Some little experiments

 

What a busy week....lots of framing and Artweekend fun, but in amongst that I've been working on these experimental pieces. The one one the left needs a few more bits doing, but the one on the right is finished...very different styles but both very interesting to work on...I'll take both styles further I think...:-)

 

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experimenting

This is a quick test of blogging from my phone . Let's see if it works . I've been working on this picture of the square in eynsham using acrylic ,still a long way to go but I'm starting to get some interesting marks .

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Cornish Crows

This is experiment number two, or “Cornish Crows” as it’s now called. Oil paint and gold leaf on board, using a combination of painting, smearing, scraping and carving! I’m currently working on another one like this but introducing some simple figures into the scene. I’ve been trying to merge what I do with the watercolours and lino with my more traditional oil painting style…I think I may have finally found the way to do that…:)

Room two...

Gallery room is pretty much done now, walls painted, hole in floor fixed, paintings on the walls. Have also got lights up in the Studio room, lovely and bright, might need to get new sunglasses. Have Jack and his school chums coming over this Thursday to do some modelling for me. Second experiment went very well so have started on third which builds upon it. Both are oil over gold leaf. I’ll post some photos of those later in the week and perhaps a few sketches from the modelling session…busy :)

Still Life Day - 4:00pm

One Pear on a Stone Shelf.

Okay I’m done on this for today. I may do a bit of glazing work on it in a week or so, once it’s dried a little…then again I may just leave it as it is…need to live with it for a day or two :)

I’d hoped the combination of bare canvas, exposed drawing and a bit of detailed work would give me something interesting and I think it has. With all the still live work I’ve done I’ve been trying to find a balance between the traditional and contemporary, this one feels like a good step :)

Still Life Day - 2:00pm

Some colour into the pear and more detail in the front of the stone shelf…

Still Life Day - 11:40am

A couple of hours in and the drawing is all done, just starting to apply the darker shadow tones. I’m planning on leaving lots of this stage of the painting just as it is now, working into the stone shelf a little and refining the pear a lot more. But the background will be bare canvas as it is here and I’ll leave the drawing lines in place where possible…

Still Life Day - 9:45am

Am doing a little experiment with still life today, want to see how far I can get in a single day…9:45 now, so enough blogging on with the painting…will post though the day as things progress…or not as the case may be :)

Oil Swirls Experiment

I'm trying a little experiment at the moment to see if i can use oils with the swirling landscapes...I've got a canvas and a board I've coated with Gesso. Both are divided into two and I've used masking fluid on one half, moulding latex on the other, I've made a variety of marks with both and then painting on some oil. Thin to thick across the surface. I need to wait for it to dry now, then I'll add another coat... then I'll need to wait a LONG time for it to dry fully....and finally, we'll see if the masking fluid/latex comes off or not :)

Also did a painting yesterday which I'll blog later...need to head off now and am late already :)

Golden Key - Finished

Came down with a bout of man flu this weekend, so didn’t get much painting done, however I’ve finished this one off today. I’ll put it in the Eynsham Art Group Summer Exhibition 5^th – 13^th July, should you want to go see it…or better still, go and buy it ;)

I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. As with the watercolours, I think the techniques I’ve used here are giving me an interesting, unique vein to explore further…will get another canvas gesso’d up this week ready to go…:)

(Have attached a couple of close-ups for anyone that wants to view the mysterious lines in more detail ;))

Nearly there...

Day 4. and I’ve done a lot on this today, nearly finished in fact…:)

More shapes...

Day three and I’ve added some more detail to the background.

I spent a LONG time just looking at this today…there are some elements that I like (overall composition, sky, pose of the figure, sections of the outlines), but the general application of the paint is not yet working…it’s too like a lino cut and not enough like a painting…this is partly due to the nature of acrylic paint and my love/hate relationship with its properties(or lack of skill in using it), but mainly due to the fact that this is an experiment and I don’t know exactly where I’m going…

I need to find a way to blend the acrylics, that gives me a ‘painterly’ look, without having that ‘messy’ look that you can get from acrylics when sections are drying before you’ve had a chance to work them…the current blocks of colour are too lino cut ish….too like a cartoon…

Phase 2

Day two of experimentation and some of the lines are starting to come together nicely. I’m painting the background spaces rather than drawing the actual lines, which is giving me some interesting details along the lines which I really like…the effect is a little bit like a lino cut…anyway, there’s a bit more blocking in of colour to go yet, then I’m going to work the lines themselves, pulling out a few details here and there while tiding up balancing the weight of the lines…Once that’s done I’ll start working on the internal painting…all in all, I’m please with the way this is going, I’m certainly picking up some useful tips :)

Experimentation part 1

I’m doing a bit of experimentation this week. It’s an acrylic, playing with lines, figures and storytelling, based on a very short story called The Golden Key by the Brothers Grimm.

For quite a while now I’ve wanted to take the strong lines used in the watercolours and get them onto canvas in some form. I’ve considered several different methods, some very similar to the watercolours themselves, but part of my desire to use canvas/oil/acrylic is to gain more control over the lines in order to depict figures... The looseness of the watercolour method just doesn’t allow me to achieve that. However, I want to retain the spontaneity that I’ve been getting in the watercolours, which is something that is sometimes missing from some of my ‘traditional’ oils…

So this is it, phase one, blocking in the composition. I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to develop…we’ll see as the week progresses…:)

Experiment Number 1

Have been experimenting tonight with ways of taking the lino style designs into larger paints. Specifically how I might deal with the texture of the "blocks" of colour in a painting. This is the result of that...not a particularly thrilling work of art, but I feel like I'm on an interesting path...I'm going to experiment further with a stronger design and clearer colour "blocks", then I want to work more distinct patterns and textures into those blocks...So, water might be blue, but if you look at it closely you'd see a wave pattern...etc...anyway, I'll explain more fully when I'm awake ;)