Ways into Abstract Painting Week 5 : Personal Project

  The last session of 'Ways into Abstract Painting' was devoted to our own projects based on the techniques we'd been shown  during the classes and  researching examples at Tate Modern. It was a 2 easel  day for me as I tried different ideas out!

Shozo  Shimomoto 'Holes'  from  back and front

 At the end of the previous  class , I'd prepared several  layered ,painted surfaces with newspaper applied to cartridge paper then painted with white acrylic, thinking I would work on something based on Shozo Shimomoto's 'Holes'   But with further research on his methods of layering multiple sheets of newspaper I decided I didn't have time in a day to do it justice. 

The surfaces themselves  had dried  with very interesting textures - some people in the  class 'stole' my idea and produced some great pieces of work!  I look forward to using them myself at a later stage.   

As my main aim on coming on the course was to help me in my design work  for textile  pieces, I returned to the subject matter I'm using at the moment, breakwaters at Birchington on Sea .

 In the advanced Painting class last year,  in spare moments I produced a lot of layered, scumbled backgrounds  and brought some of these along with me.
My first   experiment was using  the black  dry brushstrokes of Pierre Soulages as inspiration . I loved how the background shows through but then went too far reintroducing some of the white  - it was better left alone !

I was keen to use a canvas as well as paper so the day before had painted over a failed painting with a grey-green.  Tinted white paint added with credit card and drips and splashes in the foreground in preparation for the breakwater posts

The last half hour before lunch I had  a very satisfying time mixing paint swatches to match the colours in Nicolas de Stael 'Marathon' ( I'd printed a photo of it and laminated it, excellent tip as inevitably paint gets on the photo!)

After lunch  using some of the colours from de Stael but deciding against original plan of impasto techniques I added more drips and splashes and painted  breakwaters in with dryish brush

 

I'd forgotten the pleasures of painting on canvas( I'd constructed this one myself with high quality fabric)   such a different surface to paper. I was a bit more considered with marks and  from   across the room the tutor said 'stop'  so I'm leaving it as it is for the moment! I might play around with options in Photoshop  and work on it some more but slowly.

So to try out more ideas I used another of my scumbled backgrounds and a  different format- a bit rushed so the paint didn't have time to dry between layers  and I didn't achieve the clean lines I was after  but bits of it are nice!

A very interesting review session in the final hour - peoples work was so varied with starting points from different aspects of the course and their own interests and experiences. Some had used oils rather than acrylics and that's something I want to explore further, the potential in layering colours and working more slowly.