First prints in to long
Today I made some monotype prints Its been to long since I worked in print these drawings of feathers and leafs were to find new ways of getting me to look at an object and draw direct. I am a lazy git and spend to much time being that lazy tit surfing the internet nightmare that is goggle images. I dont ever find inspiration but lose hours on thinking I’ve discovered something intresting. I am much better off search this website for knowledge and networks but I am a dyselixic image based freak.
Well in the end I couldnt find a image of a feather or leaf and wanted to smack myself in the face as I realised there are a shit load outside. I wanted to copy one then find one and copy it. But still I found myself wanting to photo it turn it digital then draw it. why turn it digital except for the fact that every thing in my life is digital images this is even digital. My practise shouldnt be so, I like to work for nature be it landscape or whatever the most un digital thing so why introduce this modern element. I think it throws me out.
I want to draw more from life its hard for me but it shouldnt be. I want to learn and I do when I concentrate hard for a few moments in the day.
I painted three pictures today all A4. One in colour two in monochrome. The colour one was one of the most succesfull tonal paintings I have painted for a while but I have been concetrating on this aspect of my work for some weeks now. Well on to the monochromes, These I think were succesful they were over painted on drawing/paintings I had made outside from life.
These two paintings where the third layer of paint so to speak the first was a charcoal drawing that focused on quick express marks that captured the space, the second layer was gesso in black and white with a few greys, this layer enhanced the perspective and sence of depth. The last layer was oil paint in vine black, nuteral tint, burnt umber and flake white. The last layer was to tidy up the compostion. I concentrated on not losing the two previous layers work but on making the whole better, I think it was succesful but you never know until you return to them.
I think I will continue with this work tommorrow and complete the rest of the drawing/paintings with two layers on as I though I was getting some good marks down and great undersatnding of the descriptive marks from the two layers beneth.
I hope to carry these on by making larger drawings outside that are quick and expressive based on life and aimed at understanding light and space through monochrome images of the river Dart. The dart is a river I know well and its very close to my home and work its a purfect vehicular for my investigations and experiments.
bye hole
Today was spent cataloguing my drawings done over the last year and a half.
I photographed the best and buffed them up in photoshop.
The images are a mis mash of ideas but it helped me to put them into folders of likeness in visual terms.
The drawings are ready to be made into paintings now well some of them, its wierd how they change on a computer screen its like there someone elses I have a kind of subjective removal from them. In the flesh as it were I see the marks and floors. On the screen I look at the whole and see the feeling and emotion.
I was in my gallery today and a lady commented that her tutor had said “never paint a gate shut” this is the kind of statement that stains my day why not surely it depends on what you are trying to say. Maybe the tutor thinks that a closed gate is a negative thing to the viewer.
I think its a loaded image with many interpretations the open gate dosent ingage the view it leads them in trow and past the object a closed one stops and gets them to climb over with a moments thoght.
This moment perhaps has tension the kind of moment that I am casing. The images I have made of gate, doors and passages all have these moments going in, stoping, passing through. I am aware of this and wish to investigate it more.
I have a image in mind that I feel the need to make right now of the barn door image on the last post or one before, in fact I going to act on it now
so bye
The unstreched canvas.
Unstreched canvas is easyier to move roll up and transport. Its not a finshed item of art so as in my last post its easyier to remove the stigma of making “art” and concentrate on exploring the subconsiuos things that intreig me about the image or place or light or what ever the whole practice is about gaining undersatnding. There dosent seem to be a end game in sight or even a end vision. The act of painting the scene needs concetration and strong visual perception. Thinking about it now I also think that working with unusual materials also is part of the learning process. Oils are great for colour and creating illusions of space and light but when I work outside away from the studio I dont have alot of equipment I am used to working in. This forces my hand and brain to find other ways of painting the light or texture. I react to the natural pigments of mud moving accross the canvas in the rain in a much more organic and human way that oil anf turps doing the same. The water dosent do me any harm or maybe its more than that its that the oils are artist medium they have a background of centuries of art stigma that stops me from being me with them I see turner in my turps washes, pollock in the flicks and spalshes these through me out of the process of making my work. When I see a fimilar stroke in oils I am transported back into anothers way of working.
The natural muds are my pigments they create new marks from the substance that they are. They dont hold any stigma and high ideals. They are honest and pure to me. This honesty is very importabt in the creation of the works I think that is why I dont want to make images that are traditional or conform to ideals of beautiful subject matters. I dont want to do this because they stop me from engaging just as the oild do. I want to find the new and this comes in the mundane reality of the farm that no one has painted before.
So these large works on unstreched canvas allow me to convers with a subconsiuos imagination and line of intrest. What intrest is infront of me meaning that I am yet to understand it. Yet to understand it until I am able to at which point I wont be intrested in it anymore. The intrest forfills me in some way just as much as the act of painting. The making and gaining of understanding through perception and draftmanship teach me alsort of truth that I find hard to express in words. The best of my painting maybe hold some of these things within them. I Dont want to deconstuct them to much after completion. Thats not the point the point is learning though direct enggment with the outside world in the act of creation. The farm acts as a vehicular for these investigations. I not sure if I want to try and pick this apart anymore that this at this time as I might just miss out on alot of works in this style of creatind and investigating so I guess I will leave this post there,
From photos to charcoal drawings to canvas
These drawings then move from the page to the canvas and I try again to expand on the photo/drawing by returning to the place I photoed with unstrecthed canvas and painting the scene from the drawing and life.
I have created different paintings by doing this. The way I work outside is so completely different from studio based works. I am distracted by the worlds noises, texture, light and forms. Iys hard to concentrate on the whole as I do when drawing from a photo. This tension causes me to approach things in a diffenent and experimental way. I want to take away the pressousness of the act of painting the stigma and pompus act of attempting to capture a scene in paints. The tradition of landscape forces my hand to make others works, so I start by putting the unstreched canvas in to a puddle or covering it with ash, rust mud, cow munure what ever is around the place the painting is of this killing of the white surface is rought and energentic. The natural ground helps to make the canvas seem more like a old rag a thing that has lived, been outside and seen the elements effect. I will leave them outside to get rained on to move the ground around in a random factoroutside of my control. All of this helps to take away the pressous feeling of making art.
The muddy ground I then draw into with burn wood form a barn that burnt down last year. This drawing is imformd by the drawing from the photo. I can concentrate on the elements that work in that drawing for me and bring then to the canvas work. This meditation on a theme helps I think to get me to concentrate and I find I work like i do as if it where a drawing more. I mean when I draw on paper I am not pressous about the out come, Only I will see the finished drawing its for me to understand and learn throght, when i approach a canvas then I intent to display it and I become aware of that intention of ego the distroying of the canvas by mud, ash, rust or manure helps to bring it back to a point where I can work to understand more of what I am investigateing in the painting.
This weeks paintings are of estuaries mainly th Dart and the kingsbridge. The works are in all different sizes but mainly quite large. They range from painting in just oils to works made from China clay and engine oil. These are sellers, I am making them because I want to explore tone and light. The composition is fixedwith slight variations on the theme.The look of the land isnt important I am not trying to paing a convincing tree or water suface but capture the way the tone of the painting conveys the space.
I have been working on charcoal drawings for a year now and find the limited pallette of greys easy to get a grasp of the tone of my drawings. The better the tone, balance, compostion and veriety in the sketches the better the final image.
I have been working from photos of nearby places on the rivers I find photos can reveal the lights and darks easyer they are easier to simplify. I take photos of moments of insiration when the light is right when a object casts a shadow of some intrest. these moments are fleeting and soon pass. This is way I find the camera a good tool to collect and catologue these moments.
I have made a image bank of a year and a half so far of the farm on which I rent a house. The months are put into days that I have gone out and captured the farm at different times and seasons. These photos act as reminders and inspiration to draw when I am in my gallery in Salcombe. The drawings expand on the photos limited field of vision I try to explore the moment in charcoal simlifing the photo into the elemnts that intrest me. In doing this for the amount of time I have I have just started to see the themes in my practice. I like to draw the doors of th barns open and closed, I like to find sculptural objects the slice up the picture plan, I photograph the same things again and again draw them again and again in different times and lights.
I then take the successful and intresting drawings into paintings on canvas more in the next post
