Contemporary Painting Studio week 10: making changes and review

I spent most of the final session of Contemporary Painting Studio making corrections and changes to the largest newspaper collage painting in light of analysing the 'Catenary'  paintings of Jasper John .

Remembering the lessons from 'Reading the Paint Surface' of turning source material photos  and painting upside down or on their side ,  I  worked initially on a smaller scale copy of the painting from last week

 Working on the painting itself , I used white acrylic to block out the curves that weren't working and  added more definition to the 2 dark outer curves

 I then re-instated the inner curve  and  attempted to capture the finer patterns and details from the collage using more glazes and controlled brush-marks. As with most paintings, as you develop 1 area, you have to  change and balance another  . The 2 outer curves are too solid now and  I still need to introduce a larger scale of mark ( a very large brush is required!) But I needed to stop work at lunchtime to let it dry as I had to take it home being the final session.

After lunch, I  worked into the painting I started in Week 5 , extending the shapes  and patterns from out of the collage into the areas around. 

 Lucinda  usually  highlights a few  contemporary artists each week, this time it was Diana Taylor ( who she'd  already mentioned to me in Week 8) and Karl Bielik ( examples below from his website)  

I thought the name and paintings looked familiar  and so using the search function on  my blog, I found his had been one of my favourite paintings at the RA summer exhibition last year. 

 We  stopped work about 3pm and cleared  up then set up a mini exhibition of our  best work  and then had a 'private view ' and review accompanied by  Prosecco and nibbles ( my little cheese scones were popular). It was really  interesting to   discuss what worked , what didn't and see the range and variety of styles, I've learnt so much from members of the group and their approaches to painting.

I'd included the initial collages , photos and painted sketches  so I could see how my work has developed. In essence what I've done is to take  1 initial collage and using copies of copies have gradually  simplified  and  enlarged it into something quite different yet the original source is still recognisable. 

I've come  a long way since my initial panic and indecision with having too many ideas  in weeks 1 and 2 . 

The breakthroughs came with the move to monochrome ( which I've stuck with but am starting to add a restricted palette of colours ) and in collage .

Then the introduction to using glazes of  transparent colour ( and the decision to stick with acrylics rather than move into oil painting as I'd intended)  

With my collages and sketches on display in the corridor and not immediately accessible, I worked with printed copies of the collages applied to canvases   and then made  copies of those paintings which I also worked into !

In week 6 , reunited with my collages , I painted them with glazes and started to prepare a very large newspaper collage to work with . 

This was the focus of the last few weeks, the challenge of scaling up marks and how the composition and relationship  of shapes changes. After a certain point you have to react to the painting itself although I found it useful to go back to earlier incarnations  to work out where I was going wrong.

 So what next?  I've booked a 10 week class on collage at City Lit starting in January having just scratched the surface on its potential, I want to know  more. I had too much going on to commit to a another term of Contemporary Painting Studio ( and it was filled very quickly by those who missed out ) but I've the bonus of a 2 week course 'Painting Studio Time'  set up before it starts. I think the time has come for a large painted quilt taking on board the lessons learnt from  scaling  up.