Drawing Tuesday: New River Walk, Islington

 Last Tuesday's drawing session was at Janet K's in Islington. While most sketched some of the wonderful objects she has in her house,  with  yet another new sketchbook to start ( my ' small square chunky book' of watercolours and small treasures is full), I headed off to the 'New River Walk' in search of inspiration armed with my 'bijou' paintbox and size 12 travel  paintbrush.

 Some interesting architecture  and seriously distracted  by the adorable moorhen chicks (  black balls of fluff with enormous feet) , with less than an hour I  found a bench and drew whatever was in front of me. 

I started off with the negative shapes of the tree then ' branched out'  into  a watercolour  sketch .   There were several people  that  stopped to look  and  some members of a walking group  huddled round blocking my view! I'd like to say that's why it isn't a brilliant painting  but I'm out of practice. 

What is it about painting in a public space that invites comments  from passers by ? 

I've got  used to it over time  and don't mind  too much  but  it  can be intimidating if you're new to working  'plein air'  .  On this occasion  it was the usual : ' you're so clever'  ' my aunt /brother paints' , 'I couldn't do that' etc. They're usually complimentary and admire the fact that you're doing it all rather than critiquing  the art you're producing ( I was once unnerved by someone silently watching for 10 minutes or so then saying ' That's a neat little paintbox' )

 On holidays abroad  eg Tunisia Ian has found me surrounded by silent locals  or in Greece, cats. 

My favourite quotes from walkers on the Pennine way  whilst  painting in Malham :' Why don't you take photos , it would be  easier' to 'I'd like to take up painting , it must be so relaxing' . I meanwhile was trying to brace myself on a slope with my easel threatening to take off at any moment! 

I'd picked up this large piece of bark but although tempted to bring it back, I'm not sure what the train commuters would make of it  so settled for a continuous line drawing in pen with 'frottage'  using brass rubbing crayons.

And whilst in 'frottage'  mode, I made rubbings from the litter bin  with crayons on colour catchers and handmade papers and graphite on tracing paper

Janet supplied a wonderful lunch and  it was great to catch up with most of  the Tuesday sketching group  with  interesting, wide-ranging conversations. ' Homework' was to draw from a painting/print. Alas I haven't done it yet  but I will, I know from the 2 courses I did at the National Gallery  that  you learn so much  about composition from  using drawing to really look and analyse, even if the subject matter is not to your taste.  One of my examples was  published in this book  but my more recent experiences have been looking at colour too. Definately a very useful exercise.

Contemporary Painting Studio Week 7 - Scaling up continued

Using my time on the train journey to 'Contemporary Painting Studio' at City Lit  to prepare my ' to-do' list  is proving to be  productive ( although my stitching project is feeling neglected) . It's a bit challenging to cut out and glue pictures in an airline style seat although I do find that the seat next to me is left vacant as long as possible...  

My lists are always over ambitious but I achieved quite a lot of it in this session:  painting over large scale newspaper collage,  reviewing potential compositions  and exploring large scale marks on pre-painted surfaces 

The first job  was hanging the newspaper collage from last week back up on the screen easel - much better behaved now it has some substance to it than the initial roll of paper . Then it was a case of  loading my palette with a large amount of white acrylic paint and climbing up the step ladder  and painting with a large brush -  very satisfying.  I did one coat before coffee and another afterwards  so that after lunch it was dry enough to take off the screen  and I could concentrate on my other tasks! 

After morning coffee we had a quick  review ( 2 mins each) of everyone's work - we did  this in the second session  and it was really interesting to see how peoples ideas have developed  or changed in the intervening weeks.  We were asked to think about approaches used   by  other people  that  we found  interesting and we might use   in our own work.

As I hadn't started on  collage at  the previous review, I picked up on different ways this technique was used: working into photocopies  with paint to simplify shapes  and restrict colour palette;  combining photocopies in collages  with layers of tissue paper, working into them with paint and drawing (then enlarging and repeating the process).

I also was aware of the importance of format - in a couple of cases  we discussed how changing the shape and proportions  could alter the impact  and focal point of the painting  and the difficulties of scaling up from a sketch - do you keep the same format or change it?

Although I'd made the decision not to work in oil paint (  thanks to Amanda's session on glazing I  could achieve a lot of the same effects with acrylics) , there was much to learn from the many accomplished artists there who do use oils , in some cases what wasn't working and why. There were some very interesting layered backgrounds being  painted over and scratched into to reveal the underlying paint  and a discussion  on how to lighten  areas  with glazes without using white ( can lose translucency ). I remember that lesson from 'starting oil painting' class.     

After lunch I  looked again at my collages and sketches to review the compositions, to select what might prove interesting developed  into a larger piece of work. In week 5, I'd  started to paint into a photo of a collage applied to a painted canvas( above). It was over done   and I  wasn't happy with how some of it was working so had printed off a black and white and a colour copy to play with.

On the black and white copy  I started off by cropping to create a square format then using white  thinned acrylic  blocked out the areas I didn't like  and reinstated the inner dark curve, extended the outer one  with dark greys and introduced some breakwaters!

On the colour copy I made similar changes but instead of cropping , I first  extended the top part of the image with greyish blue paint to create the square format. 

Having rolled up my  large newspaper collage for next week, I then used the screen as in previous weeks for taping up sketches/ collages , including mark-making trials  and set up  an A1 sized newspaper  painted collage ( masked off for square format ) on an easel.  

My order of large brushes from Jackson's hadn't yet arrived ( it has now!)  but I made do with what was available and had an interesting time  applying an initial colour wash and then experimenting with different colour mixes and marks.

I found some of the underlying colour lifted off (note to self: less water more medium need )  and the textured surface provided by the underlying newspaper collage  reacted very differently to  primed paper( brushmarks were not retained in the same way and the paint was more opaque)

 I used up my paint applying  drippy colour washes to yet another newspaper collage( where I'd simply pasted a whole sheet down ) from 'Ways into abstract painting'. I'm seeing ghostly hilltop villages and am looking forward to working into it exploring the found shapes. 

But I shouldn't get too distracted from my principal task  for this weeks class which is getting started on my large scale painting! 

Drawing from the Masters - Composition

We started our session on composition at the National Gallery by first returning to the Expresso Bar to look at Frank Auerbachs' interpretation of Rembrant's 'Belshazzars Feast'  where you could clearly see a diagonal composition in his simplification. Then back to  analyse Ucellos' 'Battle of San Romano', particularly the linear perspective  with broken lances in the foreground leading you in.  I love the design of the lances in this but chose not to draw it - wouldn't want to give Ian the false impression that I'm suddenly interested in battle scenes!

We played spot the vanishing point in Crivelli's 'Annunciation'  before  looking at the surface geometry in paintings by Veranesi and Tintoretto -very clear diagonal in 'The Origin of The Milky Way' (below)

After further examples from Poussin and Rubens and a reminder to look at the shape of the canvas in relation to the composition, we were set free. No sketching stools available this time so I stayed in the Rubens room (29) as it had reasonable light and leather sofas (ever the pragmastist!) After several thumbnail sketches of various pictures, I decided on Rubens 'Miraculous  Draught of Fishes'  for the waves and curves of the bodies. I had several attempts  until I started to work out what was going on  by which time it was 8.40 and time to meet up with the others. Tone next week then 'sustained drawing'.

Masterclass in Composition and Thoughts on Colour

Among the preparations I made for Elizabeth Barton's Masterclass was ( as instructed) , files containing images that inspired me, copies of 'good' paintings by artists of the same subject. I had a folder of waves, another of vases, a portfolio of images at speed from a train. I settled for using the one on doors as being more graphic they seemed easier subjects for the exercises. Given the plethora of pictures I had, it was surprisingly easy to choose an image from the village at the top of the Anovreti Gorge in the Peloponnese. It hadn't changed much from when I did a watercolour of it 8 years previously apart from peeling a little more and that particular Greek blue has stuck in my mind for decades Laying tracing paper over the photos, drawing then photocopying and cropping resulted in this image which got the thumbs up during the critique process from my peers. The combination of diagonals and wonky lines is particularly appealing.

On day 2 we discussed the importance of tonal studies, not something I've done much of but potentially very useful. I only had time for one stab at it so not quite balanced but definately worth pursuing. It also came in handy for my painting course!

Interesting thoughts from Elizabeth on colour - on using ones that sum up the emotions associated with the subject rather than being representational. Something I definately need to work on in helping me move towards abstraction. Co-incidentally, a post on this topic today from Robert Genn in his Painters Keys. Also an apt quote from 'Bright Earth ' by Philip Ball which I'm currently rereading

"The seventeenth -century French writer Roger de Piles clearly felt that painters re-created the landscape to suit their own vision- to such an extent that this 'imagined reality' impinged upon the artists very perception of nature:'Their eyes see the objects of nature coloured as they are used to painting them.' "

That's me! Seeing purple in everything!

I digress - talking about colour always does that for me. I argued for using 'Greek Blue' for this piece because it is so much about the colour itself but it would be interesting to try a different palette of colours eg reds- that's where Photoshop comes in handy.

A useful part of Elizabeth's class was the the one-to -one attention and opportunity to get another opinion. As part of the selection of artists intepretation of doors I'd brought along this newspaper clipping about Prunella Clough. Following on from our'homework' looking at artists and quilters we admired, I was more able to articulate why I like this piece - the bright fine detail inserted on top of a looser , larger scale painting, the interest this generates.

This made me think of how I could combine texture of peeling doors with image of the whole area without having the same level of detail all over. With Elizabeth's input looking at my photos, we combined a photo of the door area with a photo of frayed sample done for QuiltWOW workshop on distressed doors. Definate possibilities!