Chaotic state of mind.

Uncategorized

15 Mar

In a short space of time we seem to have arrived in a strange dystopian world. I guess I am lucky that my studio environment is a place of reduced contact, but my brain has been somewhat chaotic over the last two weeks as I have been pulled away by non-art commitments and introduced to many new art related subjects I need to think about.

Master copy drawing

My studio friend, Janet, is studying drawing, whilst I am studying oil painting. Jac has introduced Janet to her Master-copy drawing assignment that involves research into drawings of the Renaissance Masters, experimentation with their techniques and creation of a master copy. She has suggested it would be relevant for me to complete an abridged version, as I will be moving onto figurative work later. Never one to do a half-hearted job I am looking into many things. If I am to do this properly, I need to start at the beginning. Back to anatomy, I have studied limbs and trunk from a medical perspective, never the facial muscles and this is about anatomy for the artist. I now have a skeleton next to my desk and a pile of books I am reading. Owns their form and protrusions, volume of muscles and their layering.

Colour and composition

This project will run alongside my painting projects that have been somewhat neglected during the last few weeks. Not completely though, as I am always drawn back to my easel.

You know it’s relatively easy to paint monochromatically, introduce colour and the options are endless. There are so many decisions to be made around transparent glazes and washes, colours that juxtapose well and enhance whilst others look downright bloody awful. It is incredible how you can mix on a pallet and think you have the right colour then the minute you place it on the canvas, in a new environment and it looks completely different, not just the colour but the tone that you were expecting.

It’s not just the decisions around colour but the decisions around composition, how to make a composition interesting not boring. When I am working from my mind I can create backgrounds that are somewhat cliché and an uninteresting the more I develop a series of techniques that I know will work. As Jac reminds me, no one said this was going to be easy, painting is hard and it should be. It appears that the more I learn the more I realise how much there is to learn!

Here is an example of my pomegranates and pairs that I am struggling with. The early stages were more interesting, then I became rigid and an imaginative developing these objects that sat with no relation to each other on a horizon lead background.. Get rid of that boring background, now I have two objects floating in the space with no relation to each other! A lot of work to be done on this one.