It might seem the wrong way round, but I decided to put my collages first and then the notes on individual paintings, and finish by answering the questions in the course book and how well I met the assessment criteria.
Collage 1:
Basis: Meaning
I tried to think if I could construct a coherent internal meaning out of randomly chosen found images/grounds and media.
It was a bit like that game where you’re given 100 found words and have to make a poem out of them, what I would definitely do next time if I did a collage/series of images is have them thematically linked, like Annie Kevan’s ”Boys’. And having chosen the images then think very carefully whether I used the same or different media and styles.
Initially, I tried to find a collage maker online but am so glad I didn’t as handling the paintings and moving them around was so rewarding and helped my thought processes.
I couldn’t find an overarching meaning (internal coherence) so went for as many little connections as I could, such as the director and the performer both pointing; it hopefully sets up a little dynamic and comments on the nature of gestures which we decode and take for granted. Another example is the bottom right where Freddy Mercury’s arm leads you into the painting (compositional element) but also he’s a popular artist brightening up the lives of the ordinary people, in this case Lowry’s factory workers… and makes a little comment on bread and circuses aka Orwell.
I think the strongest image – emotionally – is the young woman with her head in her hands painted in ink. If there is a key to the meanings swirling around in this painting I think it would focus around her.
Collage 2:
Basis: Colour/composition
Interestingly I find this far less satisfying (it’s based on colour and composition) which tells me that the most important thing for internal cohesion and ‘presence’ in a painting – I’m counting the collage as a single painting – is meaning.
There are 100’s of combinations – I just did two as I don’t think doing any more would fundamentally improve my understanding of the concept.
Total time allowed: 27 hours (I probably went about 10 to 15 hours over this on the painting up.)
Review exercises and decide on images and grounds etc plus write-up in log book:
2 hours
Cut paper and prepare grounds:
1 hour
Painting and notes (1 hour painting and 6 minutes photographing and writing up)
22 hours???? 32???
Arranging and photographing in a square:
0.75 hours
Changing arrangement/photographing/writing up:
0.75 hours
Assessing against course criteria:
0.5 hours
There are various ways to approach this… I’m going to look at which paintings I did in my exercises that I particularly like and use that as a basis to start… then I’m going to think of any other combinations of material and ground that might work.
Next I’m going to try to match the material/ground combination to my image and intention (though as I’m using found images rather than building up a painting from scratch it remains more of an exercise than an intention led assignment).
I also like the idea of painting in series, so I’m going to use the same image with different combinations and see how that effects the final painting.
A) Combinations that I like
From Exercise 1.1
1) Thin pink acrylic and black watercolour (the colours could be changed the black and pink work well)
2) Thin pink acrylic and thin acrylic… the result is similar to above so it will be interesting to explore the difference in a longer painting
3) White gouache on black gouache.
4) Watered down yellow watercolour and grey poster paint – this was a surprise but the lack of tonal difference adds something to the painting.
5) Varnish on white HP watercolour paper and black gouache – the varnished white gives the painting a harder edge feel than if it had been on poster paint white.
6) Pale yellow watercolour and grey acrylic – again the grey and yellow, oddly, work well.
7) Poster paint on top of poster paint splodges, this is extremely effective but I will varnish the finished painting both to preserve/protect it (curatoral) and to enhance the colours.
8) Watered down acrylic splodges and watercolour – this gave an unexpected etherial quality… very interesting.
9) Just paper and thin black ink.
10 and 11) Acrylic white and very thin gouache – One with and one without varnish, I want to see how the varnish affects the outcome… I suspect it may give it a more ‘oil’ paint look and deepen the colours, but the the matt ‘scrubby’ quality of the thinned gouache may work better
12) Black acrylic and very thin gouache.
From exercise 1.2
13) White poster paint and grey acrylic.
14) White gouache on black poster paint.
From exercise 1.4
15) Black ink on HP watercolour paper.
Other combinations I want to try
16 and 17 – I also want to work with coloured inks both inside black lines and tonally… as the ink works so well on white HP watercolour paper I’ll use that as a ground.
18 – black ink on watered on acrylic splodges
19 and 20 – A friend gave me a set of heavy bodied professional acrylics and I want to try these out, on the pack it says they are good for impasto so that would be a different technique as most of the other combinations involve thin paint. As the acrylic will be opaque (if only from there impasto nature) I think they would work well with coloured grounds – I don’t need the white ground to reflect light back through them.
So… perhaps a black acrylic… this will be shiny and give it depth rather than black poster paint… though the contrast of matt poster paint and impasto acrylic might have worked.
… and pale yellow watercolour… if I leave this unvarnished it will give me an idea how the matt quality works.
B) Found images that I like
I could source more images but think this assignment is more about experimenting with painting media than a finished product expressing artistic intention… so the driving force is different.
Which doesn’t mean by its very nature of picking painting combinations that I like that the ‘product’ won’t express an artistic voice, and in having a voice intentions will start to creep in… a realist style is different from realism, a gestural quality different from tight accuracy. So I think the artistic voice, in as far as it reflects a way of seeing/interpreting the world, has an effect on the viewer even without a specific (high concept) conscious intention.
- Frozen pond – my photograph from phone.
- Lowry – page out of old calendar.
- Freddie Mercury – publicity photograph from film.
- Monet – page from old calendar.
- Children playing – black and white publicity shot from film Roma.
- Face – black and white large newspaper photograph of Don McCullin’s face.
- Director at work – black and white publicity shot of Alfonso Cuaron directing Roma.
- Julian Trevelyan painting – from fron of gallery handbook.
- Modigliani Young woman – postcard from exhibition.
- Pierre Bonnard still life – postcard from Fitzwilliam museum.
- My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant covering her face because she doesn’t want to be photographed.
- My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant posing with a smile by giant naan bread on celebratory meal.
For the paintings above I’m roughly going to copy them with my spin, I’ll alter the composition of the photographs to make them more aesthetic.
But, some of these I want to paint twice just to see what the effect is.
13) Pond – I want to do an ‘abstract’ colour version of this.
14) Pierre Bonnard – acrylic white and thin gouache unvarnished.
15) Pierre Bonnard – acrylic white and thin gouache varnished.
16) Freddie Mercury – coloured inks with line.
17) Josh’s photograph face covered – coloured inks tonal.
18) Jon Trevelyan – black ink on watered down acrylic splodges.
19) Monet – black acrylic ground with impasto acrylic.
20) Pierre Bonnard – yellow watercolour with impasto acrylic.
My 20 paintings an hour each including prepping support
- Frozen pond – my photograph from phone – white gouache on black gouache.
- Lowry – page out of old calendar – thin pink acrylic ground with thin acrylic
- Freddie Mercury – publicity photograph from film – pale yellow watercolour ground with grey acrylic.
- Monet – page from old calendar – white poster paint ground and grey acrylic.
- Children playing – black and white publicity shot from film Roma – watered down yellow watercolour ground with grey poster paint
- Face – black and white large newspaper photograph of Don McCullin’s face – watered down acrylic splodges ground with watercolour.
- Director at work – black and white publicity shot of Alfonso Cuaron directing Roma – thin pink acrylic ground with black gouache.
- John Trevelyan painting – from front of gallery handbook – varnish on white HP watercolour paper ground with black gouache.
- Mondrian Young woman – postcard from exhibition – poster paint on top of poster paint splodges – varnish finished painting.
- Pierre Bonnard still life – postcard from Fitzwilliam museum – White HP paper ground with watercolour.
- My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant covering her face because she doesn’t want to be photographed – HP water-colour paper with thin black ink.
- My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant posing with a smile by giant naan bread on celebratory meal – black poster paint g
- Pond – I want to do an ‘abstract’ colour version of this – black acrylic ground with very thin gouache.
- Pierre Bonnard still life – acrylic white ground thin gouache.
- Modigliani’s bearded man – acrylic white ground with thin gouache varnished.
- Freddie Mercury – HP white water-colour paper with coloured inks, with black lines.
- Josh’s photograph face covered – HP white water-colour paper with coloured inks tonal.
- Julian Trevelyan – black ink on watered down acrylic splodges.
- Monet – black acrylic ground with impasto acrylic.
- Pierre Bonnard – yellow watercolour ground with heavy body acrylic.
Paintings: (these are all on 6 inch x 6 inch HP 300gm water-colour paper)
- Frozen pond – from my photograph on phone – white gouache on black gouache ground.
Discovered a new way of working: if I outlined the shapes in thin white it dried sufficiently so I could infill with watery white so that it picked up the black gouache and made frosty patterns, as the white quickly went grey I had to keep remixing fresh white and add it so it looked natural. This gave quite a dull grey frosty look.
I then added touches of undiluted white gouache to show the cracks, air bubbles and frosted grass. Finally I added the stones; white and grey for larger stones to give structure and different greys for the smaller stones.
I’m quite pleased with this as the choice of medium suited the subject and has worked well in capturing the ‘feel’ of the beautiful frozen puddle.
2) Lowry painting from an old calendar – black acrylic on a think pink acrylic ground, 300 gm HP water-colour paper.
What I love about the Lowry is the way he captures the distance, and a really complex scene, with bold fluid brushstrokes and washes – I think washes could be a technique I could develop in my painting as they are a mixture between control and happy accident and can convey so much mood and ‘detail’.
Lowry’s figures are a stroke or two which capture the person and their travel perfectly. You get working class or posh, man and woman, late, with friends, young and old. I definitely want to try to sketch more people moving… just three or four lines in a few seconds.
I think the ground and medium go together well with the pink providing colour, mood and unifying the painting, and the medium providing the tone and texture.
It seems to be a bit of a theme with my painting as some bits of this {the texture on the buildings on the right and some of the people} are working very well and other bits less so. The bits that work are where I paint without thinking, connected to the canvas seeing the people move and the dirt on the walls and missed out my thinking brain, the less effective bits are those where I tried to copy shapes and tones.
3) Freddie Mercury – publicity photograph from film – pale yellow watercolour ground with grey acrylic.
I like the yellow and grey which give it an inspirational tone, and almost feels as if he’s hitting the high note. It’s amazing how different colours shift a painting and carry/echo/amplify different meanings.
I decided to miss off the Africa behind him to keep the composition cleaner as this seemed to be what the colour demanded.
My small brushes have splayed a little so it was difficult finding the right brush… and the acrylic is very unforgiving for washes and lines, as soon as you lay it on it sticks. And once it’s at all dry it’s fixed, so you can’t pull it out. This is teaching me about how important it is to understand what my media can do.
The watercolour was generally very fixed (much more than the poster paint) and didn’t easily mix into the wet acrylic. Again, I’m learning what different mediums do together.
Lots wrong with this, the outstretched arm is the wrong shape, and with acrylic it’s very difficult to correct it.
But, by overlaying the washes and using thicker paint I was able to get a reasonable tonal range and the face and hand are starting to work.
4) Monet – page from old calendar – white poster paint ground and grey acrylic.
I worked fast because it’s very difficult to rework these mediums when used together. The heavier acrylic marks are immediately fixed and you can’t redo the wetter work as it just makes a muddy mess as it mixes with the poster paint.
Very interesting how having poster paint under the acrylic needs a totally different technique, and gives very different results, from the watercolour.
Any wet paint mixes almost immediately with the poster paint so you have to work very quickly with wet washes, unless you want an opaque grey. This gave me two wash techniques… the thinned acrylic, which didn’t lift the poster paint, but was immediately permanent, and the wetter paint that I could use as super quick washes or ‘mix’ with the white poster paint. I could use different tones of washes but it was very difficult to layer the washes without lifting the poster paint underneath.
Interestingly I found myself standing up to finish this off as I needed to paint it ‘intuitively’ from a distance to see it come together.
My favourite part is the water shadow from the big tower which is beginning to ripple.
5) Children playing – black and white publicity shot from film Roma – watered down yellow watercolour ground with grey poster paint.
It’s interesting as when I did this upside down I captured the whole photograph and movement, here I’ve cropped it to my central field of vision. It changes the composition completely, and the child leaving the frame is quite effective.
Yellow and grey are a good colour combination and the daylight looks amazingly bright. This would have been totally different on white paper.
The watercolour stayed fixed but the poster paint was difficult to apply in a ‘painterly’ way with any degree of control.
What I’m doing more and more is drawing with my brushes, and working tonally, it may not be as accurate as pencil and I don’t know if my corrections can become part of the painting but it’s a technique I like. It’s a bit like sculpting in as far as the image is evolving as I paint by addition and subtraction.
What I would like to do is work quickly, accurately and intuitively… once the grey was on it was very difficult to correct so I think a medium that allowed me to go in both directions (adding and subtracting) would suit my evolving style.
6) Face – black and white large newspaper photograph of Don McCullin’s face – watered down acrylic splodges ground with watercolour.
My first choice was whether to go for a ‘colour’ painting or use a single hue, as I wasn’t aiming for a realist painting I opted for yellow. Yellow is the lightest hue and would make some interesting colour combinations with the background, white would be too harsh even though it would give me the greatest tonal range.
My biggest problem was I couldn’t see what I was painting as the yellow is so translucent. So I had to ‘guess’ and build up multiple layers till an image started to emerge.
Is this the same technique as glazing with oil?
There are, as usual, a lot of faults with this, mainly in the drawing as the nose is too long, the nostril is the wrong shape and the gap between the bottom of the mouth and lips far too small.
However, I love what the painting is beginning to do in terms of colour (even though as the background is random there wasn’t always the right tone underneath). The nose, eyes, shirt and face are almost glowing and the background breaks up the face in a really interesting way. The yellow wash pulls the face clear, yet the yellow blends with the background and unifies the painting.
As a technique I think this has a lot of promise.
The watercolour works well on the acrylic because the acrylic is stable and doesn’t ‘lift’. However watercolour on watercolour might work as the watercolour ground has been stable in my other paintings, although the danger is I might work it too much by adding darker tones where I need them and making the painting too tight.
I’m learning that the combination of intent and accident, then using the accident, is a great way of working as the random element brings freshness and surprise, for instance in this painting the red and the blue eye work well.
7) Director at work – black and white publicity shot of Alfonso Cuaron directing Roma – thin pink acrylic ground with black gouache.
I didn’t know where to start on this and built it up from a very thin wash to get his outline, adding and taking away stronger washes, and working back into painted areas… I spent a long time on his head, next his clothes and jacket, then the sink and just a few minutes on the tap, house and wall on the left and sky.
His head is still not right but bits of it are beginning to work, the light tonal washes work well to build up features; but I need more practice to both get it right and then make it looser.
Parts of his jacket are working well, though I can see tonal errors and could have added more wash to darken the right hand side; I think his jeans are great and I love the way you can leave a very thin highlight by putting a wash close to a darker area (I’m starting to decode boundaries as I go, whether they’re formed by light on dark or dark on light, and leave a gap or add a line whichever is appropriate); and the tap, and slightly out of focus trees and house to the left of him and sky work really well.
This is teaching me, again, how fast and loose can be very descriptive and effective; how you can paint different areas of your paintings in different styles… or not… it’s another choice; and how effective monochrome tonal paintings are – you can almost read the different colours in this, and I don’t miss the colour at all… so it will be interesting to see how this informs my paintings when I get back to colour.
It certainly reiterates the value of using thin washes and how different mediums react on different grounds.
8) Julian Trevelyan painting – from front of gallery handbook – varnish on white HP watercolour paper ground with black gouache.
This was difficult as the gouache spotted on the shiny varnish, I had to thicken it till it stuck, then ‘rub’ it in, then dilute it and take it off.
Another problem was that Trevelyan had used colour instead of tone (many of his colours were tonally very similar) in a lot of his painting which, if you only have tone, causes lots of problems. What I also noticed when I was painting it was that this had a big design element, and the visual language was different from painting.
The effect of black on white (there are greys caused by thin black over white but these have a totally different quality to greys made with mixing white and black as they are much ‘cleaner’ and sharper) is very interesting. It makes the painting much edgier, changes it into a coal mining area? and adds mystery and personality to the face.
The combination of mediums is interesting too as the little spots of white give it definite feel, and in a strange way for such a stylised painting make it more convincing.
9) Modigliani Young woman – postcard from exhibition – poster paint on top of poster paint splodges – varnished.
What I realised most painting this was what a genius Modigliani was, the composition is stunning, the way he’s arranged the colours, the tonal structure is brilliant, it’s like diamonds and sends a shiver down my spine. And the way he’s simplified the structure (colour and shape) to a few seemingly simple brushstrokes that carry so much information blows me away.
I think the splodges underneath enhance the painting as they give the impression she’s by a window with trees and vegetation outside.
It was frustrating working on such a small canvas and I desperately wanted to stand up and throw the paint around, but I tried to pick different brushes to make it look like it had been painted on a bigger canvas. And I’m learning that your tools, just like the ground and medium, are very important as they put the paint on differently, change the brushstrokes, and dramatically alter the painting.
I sprayed it with fixative and then varnished it (see below). The varnish will protect the paint from UV light so should prolong its life. Long term I’ve no idea how it would curate… but it would be possible to paint in children’s poster paint, which would be an interesting choice and even more humble than Gary Hume’s house paint.
The varnish deepens the colours but you have to be careful not to miss bits… or get hairs stuck in the varnish, it’s quite an art.
10) Pierre Bonnard still life – postcard from Fitzwilliam museum – White HP paper ground with watercolour.
I think there is a very specific way of using watercolour which is to do with washes, keeping everything clean, getting it right first time and using the ‘white’ paper underneath. Unfortunately, I don’t know the technique, and used it like I would acrylic or gouache.
With tube paint you can squeeze out new colours and move them around with a palette knife so every mix is fresh. But with watercolour unless your brush is perfectly clean you dirty the pan colour very quickly.
I think it would take a long time ands a lot of practice to learn how to use watercolours, though using them in a naive way is interesting in itself. And it has certainly given me much more understanding of watercolour paintings.
The result is still credible and there are bits that are working; surprisingly the left hand grapes and tablecloth.
My biggest surprise is how different its personality is to any other paint I’ve used, it is delicate, clean and sharp. This could not have been painted with any other media, so it’s a very good example of how a media affects the outcome. You would only choose it if you wanted a specific effect.
11) My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant covering her face because she doesn’t want to be photographed – HP water-colour paper with thin black ink.
There’s something in this that is beginning to pull me in as a viewer.
Again, I don’t miss the colour.
I re-cropped the photograph to tighten the focus and get rid of background detail that wasn’t part of what I wanted to say.
Bits of this work really well such as the table behind and bottle and prawn crackers on the right… a few deft strokes, washes and leaving blank paper are definitely the most effective way of working. And surprisingly (or maybe this is just me) even though the left hand is badly drawn it still works in a funny sort of way, it’s more discordant because it’s a different style to the rest of the painting than because of its inaccuracies.
What is slowly dawning on me is that you can paint anything, with anything in any style… and what makes a painting is its simplification and choices. You’re not copying, you’re creating something new.
12) My son’s photograph of his girlfriend in restaurant posing with a smile by giant naan bread on celebratory meal – black poster paint ground with white gouache.
Faces are difficult and this still isn’t working… mainly because the tonal difference are too great, and once the gouache has been painted on and dried it’s difficult to adjust as it dissolves the gouache and mixes with the black. The bold brushstrokes, such as on the arms and hands, are working quite well.
I cropped this and moved things about so the right hand side of her body is ‘made up’. I did this because once you change the canvas (in this case square) it alters your composition from a rectangular canvas, you can’t just take out a square section.
Given the restrictions of the media for what I was trying to achieve (apart from the face) I’m quite pleased with this.
13) Pond – I want to do an ‘abstract’ colour version of this – black acrylic ground with very thin gouache.
I decided to go for a limited palette rather than an explosion of rainbow colours because I wanted to reflect the subtle tonal differences with a similar closeness in hues.
My idea was to build up a series of washes to create shifting marbling of tone and hue but the thin gouache showed up the brushstrokes. There are three layers on the painting; orange, red and yellow. I think it was possibly most effective after the second, red, wash.
I’m not sure if this has worked but if you squint or look at it from a distance it looks like the icy pond is reflecting a bonfire (though that might be because I know it was based on a frozen puddle). I like the counterpoising of fire and ice. And the painted up feature, which is a frozen stone, stands out and looks like it could be flesh… a finger? Which gives the painting a disturbing surreal edge.
Again and again with this exercise I’m learning that painting is creating not copying. I’m trying to ‘reproduce’ the found image in a realist way with different media, I’m creating entirely new images by being open to what the new media suggests. So two things are happening, the media is changing the painting because of its intrinsic qualities but also because I am painting in different ways with different media.
14) Pierre Bonnard still life – acrylic white ground thin gouache.
Mixing the colours slowed me down.
Each medium has its own properties, gouache will stick to acrylic if it’s not too thin but if you paint over dry gouache it lifts the layer underneath. And because the acrylic is fixed the gouache doesn’t mix with the painting media like poster paint would.
I found I’m starting to draw in paint and block out areas in a base colour, this seems to work quite well.
I could do this a lot better if I had a bigger canvas and more time but barring the obvious tonal and colour faults I’m quite pleased with this.
The feel is different to watercolour, ink or acrylic… very interesting.
(And, of course, not only are the media different but how you apply them; thin, ‘normal’ or impasto radically changes the personality of the painting).
15) Modigliani bearded man – acrylic white ground with thin gouache varnished.
I painted this in a different style.
I turned thin black and white into thick impasto coloured.
The left arm isn’t long enough so I juggled for ages to make the body work and he ended up much fatter. This was because I didn’t draw it but had a go at slapping it down quickly… a great idea but if your shape is wrong then it’s very difficult to paint your way out of it.
But, apart from this being a fat version of Modigliani’s classic I’m quite pleased with the result.
It’s starting to be interesting. I’m not sure why it’s not fully working or what I’ve got wrong, but it’s definitely got potential. And I like the impasto as it gives form without detail and the brushstrokes really add to the painting.
16) Freddie Mercury – HP white water-colour paper with coloured inks, with black lines.
I tried a new tactic which was to get the lines right first time, be bolder, looser, flow more… then ‘work in’ the colour. I think it’s working as this has a freshness and power some of my other paintings don’t. There is the problem of lack of skill, it’s very difficult to get the lines right first time, but I will get better.
17) Josh’s photograph face covered – HP white water-colour paper with coloured inks tonal.
This was very interesting as I tried painting with the inks. It seems to be all about using the paper underneath and understanding what the medium can do in terms of washes.
The biggest problem is knowing where to start, how to crop it – it’s like sculpting quick setting plaster, the shapes and hues start fluid but set very quickly.
Even though ink is a liquid it works in a very different way to watercolour: it dries differently and the washes work differently.
18) Julian Trevelyan – black ink on watered down acrylic splodges.
I tried the same principle here, working quickly and sticking with my first lines even if they were wrong.
So, it’s not a copy, but a ‘based on’… interestingly this has strength and vulnerability and reminds me of me in my 20’s, it wasn’t intentional but like verbal language what comes out sometimes surprises us.
The background colours and tones are in the wrong places so the randomness doesn’t work in this painting, although in places it has produced some interesting results. I tried to correct the background colours by adjusting their tone with thin washes.
19) Monet – black acrylic ground with impasto acrylic.
Am pleased with this… what a genius Monet was.
On a small canvas with a limited set of brushes (painting is a lot easier with the right tools) you’re limited in your mark making. But I tried to use different brushes for different brushstrokes and here the brushstrokes are as important as the colours. The more I worked the more I saw.
I really like the buttery semi impasto way of working.
20) Pierre Bonnard – yellow watercolour ground with heavy body acrylic.
My partner bought me some heavy body acrylics and this is the first time I’ve used them. They’re buttery and shiny and unlike ordinary acrylics, they cover differently… the colours are different; they dry and mix differently. I’ve never used oils but I imagine they’re similar to oils… only acrylics dry darker, which is a pain.
Apart from the frustration of working on a small canvas (I needed small stiff brushes to move the heavy bodied acrylic around and only had soft watercolour brushes) there was the problem of the colours drying darker, this was especially noticeable with highlights which I had to lighten after they had dried.
…………………………………………………
Which paintings were most successful and why?
Visually the Monet and Pierre Bonnard in heavy bodied acrylic; and emotionally the ink painting of the woman with her head in her hands.
I think this was successful because it mirrored the media and technique of Monet, so it was basically a copy of his painting, and it’s his composition and choices that make this work.
However, I think it shows some skill in colour and brushwork.
The thick buttery acrylics are very like I imagine oils, and my technique of mixing small amounts on the palette as I went along feels very oil like, to judge by the palettes of famous oil painters I’ve seen such as in the 3D Tate exhibition featuring Modigliani’s studio with burning cigarette and palette.
But, as with the Monet, this works mainly because it’s a copy of Bonnard’s still life.
Looking at my collage this is the only painting that affects me emotionally and arrests my attention, so it is the most successful.
It is my reinterpretation of a photograph (very heavily cropped, refocused and objects moved around or cut out) with my colours and composition… I was in charge of creating the painting to convey the meaning I wanted, and I also had an emotional connection the image.
The drawing and painting are not the strongest but my intention is.
So, I think, what made this successful is my planning and emotional connection… I cleared the table of food and added a single bottle and empty glass – there’s been an argument and the other person has left (that’s not the real narrative, that’s my narrative)… she’s alone in the restaurant as I cut out all the other people to isolate her. The empty table behind her links with the background and also frames her making a circle round her to echo that she is lost in her own bubble… the background is bright and colourful in contrast to her distress… and I added the horizontal cutting through her head to add a jarring note to reflect her pain.
In short, this has my voice.
What arrangement worked best and why?
Collage 1 worked best (see my notes at the beginning of this article) because I arranged the paintings around meaning and created little narratives inside the collage. This gave it some internal coherence which Collage 2, based on colour and composition, didn’t have… collage 2 felt empty and meaningless.
If you were to develop this work, how would you do it?
As I said in my earlier notes, I would start with a theme like Annie Kevin’s ‘Boys’ and choose all my found images in line with my theme, this would hard wire an internal cohesion into the finished collage. I would select many more images than I intended to use and think how they work emotionally and psychologically together. Then I would make choices about media, style and ground based on how I wanted to present them and what would be most effective to convey my intention.
Which artists have influenced you and how?
Amedeo Modigliani – I love his paintings and wanted to see how hard it was to achieve that clarity of line and form.
He influenced me in that I started to try to paint with single bold strokes and not correct ‘wrong’ drawing. And to put more of me in my painting and try to look at the whole not the detail.
Pierre Bonnard – Another idol – my prime motivation was to see what it was like to paint like him as I love colour and want to learn how to capture a visual ‘impression’.
In copying him it forced me into a new quicker way of working, constantly mixing, checking… building up wholes out of lots of tiny details (a very different way of working to Modigliani) and seeing the images come into focus.
Having tried his way of painting I can see it’s doable, which is good, but it feels like a cage as it’s not my voice. I want to speak with my voice. So it has influenced me to want to break free and find my own way of doing things.
Edward Monet – As above, but his way of working is very different to Pierre Bonnard, it’s much quicker – more ‘plein air’. He very quickly moves round the whole canvas capturing fleeting moments to build an overall impression.
He also has a more physical and emotional connection with the image, having done both Bonnard’s still life feels more like slow studied studio work?
So this has pushed me into yet another way of working and made me realise that, even if the results are superficially similar, an artists voice is as unique as his speaking voice. You can never mimic (and why would you want to, it’s like being a tribute band when you want to sing your own songs) another artist as you are always copying an external sound, it doesn’t come from within you.
Julian Trevelyan – This introduced me to printmaking, as although this is a painting its design is very print based.
You can do almost anything with it colour wise, but if you stick to the design it still works. This made me think about the difference between print making, which I’m drawn to, and painting.
It made me want to subvert the design and try to introduce some of me into the painting, which I think I did as my coloured version has a vulnerability that the original doesn’t have.
I’m not there yet in understanding prints and how they might influence my painting, but they seem to have different visual rules and outcomes. Generally prints, for me, have an immediate punch in the face graphic immediacy but lack the subtle overtones and emotional heft of great art. They remind me of pop art and Japanese prints more than traditional 19th and early 20th century art.
However, as everything now seems to be hybrids of old styles it may be something I want to incorporate, at least for specific paintings.
Don McCullin – It wasn’t choosing his image that affected me, or even his photographic style, it was that he was a famous photographer. It made me constantly compare and contrast painting to photography – I’ve come to the conclusion that nowadays photography is a branch of painting… maybe it always was?
(Artists have always used technical innovation and mechanical media in their art – photography produces a flat image with ink and can be manipulated from realist to abstract.)
So, I was constantly thinking about re-interpreting photographic images in a painterly way.
Reflect on the ways you’d like to develop your work and the essence of what you hope to communicate?
Part 1 has been revolutionary in shaking up my artistic tree, nothing will ever be the same again… it feels like waking up from a dream to a new world where the old has been wiped clean and anything is possible, but you have to build it up from scratch.
It’s as if my real artistic training is starting now and the first two courses Drawing 1 and POP 1 were just giving me some basic craft skills in order to start my training.
Specifically, I have discovered several important things:
- I’m most connected to people even though my drawing skills in this area are weakest. So, I might have to work on my people drawing skills whether that’s by copying masters, speed sketching in public places or (when I can afford it) life drawing classes.
2. I don’t like copying other people’s style and am happiest when I’m creating my own painting with my meaning and a purpose. I would love to create my own paintings from scratch and with my own style – only I don’t know what my style is yet.
3. I love colour and think it’s a strength but find my copies of impressionistic paintings, however initially attractive, lacking in meaning.
Which means I’ve either got to create something so beautiful it goes beyond design (I think an empty visual copy however aesthetic is design not art) and only becomes art when it has meaning. This could be plein air in capturing a sense of moment, light, air, and mood… so well it creates a reaction in the viewer. Or like Monet’s vase of flowers it goes beyond the visual into the spiritual and awe-inspiring.
Or I use my love of colour in a different way?
4. I like loose gestural work but also like thick buttery colours.
5. I’d like to start discovering my artistic voice.
What I hope to communicate?
I know I’m not a concept artist and idea driven paintings positioned by text and explained by critics are not something I’m interested in. Nor am I interested in social comment like Hogarth, unless it’s by accident in my choice and treatment of a subject such as Millais’ giant peasant Goya like striding the fields.
I want to create, like Whistler, autonomous works of art… universal and timeless… and beautiful.
And I’d like to communicate how I see in the world; people, emotions, narrative, beauty, and a sunset or a flower.
Review of Part One
Demonstration of visual skills: I think I did well in this as I used lots of different media and grounds and spent a considerable time experimenting with line, tone and composition.
Quality of outcome: This appears to be how well the viewer grasps the essence of my intention.
This is difficult with Part 1 as most of the Exercises, and even Assignment 1, were just that, exercises… not a finished product with an intent. They were primarily about using different media and experiencing different painting styles.
However, where I was trying to communicate an intent – for instance in the loneliness and distress of the young woman, I think I succeeded. Another example would be my interpretation of the Julian Trevelyn which transforms Trevelyn into a strong but vulnerable young man.
Demonstration of creativity: I think in terms of the exercises I demonstrated creativity (self-consciousness and self-editing) and explained it in extensive notes in my blog.
Going forward the Exercises will hopefully allow me to demonstrate my creativity more, and I need to demonstrate this in my sketchbooks.
Context: I do lots of reflection, research and critical thinking (I looked at all the artists suggested in the brief) as I think what’s inside your head, your understanding, is as critical as your craft, if not more so. The craft is merely there to enable you to communicate your thoughts, feelings and ideas.
I think who I am and how I make my work hugely affects my work, in a very big sense it is my work. This is something I need to acknowledge more… at present I relate my work to my acting experience but I am also a father and many other things too… as well as an old white male… educationally, if not economically, privileged: having a combined studies degree and bringing up Josh hugely affect my work as does my childhood and life.
But that would be a whole thesis.
Understanding Painting Media 