken Telephone

Lecture: Contextualization

This is captured in a separate post. See notes are captured here: Contextualization