Time to Face the Big Ones!
I finally have the nerve up to attempt the large scale portraits.
My intention is to paint two compositions both filling 180cm x 120 blocks of cardboard. My nervousness is probably justified as having never painted on this scale before, failure would cost a considerable amount of time and expense.
There were technical difficulties to overcome even before painting commenced. My chosen cardboard substrate at 180cm x 120 would have to be thick enough not to bow, so time and effort was needed to pva four sheets of cardboard together to cure this. This hurdle was successfully overcome and painting could now begin.
I am taking these one at a time! I started with Stuart, a homeless man selling the big issue. His face was scaled up and satisfactorily drawn onto the board. My aim with the large scale is to give these people a monumentality, a physicality, and a presence which I believe is needed to emphasise the importance of the issue I am trying to portray.
I want the viewer to notice these people!
With the drawing successfully translated I could begin to paint. The basic tones were then blocked in. At this stage I am not happy, the large scale is not yet impressing me. It is still early days but at the moment it doesn’t have the presence I was looking for. One positive is that the large cardboard canvas is holding up to the punishment I’m giving it!
A Bad Day to Draw
I chose three interesting female faces to tackle with grey toned marker pens. I began well motivated, keen and positive. Sadly I didn’t finish well motivated keen and positive.
The first two went wrong from the start, marks were too heavy, too light, in the wrong place, too quick, too slow, too thick, too thin. It was a bad BAD day! Both had to be abandoned before I lost it.
Defying all good sense I began on the third which to my surprise started to show some promise. The failure of the first two seemed to be down purely to poor execution, but with the third, the pens seemed to be doing more or less what I was telling them. But then again the subject did seem to be particularly interesting.
With a drawn, gaunt face, penetrative stare and hooded head, it didn’t seem I could mess this one up however much I tried. Poor technique or poor choices? I’m too pissed off to analyse at the moment.
With drawing being an athletic ability I suppose you have to accept that some days you just won’t be on form and some days you will. Perhaps sometimes you just need a little warm up before you can produce anything not worth burning!
We all have those painting days!
Not every completed painting has to be shown. I’ve recently finished a painting of a girl with a very attractive and interesting face, however it may not fit with the overall tone of the work I have been doing. The source photograph showed the girls face with all of its strength, the problem was with translating this into paint.
Firstly I tried layers of strongly blocked in paint but this didn’t work, it lacked subtlety. Then more blending and realism was tried which rectified this, but the painting still lacked life. The eyes seemed to be the problem, they were rather flat, so more realism, more tones and small highlights were added.
This cured the lifelessness of the eyes but not my dissatisfaction with the painting. It seemed with corrections made it was then too polished. The technique of tearing away layers of the cardboard was tried to bring a little more texture and roughness to the work.
This changed the look, but not the tone. The girl does indeed have a strong face, however when translated into paint and painted to an acceptable technical standard her glamour overwhelmed this strength, overwhelmed the subject matter and to me, became the major and perhaps only feature of the painting, there didn’t seem to be anything else there.
It certainly didn’t fit with the tone of my chosen subject matter and I’m not sure if I want to show a painting where beauty is the only feature. After all the work, I’ve had to walk away and accept this painting as a failure.
10 years
Titles can be a very important part of the identity and meaning of a work. The best ones can add more layers for a viewer to explore or, if the artist wishes to direct them to where they want them to go. Personally I like to leave the viewer with options as to the title and the works meaning.
As far as titles go my preferred way of working is usually to leave them till after the painting is complete. However, sometimes they can become apparent even before a work has begun. After viewing Thailand based Ernest Zacharevics’ untitled painted portrait work on found wooden boards I was encouraged to put to use a found wooden fence panel of my own.
My original intention was to paint a detailed and highly finished piece like Zacharevics’, but when thinking what the fence panel meant and what they brought to the work I decided against it. I discussed in a previous blog about fences demarcating the boundaries of land, property, the ownership of these and their purpose in keeping people out so I decide that a very simple flat portrait would be enough.
The properties of my painting surface were already giving me enough meaning, I didn’t need to go crazy with the detail like I usually do. When drawing out the face in pencil on the panel it kept occurring to me that the vertical lines of the panel were reminding me of prison bars. Again links with my subject matter were obvious, a persons situation if damaging or distressing can be a trap, a cage or a prison, and the length of time they find themselves in that situation can be a sentence handed down to them.
The title then came to me. With these other layers added I decided I should simplify the painting even further to a single tone stencil like image. The title came from a simple answer to a simple question from an interviewer:
“how long have you been living on the streets?”
“10 years.”
What happened to the Agencies?
Having ran into difficulties finding suitable models to paint from life I was glad that I had not put all my eggs in one basket. From the outset I intended to paint also from found images and to include these with life paintings. However with a lack suitable sitters and time running out found images became my priority and focus.
There were many problems with communication with my chosen agencies, it has been difficult to contact people often due to their time constraints and heavy workload so visits to homeless centres have become less and less frequent.
Added to this many people have been reluctant for various reasons to have themselves painted or photographed, those that were enthusiastic have often been unsuitable due to problems such as scheduling and things just not working out compositionally.
The process of finding sitters for life paintings with this subject matter is a very very slow one when relationships and trust must be built, but much important and valuable work has been done and this remains an ongoing commitment of mine.
I am glad that I committed from the outset to include imagery from other sources. The found images have proved to be an extensive education. The sheer scale and variety of people with accompanying histories, interviews and stories have increased my knowledge and understanding immensely not just of this huge and complex issue but of humanity and society itself. They have truly been a revelation and I have felt privileged to portray these people.
