Table of Contents
- Reflections
- Research
- Exercises
- Supplementary Material
- Personal Projects
Reflections
Focus: I find it far easier to hold my focus for hours on a single painting than to get through a dozen quick ones in a few minutes. I had to break up the exercises into sections, and action over weeks, to get past this speedbump. Towards the end of the exercises, I was in “just get through it” mode, which isn’t the best for learning. I may need to force myself to do these again.
Paint is not Pencils: Which, of course, I know. I’ve done many blind drawing exercises before, but it is a different beast with paint. With a pencil or pen, I can keep drawing and never have to lift and reposition. I can feel the paper’s surface texture through the tip of the implement. With paint, I can’t do either.
Each time I ran out of paint, I’d have to reload the brush and kept catching myself looking down to figure out where to continue.
I kept pressing the brush too hard against the paper, as my muscle memory tried to feel the surface texture.
Drawing is the basis of painting: I love drawing. I need to stop skipping that step when I get to painting. It makes my paintings better. I know this. I keep jumping the gun.
Permission to Fail: Despite the above, these exercises gave me ‘permission’ to attempt subjects that I would be fearful of normally. I greatly enjoyed the results of some of the individual pieces, and this got my mind thinking about different avenues of painting — landscapes, industrial semi-abstract, etc. Departures from my comfort zone of the figure.
Constrained Palette: Over the summer I constrained my palette down to the primaries + white. Through these exercises, I kept that up for the most part. Specifically: Cad yellow light, Quinacridone Magenta, Prussian Blue. A few paintings pulled in some other tubes but generally, I stayed with these.
Gloss vs Matte: This produces interesting effects, particularly when exaggerated through the use of added materials (sand, modelling paste, etc). I should keep this in mind for future projects.
Found Imagery Two Ways:
- I find my collection interesting. What about them makes me want to paint them? Sometimes it is just the colours; sometimes an individual shape; sometimes the whole image.
- In the summer I kicked off a “creatives collective” at my office. There are about a dozen of us, and we meet monthly to share our processes, etc. I shared with them that my current unit leans on found imagery, and I asked for volunteers to send me found images of their own. I gave them a rough theme roughly summarized as “Here and There/Us and Them” which is arising from my thinking about current geopolitics. A handful of people took up the challenge, and I’ve been incorporating their photos into my work.
Research
To keep this post a bit contained, I’ve moved my research notes here: link
Exercise 1.1
Notes
- All colours mixed from primaries, where colour is used.
- Acrylic over Gouache felt strange. Like it was picking up the chalk from the underlayer
- Watercolour/diluted ink/gouache over thick acrylic was pure frustration.
- Gouache over Gamsol created an interesting texture where the paper was semi-absorbent.
Highlights/Favourites
Exercise 1.2
It took me forever to get to this one. In fact, I did it last of the exercises. Then Andy Warhol got into my mind, and I was thinking about image degradation through the process of repeated printmaking. So I chose a single image and decided I would repeat it across all backgrounds.
With Warhol in mind, I chose an image of a celebrity (Henry Cavil) already in my found images collection. Let’s see what happens. Each image will be 1 black, white or grey “paint”, on either a black or white background. I think this should create a somewhat interesting progression as the images become visible.
Challenges and Decisions
- Black on Black, White on White. How will I differentiate, particularly with the acrylic as it was the same paint used to form the background
- I’ll use gloss vs matte interactions for light vs dark areas.
- Can I include materials into the paint to enhance the gloss effect?
- I was reminded of Ben Nicholson’s white reliefs or Soulages’ black paintings, and thought this might be an interesting path.
Setup
Tracing paper, chalk and charcoal, for image transfer onto prepared watercolour paper.
First Result (with underdrawing)
Some are more successful than others, but as a whole I quite like it.
- I think the black ink on black works quite well (second from top left). The ink turns out darker than the acrylic.
- Adding sand to the black acrylic enhanced the gloss effect however it makes poor Henry look quite sickly. Who wants a forehead as bumpy as that?
- White gouache on white was interesting (second from bottom left) as it looks almost yellow to my eyes. Using it as the ‘darks’ works quite well here I think.
- I like this arrangement for the most part, though perhaps I should have moved the full-white paintings to the right-hand of their lane for better impact.
- I’ll look for ways to use these white/white and black/black again. That was quite interesting.
Bumpy Henry. Sand has added to the paint.
Exercise 1.3
- Mixed three small bowls of acrylic to work with. Each time I changed the image, I switched colour.
- These are a glorious mess. In the second I can see where I started just focusing on specific lines or shapes of interest.
- In the third, I kept the same colour (green) and added a bit more blue between the images. There is a bit more feel of cohesion here.
Exercise 1.4
- Watercolour. Ultramarine+burnt umber for my ‘black’ so I could play a bit with that.
- In the 10 minute, I made things harder for myself
- I took no time to plan. Big mistake
- I used a brush that holds too much water, which meant things became a swamp.
- I was working flat, and this had the effect of stretching/crunching various parts of the work.
- In the 20 minute, things were different. More relaxed
- I started with construction using dried paint remnants already on my palette.
- This helped immensely as I was finding shadow shapes.
What would this have looked like if I started with 5 minutes, then did these then followed up with a 40? that might be an interesting exercise to pursue later.
I quite like the look of the construction lines showing through.
Supplementary Material aka Procrastination
Personal Projects
Thinking about abstracting the human form
I’m exploring a different way of creating figures, by building up from fairly abstracted silhouettes.
I’m liking the results, and I think I have a lot of room to play here. They provide a wide array of possibilities.
Leveraging oil stick pigments gives the most immediately satisfying application method. Scribbly and smeary.
Using a large brush, I can create some interesting shapes, and then cutting down through the paint with a silicon point lets me accent form with lines. I really like this.
Using a ridiculously oversized round brush has some interesting possibilities. Prevents me from getting too precious with irrelevant detail.
I like where this is going. More experiments are needed, and an eventual painting leveraging this.
Details
Attempting Plein Air
My husband and I spent a weekend up north, and I took my oil painting supplies. I got as far as an underpainting/block in.
When the temperature is subzero oil paint doesn’t flow; mineral spirits evaporate much much slower; and fingers get cold.
I was working on primed masonite, with an oil ground. I couldn’t quite figure out the right weight to put on my brush, resulting in prior layers getting immediately excavated from the surface. I think the slow evaporation of the mineral spirits was a big part of this.
I’m happy with my ability to edit — I’m not just creating a photograph. But much more practice is needed here.
When I get back to this panel, I’ll make sure to note it in a future learning log.
Thinking about cityscapes
I’ve been catching views of the sky through narrow passages between buildings, and I have been awestruck several times. I am now finding myself working the shapes through in my mind, and thinking through how I might turn these ideas into a short series of paintings.
“How things block the sky” is a phrase that keeps coming back to me, so I’ve noted it in my sketchbook.
Pages from the sketch book, related to the above
