Table of Contents

Reflection

  • Workflow
    • I found this project interesting as I realized it comes together a ‘way of working’. Going from thumbnails, to larger drawings, paint sketches and then final work. As I worked through these exercises, I expanded my view of them in preparation for the assignment — essentially starting my preparations for the assignment based on the work here.
    • I’m starting to get layering, with wet media. I think one of my stumbling blocks is that I’m unconsciously expecting paint to work like dry media. Of course it doesn’t. If I want to layer, I have to do so with careful planning, or let the paint dry between sessions.
  • Texture and Drawing Through
    • My tutor encouraged me to consider my use of texture, and to ensure I was drawing through each work — not just filling space for the sake of it.
    • Although my tutor pointed me in the direction of an artist who uses oil pastel over paint, I’m trying to take the view of ‘texture’ more broadly.
  • Expressiveness
    • Querying my own response to an implicit question posed by my tutor, I asked how I could manipulate paint consistency to something that would let me loosen up and get more expressive. I chose acrylic to work with, here, originally due to its drying time allowing me to experiment and cover-over quickly.
      “You have achieved quite dramatic results in the life drawing sessions. These sessions are often rather bland, but these drawings feel like portraits with mood and dynamism. You seem more confident in these dry colour materials where some of the issues of mixing, consistency, application are less complex? The hands of the model on the right are especially beautifully and sparely rendered.”
      I talked about this a bit more in my assignment reflection, in project 1.
    • There is an interesting parallel between working in acrylics and working in pastel. Although I don’t yet know how to dynamically change the pressure on a brush like I can on a block of pastel — leaning my weight to one edge or another to create dynamic shapes in one movement, I think I can progress my mark making in acrylic by layering and letting the paint skip over the surface of the work.

Research: Golden Ratio

You’ll find my notes on Golden Ratio here: here

Painting from Working Drawings, Squaring Up

Acrylic Sketch

  • There are some interesting ideas here, even if the total is a bit of a mess
  • Observations
    • There is a nervousness to the lines due to my unsteady hand. If I had used a straight edge the result would have been better.
    • The palette generally works, though I think I used too intense an orange in the windows.
    • The lines work best when they are balanced against flat colour. See the driveway on the far left. The whole falls apart when it is too closely packed.
    • With a different brush, and a few more pale colours, the sky treatment could be interesting.
  • Materials
    • I’m generally not a fan of acrylics. The drying speed is stressful. But perhaps this should lead me towards a more express approach? Let the drying speed guide the energy of my paint application?
    • On the other hand, it made working through this sketch super fast. Layering up the colours was easy, as there was no chance of the colours mixing into mud due to still being wet.

Another Pass

  • I like how acrylic paint lets me quickly lay down blocks of colour, and layer over top, due to its drying time.
    • I’ll use acrylic and tape to create the hard edged dark undertones for each block area. I’ll then use oil paint on top, building texture by letting the base colours show through.
  • I want to be more ‘expressive’. I think I’ve figured out how to get the paint to the right mixture to let me be more expressive.
  • I want to be less rigid in this pass, so I’ve focused mostly on the silhouettes during this ‘squaring up’, and will draw the rest in with paint. Irony: I say this while constructing a composition built of blocks, hard edged lines, and using tape to build up the edges. This is hilarious.
  • The sky needs expressiveness, the buildings need a measure of rigidity.
Taping in those hard edges.
Acrylic sky under layer
Beginning to apply oils overtop the acrylic layers

Despite this piece being the opposite of “expressive” I think I’m getting a handle on the paint consistency I need for more loose work. Here, I’ve mixed various blues with a large quantity of linseed oil, getting to a sticky almost honey consistency. It may be too loose, but it feels closer to ink&brush, and I’m not fighting to get long brush strokes in.

  • Drawback: I have to be extremely careful of the edges, to prevent immediate mixing, and I need to move carefully.
  • Drawback 2: This will take a while to dry. So I’m going to have to think about patient layering here.
  • Drawback 3: I can’t go back to acrylics at this point, except in those areas I haven’t yet touched with oil (green, and sky). And doing so might be opening myself up to some extremely messy outcomes.

My thinking, is that after I get these solid blocks in, I can then add more expressive “drawn in” marks on top.

I stopped here as I got distracted by the glazing, and worked on other parts of the unit. There is a lot of possibility here, and I should return to this.

Exercise: Working from Photographs

Over the autumn, I took many photographs of dawn and sunset, as my commute to the office gave me many opportunities to view the sky at these times.

Although the camera was useful for capturing some of the ideas, it was terrible for capturing the actual colours I was seeing. This is really unfortunate as the colours were remarkable.

For this exercise, I wanted to work from these collected images, and not replicate any one single image. Instead, I thought to pull ideas from them to construct a separate image.

My goal here is to first work in pastel, and then work in oil on a second attempt of the same subject matter. I’m hoping this will help me with colour decisions, and sequencing.

Pastel attempt 1
Pastel 2
Pastel 3
  • I found myself saying to myself “Do less” when I started pastel 2 and 3. How can I reduce the references down further and further. This led directly into the oil version, below.
  • In my figure work, I often use reference photographs created by professionals specifically as art reference pictures. Sitting here, reflecting on my own photographs, I realize how hard it is to both capture what I want captured but also frame/hide objects that muddy the image.
  • It is fascinating how ‘stiff’ these pastel works are, compared to what I’m used to with my figure work. Clearly I’m more at ease with the human figure, than with landscape, which allows me to push things and experiment in a more relaxed way.

Simplifing further:

  • Terrible photograph, as the white paper isn’t showing white.
  • I did this after I had gone fairly far into the assignment. I think if I had figured out the paint consistency in this work before starting the assignment, I’d have done the assignment differently.
  • I was trying to figure out how to get paint to do what I do with pastels. I think I was successful:
    • Significant amount of refined linseed oil
    • A synthetic bristle long philbert, #10. The bristles are kind of like traditional bristle, but with more spring and less splay. I really enjoyed working with this brush.
    • I need to keep in mind that I can’t layer when wet quite the way I can do so immediately with pastel.

If I let myself be patient, and work paintings over multiple sittings, what I learned here will be super valuable.