An interesting days work on week 2 of ' ways into abstract Painting'.
We started off with 3 different sized brushes and the 3 primary colours to describe circles/elipses, vertical and horizontal lines of a still life on a piece of paper that was moved round to give multiple viewpoints. I did something similar to this on
'Develop your drawing' course so you'd think I'd have got the hang of it by now ! But it still got a bit confusing towards the end as the surface of the paper became covered! If given the exercise again I think most of us would have made full use of the broader brush rather than using it's edge to give more variety to the marks.
We'd been asked to bring a postcard/ image of a painting we liked for it's colour scheme. I brought in a book with work by
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham that I'd already worked from but once the colour mixing/matching exercise was described I opted to go for one of the laminated copies of artworks available to reduce the chance of paint getting on the pages of the book. Good advice as by the end of the day my painting shirt had extra daubs on both sleeves!
I chose a painting by
Ivon Hitchens - I couldn't find an image of this particular one ' 'From a hilltop' on the web but looking for it I was reminded how much I like his work and have added a couple of books to my wishlist. One of his paintings is on the cover of one of my favourite exhibition catalogues
'The experience of Landscape' which with it's inspirational variety of images and poems in a compact size has accompanied me on many a journey since I acquired it nearly 30 years ago.
We were asked to select about 8 colours in the painting and mix them accurately from the paints provide ( cool/warm versions of primaries plus white) placing swatches on the edge of scraps of paper so we could hold the directly next to the colours on the painting (hence the need for a laminated image!) .
I love
colour wheels and mixing so had a delicious and informative time learning about his unique colour palette . Hence I was rather rushed the next step of using one of these colours to knock back the white of the mornings first exercise before lunch
After lunch work continued in making something out of these multiple viewpoints using the colour palette we'd developed in the morning. For most people including me , this involved obliterating the red ( although I liked the glimpses showing through the layers )
It went through several incarnations , being reminded of the frustrations from 'reading the paint surface ' of having to change an area that you like because it no longer works with the rest as the painting evolves! In the end I don't think I made too bad a job of interpreting his colours but it could still do with more tonal contrast - particularly his intense blacks ( trying to mix those was a revelation) and the composition was pretty poor . Monet's waterlilies kept coming to mind, not the effect I was after .
I only had about 10 minutes before clearing up to have a go at another exercise - producing a 'barcode' analysis of a painting with strips showing the proportions of colour from dominant to accent . Reminded me of the
DOMIN scales of cover/abundance from my plant survey days! I chose a painting by
Ashile Gorky , an artist relatively new to me(I first saw some of his work at the
Abstract Expressionism exhibition) . I loved how his colours were built up through layers and tried to replicate this with picking up several colours on the brush at the same time to get optical mixing .
Lots to think about and try at home with my own paints and favourite images. The printer and laminator are going to be busy....
