With a swish of his brush Constable conjures up a moody beach in 1824 and Peyton a pop star in 1996. But though both Constable’s sketches and Elizabeth Peyton’s finished paintings look quick and sketchy, have they used oil paint in the same way?

I was fascinated by the way Constable’s sketches and Elizabeth Peyton’s finished paintings both appeared to be painted quickly and capture a fleeting moment. It is as if you were in the room with the pop star or strolling on the beach with Constable.

Elizabeth Peyton, Blue Liam, 1996

However, when I visited the Elizabeth Peyton exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery it was obvious that the eyes were painted slowly and carefully while the background was generic (visual shorthand for a body in a room) rather than a specific moment like Constable’s sketch.

This made me consider the way I am beginning to use time in my work. Below is a very quick acrylic sketch (but it could as easily be thinned oil) that captures my connection to the moment.

Acrylic on A3 paper

Next, I looked at a Constable oil sketch:

Brighton Beach, 1824

The painting is stylistically coherent; it was all done quickly, and I can feel myself walking on the beach. I think the lack of finish means Constable is able to focus on the colours and mood (he is living in his body rather than his head) to capture the fleeting moment. However, Peyton was working from a photograph and her sketchy background is visual shorthand, a dead image. In contrast, Constable’s oil sketches are a shorthand for his sensory and emotional experiences of the lived moment.
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This made me consider my own practice and how quick on the spot sketches capture a moment that would be impossible from a found photograph because you are living the moment… not copying a dead photograph. I then thought how I could extend my sketchbook work by using thin oils.

Here are a couple of my sketches, A5 sketchbook

A5 sketchbook:

Copying people from a photograph would have produced a tight, flat, stiff and lifeless sketch, as would drawing seagulls from a book.

Relating this to the course as a whole, I realised that medium and technique are just vehicles for achieving an artistic end. Thinned oil paint is as good for quick sketch work now as it was in Constable’s time. But the really important factor is the positioning of the artist, not the speed. Are they working from the head (Peyton’s

work is basically a highly finished intellectual work passing itself off as spontaneous) or from the body, like Constable, where they capture their present reality?

Peyton is using speed as a finishing technique to suggest spontaneity (the photograph is not going to go away) whereas Constable is using speed to capture a fleeting moment.

Constable’s oil sketches have impressed me with how one can quickly capture the mood and emotion of a moment using thin oils, so I will incorporate this way of working into my practice. I love colour,  and am an emotional painter, so colour sketches are more suited to my artistic voice than line sketches.

Bibliography:

BBC (no date) ‘BBC – History – John Constable’. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/constable_john.shtml (Accessed: 7 November 2019).

Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels – National Portrait Gallery (no date). Available at: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2019/elizabeth-peyton (Accessed: 8 November 2019).

Frist Art Museum (2012) Curator’s View on Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLsxp2gRP4k (Accessed: 9 November 2019).

John Constable | Brighton Beach (1824) | Artsy (no date). Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/john-constable-brighton-beach (Accessed: 9 November 2019).

Lack, J. (2009) ‘Artist of the week 36: Elizabeth Peyton’, The Guardian, 8 April. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/08/artist-elizabeth-peyton (Accessed: 9 November 2019).

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton (no date). Available at: https://walkerart.org/calendar/2009/live-forever-elizabeth-peyton (Accessed: 9 November 2019).

Plc, G. B. (1996) Techniques of the Great Masters of Art. Grange Books.

 

 

 

 

 

This Assignment is meant to be seen as a unit, that is all five paintings make one reaction and should be seen as a whole not five separate paintings.

The five paintings are different aspects of my environment which I reacted to in different ways which show my environment as a whole.

In short there’s the photograph of the model of me in black space as my self awareness is what gives this space meaning (for me); the leaves show my garden and the peace and tranquility it gives me; my self portrait made of rubbish acknowledges my waste as part of my environment (it has to be managed and holds a record of my consumption); the fiery house is my digital world, so different from the garden; and finally the collaged bedroom is playing with the idea of real objects rather than painted representations… it stands for my bedroom and is extending into sculpture (it has a 3D element) that allows me to ‘see’ the objects in my bedroom that I normally take for granted and a painting wouldn’t capture because it’s primarily visual and illusionary.

So, these five paintings are all linked to give a single picture of my environment.

Depicting your environment

When my son left for university I moved to a small village and sometimes miss town… walking down the road to Cambridge Utd, biking to the cinema or the swimming pool and chatting to all my neighbours and friends. This can make my house feel more like a box than a home as I haven’t built up all the connections I used to have.

For my Assignment I’m going to make five paintings:

(1) A home is made of people, memories and relationships so one way of looking at my environment is as a black box, somewhere empty of memories and connections.

(2) I love trees so am going to paint the sunshine through the leaves of my cherry tree.

(3) My environment is also all the packaging I throw away so I’m going to make a self portrait out of bottle tops and packaging.

(4) Part of my environment is the digital connections I have with all my friends. You can’t normally ‘see’ these so I’m going to try and paint them.

(5) Leaflets and envelopes pop through my letterbox and normally get thrown away without a second look, so I thought it would be fun to use them to for a collage of my bedroom.

(1) Boxed In, photographs of man made of bottle tops, tissue and PVA glue (18.5 H x 9 W x 7 D cm) standing inside a posting box painted with acrylic Mars Black and varnish (34 x 44 x 16 cm).

For my photographs I’m going to pick three 19th century lighting formats that I’ve read about in my Essential Reading book Techniques of the Great Masters by Waldemar Januszeczak. This will show how different lighting can radically change not only the image but how we view a situation too.

Chiaroscuro: traditional muted high cool northern light which gives the model deep warm shadows and lots of half tones ideal for classical tonal painting.

 

Technically this was very difficult because I ended up on ISO 12800 and it was still too slow for camera shake at 1/15… F 5.6 so quite a shallow depth of field to let in lots of light… but I didn’t want to put the camera on a stand as that restricted my freedom to move around.

In the end I went for the one that had the most half tones and was the nearest to being in focus.

This has directional light, high on the right through tissue paper, and modelling. It’s as close as I can get to chiaroscuro lighting; though in classical lighting there wouldn’t be any reflected light on the model’s right arm.

Visually I find this very interesting with the light grey high up on the back wall as the ‘window’ light brushes against it, the reflected red on the background, and the figure is nicely modelled.

2. Early photographic: bright lighting from behind the artist which killed the mid tones, gave a flat image with dark contours and (mainly) hid the shadows behind the subject.

 

I’ve chosen the one  that most closely resembles early photographic lighting: flat, from the front and with the shadow hidden behind the subject.

There’s something hard and brittle about this lighting that I like.

3. Natural lighting (I’ll take the box outside). This will give me ambient lighting, blue from the sky, and reflected light bouncing in from outside. It brings the garden into my house and should make the box and any shadows on the model much lighter and cooler.

 

I took several but this is the one I liked best.

I chose it for three reasons.

1. Only my  head is in focus so it mirrors how we see naturally, which seems like a good way of using natural light.

2. It visually translates the concept that the house has no meaning (is not a home) until I fill it with memories.

3. I like the way my black shoes catch a highlight. This gives them form and differentiates them from the background void.

(2) Sunlight, oil on canvas, 60 H x 60 W cm

I made several quick drawings in my A5 sketchbook standing in front of the tree and then painted these up as watercolour sketches in my A3 sketchbook.

I made them square as I’m going to use a square canvas and the canvas shape (as I discovered with the tondos) dictates the composition.

I was surprised by how effective the thin suggestive wash of the shadow on the wall is, though I don’t want to do a ‘realistic’ painting for this.

The leaf pattern is beginning to work especially where I haven’t drawn in the shape of the colours and the overlapping leaves are dissolving into an abstract pattern.

I don’t like the single leaf blown up as its become more design than art. And the abstract painting (using the colours and forms) has lost its connection with the leaves.

So, I painted up the leaves in acrylic in my A3 sketchbook.

I really like this as it’s joyous and beginning to capture the effect of sunlight through moving leaves so works both visually and emotionally.

Technical notes: the rough brushwork is effective… the ‘blue’ patch doesn’t work… 2 or 3 colours in a leaf works, more doesn’t… suggestive, blurred edges are good… keeping the same base green on each leaf is effective… I used four different green but one green lightened and darkened would be much better.

Sunlight through leaves, oil on canvas, 60 H x 60 W cm

This was a combination of using my annotated sketches (I can’t mix the colours quickly enough as the light changes but I can jot them down and then ‘see’ them back in the studio).

Technically this was very difficult as it’s my first big oil painting using hog’s hair brushes and the techniques I’ve read about in my Techniques of the Great Masters of Art rather than adapting watercolour and acrylic techniques. It was wet in wet with a tiny bit of wet on dry; as I painted it over three days some patches had started to dry. I corrected the whole canvas as I went along.

The book makes much more sense now and I could imagine working on six or seven paintings simultaneously leaving each to dry for a couple of weeks while I worked on another. It’s the first time I’ve imagined I could work professionally in oil one day, which is very exciting.

This is an all-over painting with a very shallow depth of field and a surface pattern, so it sets up a dynamic between the picture plane (2D) and the (3D) leaves. I modelled the leaves using a warm/cold contrast and didn’t use any brown or black. There’s also some  touches of orange on the blue green leaves (complementary colours) which give it a ping of extra energy.

I think it works in capturing both how the leaves in sunshine feel to me and their physical reality, so both a subjective and objective painting of my environment.

(3) Self Portrait, mixed media, paper, bottle tops, flour, packaging and PVA glue on canvas, 50.8 H x 40.6 W cm

As this is my first concept painting it’s very hard for me to judge how successful it is.

In what way is it a self-portrait?

It reflects my life by using rubbish from milk cartons to coke bottles; food packaging like the tinned tomatoes for my lips; health products such as vitamin tablets (prime man 50+) and (cavity protection) toothpaste; my email from the OCA saying I’ve completed Assignment 3 with a scribbled note to say I’ve passed Assignment 4.; and a tag from a painting for sale.

So, it is a self-portrait that captures something important about what I am now.

Does it depict my environment?

Yes, as long as you define my environment as including ‘rubbish’.

Is it art?

If art is a question, message, abstraction or personal representation then this is art. And even though it doesn’t capture a physical representation it is still a portrait as it says a lot about me.

Is it good art?

I have no idea.

As it’s my first attempt at anything like this and I don’t know the language it’s bound to be beginner level – but my hope is that I’ve absorbed enough about ‘art’ over Level 1 for it to have some value.

(4) Visual portrayal of my digital environment

A3 sketchbook – six preliminary ideas in ink.

I wanted to try and convey all the online connections (internet, WhatsApp, text, Facebook, video messages, emails etc) that come into my home. Just because they are digital doesn’t make them any less part of my environment. In fact, because they are invisible (unlike the flooring, a painting hanging on the wall or my possessions) but all pervasive – how often do we check our phones?  And they wouldn’t have been in a painting of anybody’s environment pre about 1970 – it probably means it’s even more important to try and paint them.

I like top left and bottom right sketches.

The first one works because the black squares could represent bricks, and there’s a house shape, though I think I should put the ‘white’ square inside the house.  ‘Digitising’ my environment by using dashes works as it echoes digital language, and the colouring shows the emotional effect of the connections. I like the orange around the house which could be a glorious sunset or stand for a ‘digital glow’.

The final sketch is simpler. The triangle inside the rectangle places me inside my house (I don’t know why I like the triangle more than the circle to represent me)? I like that my environment is coloured by the digital world.

First and last small sketch developed in ink in A3 sketchbook.

The first sketch the clear winner as it has much more meaning.

I’m going to make the physical world of ‘matter’ black (Mars black not mixed from burnt umber and ultramarine, as I want it as neutral as possible) and for the internet I’m going to use colour straight from the tube.

My Internet Environment, acrylic on canvas, 41 H x 51 W cm

This was the most fun as I was completely free to let the paintbrush do the talking.  It was like having a conversation in colour instead of words.

I love the way the canvas show through and the white makes the yellow and red luminous. Playing with the brush strokes and working intuitively is the way to go, at least for part of my practice and I’d love to do more like this.

It captures the concept I was after, that the internet is part of my environment.

Technically the difficulty is that it’s a bit like watercolour. You have to get the brushstrokes right first time, working over them muddies the colour and and you lose the texture of the canvas which I was using to harmonise the canvas.

(5) Bedroom, mixed media including: post, leaflets, rubbish and PVA glue on canvas, 40.6 H x 50.8 W cm

This is not a traditional single perspective painting, I’ve tried to capture the whole of my bedroom.

By using collage I’m forcing myself to look, think and visualise in a different way  (because I can’t use paper like paint like paint) and I hope this will enrich my practice as well as teach me something new about my environment.

This is starting to do some very interesting things, such as read like a book, a cartoon and a painting all at the same time. When you look at any one part of the painting it makes sense and you build the bedroom in your head from all the pieces. I found I was also projecting real tables and chairs onto my schematic suggestions.

So, even though it’s non-realist, is making its own artistic conventions, and has multiple viewpoints, it could be argued it’s better than a conventional painting because it packs in more information.

However it’s not a beautifully crafted aesthetic object.

Which raises the question of what is a painting and what is its job? Does it have to be beautiful? Does it have to be well crafted and does it have to please the viewer?

It can be aesthetic (and beautifully crafted aesthetic objects sell)  but I’m learning on this course that art can also be lots of other things. Though I haven’t yet worked out how you can make money out of poorly crafted ugly objects however meaningful they are… unless maybe you have very rich friends, critical acclaim (the gatekeepers) and the ear of the museums?

I should add that this took eight hours and was much more difficult than I’d imagined. This was not only the cutting and sticking but (perhaps even more) working out a new visual language.

Considering my bedroom in this way has changed my relationship to it. It’s difficult to describe but by painting it through a new ‘frame’ it’s changed how I look at it.

It’s almost as if before I saw my bedroom (the world) as it would appear in a painting or photograph, using a learned visual language, and that that was unquestioned as the only way of seeing. But now I have a new way of seeing. The nearest I can describe it is as if the single viewpoint is a word in a sentence, and the bedroom is the whole sentence.

Five different ways of curating my paintings:

I’m going to curate them on the wall, on a stand and on a table.

1. On the wall:

The curation is both the arrangement of the paintings and the photograph of the paintings – there are numerous ways you could photograph a collection and each one would change how you ‘read’ the paintings.

This is is a traditional wall or gallery hanging, flat paintings presented on a flat white wall. So the curation is both in the internal relationship between the paintings, and in their external relationship to the space.

I’ve tried to get the viewer to walk through my house (at least a little). The light on the bedroom painting hopefully draws the eye up the stairs to the right. After resting there they walk back down the stairs and out towards the leaves (the tree is just outside by the patio). Next I suspect the bright red and yellow will draw their eye which is my internet environment… then there’s the photograph of me standing in a void  (I create my environment)… and finally we make eye contact.

My aim is to make the viewer think about my environment, me, and then about their environment. Therefore it raises their awareness of their environment, just as this Assignment has raised my awareness of my environment.

2. On a stand:

This is using the idea of a ‘person’ as a unifying concept.

My head is on the top, the leaves are the widest part of me (my chest and tummy), the photograph (it is also a body in itself) bends to link the body with the two paintings below which stand in for my legs.

Rather than moving through the house the paintings have to be read like a book, a page at a time (only vertically rather than horizontally). The viewer looks at one painting, studies it, and then moves on.

It doesn’t matter where the viewer starts though I suspect they’d start with the top as we naturally look at peoples eyes first.

By making the viewer stop and look at the paintings separately it mirrors the gallery experience. The viewer will naturally linger on the ones they find more interesting… one at a time, rather than see them as a group.

My hope with this curation is that the viewer would piece together my environment from the individual paintings. The weakness is that I don’t think this curation asks them questions about their environment… they remain outsiders looking in.

So, I’m not going to pick this curation.

3. On a table:

The unifying idea here is that the paintings are in a table top sale. I also thought it would be fun to play with overlapping paintings… in real life you’d have to move around (or pick them up) to see them properly. By flagging them as ‘objects’ it also de-iconises them and makes them into ordinary things rather than revered objects.

It’s also a fun arrangement as the bedroom window looks out onto the tree, I’m peeping over the orange painting… and there I am proudly standing in the front.

I think it also emphasises that you have to get in and around my environment to really experience it; it’s not a neat arrangement of flat surfaces, it’s a physical space you live in. It almost has echos of a model of my house with rooms and walls.

I’m not sure it works (so I’m not going to choose it), but I think with proper mounting and lighting this could be an interesting way of displaying paintings.

Reflection using assessment criteria:

1. Visual skills… materials, design, composition.

In using a variety of media to make five paintings I think I’ve shown good visual skills.

I have used a variety of techniques from direct observation, sketches, developmental drawings, oil painting, collage, acrylic and photography… and combined everything I’ve learned so far to compose and produce a range of effective well-composed paintings.

2. Quality of outcome… application of knowledge and presentation of work in a coherent manner.

I’m quite pleased with the quality of outcome as in challenging myself with new media I’ve had to both apply new knowledge and adapt knowledge I’ve learned over the last four years. In all five paintings I think the outcome is coherent and much looser than I’ve ever managed before.

3. Creativity… imagination, experimentation and invention.

It’s difficult for me to judge but in covering both my physical environment such as the leaves, rubbish, developing a new way of seeing for my bedroom, and visualising the invisible in my internet painting I think I’ve shown imagination.

4. Reflection, research and critical thinking.

My research has been in-depth and I have written extensive notes in my logbook both on painters and techniques.

As I’ve gone through the assignment I’ve reflected fully on my work. I find that I learn as much from my reflection and looking as I do from actually painting. My reflection and reading informs all my painting.