Response to Feedback for Assignment 4

I had a google hangout with my tutor following submission of Assignment 4, unfortunately the camera on my laptop wasn’t working so it was more like a phone call! However I always find these very useful.  This was followed up by a summary of the conversation in report format.

From the conversation and report I understand that my approach is better and there is more invention and confidence in my work which I was very happy to hear.

Feedback is very fair….my reflections…..

• I understand that there can be a tendency for some of the work in the landscape section to appear “a bit muddy”. I believe this was due to me trying to get to grips with working in oils outside and lack of experience  at this point but can also see how the suggestion of re looking at colour theory and making sure I am aware of clean lines will help.
• not working on corrugated cardboard going forward because of too much of an underlying texture…yes … it was an experiment that I got a little carried away with and the desire to find cheaper alternatives for experimenting on.
• changing brush more often….think I was just being lazy.
• understanding the rhythm of the object at the back of a scene…..I had gone back and altered an area which was clumsy and broke the flow of a tree with a bridge in front….
• Continue to experiment with ipad as a way of investigating possibilities….yes I was also quite surprised at the outcome of trying this will do more.
• Continue to experiment with ways of applying paint – loved doing this and happy to keep it up.\
• Go back and refresh myself on lessons in Drawing1 regarding negative space, structure and tonal range ……certainly a reminder or too would be good, I’ve been aware of being caught up in all the greenery which lead to sludgyness as in point 1.
• Visual research is going well….I would like to try and get to see more in the flesh, I’ve been very much doing this on the computer due to restraints on time with my daughters wedding…will try and get out more.
• Posts on the blog not showing properly……I have already going back and checked by looking on another computer…….they seem fine now….will continue to check as I go.

 

 

Assignment 4

Tags

Landscape, OCA, Oils, Painting

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The brief asks us to review the paintings produced in this part of the module and I have, first looked back at the work produced. Reading from bottom right backwards to top left I can see how I have been  working on loosening my painting and every now and then I get pulled back into being more literal.  Trying different methods of applying paint and scraffito have featured more and more and the work that was more spontaneous and/or on the spot is far more interesting.  Working quickly seems to produce more interesting results for me, the mark making is bolder and freer and in 2,4,and 8 this produced pictures I am more happy with.

Beginning this assignment I already have an idea of the place I want to portray and how I want to work.   I have recently been looking at Joan Eardley and admiring the bold loose style, something I would like to work towards, but which is alien to me. Again I am using familiar territory, my dog walking takes me to some lovely places, but I want to try to include some sort of man made structure into the landscape. This time of year, June, there is an awful lot of green around so I want to find something else to include and break this up.

Having chosen the spot I first want to get my composition sorted so make my first visit just to gather information. I take not only my sketchbook and home made viewfinder, but also my camera.  Over the course of this part of the module I have found that one can use different elements from both.   Sketches and thumbnails are the most valuable in terms of shapes and composition. The camera shots are just a visual reminder when away from the scene, and as I learnt in the last exercise I can pick out pieces from one photo to add and not slavishly follow the photograph.

Walking around the area I took loads of photos from different angles some to experiment with composition some to remind me of natural shapes as in roots, foliage and reflections in the river.

I then started on some thumbnail sketches just to start getting a feel for the tones.

I had taken one of my bits of card so used this with oil pastels to get a feel for the colours, I was starting to choose a particular view now and so went for a large A2 sketch in charcoal and chalk.

As this was much bigger I became more free with the drawing and felt this a good place to stop. Taking this information home to reflect on and to at least start on a coloured ground for use the next day when I will come back and try to get painting in situ.  There is quite a lot of dog walking traffic at this point, but I will just bring headphones an try to ignore it.  I had a lot of people peering over my shoulder today….bit uncomfortable….but when you get chatting most people are ok and just interested.

Day two, lugged all my stuff back again, much sunnier than yesterday, but still quite a bit of doggy traffic.  The smell of the oil paints kept them away though! Ha Ha.

After working for a couple of hours, I took everything back to the car with the intent of finishing at home.  I was getting bitten, forgot the insect repellant!!!!  Over the course of this module I have learnt also that I work better in quick bursts.  If I slog away at something it never seems to work.  If I take regular breaks the eye sees a lot more when I come back.

These are not great photos, but they show that when I got it home I started to adjust and scratch into the surface.

The following day the rain set in and so going out again was not a possibility.  I became increasing frustrated with trying to portray the river, in particular and it seemed to defeat me not matter how many time I changed the colour.

During the painting I tried to take my frustration out by making another very quick painting alongside the original.

I am undecided about how I feel about this, but it did the trick in helping me to carry on with the original.

At this point I am going to leave it for a couple of days, partly to dry and partly to have a think.

I have used bubblewrap to try and achieve foliage, however this looks a little weird not quite sitting comfortably with the other style so I might need to change this.

During the course of this module there have been several artists that I have discovered that have influenced how I would like to work.  Pierre Bonnard’s coloured grounds struck me first and since then I have used coloured grounds. In this painting I am pleased with the warmth of the red/orange ground which shows through and gives warmth to the scene. I am also trying to work across the whole scene simultaneously which gives a better feel of togetherness in the scene. I have recently discovered  Joan Eardley.  I would like to be able to paint with the seeming wild abandon that her landscapes have.  Clearly I have not achieved anything like that here however, the field in the background is the closest I have come to this sort of looseness and the foreground with several layers of washes is closer to the sort of feel of several layers that she achieves. I would need to give much more time to the oils and their drying process in the future.

After two days………

Having forced myself not to tinker or indeed look at it for two days, I can see three areas immediately that I want to work on.

First the bridge….there’s something awry with the perspective, so I set about trying to amend this.

Second the foliage is way to small for the size of the picture, the bubble wrap was hopeless, so I picked up a much larger brush and got bolder with the paint.

Thirdly the river.  I went back to my tonal thumbnails and noticed a much darker edge to the water caused by rocks.

Final Painting

I took the painting outside to photograph it. This is a much more realistic picture of the colour.

I am much happier with it now.  The particular areas that pleased me are:

• I have worked to work across all the canvas with my colours and this has tied the picture together there are elements of all the colours in all the areas.
• I’m glad I sorted out the perspective, its not perfect but much better.
• I love that not one plank of wood is the same as another, I’ve scratched and played with the colours a lot which I hope makes it look worn and not new.
• The warmth of the ground colour gives the scene a glow it did not have in life, but a sense I hope of a pleasant place to be.

Next time….

• Be bolder still.  I feel that this was not the scene to attempt wilder painting.  I had wanted a manmade feature amongst the landscape, but the fact that I chose to paint the bridge right across the canvas limited the attempt I’d hoped to make on being even looser.  I became a little obsessed with getting it right and therefore tightened up.
• I have learnt more about oils by having to work bigger.  The drying a little frustrating, but when glazing one colour over another I enjoy the interesting depth that can be achieved and in the foreground of this picture.  I would like to follow this up.
• Although the drying time is long, this makes oils easier to play with whilst wet which made the scraffito fun.  I used a pointed pallet knife and held it at the very edge of the handle with made the marks unpredictable…..more.
• I don’t enjoy foliage :(….my colours were not considered enough, and the marks rather timid.

I have added a few shots at the bottom of this to show close up areas of the piece.

 

Exercise: Working from a photograph

I have taken a photograph of mine, a very typical scene from my life, of my husband waking just in front of me with our dog. This happens every single day, twice a day.  I am interested to see how I can manipulate this scene into something different.

 

I took three areas of the photo and just sketched them into squares, drawn around beer mats, and found the square a comfortable format.

 

 

Continuing this line of thought I traced them and put them on top of each other.

Trying also with each layer in different colours as the black tended to look muddled.

Quick sketch in acrylics.  This looks very messy.  Hate the colours but then its acrylic in a sketch book so not great for colour choices.  This makes me think there’s something but I cant quite pinpoint it.  Do all the objects need to be there? Do they all need to be opaque. Should they be more realistic or less?

I appear to have transposed the diagonal row of threes too….not sure what happened there , this has made all the trees one side which might be why I don’t feel this works.

As a side note, there is a degree of separation that is quite useful when you take a picture of your sketchbook/paintings and upload to the blog.  It has a similar effect to leaving the room for 30 minutes.  You see it slightly differently, with fresh eyes and can be slightly less attached helping with the decisions sometimes.

Using the square format and water mixable oils I applied a very thin layer of burnt umber and then a thin blue and white mix which I had intended to scratch into.  the water mixable oils turned out to be not as good for the scraffito, so I went back over the tree area again.  Working on a paper  is now starting to prove not sufficient as I am being much more quick and rough with handling the paints and scratching. As can be seen from the picture above the paper was starting to give way in places.

I decided to at the figures next and then the further tree shapes.  I did this in green and then wondered why?  I was slavishly following my sketchbook and not using it just as a reference.  I wanted this to be the finished stage, but it doesn’t sit right with me.  I have had to use the rule of thirds here as the golden ratio isn’t right in a square format, so the positioning of the figures felt ok but the top trees have divided it too much .

I have now toned down the trees and am a little bit happier with it.

Original Photo

I have aimed to combine elements from the photo to convey a walk and the different parts of a wood all combined. My final picture feels “end of the day” in terms of colours. I have not  attempted to be accurate in my rendering of the shapes and amount of branches but tried to convey a feel.

It was tempting to refer back to the photo but I instead used my sketches as my reference.  Its been an interesting exercise and I find I have stepped even further away from the literal in this exercise.  Using just a few elements and not the whole photo was a deliberate decision and one I am pleased that I stuck with.  I have also learnt to not stick with my first idea of the end result and am glad that I went back in and played with the colours and scraffito again.  I am less content with the figures as they are a little naive.

As I mentioned earlier I think I will have to start using some more substantial surface as it is clear that it needs to be able to take more punishment.

Joan Eardley 1921–1963

Stumbling around on Pinterest yesterday evening I came across this artist… loved her work immediately.

She was a British artist noted for her portraiture of street children in Glasgow and for her landscapes of the fishing village of Catterline and surroundings on the North-East coast of Scotland.  Her landscapes were what attracted me first as obviously this is what I am looking at right now. However her portraits of the street children put me in mind of the work of Marlene Dumas, whose exhibition I visited as one of the first I attended with OCA.  Both produce haunting faces, hard to forget as they seem to look out at the viewer from behind masks, quite unsettling.

The landscapes attract me because of the energy of the mark making in very thick paint which gives texture to each scene.

This has a feel of sitting in the field as if peering up through the grasses, it feels wind swept, the brush strokes heading in all different directions.  There are just one or two details of the grass shapes, just on the surface layer it appears, these are enough to conjure up the whole field.  I understand from reading about her, that she like to paint actually in situ, she must have had to revisit a view many times as these are oils and the drying takes time, but they have dried between layers as you can see the drier brush strokes not blending with the colours underneath.

Wonderful winter view, the deep grey of the sky, threatening more snow.  From what I can see in this screen image it looks as though the paint has been scratched into as well as being applied very thickly.  The row of houses look as if they are sliding down the hill, perspectively incorrect by this adds to the atmosphere of the scene.  The limited colours used do give a sense of the cold, the greys, cold/icy blue and just enough brown to give a sense of the earth, frozen and colourless from little light.

 

References:

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/exhibition/joan-eardley-sense-place

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/10/joan-eardley-the-forgotten-artist-who-captured-scotlands-life-and-soul

Exercise: Squaring Up

I had tried this method of enlarging an image recently on an image from a magazine using pencil and felt tip, so was not completely new to it.

This time however, I chose a photograph that I had taken on a trip to Barcelona a few years ago.  I deliberately went for a scene that I have not attempted before, being buildings and people.

When drawing it I deliberately ignored the temptation to us a ruler for the straight lines on buildings as I wanted to stay as loose as possible.  This method does start to make you tighten and want to get things just so, which I have been working hard to get away from ….

I have been using a ground colour but started to paint too quickly and neglected to do this, so I opted for starting with bright colours to work on in this instance.

Working across the painting is bringing it together in terms of colour as I use whats left on the brush on different parts of the picture, however I do now have everyone in the same jeans 🙂

I’m starting to want to work faster which is difficult with such a detailed subject, so at this point am getting impatient.  I am thinking of drawing on top of the oil paint to get more control for the details.

 

Some of the drawing in oil pastels has helped, more distinction of the people and the ground and darker tones. The wobbly balconies however are fairly hilarious.

Shame that I clearly rushed things at this point, to be completely honest I lost interest in the picture and that shows, but I think the purpose of the exercise has been achieved.  I can now enlarge and image and retain all the qualities of composition and perspective if I should need to.

Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship exhibition at Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne

http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/exhibition/ravilious-and-co-the-pattern-of-friendship/

Visited this exhibition at The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne this morning.  My intent to research Eric Ravilious as he is one of my local artists, who grew up in East Sussex and many of his works depict local areas.

The exhibition focussed on a group of artists and designers from 1922 – 1942.  The central artist being Eric Ravilious who had professional relationships and friendships and working collaborations with artists such as John Nash and  Paul Nash. and many others exhibited. Reading the information, these artists had worked with each other and successfully networked and pushed to help each other succeed in commercial fields using their work for print, fabrics, book illustration and design.

The first room had a Paul Nash and an Eric Ravilious hanging side by side, which made for interesting comparison.

Paul Nash, The Shore, Dymchurch 1922

Eric Ravilious, The Waterwheel 1934

These are not great photos, but standing with the two pictures together my first thoughts were the similarity in mark making. They felt very masculine, the marks very firm and regular, precise, draughtsman like. The colours the same, muted shades. On closer inspection however the Paul Nash had been done 12 years before the Ravilious.

 

Moving to the next room there were many cabinets containing print work and delightful open sketchbooks from several female artists associated with the group.  This is from the sketchbook of Peggy Angus.  It appealed not only as it was little scenes of every day life, but also as they are very much of an age, so the clothing and colours so different to today.  Delicate drawings with pencil annotation.

 

 

 

There were also many woodcut prints by Eric Ravilious and others.  This is an art I was not so familiar with however looking at the prints and some of the original blocks I could see where the linear shading for his paintings linked.

His wife was also an artist, Tirzah Garwood, and I was particularly taken by her work, as although amongst this group of artists, she had maintained her own personality and her work stood out as being similar, due to technique, but retaining its own style.

 

Here a set of woodcut prints, each one having a gentle sense of humour, depicting everyday but with a smile, such as the lady who’s fallen asleep in her chair whilst reading a book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through the rest of the rooms the groups work became more similar. The paintings mainly in muted palettes.  The printed paper designs, geometric shapes mainly in one or two colours or two tones of one colour with black.

Eric Ravilious’s painting used line even when illustrating the curves of hills, and the clouds in scenery. At the end of this exhibit I felt perhaps I was looking more at an illustrator than an emotional painter. I felt he was drawing with the paint but I did not get a sense of any feelings or passion about what he was interpreting. Perhaps an artist very much of his time in terms of the British stiff upper lip, no emotional display!

 

 

Exercise: Painting from a working drawing

Choose a subject that you’re already familiar with and make three drawings.

 

As the weather was behaving I chose to do this exercise outside despite the suggested subject being the corner of a room.  I made my drawings at a pond at the end of our road, I have sketched it previously and know it very well.

I kept my sketchbook close and laid a surface colour of yellow ochre and then some background greens.  I scratched into these with a wok brush and pallet knife to “draw” the basic picture.

Beginning to apply some colours I continued to scratch into the picture, I also smudged with a cloth  to blend as I went.

 

My sketches helped  with the literal information of the image, where everything was, the colours and the tones.  I could have taken different materials to give me more accurate representation of colours as my pencils were quite limited. I could  also have done some smaller detail sketches for, say, the bark patterns.  However, I am heading away from literal representation and therefore overall felt that I had enough information.

Being away from the subject gave me more freedom to develop my techniques.  The temptation when in front of the subject to get very literal was removed by not being there. This afforded me the chance to play with techniques more. I am experimenting with more scratching, repainting and scratching again, the quick feel of the scratching appeals to my impatient nature and is starting to get interesting results.

I am not 100% happy with the finished painting.  The composition is a little dull, I don’t think it has a focal point of interest.  However I have learnt from this exercise.  I have taken several visits to the picture letting the colours dry in between and this has meant that I have brightened the pallet and developed the scraffiti technique further.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research(independent)

 

In an oxfam shop I picked up and purchased two books which took my eye.  One was actually an exhibition catalogue of work by Richard Diebenkorn, an artist whose name I knew, but about whose work I knew nothing.  The exhibition had been in 1991 at The Whitechapel gallery, London.

The second is a book on work by an artist, called Antoni Tapies.

Richard Diebenkorn 1922-1993, and american artist identified as an abstract expressionist.  Flicking through the plates in the catalogue I was particularly attracted to the series of paintings titled “Ocean Park”. One of these paintings is on the cover of the book. I took a quick look on the internet to find a little more about the artist.

Below are two of his landscape works, the first painted in 1955 entitled Berkeley “57 and the second is on of the Ocean Park series no 54.  This series is painted in the seventies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are abstract landscapes and in order to try and understand how he came to these I looked on the internet at actual photographs of the areas.  Berkley is a hillier and greener area of the USA, ocean Park California is vast spread out sun kissed and flat.

The colours in the paintings and the shapes portray the feel of the places, Ocean Park paintings in particular have an atmosphere of calm, I get this from the colours and the large flat shapes.  There is nothing busy here at all, which is the vibe California gives off. I have driven through this state and the enormous spaces, fields that go on for ever are so different to someone from England who is used to neat rolling green fields.  I feel as if these paintings also have a certain aerial view quality, as if the artist is looking down from above.

I  notice that there appears to be overpainting of original layouts, but these are not done in order to coverup as they are clearly visible.  There are also some line that are ruled in some of the paintings, perhaps in a pen of some sort they are too crisp surely to be paint.

Having looked at this work I was inspired to go off and riff a while in my sketchbook.

 

 

Having in mind my garden from the side and from above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I just played with colour and line

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I thought about my last exercise and some doodling that I had been doing using the diamond shape from my leaded light windows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I changed to watercolour pencils in a small sketchbook contemplating wet beaches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With regard to the Tapies works, I only skimmed the book at this stage, I found it maybe a step too far for my understanding. I will return to it at a later date.

 

References:

Richard Diebenkorn. (1991). 1st ed. Whitechapel.

Tàpies, A. (2005). Works on paper & sculpture. 1st ed. London: Waddington Galleries.

https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Richard_Diebenkorn

Exercise:painting a landscape outside

I have been thinking about this exercise for some time.  I knew before starting which view I would tackle.  I have a regular dog route and at a particular point there is a great path which goes down and up again, receding into the distance.  This view I know very well and I waited to catch it on a sunny day.

Before heading out, on a  rainy day I tried a couple of different approaches to it from my memory, to get a feel for the shapes and composition.

using some coloured papers and a felt tip I tried to envisage the composition.

 

Abstracting it further with some compressed charcoal.

 

As the weather didn’t improve I prepared an A2 sheet with a quick layer of umber oil.

 

 

 

 

Finally we got a good day and I headed out. Taking an easel and carrying case and a bag full of paints and turps, rags, brushes and other implements.  A Sandwich a banana and large bottle of water.

Getting set up, the first thing I did was do a very quick sketch to familiarise myself with the scene again and get a composition for the picture.  I was tempted to miss this out, as I know the view, but I’m glad I didn’t.  It proved very useful to position the painting and feel my way around the amount of trees and foliage.

 

Really warm day…..I built up the greens before scraping on the trees.  From previous exercises and in sketchbook playing I am using more and more different implements for putting on the paint.  This is giving my surprise mixes of colours and textures and as oil is a slow dryer there is plenty of time to move it around.

These are not the greatest photos as I forgot my camera and was relying on my phone.

I used scratching into the paint for more detail and at this point I took this home, I was hot and the paint was starting to merge into a grey, I felt it probably needed to dry before tackling any more.

Once I got the painting home, I was very disappointed with the colours, the light in the forest and the sun on the canvas, combined with wearing sunglasses on and off against the glare had given me a distorted view of the colour.

Preparation for painting outside next time I will need to consider……

• The supplies…..can I get everything into a rucksack rather than carrying a cumbersome bag.
• Take a hat ( I was feeling a bit odd by the end of  the session as the sun was beating down on my head for about 3 hours in total.
• Standing up is best, however as small stool might be a useful thing to purchase.  This time I was lucky as I had a fallen tree to sit on.
• Take a camera next time …….my phone was ok but I could have taken better shots with my camera and taken the opportunity to collect other views and object i might use in further paintings.
• Take a trial trip out to the view for sketching, I had convinced myself I didn’t need to this time as I walk this path every day, however you do look at things very differently when you are going to paint them.
• Make myself a viewfinder.  I am aware that sometimes I get overawed by the whole view and find it tricky to just select an area to concentrate on.
• Maybe take an ipod, the music would distract me from noticing people and when they notice the earphones they may not stop to talk to me!!  Actually this was not as daunting as I thought it would be most people are nice and think your quite brave to be doing this at all!!

I did learn that….

The sunlight combined with polarised sunglasses greatly effected the colour, or rather my perception of the colours.  This is tricky as I wear prescription glasses and my sunglasses have the prescription in them.  I will need to be aware of taking them on and off a lot more.

The little sketch I did on the spot, first, was very useful in getting positioning right.

I am pleased with the effect of scratching into the paint and have learnt to then paint on top of that too. My painting is becoming more multilayered and the area in the bottom right of the painting shows me future possibilities of this technique.

I am going to let this dry for a few days and go back in with some more colour to improve the contrast between the darks and lights and give some more definition to the trees.  I could sharpen up the foreground too, as there is not really much aereal perspective here, just a little in the top right of the picture, maybe more, would give the picture more depth.

 

Research point: Golden Mean/Golden Ratio

Research the Golden Mean/Golden Ratio and its applications to artistic composition.  Don’t get bogged down in the maths of this.Find out also about ‘the rule of thirds’ in landscape.Look on the internet and find some examples of landscape paintings that exemplify these compositional principles.

I read and watched many explanations of the Golden Mean/Ratio on-line and many seem to concentrate on the maths of this phenomenon rather than its application.   The ratio is 1:1.618, and this number applies to the difference between the proportions of the ‘golden rectangle, image representing this below.   These proportions have  for centuries been recognised as the most appealing to the eye. This ratio appears everywhere in nature, in art, in design, in music and in the human body therefore it would appear that it is natural for us to be more drawn to art that contains these proportional relationships.

 

The ratio of the whole line (A) to the large segment (B)

is the same as

the ratio of the large segment (B) to the small segment (C).

In other words, A is to B as B is to C.

This occurs only where A is 1.618 … times B and B is 1.618 … times C.

This is taken from https://www.goldennumber.net/golden-section/

 

Out of interest I tried to overlay a Golden Rectangle on my most recent landscape exercise using Photoshop. The proportions of the painting aren’t a fit however I do seem to have got close without realising, luck obviously, however  this raises the question in my mind ….do artists actually think about this consciously when starting a painting? They may not, but the results are more pleasing if they fit this law.    Are all commercial canvases and sketchbooks in this proportion?  A4 paper is not, I just looked, its 1:1.41. But then again its not about the size of the canvas is it? Its about the proportions of the image within that catch the viewers eye.

Examples from the internet

George Seurat – Bathers

Salvador Dali

Dali’s painting is actually done within a golden rectangle.  The positions of the disciples on either side being at the position of the golden sections, and the table is at the golden section of the height of the painting.

 

The Rule of thirds is for me easier to understand, having learnt this one initially for photography.  The example below demonstrating it nicely.  Dividing the area equally with two horizontal and two vertical lines, placing the interest at the junction points and not dead centre makes for a more dynamic image.

An example of its use using Dali again….

References:

http://emptyeasel.com/2009/01/20/a-guide-to-the-golden

https://www.goldennumber.net/golden-section/

https://www.thoughtco.com

http://www.widewalls.ch/golden-ratio-examples