For today’s painting I decided to try again with the wax resist writing and then do a complete wash of colour over it.
An interesting result of using a small house painting brush for doing the wash was that it created horizontal lines going across + drips. Then, as I worked down the paper I wiped away some of the (drip) mark with the brush.
I worked over this with charcoal writing (eyes closed), and would have carried on to the bottom, except Kate mentioned that I should take a look (at the point the writing stops). I had been talking earlier about not wanting the result to be as balanced (and neutral in my view) as it often turns out. Too balanced = not exciting.
The other thing I find about stopping 3/4 of the way down, rather than going right to the bottom is that attention is paid to the underside of the writing, which I think is quite elegant and beautiful.
At the end (after dripping yellow, red and brown) I decided to add white drips finally, to link the first white wax marks to the ending.
The last 2 photos of development of ‘tuesday’ painting.
In this painting the first stage of writing with white wax (want to write without seeing the results while writing) doesn’t show up by just dripping watery acrylic over it (wax resists in places but doesn’t add up to much).
My aim is for the drips to provide a frission/ contrast to the writing.
Marks found on a wall on the way to the railway station in Abergavenny.
On my way to the station this morning I found interesting marks on the side of a house.
The photos in this post show the progress of my painting today.
I started with writing in white wax (wanted to be unable to see marks I was making), then ran watered down acrylic over. Once dry I used charcoal (eyes closed) – then went into it with greenish paint – following the blilndly drawn charcoal marks often.
I need to be clear in my reasoning in using certain colours or not.
My reasoning for using green and grey stemmed from a past piece of my work and continued for ease of making work. If I restrict my palette, I know how to start each time I get a chance to paint. This is important to me as the time available to paint is rapidly being taken up by other things, some necessary, some maybe not. (Prioritize!)
I have been using past works as starting points for new work. I now need to refocus on my key points of exploration, i.e. writing, gesture (meaningful marks) ->>> Random (intuitive) marks. Working on that liminal place between the two.
Other relevent words: listen, space
I am considering the frission between certain marks. In the recent large painting (wood for the trees) – The 2 marks are writing and drips. One the gesture of writing, mostly meaningless, but with embedded meaning of language, and under my control the other initiated by me, but not controlled.
I have just ‘written’ in semi darkness with charcoal on white paper. And the next stage is to run paint across it. It doesn’t have to be all in one direction as I’ve done before. There is no reason not to turn the work around while the drips are running (down).
