Contemporary Painting Studio Week 5

Week 5 of Contemporary Painting Studio  started  with  a  structured peer review session   looking at each others work : project  development  and experimentation processes;  paint application methods.  

I was paired up with someone   with a very different  style  to mine ( process driven,  painting in oils,  responding to the surface ,  diving straight in without a great deal of preliminary planning). Quite a contrast to my 4 weeks  of developing ideas - she couldn't comment on my painting methods as I hadn't really done any!

I'd already written on my  review sheet ' halfway through, get painting!!'  so I did.

 

I started by  having a go at the techniques that Amanda had demonstrated the previous week : priming a sheet of paper with diluted PVA and layering  glazes of transparent  paint mixed with various acrylic media. I brought my own Winsor and Newton professional paints in as  they were truly transparent  and some unopened Golden  mediums  I got in a set years ago. I  began quite systematically  but then when some accidents  started to happen  ( dribbles and bubbles - perhaps due to a brush not being properly washed?)  I got a bit carried away seeing how far I could push the layering.  I confess I got a bit giddy using colour after so  many weeks of  monochromes and neutrals.

After lunch I returned to working with a more sombre palette,  mixing greys to match the colours in the collages I'd chosen to work with ( without using black).

In this case I'd printed a copy of the collage onto t shirt transfer paper and ironed it onto some primed canvas  and   worked outwards  trying to replicate the marks.

 Still a work in progress, trying hard to work slowly to retain the freshness of the collage.

This collage again was printed on t-shirt transfer paper but applied to a painted canvas.

 I can see I've already overdone it  but have made some copies I'm trying different things with  to see if I can rectify it.

 I discussed with Lucinda some of the outcomes from my mentoring session with   Christine that were relevant to  painting particularly use of collage, moving into abstraction  and scaling up. The painting above is only A3 and I've currently only  worked up to A2 in size.

Lucinda  suggested I build up to at least 1m ( they have paper on a roll) , taking advantage of  the large screen easel I have. 

Our 'tea break' in the afternoon consisted of Prosecco and cake ( it was several peoples birthdays)  and looking at our preliminary work hung in the corridor of floor 3 (it's on for another week)  

I finished off making up another sheet of collaged newspapers  as backgrounds for the following week - A1  this time!

 

 

Contemporary Painting Studio Week 4

Last week in Contemporary Painting Studio, Amanda Knight  was the tutor in the morning and gave us a fascinating and informative whistlestop tour through  acrylic and oil mediums , particularly for glazing.   Most of the group paint in oils  so that is what she concentrated on  but she gave an interesting  demonstration of the luminosity of using glazes of transparent colour in acrylics  rather than mixing colours ( a bit like watercolour but more so! ) . She  mentioned the work of Mali Morris ( examples above)  who currently has an exhibition at the Fold Gallery -  definately one I hope to see before it closes, her work looks so joyful.  

 There  wasn't much time  left to do much before lunch - I'd made some B&W copies of my collages  and stuck them on a piece of paper and started to work into them with white, already looking interesting  as they are more integrated with the background.  In the afternoon we were choosing preliminary work and sketches  to  go in the display cases on the 3rd floor   so this with some of the original collages  is what went in.

I've got into using up leftover paint on  a sheet of paper, working with a credit card, I've now got quite a stash of  painted papers for backgrounds or to tear up for collage. This time I did an monoprint as well ( above) . I'd  spent my benchtime while at Studio 11 in Eastbourne doing monoprints on fabric ( 65 of them!) so I was still in the ' what if' zone. 

These are a taster of what I produced there  using acrylics and an acetate sheet ( above) and a Gelli plate (below) . I spent my coffee break photocopying some of the  better ones for  use in collage and after talking to Michelle Dow yesterday am going to do some more , varying the scale. 

 In preparation for tomorrow's class  I've been playing with images of some of  the sketches, paintings and collages in Photoshop

This is the top of the painting I did in week 2 ( above)    and with 'invert' filter below. I like how the newspaper text beneath the paint shows through

 Last Friday I  did some printing on fabric  and t-shirt transfer   sheets and today I bondawebbed the fabric ones onto pieces of old linen tablecloth ( I'll stitch into these for Journal Quilts) and conscious that  I've yet to do much painting (!), ironed  photo transfers onto primed  and painted canvas
(I had good success with this technique on Advanced Painting course last year)

 While waiting for the BT telephone engineer ( we've had no incoming calls since Saturday although outgoing and broadband were fine ) , I started to look through some of my art books for examples of collaged work .
The acrylic collage pieces by Anthony Whishaw struck a chord  - his work has often been my favourites at the RA Summer Exhibition ( which is why I requested his monograph as a Xmas present )

And coming full circle in this post, his  painting ' Espot' of transparent acrylic glazes !

UPDATE on 'The Big Draw  Selfie' , the animation has now been posted on the City Lit Blog . My drawing is  the glasses towards the end !

Art Meets Science

I've been involved in a small way in this new exhibition showcasing the work of the Millennium SeedBank , contributing some plant cultures in jars and some orchid seeds. I particularly like these sculptures made in willow by artist Tom Hare of seeds. Five have been installed so far and five more will be crafted on site over the summer ( with a chance to join in! )

In the Nash conservatory,three giant 3 metre long fibre glass devil claw seed pod sculptures by Tony Gibas hang from the ceiling. As a film set designer, Tony also made the mock growth room where some of my plants are displayed.

The exhibition also features some of the amazing coloured electron micrographs by Rob Kesseler . A few years ago there was an exhibition of his pictures of pollen, hugely blown up (shown below) I loved the idea of the trees and gardens showing through the images and it started me off thinking about how I could combine images in Photoshop and use transparency in my own work.

Pojagi

3 posts in one day - unheard of ! But then sometimes so many threads come together that you have to follow it up. I've worked quite a lot in the past with silk organzas, specifically printing on them using the computer and using them in layers but have been following a highly opaque route recently. When I wrote recently on 'skylines' , I had a comment from Neki about using the technique with sheers. Ooh I like that idea. And then I saw what Jude in her 'What if?' blog had been doing incorporating translucent fabrics in her work - lovely. I first saw 'Pojagi' items in the Korean Galleries at British Museum and the V&A and then the catalogue of a collaboration between Australian quilt artists and Chunghi Lee ( one of the reasons I joined Surface Design Association)
I later came across the book ' Rapt in Colour' which is full of examples to make you drool. What I really like about 'Pojagi' is the way the seams are like the lead in stained glass windows, important and integral to the design, and also the 'moire' effect you get when organzas are laid over each other.
I made this door curtain specifically for the doorway from the kitchen to the back stairs in our old flat. I scanned Eucalyptus leaves and printed them onto silk organza to get the idea of them drifting downwards. As I was printing on A4 sheets I had work out a way to join all the pieces - I settled on French seams as the best way to trap all those loose threads!I was originally going to trap real leaves between the layers but they proved too brittle and so made silk leaves instead.



As there are leaves printed on both sides , one of the bonuses when the curtain was in situ was it looked very different according to whether the light shone onto it and when it was backlit, in natural or electric light. Unfortunately we haven't yet found a location for it in our new property

After I'd done it I found instructions on how to sew the seams 'properly' on a Japanese Pojagi site (no English but the diagrams are clear). When I was in Japan, the books mentioned on the site were top of my shopping list and I bought a couple of kits (the fabrics are translucent ramie). I bought some light kimono fabric with Pojagi in mind - perhaps now is the time to think about transparency again.