Reflections in oils

 

Reflections

And now for something completely different.

This painting is done from a photo of Rende’s. Normally I avoid working from his beautiful photos, since he has already made all the aesthetic decisions, there doesn’t seem to be any challenge in just copying them.  But I needed a break from fruit (!) and the rippling water with reflections and that lovely red edge of the boat fascinated me.

I used oils but first painted an acrylic ground of that heightened turquoise which shines through most of the painting. My broad, synthetic brushes worked really well getting the large areas of water down, and frankly, this went quickly and more easily than my still lifes. I left a lot of it just as I first sketched it in, and am happy not to have overworked this one.

For more of Rende’s reflection photos, see this book.

 

Colour beyond vision

Purple apple,   oil on canvas board

This is the painting started in February. It features a beautiful CD cupboard Rende made. Plus, to the left,  the arm of a couch he made for us a long time ago.

The challenge for me in this painting was to keep the spirit of the first inspiration. There are some unresolved areas in it still, but in all the painters I admire, this is true. If you try to get everything too ‘finished’, or ‘right’, the life goes right out of it. It is a balance of honouring the first moment of vision, and working on it to enhance that rather than take it over with what the mind thinks it should be. That is why there is a magical element in creating. It is a letting go so that something unexpected and uncontrolled may enter, just as much as a skilful manipulation of technique.

No way was I going to lose that cocky little purple apple. The other fruits gained more conventional colouring, but I left this as a reminder of the worlds of colour just beyond vision. And that a painting can be anything you want it to be.

Here are the first stages of this painting:

acrylic underpainting

First layer of oils

stage 2

Monsieur Cezanne

It is good to be painting again and at the same time studying Cezanne’s life and work. The book I’m reading is coffee table format from Taschen publishers, it was originally German and I’ve got the Dutch translation from the library.

First stage, roughing in the colours

So much to say, where to start.

This stage of a painting is my favourite, everything is still open.  The composition is solid enough to hold it, and the subject familiar enough not to pose too many technical problems. I love it as it is, it hardly needs anything more in some ways. The eternal dilemma, how to work on anyway, and keep the original freshness.

All the while, I’m thinking about Cezanne on 2 levels- personally, how it was for him as an artist, and technically, how did he solve this, what brush strokes did he use and when, how did he apply paint, how did he use colour?

It was really tough for Cezanne as an artist. His father wanted him to work in the family banking business, his home life in general pulled him emotionally this way and that. He made some truly awful paintings in the beginning! We rarely see those! It wasn’t that they were just immature, (they according to his biographers are packed with symbols representing his inner conflicts), they are dark, and not particularly well painted.

Early work of Cezanne    Source   

What is so inspiring about his life is the gradual inner transformation he underwent which enabled him to gain the discipline to really work at getting his emotions under control, and to finally devote himself to his art despite huge lack of self confidence.  All this was reflected in the growing stability and harmony of his  images.

His relation to the Impressionists is a whole other story, and just as riveting from the point of personal transformation, individuation and art. Mostly he was a loner, following his heart, weathering rejection and ridicule, carving out his own path with very little respect or support from all but a few of his peers. His brush strokes are born out of this, forming the beautiful, strong and rhythmic surfaces of his mature paintings. Everything works, the compositions, unity of colour, application of paint- and he had to fight for all of it, most often working alone in uncertainty.

Chateau de Medan, Cezanne   Source

So back to me, one of Cezanne’s countless students from afar, more than a century separating us, but still feeling his presence close. How do you apply paint, how do you handle a patterned cloth, indicate the pattern but not lose the light and dark movements of the folds? How do you define an edge, how do you apply the paint and keep the stroke fresh and separate yet have it harmonise with the strokes next to it and the painting as a whole? Monsieur?

And this is a difficult stage of a painting, the part where by making a few decisions you instantly eradicate the infinite futures of your painting and limit it to one outcome. My heart always sinks a bit when  I start to apply thicker paint, my own limitations are more evident, and the lofty hopes I had at the beginning start to come down to earth more. Oh well, the way to get to your work, the bright, soaring, uniquely own work you were born to do, is simply to do the next painting.

Stage 2, starting to apply thicker paint

Flock of friendly felt birdies

flock of felt birdies

Crafty corner time! (Goodness, however will I keep up my image as a professional designer and serious painter by showing my small handmades?) Well, not my problem, I don’t see them as separate from my other work.

This group is sold out. I’ve found that selling works for me if it is to my immediate friends and other small local circles, like classes etc.

I wanted to share part of the process of making these little sweeties because it is something that evolved while working on these and might be fun or helpful for others.

During all my hand work projects I always felt bad about the waste of little bits of pure wool felt, silken embroidery threads and snippets of wool and acrylic yarns. I kept as many scraps as possible, but inevitably the tiniest pieces would get thrown away. Well, I just started putting them in a jar because the colours made me feel happy. And when they accumulated, the penny dropped, and whoopee, I discovered I  had ready-made stuffing for my brooches.

Here is my worktable surface, it pleases me how harmonious the colours of the washi tapes, scraps and Papaya mailing stickers are, oh and the crochet work in the background. I tend to stick to these kinds of warm pastels. Far left you can see my scrap collection jar.

tabletop

Here is bluebird in the process of getting his innards.

getting filled

And here he is ready to send to Sandy, my dear friend in Canada who will be his new mom.

‘Tweet’ (remember when that used to mean, bird word)!?

Bluebird with fancy toes

Some of my pen and ink wash demos

Silver teapot         pen, brush and ink

It seems like some of my best drawings happen during demonstrations for my ‘Creative Drawing’ class. We worked on reflections recently. I wanted them to get a feel for ink line combined with wash tones; and silver shiny objects seemed to lend themselves to this. It was a complex assignment, but they did really well. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of their work this time.

The next week, to continue with the technique and work on perspective as well, we worked from old IKEA catalogues. They chose an interior or part of one, to draw, then work with in pen and ink and wash.

Cozy chair         pen, brush and ink

This chair was a nice challenge, and since in the first lesson I emphasised loose, rather non-chalant application of strokes and wash, I wanted to demonstrate with the chair that pen and ink wash work can get detailed and precise if wished.  The teapot was done quite quickly and directly. The chair was built up out of light, then subsequently darker layers of wash which were left to dry between layers. It took the better part of an hour.

If you keep a sketch book or are interested in trying these for yourself, they are nice exercises. In this first demo below, I let the wash bleed as I added subsequent layers.

Camping cup        pen, ink and wash

You might find that the tendency with this technique is to blend too much or begin ‘scrubbing’ the paper. Try to avoid this and work staccato, leaving out too much detail and applying cleanly separated areas of grey. Where there is a subtle gradation from light to dark, you could add some wash while the first layer is wet. But for the velvety sharp darks which define the silvery surface, it is better to let previous layers dry before adding the darkest tones.

Have an extra clean damp brush at hand to soak up unwanted sharp edges if necessary.
I used India ink, but Pelikan fount india is also nice, and normal fountain pen ink can give some unexpected effects by breaking up into blue or green tints when water is added.

I briefly worked into the bottom cup drawing with coloured pencil. This technique forms a great base for multi-media work.

The beauty of imperfection

Els’s apples 2
Oil on canvas board

This painting was started in the spirit of a 37 minute one, with the intention of working into it.

I enjoyed using the same fast approach, avoiding too much polishing. The discipline here is to find the balance between getting it ‘Right’ and letting it be. When you are limited by a 37 minute deadline with no opportunity to go back and correct, there is a better chance of a raw but honest painting. The catch when I do allow myself to work into it, is to let things that are ‘wrong’ stand anyway in service to the  whole. But there are degrees of ‘wrong’, so as usual, it is an ongoing discovery process.

This one was painted over a strongly textured painting I’d done years ago, I liked working on that rough surface and how it influences the overall texture.

I learned something important from working with Jovica Veljovic, type designer and calligrapher. He advised, when working on a piece of calligraphic text, to not try to make too perfect letters when you start the piece. That way, if anything went wrong later, it wouldn’t jump out so much. If there were irregularities in the strokes, let them be there. In that way, all the little natural flaws would add up to a consistent looking whole.

Trying to make too beautifully perfect letters usually results in dead work. But allowing imperfections makes personal, alive pieces. Eventually, I have found, all the small quirks in one’s own writing form a unique visual vocabulary and over time, infuse the work with one’s own signature.

Title for magazine article           Walnut ink and reed pens,
S. Zoutewelle

It is the same with painting.

Painting quickly, bypassing the inner critic

Els’es apples

Harvest

Tanny’s fruit bowl Oil on canvas board

A friend recently commented on my paintings and recognised the 37 minute one (see previous post) as a turning point. It feels that way to me as well. I’ve done 2 more and intend to continue at least for awhile.

What painting fast does:

• It launches me out of attention to detail and forces me to concentrate on large forms
• Painting quickly encourages me to mix on the canvas instead of the palette, resulting in fresher colours
• Not having time to constantly correct or blend strokes leaves the rendering rougher but fresher
• The painting tends to capture the essence of the subject rather than getting lost in surface details
• Painting fast is scary to the perfectionist in me but it forces me to let go enough to really risk
• Accepting the ‘mistakes’ is liberating  and prevents focus on ‘getting it right’
• It silences the inner critic because it feels like it is just a study, not a ‘finished’ painting

Painting fast is scary, but it shoves me so far out of my comfort zone that change is allowed to happen! I’ve been striving to loosen up ever since I picked up my painting again 2 years ago. But it is hard to not go on repeating familiar habits, and you rarely reach new ground without some kind of aha! or shock. Once I had something jolting enough to shift my perception – with permission, a workshop leader slashed a great stroke of thick paint on a landscape I had been stuck on. My perception changed, but on ce I got back to my studio, I didn’t know how to get to that freedom on my own. It is a process and you need to have patience.

Having to get a lot of things down on the canvas in a limited time, you have to choose what the priorities in the painting are. And then you set the timer and paint like crazy, picking up gobs of colour on the brush and just getting them down in approximately the right places, then moving on to the next area. It is very intense to work this way,

I’m outside my comfort zone most of the time. But that seems to be the magic zone where the painting can come alive in its own right without me imposing all kinds of preconceived notions onto it.

(See Cat Lupton’s recent post on Losing perspective, for a personal musing on the kinds of decisions that are made in a specific painting, both artistically and historically) .

The last point in the list, accepting mistakes,  is probably the key to how I need to approach painting from now on.  Up until now I have been caught up in making beautiful paintings or simply getting things to look right. All of this is necessary but doesn’t create living work. I am not discounting my more precise, realistic work, but a lot of it didn’t have the potential to soar, and I sense in this new step, that the work is taking on the capacity to surprise, and delight me. And to somehow bypass the overly concerned,decision making, limited, directing, left brain part of me.

And obviously this has implications for my life outside of painting. How could it not? These are important developments which can’t help having impact on how I think and live. If, in the world of the canvas,  I can let go, accept mistakes, accept things as they are, delight in imperfection, follow my intuition, let the world speak to me without imposing my view of things, wouldn’t that mean a gentler, less worrying, more relaxed me? With or without paintbrush in hand. 🙂

37 minute painting

Tanny’s fruit bowl Oil on canvas board

This piece was done today in 37 minutes, inspired by Robert Genn’s ’37 club’.  It is 30 x 40 cm (about 12″ x 16″).

I’ve been receiving Robert Genn’s wonderful artist’s newsletter, ‘Painter’s keys’ for several years now. Even when I was convinced I wouldn’t ever get back to painting seriously, I always read each letter. Robert always addresses central issues to creating art, everything from why inspiration hits some times and not others, and what to do about it to getting a good gallery, to self evaluating your work.

I am sure the support it gives and the community around it have helped pave the way to finding my way back to oil painting.

The 37 club stems from a painting workshop exercise that Robert and his daughter Sara give to their participants. You have to finish a piece in 37  minutes (which just happens to be the time span of their hourglass).  This technique breaks you out of getting fixated on details, and the results certainly surprised me. I didn’t have any idea how I would get all that fruit, the bowl and the cloth even sketched, in that amount of time. But I worked fast and directly with thicker paint than I usually use. The result is another step in the direction I’m moving, which is more painterly, less precise. Like one of those mysterious canvasses which look abstract up close,

Detail from Canadian painter exhibition

and then resolve into a beautiful realistic scene when you move back.

Canadian painter, 20th century

These were taken awhile back at the Groninger Museum, sorry I can’t remember the name of the specific painter, the show was called The Canadian 7, I believe, and showed wonderful outdoor art done by a group of men in working en plein air in the Canadian wilderness.

As to the 37  minutes, before I put the timer on, I did make a pencil sketch to analyse the oval and the negative shapes. I put down an acrylic under-painting in raw sienna and cadmium medium which is why it looks sunny where that shines through the hastily applied paint. And I painted in the contours of the bowl, fruit and cloth roughly in acrylic. I squeezed out my paints, put on the timer and painted like mad, even finishing 5 minutes before time.  I was tempted to do a little touching up, but the whole point of the exercise is to just leave it, for goodness sake!!  So I am.

(From a photo by the way).

Sketching horses in wet and dry media

mare and foal summer 2013

We are blessed this summer to have two mares and their foals living in the field bordering our back garden.

There is a horse breeder who keeps his prize stock in this area, other years we’ve had a whole herd one field further away.

But it is nothing like this summer, having them right outside our back door where we can watch and interact with them daily.

horses in late spring 2012

Other years, Bernardo and Prelude have been in this field-  soul mates who hate to be separated, yet usually are every winter when their respective owners board them in different stables.

So I have had adequate opportunity to make endless sketches of various horses over the years. When I was small, horses were all I ever drew. As an adult I have had to learn the proportions all over again through continuous observation, as well as some anatomical study.

It is ongoing learning,  but I am happy with the freshness of the watercolour at the top of this post, which is a product of all the work that had gone before.

Letting go a little more- journey in paint continued

Mango and eggplant – Oils on canvas board

Still on the journey in paint here.  This one is a continuation of “Anne’s kitchen series’, the first one was Pears in sunlight a few posts back. My friend Anne’s (and her husband Jim’s) kitchen in Pittsburgh was a place I felt instantly at home. Visually, I loved the richly decorated ceramic bowls from all over the world, and how Anne loaded them with whatever fruit and veg were at hand. The bowls regularly caught the sunlight streaming in from the windows.

My challenge here was to keep the spirit of the first sketch I did with oils directly on the canvas. I loved it and for awhile didn’t want to do anything to it at all.

‘Mango and eggplant’ sketched in

Painting is continually teaching me. In this case, the sketch was telling me it was fine just as it was. That in a sense, that first spontaneous response to the subject was already enough. That the loose, unselfconscious sketching in, which part of me says is ‘not finished’ and messy, is actually lovely in its own right. If you don’t compare it to an image of a finished work, it has its own appeal. And many artists,the Impressionists come to mind, have used this thinly painted rendering as their style.

The reason I returned to it and began to develop it anyway was because I loved the richness in colour of the original scene. So I went for that but promised myself I would do everything I could to preserve the freshness of the sketch. I’m happy with the outcome because, although it looks ‘finished’, I worked on it with the same looseness and enjoyment as the first stage.  It was very different from working on this one below, which made me tense throughout, trying to get things ‘right’.

Classic still life Jan 27, 2013

What my painting is teaching me as I move out of an overly perfectionist, into a more playful, inexact rendering, is that I don’t have to try so hard. And that some things do really take care of themselves, I don’t have to plan and control everything. I don’t have to explain every little detail, I can leave room for people to fill in their own impressions, both in the painting and in relationships.
I can play and experiment to see what happens without worrying so much if it is ‘right’.  Things can be suggested, other areas can be left raw, the process itself has an intelligence I can trust.  And this applies to life off canvas as well!