Table of Contents

Reflections

Have I bitten off more than I can chew. Time has flown by, I’m definitely now late on my plan for this course — I’m going to have to really crack down if I’m going to hit assessment in the fall. Summer is a hard time to do schoolwork, I suppose.

I’ve continued my portraiture mentorship, which I’m greatly enjoying. I’m starting to pull ideas from there into my other work, and pushing some of the ideas. I’m really liking this, and I need to figure out how to weave the efforts together better.

Working within the circular form of the tondo has been very interesting. For me, the circle has become “portal” into the space of the picture more than any rectangular form ever has. Rectangles might be windows, but circles are vision and I’ve found that intriguing as I’ve hunted subject matter. My choices have largely fallen into “what was I looking at at a specific moment” rather than compositional decision making. Windows, rectangles, are built for specific views but vision falls where it may. I like that chance

Oddly, I’m reminded of Jenna Gribbon who seems to create paintings from hidden camera angles. Although her work isn’t in tondo form, the idea of ‘vision’ is there.

I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at Tanya Gomelskaya’s work. Her sculptures are literal portals, with hands, faces, and more reaching out from the painting. Her Instagram (here) is filled with many disturbing works that bend towards body horror.

She also creates “mirrors”, reflecting just an eye. She takes a hammer to the painting, breaking the glass surface and reassembling it. I love the metaphors in the work.

Tanya Gomelskaya (s.d.) Good Luck #14. [Oil on glass, resin, vintage frame] 16.5 x 10.1cm.


Tanya Gomelskaya (s.d.) Unrest. [Oil paint on glass, clay, vintage frame] 40.6 25.4cm.

Exercises

Prep & Experimentation

A few images around how things were kicking around in my mind, at the beginning of the unit.

As part of my mentorship, I’ve been experimenting with toning my surfaces. As I was setting up for this unit, sunset orange light was flooding my space, and I decided to roll with it. Using pigment heavily thinned, I let it create its shapes and lines. I wasn’t sure this was a good approach, but I knew it would create at least some interesting effects to respond to.


One of my black irises was knocked over in the rain, so I carefully pulled it apart and pressed it into my sketchbook. The result are these watercolor wash-like forms. very jewel like. These didn’t lead anywhere, but I still go back to them to marvel at the colours.

Can I pipe oil paint like icing? yes, sort of. Incredibly messy, but full of potential. I took some doing to get the approximately right consistency for piping. I used a blend of cold wax, and my chalk medium (chalk+linseed), with leftover paint from my palette. The result pipes reasonably well and sets up very hard due to the wax content.


Flower study

Thinking about circular forms naturally led to me thinking about flowers. I’m not usually someone who brings cut flowers into the home — I have a garden full of blooms after all. But these yellow and pink roses got me thinking as I approached this unit, I muddled along through some colour-mixing studies. Maybe I’ll do these again, as it was quite enjoyable.

Exercise 4.1

Exercise 4.2

Watercolor pencil. I couldn’t resist going at these drawings with water, for better or worse. I think the abstract qualities of the second (drawn while in a hotel while travelling) led me towards going abstract in the assignment.

Exercise 4.3

I seem to have missed doing this exercise, as I jumped straight into doing 4.4

Exercise 4.4

Adding “remains of the tomato” to my can, using chalk medium to add solidity. I quite like how the pull tab protrudes beyond the circle, and my managing to stay relatively loose with the overall work.
I was cleaning my palette, after a day or so, and all these paint films made interesting shapes on the glass. I wondered if I could transfer their wispy delicateness to the painting and affix them. Yes, and no, as you see in the following two images. I could transfer them, and with tiny dots of linseed oil I could fix them in place. But over the following week, the linseed creating new (and interesting!) textures as it spread and dried.

Less interesting attempts: paint wasn’t think enough, and my inspiration just wasn’t there, as I worked on these little images.

Supplementary Material

Portraiture Mentorship

I continued my mentorship with the portrait artist, through the summer. This has contributed greatly to my lack of successful time management. However, I’m enjoying it and continue to learn a ton. In particular, the artist is pushing me to be more confident. He challenged me to paint a large portrait (20×30, or so) using a reference set he specifically created. Inspiration was sort of Bridgerton, but gives me an opportunity to try out all that fancy lace frippery that I see in the old master’s.

Preparing my drawing and transfer
transferred
washing in my darks
Coat underlayers
Face underlayers

Landscape Exploration

As I continue to think about the potential charity auction at work in the fall, I’ve been testing out ideas of what to paint. Here is an in progress, some of the first layers, of a not-yet-abandoned attempt. It is very disjointed, and feels like two separate paintings. I like the qualities of each, but not together. I will likely lean towards the moodier darker painting suggested by the green&brown tree forms.