Three quick tonal studies:

(Three quick tonal studies using 3B pencil or softer. Identify at least ten different tones.)

1) Paracetamol blister pack: 4B pencil in sketchbook (this about a post card size photograph), putter rubber and ‘blending’ stick.

I enjoyed this – next time I’d draw it bigger as my pencil, ‘smudger’ and putty rubber were too big for the detail. But I’m pleased for a quick sketch, even with the obvious mistakes such as the tablets being different sizes, as it gets the feel of the pack.

There were lots of tones I could see that my media wasn’t fine enough to add because the space was too small.

I can see how this could easily be adapted to an abstract and like the fine balance between pattern, order and disorder; and the rhythms this sets up.

2) Crinkled up KitKat wrapper and foil in A4 sketchbook.

I really enjoyed doing this but it was a little too small to see, and my pencil and rubber were too big.

The tones between the mid grey silver and light red are similar but I think I’ve got the idea of the difference between the red paper and the tinfoil through the texture.

I will definitely try painting something with tinfoil for the oil study but will go bigger.

PS: When I was doing it I made the mistake of breathing too hard and blew the wrapper away, and then couldn’t put it back in the same position so had to complete it from memory. I used my memory of the pattern of light and shade and how the paper and tinfoil were very differently textures with totally different patterns.

3) 4B pencil on A3 sketchbook – 1 hour sketch of scrunched up fish and chip paper from Aldeburgh East of England OCA sketch day.

The instructions said a short sketch and I don’t want to be too literal but an hour seemed long enough.

I could easily have spent all day on this so had to make the decision to stop.

It’s taught me that drawing crumpled paper (and by extension fabric) is all about tiny tonal differences. That lines are conventions when the real differences are the juxtaposition light and dark areas… so when you put a line to define a boundary it looks false on a tonal drawing, and is very difficult to rub out. I tried using a ‘stick’ to blur the hard lines and indicate subtle shadows by blending and using a putty rubber.

I think a whole chip wrapper would be too hard for my painting so I’m going to do something smaller.

Three oil studies:

(Choose something of a fairly neutral colour – place on white paper on strong light.)

1) Oil paint, A4 on on card pre-painted with brown gesso.

I can see lots wrong with this and could work on it for hours… but given my time constraints I had to stop.

This is oil paint wet in wet.

I spent a long time just looking at the whites and trying to discern the subtle colour and tonal differences. The white of the pill packet was very different to the white of the ‘brilliant white’ paper I’d put it on.

The paper had a blue tinge so I took the tiniest bit of coerilium blue (I couldn’t see any red in the paper) and mixed it with a big squeeze of titanium white and linseed oil. I then laid down a base leaving a space in the middle for my pills. I experimented with different mark making with my palette knife (as I wanted some interest in the background and didn’t want to go for table edge). Nothing worked so I had another think and decided I would have a colour gradient from front to back as this would give an idea of distance on the flat paper.

So I added titanium white and linseed oil and smeared this at the front and worked it into the paint already on the canvas to produce an even gradient.

Next I mixed up nine different greys and a black with equal steps between them and laid them on my palette (I’m now routinely using a piece of window glass).

I then painted straight onto the card.

The really difficult bit was that when you’re painting wet on wet the colours mix almost by magic. This gives you three options… to paint into the underlying paint and mix the together, to lay the new paint on top, or half way between those two.

Really, I just tried to problem solve to get the effect I wanted. Brushstrokes really gave structure and different brushes had very different effects.

I’m pleased with how the tablets stand out against the background because they are a different white, with the tonal transitions within the tablets and the general look of the whole piece.

Less successful are the heavy shadows on the corners of some pills. However, when I had them lighter the painting lost definition and din’t quite work so I put them back in. This means there are almost two different visual languages (subtle and gestural) going on in this painting and they don’t quite mix.

By comparison to my tight realistic painting s from photographs in my last unit it’s a huge success, but in terms of where I want to be it’s barely a beginning.

2) Oil paint, oil on canvas prepped by painting with a thin wash of red paint so it was pink, W 30 x H 22.5 cm

This time I tried using some of the techniques that I’ve read about in my Techniques of the Great Masters of Art by Waldemar Januszczak.

As I hadn’t got a couple of weeks to let it touch dry and go through the processes of glazing, scumbling and building up tones, half tones and highlights I had to paint it alla prima (wet in wet). However, I could use some of the techniques.

I drew the wrapper in very thin red oil paint, then blocked in areas of colour using tones and half tones (and adapting what I learned from watercolour leaving the bits I wanted pure white unpainted. Also as I was painting it up I didn’t worry about bits of the canvas showing through.

Once I’d laid in the rough blocks of toned colour I worked in areas: red first, then white and finally the tinfoil. To differentiate the shadows I used a brown black and added red for the paper shadows in the wrapper where; plain brown grey for the shadow on the surface and blue grey for the tinfoil. I used a variety of brushes on the main painting applying it in dabs and strokes, and mixed a lemon yellow/cerulean blue/titanium white light green for the background which I half mixed, thinned and then applied with a palette knife.

I’m pleased with the result as it’s suggestive rather than tight realist, yet is obviously a Kit Kat wrapper, and it has personality and energy. I don’t know if it would classify as an artistic voice but it’s certainly a large croak, and is a huge step from when I started this unit.

Even though it took me about six hours to paint it, so wasn’t quick, I tried to work loosely and interpretively.

My biggest problem was painting it in two session, one in daylight and one under a spotlight from a similar, but not quite the same, position. The moving light and the changing quality of light were quite difficult to incorporate as it changed both the ‘shapes’ I could see, the shadows, and all the local colours. This meant I had to be aware of the changes and keep the shadows and colours I started with in mind and try and paint those.

3) Acrylic on white canvas , W 30 x H 22.5 cm

I don’t want to single out CokeCola  but they’re a global brand, perhaps the most recognisable brand on the planet? This may be an exercise in painting rubbish near home, but my rubbish has world wide consequences. Blister packs and Kit Kat wrappers end up in the bin… but my coke bottle float away to Hawaii.

This wasn’t about beauty like the pills or the KitKat.

I decided that the only way was to jazz up the background. Coke sells itself with bright colours so I’ll do the same, it pollutes the ocean so I’ll have some blue… and the question I hope to raise is, why celebrate an empty coke bottle?

The bright background gives it importance, but it’s rubbish, this raises a visual question and hopefully sets up a mental itch. Scratching the itch (and this doesn’t have to be on a conscious level)  tells us that what we do with our rubbish and how we package our food is important.

I’m not sure my colour knowledge in terms of the background is up to the job and can’t decide if I like it or not. I think maybe it’s beginning to work and with more time and lots of sketches I could pull it off. But maybe it does work?

I used acrylics because I couldn’t think of any other way of showing transparency than with a glaze over a painted background and oil paints wouldn’t dry for a couple of weeks.

As the sun was in and out and this took about four hours to paint I had he same problem as yesterday, the highlights and shapes were constantly changing. I tried to overcome this by making washes and quickly sketching it in so I captured a moment (and made mental notes to myself about where the light and darks were) and then painted that up my sketch rather than whatever the bottle was before me later in the day.

My brushes were too course for the size of canvas the viscosity, being acrylic was constantly changing, but the bottle is recognisably a coke bottle so I’m happy with that, even though there’s lots of room for improvement.

I’m enjoying drawing with my paintbrushes now.

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Research

Kurt Schwitters:

(b. 1887 – d. 1948) – his Wikipedia entry says: Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.

An avant guard artist who’s family had a private rental income for the whole of his life so he never had to sell any of his work. This meant that he didn’t have to make beautiful objects to sell and was driven by status and social recognition.

You would therefore expect his art to grab the attention, be witty, be current, be clever and be talked about… to register with the elite and the thinkers, shakers and art makers.

As he didn’t have to make anything anybody wanted to buy there was no drive to make aesthetically pleasing objects and artistically he was free to roam wherever he wanted, which is reflected in his different media and genres.

He seems to have been politically driven early in his career with dadaism and constructivism.

Another factor influencing his art was that he wasn’t drafted in the army due to ill health so didn’t have the experience of fighting in the same way as many contemporary artists.

All that said, he has a very high profile in the establishment/museum/academic art world, so his ideas are considered important.

Opened by Customs, 1937–8

This is of its time as it is meaningless now without decoding. It’s like a historical time capsule or a dusty file, which may be full of gems of understanding and witty comment on the society in which it was created. But to anybody without the context is unappealing bits of rubbish stuck on a canvas.

As with any ‘conceptual’ art – where the meaning is word based rather than visually based it comes with a long explanation at the Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schwitters-opened-by-customs-t00214

This has no use for me… yes you can use the rubbish you find around you to make satirical comments on society (and like a newspaper cartoon it may be fleetingly relevant) but this doesn’t feed the soul… is not beautiful… doesn’t use visual language…and would never sell unless you had a big reputation with the museums.

I’m studying for a painting degree because I want to use visual language and make beautiful objects with accessible meanings that everybody can share, so Mr Schwitters is not for me.

 Arman:

(b. 1928 – d. 2005)

He learned painting from his dad, who was an amateur painter, was awarded a BA in philosophy and mathematics and went on to study archeology and oriental art at École du Louvre. So, although he had been around art he never studied as an artist.

Arman had three trademark ways of working, his brand identity if you will… Accumulations, Poubelles (Trash bin) and Coléres (Cuts).  Accumulation was where he used lots of the same object arranged/sculpted together, ‘Trash bin’ was accumulations of rubbish and ‘Cuts’ was where he sliced, burned and slashed objects and then arranged them on a canvas. He also did this with violins and bronze statues.

In 1960 he was a member of “new perspective approaches of reality”  who questioned  the concept of art and the artist in 20th-century consumer society by reaffirming humanism in an industrial society. However, I can’t see how any of his work relates to this group, or how it reaffirms humanism.

Here we have an accumulation of cars in concrete.

And some rubbish…

Petits Déchets Bourgeois, 1959

This looks like a box of rubbish and would have no value out of the museum context validated by language. You have to be a member of a very select club with a high level of education (and buy into that education and value system) for this to have any value and not be what it is, rubbish.

I can see his work is a curiosity (and some of his accumulations have an inherent beauty) but his work has no meaning for me… unless it’s that with a good idea and a strong brand identity (and the right marketing) you can earn a good living.

For this exercise and as a painting student it’s not relevant.

Alex Hanna:

(b. 1964)

The Wikipedia entry says: … Alex Hanna is an English artist. He studied Fine Art at Sunderland Polytechnic from 1983 to 1986. His paintings display arrangements of disposable packaging and objects which have little or no material value. These objects are arranged in a traditional still life format and painted using process based and traditional painting techniques.

(He also seems to do a few portraits)

I looked at his work in one of my earlier exercises and in painting monochrome ‘rubbish’ tonally he is very relevant to this exercise.

Looking at his Wikipedia entry I’m not sure I agree about a traditional still life arrangement as he often paints single objects rather than an arrangement, and even when he paints two or three objects they seem to be placed in a basic line rather than ‘beautifully’ arranged. Giorgio Morandi’s work is not really in a line and is stunningly and beautifully arranged, there’s certainly not that level of composition in Alex’s work.

Also, in his recent work on his website he is producing tonal abstract work rather than monochrome rubbish.

Recent work:

Older, traditional work:

It’s interesting and from a novelty perspective will sell but sadly, I think, a gimmick. His brand is ‘the rubbish man’. Which begs the questions as to why rubbish? And would he have been as successful in the more crowded traditional field where success is based on competitive talent rather than a novel idea?

This reaffirms the power of a unique idea (a USP), if all you want to do is sell then get an idea and stick to it. A powerful and consistent brand is essential. But then… are we artists asking questions or manufacturer shifting product?

Being that I need to earn some money from my art I’m going to try and be both, have a brand to pay some bills and make art to feed the soul.

As a tonal study it’s very clever {and helps me with this exercise} but doesn’t have the beauty of Morandi or the visual meaning of an impressionistic view of ‘reality’, or any other meaning.

Tanya Wood:

Is a contemporary female artist and teacher working in drawing.

Unless she hovered above her subjects she works from photographs and transcribes them in pencil, a painstaking work of love and art.

In being a tonal work this is useful for me however in terms of style it’s not what I want to pursue.

This is not a meditation on life, but meticulous craft. There’s no movement in her drawings, no human reality, no breath of life…  when I stop, look and listen to the world. When I step off the conveyer belt this is not what I see. I see people with thoughts and feelings, jobs to go to, meetings to make, jokes in their heads. These people remind me of dead sculptures not living beings, and though I am in awe at the time and skill I don’t want to work like this.

Tim Noble & Susan Webster:

( Noble – b. 1966 and Webster – b. 1967)

Reading their biography and CV is very interesting… I think I’d probably quite like their work which is contemporary and questioning. However, I’ve no way of judging it apart from accepting establishment’s critical acclaim which I’m not going to do without any understanding.

For instance:

AFRICAN HEAD STUDIES, Diptych, 2017, Bronze

Tim: 41 x 35 x 12 cm (161/8 x 133/4 x 43/8 in)
Sue: 47 x 35 x 10 cm (181/2 x 133/4 x 4 in)
Base: 21.5 x 21.5 cm (81/2 x 81/2 in)

… although fun I can’t see why this is any better than similar sculptures I’ve seen in student shows. I know Saatchi bought some of their work and they worked with Gilbert and George and are beloved of the current art market. But I don’t have the skill to make my own judgement and am not going to take their genius (given what I know of the art market) at face value.

Their sculptural/light work is fun (and very clever) but I’m not sure what it’s saying. It reminds me of a novelty in an upmarket theme park.

My reaction is more one of amusement and, oh isn’t that clever, there’s nothing I can really connect with. I might go see it but I wouldn’t buy it, and like an action film it wouldn’t make me think about anything though I might be lost in the moment for a few seconds.

Miss Understood & Mr. Meanor

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, 1997, trash and personal items, wood, light projector, light sensor, 60 x 70 x 140 cm, © 1997

I picked this because it features rubbish and this exercise is about rubbish. And I’m going to use rubbish in my final assignment.

But again, this strikes me as fine art rather than painting, and I specifically chose to do a painting degree.

Catherine Bertola:

( b. 1976)

Her Wikipedia entry says: Exploring the idea of existence, Bertola works with dust, glue, interior building fragments and other detritus of human existence within site specific installations to evoke history and evoke memory. Bertola follows in the tradition of British artists like Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread “who excavate the landscape and narratives of the past and present, exploring histories through objects, place and recordings.”  Bertola was one of 18 artists-in-residence in the Further Up in the Air project in the Sheil Park housing block, Liverpool, one of the artists invited to live and work in the flats of the housing project slated for demolition.

That sounds like she uses dust and building fragments set in glue as her media instead of pigment in oil. So, another branding… it could be a gimmick, it’s certainly unique and makes her stand out.

I wonder whether her media enhances her meaning? Whether using dust and building fragments really does evoke memory? Or evoke it more than a traditional painting?

Catherine’s artistic statement: https://www.axisweb.org/p/catherinebertola/#info

What she seems to be doing is researching the history of a building and using dust as a metaphor (in that forensic scientists recreate the past out of examining dust) applying the dust to paper to make patterned wallpaper in a site specific display.

Also the dust has accumulated over time and ‘holds’ the history of the building.

Walls are Talking at The Whitworth – a new work for the show, Bertola developed Beyond the Looking Glass – a little room covered in floral wallpaper where overlapping designs tumble to the floor and envelop the space in a blossoming motif. Viewable only through a small window, it is a quiet, self-contained world within the exhibition’s otherwise boisterous display of patterns and papers.

I understand that you can use anything as a painting media (dust and glue) and that the choice of media can affect the ‘framing’ of the work by the viewer. Knowledge changes perspectives and interpretation.

However, the only meaning this could take on (it’s a lovely craft work) is within a written context where the history of the house was explained and the relevance of the pattern linked ‘with words’ to the history of the house. As such it is illustrative and not self contained, nor is painting.

Again, it’s fun, but is coming from a direction I don’t want to come from for a market I don’t want to serve. Interesting but not helpful for tonal drawing of rubbish.

1. Watercolour sketches

I sketched the corner of my room in my A4 sketchbook then while sitting in a similar (but not the same as it was really awkward) position thinned down some watercolour paint and (looking at my sketch and the room) drew three sketches on A5 watercolour paper.

My reasoning was that the shapes didn’t change (though I guess my perception of them in different lights might affect what shapes I see?) so in order to focus on the changing light I’d sketch the shapes for all three before I started.

This has the disadvantage of having black outlines when on the last sketches I just had white and could ‘grow’ the painting organically rather than fill in shapes. However, I’ll try and be creative and responsive to the light.

I’ve not done every leaf as I want this to be suggestive rather than realist.

I noticed that when I stopped copying the sketch and focused on my drawing (whether it ‘felt’ right) and the underlying patterns of the leaves the sketches improved.

1st watercolour sketch on A5 watercolour paper: 3pm

As I thought the outlines were problematic but for this exercise I’ll let it go. I wouldn’t sketch out a watercolour again as it makes using the white of the paper difficult to use for edges.

Only just touching the possibilities of watercolour but it’s a really beautiful medium and discovering new techniques, such as when I dripped some paint on the ceiling and took it off with water. When it dried it had also taken off the this wash underneath and looks like the light was catching the ceiling in a perfect blend.

I tried to use thin washes instead of adding white, it’s much more effective than adding white for both highlights and lightning colour without making it muddy. Also, I discovered that if you use watered down colour in the background it desaturates the colour (obviously) which means if you use normal saturated colour in the foreground you naturally get a sense of depth without adding the complimentary or grey to your colour.

Made some huge and obvious mistakes such as not leaving the white paper clear for the sunlight on the inside of the window – I put it it the wrong place so painted it over.

But, all that said, I think it captures the low yellowy evening light from the right catching the leaves.

(If I did this as a painting I would crop off the top third of the painting but I wanted to see if I could manage light/shadow falling on a a plain flat surface).

Next I’ll paint morning and then try one in the evening or at night.

2nd watercolour sketch on A5 watercolour paper: Early morning.

For this I sat on my bed so I could see what I was drawing and tried painting the plants before the background.

The background doesn’t quite work as it’s difficult to wash it over the leaves and judge the tones without picking picking up the colours already laid down, so as a process I think I’ll do the back ground first.

I think looking at the plants has allowed me better colouration. I didn’t stick to local colour but tried to keep the tonal differences, saturation and highlights the same.

Watercolour is very difficult as much of it is about using the paper and diluting your paint, so that the dilution and paper almost become as important tools as the choice of brush.

I think I’ve definitely captured a different quality of light which I’m really pleased about. The early morning light is much bluer and more diffused as it’s not shining directly through the window but is to the left of the window at the side of the house.

What’s interesting is that the light shifts the focus of the painting, in the first painting the focus is on the middle of the watercolour where the yellowy light captures and plays on the leaves. Here, the focus has dropped to the bottom of the plants. I really like the bottom of the two plants on the right (the ones on the floor) as the colours are very suggestive and evocative.

I had thought about light changing the colours and the mood, and the shadows being different but I hadn’t thought about it as a device for directing the viewer’s focus.

If these were painted up they would be two (almost) completely different paintings. It’s making me think that shape is maybe not as important as I thought… or that its importance depends on style and context of the painting.

3rd watercolour sketch on A5 watercolour paper: Night

This is interesting as the light has reversed and is artificial.

I used white gouache which gave me another tool… I could mix it with colours to give lighter toners and more opacity, and I could also use it for highlights. So in effect I had two different styles going on in the same painting, watercolour washes and using the paper and oil painting laying down body colour.

There are no yellows and everything is flatter. The shadows are less pronounced.

I quite like the plant in the middle (and it’s plant pot which is quite well modelled) which is suggestive rather than realistic. The rubber plant takes this a stage further and is a bit David Hockney/Matisse pattern.

….

There are lots of things to take away from this exercise but I the biggest  is not what I thought when I went into the exercise. I thought the direction and intensity of the light would be the most important factors but it’s the quality of light.

Different light changes everything in the painting.

Light isn’t white it’s a complex mix of colours and each white is different (it’s just that out software photoshops it back to white – which is a blessing and a curse). I find it easier to think of different whites as different colours than as white light.

It’s a blessing because it makes practical life easier, as we see the colours more consistently and can ‘decode’ what we see, a curse because the colours are totally different and effect us emotionally but, unless the change is dramatic like yellow evening light, our brain makes us see everything as if the light hasn’t changed

So we have to teach ourselves to be aware of the light and try and see it as it is.

The changing light (time of day, cloud… atmospheric effects) is like shining different coloured lights of whatever you’re painting. It unifies the whole painting like a coloured glaze and changes all the colours you’re looking at. Which in turn changes the mood, emotion and emphasis (where the interest is) of the painting.

When composing a painting, the choice of light – as painters we are Gods and can use any light we want – becomes essential. I’d not really thought of it in these terms so this exercise has been very useful.

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Research:

Pierre Bonnard:

(b. 1867 – d. 1947) – Wikipedia says… Painter/illustrator/printmaker – stylised decorative quality and bold use colour.

Interestingly, I went to the Tate Modern exhibition of his work in the Tate Britain in May 2019, I was disappointed when I saw his paintings in the flesh. Having loved his works in reproduction (tiny by comparison as most of his paintings are quite big) they weren’t nearly as powerful in real life. The colours were more pastel and the whole compositions didn’t show up as well, leaving you to the parts which (for me) didn’t work in terms of shape/hue/colouration. But I would never have known this unless I’d seen them hanging in real life. I think that for some of the book illustrations they pump up the colour.

He seemed to paint mainly beautiful gardens, the countryside, his naked wife in the bath or open doorways and windows.

Pierre Bonnard Door Opening onto the Garden 1924

This reminds me of a pastel Matisse in its decorative, flat, Japanese patterned sort of approach. I like the colouration, which is what it’s all about, but there was something off key (I never quite decided what it was) in the real painting that sapped it of its power.

It would be great to have a go in this style and try and entirely step away from realism.

I doubt whether the painted colours bear more than, if any, a passing resemblance to the local colours. So, I might have a problem as this exercise is about the quality of light and its effect on surfaces and it would be very difficult to imagine how the different qualities of light (light at different times of day, even though it appears ‘white’ to our eyes is very different) affect colours that aren’t there.

However, I could absorb the different light and abstract it onto my surfaces – the intensity, direction and ambience should come through. On a practical level maybe I could pin bit of coloured paper to see how the light affected the hue?

I’ll have to have a think.

Lee Maelzer:

From Collateral Drawing: “I am a painter and sometimes photographer and filmmaker, living and working in east London. I make figurative oil paintings, often very large, of ominous, mostly unpeopled spaces and the discarded objects therein. These comprise a body of work that relates to both a psychological and physical reality and celebrates the possibilities of the paint and surface.” Lee Maelzer

Waiting Room, 2011, oil on canvas, 25 x 35 cm

Her work is interesting and the rooms she paints remind me very strongly of Hopper as they look like the background of a Hopper painting. If a Hopper painting is the full the full symphony then Lee Maelzer is a couple of bars taken out of the middle.

‘Waiting Room’ has a feeling of empty space, isolation, and distance… and the painting style is similar to Hopper too.

Her discarded object paintings, often on paper, are something totally different and veer towards abstraction. For me, they don’t quite work but that would be an interesting discussion in itself. They use a very different visual language to her canvases, though her mark making is very similar to her painterly technique.

This painting is particularly useful for this exercise as it features blank walls and I was thinking I would have to find a corner full of ‘interesting’ objects. It’s a lesson in composition and surface where the walls though not at all ‘real’ (they are obviously painted) feel perfectly right.

Hayley-Field:

She’s an abstract painter (and I quite like her painted work). Not to be too literal but I don’t see how her work is relevant to this exercise.  Unless it’s an invitation to paint the corner of my room as an abstract?

I could do that for fun… it’s an option.

On her website she says: My work hovers between specificity and openness. It represents  intense, personal responses to observations, memories or events. I find a great challenge and joy in painting – mixing loose brushwork with fine detail and considerable re-working, often surfacing isolated figures and shapes. 

Noticeboard, Oil on board, 40cm x 40cm, 2018

I chose this as it’s the only painting I could find on her website with any ‘house’ connection, you might have a noticeboard in the kitchen.

I find it difficult as it’s tonally, if it were black and white, so similar and don’t think the pallid hues make up for the lack of a visual skeleton.  Or that the colours and slightly empty sickly feel is linked to any meaning… I can see that a noticeboard might have rectangular stickers on it.

It doesn’t work as an abstract (though the arrangement of shapes is balanced), it has no emotional effect, is not beautiful, is devoid of connection or meaning, and doesn’t work as a colourist piece.

Walter Sickert:

(b. 1860 – d. 1942)

I like his paintings in the flesh, though they seem a bit inconsistent. Like a raconteur who pours out material, most of which hits the mark… but not everything.

He was effectively apprenticed to Whistler as a studio assistant and painted wet in wet from life before moving into the influence of Degas who encouraged him to change his technique. He started in the studio from drawings made on the spot, a practice he kept up for the rest of his life. Though as an old man, from 1927 he increasingly used photographs as the basis for his compositions.

However, he seems to have kept the low tones of Whistler… just added highlights.

Ennui, c.1914

Ignoring the figures and the nonjudgemental narrative,  an airless marriage suffocating in boredom, this is a painting of a corner of a room, from sketches. So perfect for this exercise.

What strikes me first is how even though this is two people apart there isn’t the distance and emptiness of a Hopper painting. They are connected, just bored. It would be fascinating to see how the composition and technique managed to put them separate but together as different from two isolated figures, which it could easily have been.

Even though this looks like it might be local colours I don’t think it is as the palette is so limited, maybe that’s what connects the figures? And creates the mood?

For some reason it reminds me a little bit of a dour Norman Rockwell?

It seems roughly painted, realistic but not realist… with a hint of impressionism. It also feels very free and loose while precisely capturing a moment.

I think my message to myself, which I keep coming back to, is that I don’t need to be so precise. I need to trust more and just go for it.

I also have to decide whether I paint from sketches or like the last exercise with the watercolours wet directly from life.

A4 watercolour paper: Monoprint 4 of 10

I like the complexity of the image and the way the eyes hold you.

A4 watercolour paper: Monoprint 5 of 10

I like the personality of this and the broken lines, the way the face is dissolving into abstraction.

A4 watercolour paper: Monoprint 6 of 10

I like the balance of space and marks.

A4 watercolour paper: Monoprint 9 of 10

I like the completeness and directness of the image.

A4 watercolour paper: Monoprint 10 of 10

I like the way I’ve begun to simplify the image and the effect of the broken lines.

Here are all ten monoprints starting top left, and reading left to right.

The paper is the same, the difference in colour is caused by sunshine, cloud and shadow.

I used Artisan water mixable oils with Thinner and Medium.

Oil was new for me, it covers beautifully in its ‘raw’ form straight from the tube and reminds me of printers ink. It’s silky smooth, shiny and has a buttery consistency. On an A4 acrylic plate the choice of brush was difficult… the sensitive smooth watercolour brushes struggled to push the paint around (until it was diluted) but the oil brushes were too large and course.

I need to buy some smaller oil brushes.

To stop it cracking I mixed Thinner and medium – it emulsified slightly – and diluted with that; though at the end I started adding Thinner on its own.

The different viscosities on the plate affected printing as when I mixed thinned paint and out of the tube paint the thinned areas printed a patchy white and the out of the tube areas printed solid… when I compensated by adding a puddle of thinned paint these spread and produced flat areas of colour while the raw paint left little sticky up marks.

So, when mixing different viscosities you have to think carefully about where and how you place them as they will affect the final print.

I also experimented by wiping a used plate with my finger and making a print of that which left a very faint trace and produced an interesting result. Almost like an echo of an image, there were no sticky up random bits and all my finger marks were preserved. I might try and incorporate this idea in one of my Assignment pieces and have a very faint image… it would also preserve brushstrokes.

At first my ink sketch moved around so I attached it with masking tape… then my acrylic plate slid around so I fixed that in place too… as my plate and surface are the same size it was easy to position the paper but I think you would have to mark your table with bigger pieces where the position of you print on the paper is important.

Much to my surprise I found that you could have a lot of control over the final image, there was a random element which was very effective – but at least in this additive mono-printing it was perhaps in the 10-20% range rather than the 80% plus I had expected.

In this there weren’t really any areas I’d want to remove, the failures (such as when the loose paint spread out and blackened the eyes) were part of the learning process rather than something artistic I’d want to correct. It will be interest to work in reverse – subtraction – for the next exercise.

Until I know what effects I can produce by mark making in the paint and how the different subtraction affects the print I can’t say how I would use it.

As the images stand I wouldn’t want to paint into them as I like their simplicity. Though looking at Elizabeth Payton’s work I can see the possibility… however her paintings are much more ‘finished’ and that wasn’t what I was trying to achieve here.