Feeling Behind then Gaining Clarity

At the end of my first week back at work after a long four weeks on leave, all I wanted to do was shut myself away and paint. I had been feeling huge frustration at not being able to complete all the paintings I had started during my leave. I learned a lot from that experience: the work I am doing is too ‘complicated’ in the sense that I need to wait for layers to dry during the process. I have to learn how to paint a la prima, and learn it soon. I think a couple of workshops are on the way. Unfortunately, as far as my research has taken me, the best ones are in the USA. Time will tell.

During my break, I wanted to finish work and good work at that – at least paintings that I was happy with. I usually stick with a work to try and resolve the problems and that strategy has always taught me something. However I realised that some of the work I had done was just not redeemable. So, I wiped out two and re-primed them with Titanium White oil paint, so heaven only knows what will appear on those surfaces. For at least two weeks it was far too dark to paint during the day and I had to paint with my daylight lamp attached to my table easel. Even with this lamp on I felt I wasn’t using colour very well. Also, it was far too dark to take any decent photographs – it still is, here in London. These are not complaints; just facts.

Today, I had planned to see an exhibition at the National Gallery, but when I woke up, the whole event and outing just wasn’t ‘speaking’ to me any more, (which was very strange for me) so I spent a few hours working on an outdoor scene I had photographed two years ago. This was one of the paintings I started during my leave, but couldn’t complete. Yet another work, too complicated to paint in a day; well for me at least. However, I made progress and learned a lot and even with these tiny, and I mean really tiny, movements forward with understanding and getting back to ‘seeing’, told me that I had made a good decision to stay at home. By listening to my own inner voice, I gained clarity. This clarity revolves around staying with my own work and spending more time on it instead of rushing around trying to absorb the whole art world in one weekend. It also revolves around really sticking with paintings that don't go well from the beginning. It also helped confirm what makes me really happy.

I also have to learn how to manage my time. I am awful at it. Not going to the art exhibition, gave me time. The painting I am working on will not end up on anyone’s wall, but it is in the completion of it that I get clear about what it takes to be a painter and the feeling of satisfaction is incomparable.

Until the Summer light comes, I think I shall spend the nights working on charcoal drawings just to try and keep creating each day and practicing, practicing, practicing. The weekends shall be reserved for painting. I have one nearly-finished still life from my weeks off work which I tried to photograph today but for that, again, the light was poor. It is the weirdest still life I have ever attempted, and maybe, if I am in a quirky mood next weekend, I’ll post it here.

a.m. - Feeling Behind & Out of Focus

p.m. - Progress and Clarity

Homage to a Homage

This is my submission to the latest Following the Masters challenge. I have been waiting so long to photograph this work because the light has been so poor lately. However, today, I decided I could not wait any longer as the deadline for submission is tomorrow, so I chose the best photograph out of many and felt it would have to do as 'good enough' for the project.

I chose this Picasso because it was one of the works on show at a magnificent blockbuster exhibition held at the National Gallery in 2009. The format was also roughly the same as a spare canvas I had, so a lot of practicality was involved in choosing this work. It is not my favourite by a long distance, but I loved its quirkiness. This massive show was titled "PICASSO - Challenging the Past". The entire exhibition was based on Picasso's own homages to past masters and the pictures he had painted directly from their masterpieces, e.g. Velasquez' 'Las Meninas' which was for me, the utlimate picture at the show. So my work is a homage to Picasso's homage to Lucas Cranach the Younger! It was a spectacular show and I found it very difficult to leave the exhibition halls. The energy of all his work together was staggering. The original work is actually a linocut and to emulate some of those effects was difficult but I didn't try to push that too hard. In addition, the yellows and ochres were incredibly hard to paint. I had to go over them many times to get them to look solid. I should have thought this through carefully at the beginning but I was so eager to start. It took a lot longer than I anticipated. I kept seeing extra details that I had missed but all in all, it is close enough to my original vision to send it off to Following the Masters. Another interesting part of this challenge was finding the original work by Lucas Cranach the Younger which inspired Picasso to do his linocut. I find all these transitions over time hugely absorbing.

My homage to Picasso

Oil on Canvas - 30" x 25"

The Original Picasso

"Portrait of a Woman after Cranach the Younger"
Colour Linocut - 25" x 13"

The Original of Lucas Cranach the Younger

"Portrait of a Woman" - Oil on Board - 83 x 64 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum - Vienna

Pepper Study

This took 45 minutes. I was desperate to paint something, anything. I haven't been able to paint under good light conditions for days as it is so incredibly dark here and my daylight lamp is inandequate for more demanding projects. This type of exercise reminds me of school art class and quite frankly, if memory serves me well, I could have pulled off a better realised represenation of this type of object in those days. I didn't make any effort at a special composition, nor did I fuss with background colours in an attempt to create a more visually interesting arrangement. I just placed the pepper on a breadboard and painted what was in front of me.

I will photograph it again in better light (when we see the sun again), not because this small work is worthy of it, but I just can't stand colour inaccuracy when posting my work to the blog. This is a discipline for me only and not because I expect anybody else to care too much, if at all, but I also like getting my work up and posted as soon as possible after completion. It's a trick to feel good.

"Yellow Pepper"

Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"

Charcoal Portrait

At the beginning of my annual leave, I decided I would do some sketching as well as painting. This is the first sketch, a warm-up so to speak, and even though there are many things I would like to correct, I am quite pleased with it, especially the likeness to the 'model' which surprised me as I wasn't too concerned with that at first. It was sketched from a rather dramatic photograph taken in artificial light. I just loved the way the folds of the scarf emerged from the pitch black background and this was a delight to represent in the sketch. I had forgotten the range of options available with charcoal, and I unfortunately started this out on paper that was slightly too rough for the effect I was trying to achieve. I thought I had finished it last night with only a few minor corrections to make this morning, but when I got close to it in the cold light of day, I saw there was so much more I could do to bring it closer to the actual photograph. The first layer of charcoal on the background wasn't intense enough to convey the stark chiaroscuro of the photograph, so I was glad I had sprayed fixative over the whole sketch last night. This gave the surface a 'tooth' this morning and I was able to darken the work quite considerably. This was a good learning excercise for me and I had forgotten how quickly one can finish a drawing compared to an oil painting, with the added benefit of it being suitable for night time work when it's easier to work with black and white knowing there will be no colour mistakes in the morning.

Portrait

Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 11.5" x 11.5"

December/January Plans

I have been experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms being away from my easel for a few weeks. This has been ultra-frustrating but soon, very soon, I will have four weeks annual leave and I have promised myself to use this time mostly for painting. I have so many unfinished projects that it has become a joke. The day job took over with a huge relocation project to a new office which took both time and energy. Something had to give; sadly it had to be the painting. During 2009 I have been painting mainly ‘challenges’ for the Different Strokes from Different Folks and Following the Masters blogs. I have loved doing these, but during this end of the year break, I am going to play in my own playground as well as participate in one Challenge.

For years now I have really wanted to go back to basics. I haven’t painted traditional still lifes for decades, and I am going to try to do one small one every day or every second day and ‘loosen up’ a little and experiment with colour and composition. I don’t even know if I can still draw, let alone paint, an ellipse after all these years! I’ll have to scour a few flea markets and bric-a-brac stores to pick up some items to use as basics props. Just writing this is exciting but I also know that I might hit a few obstacles along the way as I am presently so unfamiliar with this type of work. I also hope to get a little bit of drawing done. The only real impediment to all of this could be ultra dark skies during the day here in England, which are typical for this time of year. I hope to paint still lifes of many types of objects; ceramics, fruit, vegetables, ornaments, food of any description, and I might even try my hand at some food packaging. Okay, I have probably gone too far now as I think, for a painterly foray across such a range of objects, I might need eight weeks, not four, to complete what is presently running across my mind’s eye.

Another ambition of mine is to use up all my old tubes of oil colour. I have quite a few tubes of a brand of oil paint that I no longer wish to use as I have moved ‘on and up’ in my choice of oil paint. The ‘old’ brand is traditionally considered a ‘good’ one, but for me it is not good enough, and I am a firm believer in only using the best materials.

Roll on Friday night and let’s hope by this time in 2010, it won’t be a case of “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”. Who knows what might happen.

Waiting.

Hope Springs Eternal.

Bedroom - Interiors Series - No. 1.

I decided recently to try my hand at painting interiors. I knew this would be a tough call because I haven't tackled interior scenes since my school years. My attraction to this bedroom scene was the glow of the yellow and the strong contrast between light and dark caused by an overhead light. I chopped and changed my style and process a few times, tried glazes which took ages, and then in the last few days decided to complete it no matter what. I have learned so much from this work, that I am going to do a series of interiors when I have lots of time. There are so many mistakes and I felt that it wasn't good enough to 'publicise' but then again, also decided full disclosure of my work is not a bad thing either.

Bedroom Intepretation 1.

8" x 8" - Oil on Canvas

Challenge No. 6 - City Rooftops.

This was a stinking hard challenge for me. I struggled with it like mad but ended up saying: "I AM going to make this work!" This is my latest submission for Karin Jurick's latest Different Strokes for Different Folks blog challenge. Karin put up a photograph of a view she had taken from her hotel in San Francisco and my first impression was that it was a beautiful photograph, with such icy, sharp contrasts and brilliant light. Of course this would not be easy to interpret realistically for me in the limited time I have on weekends, so I thought I would just let rip with something more loose and spontaneous.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS' DAY

25 October 2009

"Room With A View"

Oil on Gessoed Board - 12.5" x 12.5"

Nothing to show for August so far.

August has been a weird month creatively. I just haven't been able to finish any works at all. I have started some, left others half way through in the drying process only to come back to them later and discover I don't like any of it and ended up scraping off the entire surface of oil paint. Strange month was August. I also discovered that I was trying to combine finishing my own art projects with the blog challenges for DSFDF and Following the Masters that confusion reigned supreme; too many disparate visions were being dealt with at the same time so I stopped all of them. I also had a huge amount of admin to do around the house; whatever that means, but I think most readers would understand. So, August has been a bleak month so far for finished work. I hope to change that with at least one work, not a blog challenge, but something from my own stable of projects.

I was also hoping to do some small sketches or watercolours in the spaces between paintings, one a day hopefully, but that has not happened. I need a studio to really enable me to do some work each and every day, big or small, oil or watercolour, sketch or painting. So even on a smaller level, I have found getting very simple work finished, an impossibility. Am I being too hard on myself? Maybe doing a charcoal sketch tonight - of anything - might clear the cobwebs.

The truth is, I need a break; something like a year-long sabbatical would do.

My Latest Blog Challenge! No. 5.

In the spirit of adventure I have entered another blog challenge. Recently I discovered another super blog Follow the Masters which challenges artists to respond to various images of the Master Painters. This last challenge was to take any Maxfield Parrish work and interpret it. I have visited art galleries in the USA but confess, that I have never lingered in front of any of his work. This therefore was a double challenge because I only had a web image to work from. Interestingly, the images of his work on Google Images vary so dramatically that it is impossible to work out how far they are removed from the original but I would assume, very far indeed, especially the one I chose which is "The Tempest". I loved the web image I chose because it had huge drama and it looked as if it was one of those over-printed images that was many generations away from the original register. I loved the rock formations and I think they were the real hook to get me started on this work because, on close inspection, they reminded me so much of the abstract expressionist work I used to do at University. However, it was great to get it finished, even though it took me far longer than I anticipated, but that is what these blog challenges are all about; learning.

After Maxfield Parrish's "The Tempest"
Oil on Gesso Board - 12" x 12"

Detail that reminded me of my University days!

The Original Maxfield Parrish "Tempest"

Challenge 3. - Madison Avenue, New York City

After not having submitted a painting to the previous 'Diana' challenge on Different Strokes for Different Folks, I was ultra-determined to get this one in by the deadline. I am learning constantly through these challenges as it has been years and years since I have painted seriously and this one gave me a couple of surprises to say the least. I should not have laid down the first colour in acrylics (just to speed things up a little) as it spoiled the surface for the oils. In addition, the surface of the gesso was too rough in the first place, so I couldn't render the fine lines I wanted to, and, most frustratingly of all, the format was far too small for the effects I intended to create. However, this is my first cityscape and even though I didn't have much fun with the skyscrapers, I loved the adventure I had with the cars. What's next?

Madison Avenue -New York

Oil & Acrylic on Gesso Board - 9.25" x 12.5"

Whacky Close-up