Step x: more monotypes

Monotype, Edge Lines 1
45x38cm, Printing paper

Last week's misshapen pastel sketches on printmaking paper did offer up a few insights into the next relief cut. But before I want to proceed to that, I thought I'd try again some more monotypes. I was keen on trying them out on a larger scale than the previous 20x15cm.

So, with all the courage I could muster this morning, I inked up an A3 sheet of acrylic paper - I had assumed that its preparation for acrylics would have prevented the oil paint I am using for printmaking to sink in, well - nice idea; in practice, though, the paint sunk in rather quickly; and for the next prints I just used one of the large laminated boards floating about in the studio - that worked perfect and provided a large enough surface to fill.

The 'plate': a sheet of acrylic paper

I started with monochromatic: the remainder of my tube of burnt umber was mixed with a bit of stand oil and turps and pasted onto the board; I then proceeded with various rounds of markmaking (knives, tissue paper, etc), adding and removing ink as I went along. Printed one, then another and another.

I've been doing a bit of systematic exploration of different papers, there's some I've been using a fair bit by now, but there was a new, very smooth, sized printmaking paper in brilliant white on the go today, (interim verdict: I LIKE IT); the trustworthy Tosa Shi (but too few sheets of it).

I like these sparse monotypes a lot, and on the larger scale they are fascinating: so extensive and yet very reasonable (!). In reverse, I am also reconciled with the composition - last week I initially thought it was weak, but no, it isn't. I moved to another one in colour. But that's next post.

Monotype, Edge lines 2
45x38cm, Tosa Shi paper

By the way, if you want to have a look at a larger size of the image, click on it, the click on 'All sizes' on the flickr image, this takes you to the full resolution.

Without a horizon...

I got a couple of new books - some on loan, some to keep, and all of them are about landscape/water/seascapes. Perhaps the best to start with is the most recent sketchbook from our Moley Exchange.

The latest addition in Lindsay's 'Maps and Destination' book are two seascapes in oil/coloured pencil by Vivien. I am so pleased to have them for the time being... By now the oils are pretty dry but when I first got a couple of weeks back, they weren't. There's a lot of detail in these sketches: water colour, changes, movement, spray, some rocks.

Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown,
Oil/Coloured pencil in Moleskine 18x14cm
See here for Vivien's own discussion on this entry in her blog
And here for the Moley exchange blog entry

Neither of them has a horizon line. But, structured by lines they are nonetheless. This one has a strong foreground with rock and plenty of spray. Yet, what intrigued me most was the water in the middleground: there's a wave on it's way, not quite built up yet, nowhere near breaking but it's rolling. It seems to me that Vivien's achieved this effect by line work and colour change.

Detail, Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown

Have a look at this detail: Clear linear marks in oil mark the advancing wave; in front of it, thinly applied oils with most of the colour (change) achieved through coloured pencil. It seems so much more still and calm in comparison to the line behind it that keeps moving forward.

So, do other structuring lines take the place of a clear horizon line to help make sense of a painting? Perhaps the horizon is just the most obvious, clear, understood way of demarcating heaven/earth, up/down, inside/outside and also indicate a piece as in fact a landscape?

A piece by August Strindberg that confused me when I first saw it:

August Strindberg, The Wave vii, 1901 Musee D'Orsay

It confused me for its abstract qualities. If it wasn't for the title, I wouldn't have made out 'what' it was. So, it's a landscape, but doesn't allow for easy (presumptious?) reading of such. Writing this, it becomes clear that this is of course nothing new: abstraction is the name of the game, I suppose. By taking it out of easily understood contexts, by verfremden - making it strange/foreign/alien.

As with the Strindberg piece, there is obviously also something about perspective and view point, and I've done some work on changing perspective and viewpoint on the shoreline sketches. Something is fairly straightforward, technical: as in vanishing points, angles and so on.

And, while I was stumped for a bit of what do with my entry in Lindsay's moley, I have a plan: I'll take it travelling with me... maps and destinations need a bit of journey, I think...

Bits and Pieces: ... and to take from it...

Joan Eardely, Catterline in Winter, 1963
Oil on board, 120x131cm
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Before the year's up, here is - as promised - a bit of personal reflection along the lines of look, observe, live and learn from Eardley's exhibition and the workshop that was running alongside it. [For previous posts on Eardley, see here]

I've grouped my comments along a number of themes. With a bit of difficulty of deciding where to start, I am settling on a bit of personal chronology along the lines of my own observations and markers as I picked them up.

They are losely grouped along colour - composition - markmaking - work process

As a starting point, then, there are the colours of Catterline in Winter - the first of Eardley's paintings that I came across. Part of my having started with pastels and their ready made colours was a real struggle to mix colour other than bright oranges, lime greens and purples. Here, the muted yet incredibly rich neutrals of the painting were a real eye opener to the power of grey and the variety therein. What I find really striking in all of Eardley's paintings is the sheer variety of neutral colours she uses, and there is very little repetition within.

The neutrals for Eardley act very much as the backdrop, balance - or indeed, even: frame - for splashes of bright hues: pinks, carmine, blues which structure, lift, offset and integrate the whole composition - and again: so little repitition of hue and value. This is most obvious in her series of interior scenes from the early-1950s: The Table, A Glasgow Tenement and also the male Nude. While I was first struck by the sombre ambience of these paintings, the variation of neutrals, interspersed with some bright colours actually works extremely well to provide a much lighter scene if you keep looking.

From Catterline's colours, the next theme emerges: composition.

Sketch of Joan Eardley's Catterline,
Graphite in Moleskine

During one of my visits I had begun to sketch quickly some of her landscapes - as an attempt to get more of a sense of composition and markmaking. And the simplicity of compositions - be it landscapes, seascapes or indeed the street scenes is remarkable. Strong compositions of horizon lines, a few diagonals, sun or moon in the sky and more linear marks through tracks, grasses in the fields etc. provide all that is needed. Sometimes, these are complemented by some strong diagonals in the foreground also.

More sketches of Eardley's landscapes, Graphite in Moleskine

My rough and ready sketches also tried to capture some of her markmaking - so noticable and strong. Many of the marks are spontaneous and seem almost incidental. Here, her ability to paint faces and figures out of what looks, close up, just as an accidental assemblage of dots, splashes and other marks, just made my jaw drop repeatedly. Again, without repitition, marks are made with various implements, reworked - but not generically - until they indeed make up children's figures, prams, laughter or wind through the high grasses.

More sketches of Eardley's landscapes, Graphite in Moleskine

Finally, onto some insights into her work process - and it is for these insights that I found the Bits and Pieces workshop really useful for ... over a number of sessions, more and more emerged and settled - not unlike a piece of collage itself.

For one, there is the process of sketching from life, from photos and then taking the sketches to work from them for paintings - a common work process for many artists. But of course, in doing so, more and more of the artist's response to - intellectually and emotionally - to the subject is becoming part of the artwork. The workshop broke up different steps in the process very deliberately - even rather simplistically - but afterwards I found that very helpful to unpick some of my own responses to life scenes.

As for sketching and painting, a number of pointers emerged:

• often dark outlines are visible;
• figures are based on shapes rather than anatomical form;
• highlights and lowlights are used to emphasise shape and not form - figures and scenes are flattened in this way.
• small detail, such as buttons, hairbands, laples or fabric patterns are highlights and emphasised
• the use of different media - charcoal, pastel and gouache in some of the studies and smaller pieces emphasised the above even further.
  

Collage is a working practice which takes the process of breaking down the work process further still: tearing out shapes and figures on the basis of one's sketches, even more forces one to remove the piece from a literal representation and to let it soak up own expressions and impressions - along with some technical (in)abilities.

Layering - paintings and collage - means going back to it, adding more - over time more and more is being worked into the painting. Evidence for this can be found in many of Eardley's seascapes, landscapes and street scenes.

Joan Eardley, Three Children at a Tenement Window, 1961
Gouache on paper, 46x37cm
The Eardley Family

Eardley painted the children on Glasgow's streets with arms linked, hands held, standing close together, looking the onlooker straight into the eyes, they are playful, in movement and curious. And while her paintings relied on so little repitition of colours and marks, these recurrent themes of children together make a good deal of the strength of her paintings and the responses they evoke. And, of course: the stormy and wild sea.

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Collage with architecture

Crail Collage,
Mixed media collage on board x3
each 18x26 cm

Last weekend I had started to try out how small and complex mixed media collages would work with townscape scenery. The approach to make tissue paper bond with wide open spaces seems to work quite well, so I thought I'd try and see how well it works with some of my sketches of narrow cobbled streets, quaint houses and a scenery which seems to call much more for a tight drawing or at least wash and pen approach.

I seem to have been moving to smaller paintings: while before a lot of the pastels were around 70x50 cm, much of the mixed media works took place on smaller formats: 30x40 cm, or 30x30 cm. Part of that move was down to me seeing them simply as try-outs and studies. Another part was trying deliberately to sort out complex compositions to something simpler and tighter - small formats seem to enforce some discipline in that sense.

Stairs,
Mixed media collage on board
18x26 cm

So, these three mixed media collages are pretty small: about 26x18 cm or 10x8". With such small format I was somewhat apprehensive if the architectural scenes would work - in particular with the collage and mixed media - if anything these would loosen the painting rather than tighten it. It took several rounds and layers of crayons, tissue paper, acrylics, gouache, oil pastels, and ink. But I thinks they are pretty much done now? Or aren't they?

BTW: Casey, many thanks for suggesting these as a subject to work up - otherwise, I probably wouldn't have gone back to them so soon! And, these are for the PIF which I'll post out once I'm back from Germany.

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Bits and Pieces write-up part 2

Joan Eardley, Rottenrow, 1956
Oil on Canvas, 94x164cm
Private Collection

As promised, here is a commentary on the fourth and final part of the Bits and Pieces workshop about Joan Eardley. At the centre of this fourth part were again children scenes, but this time very much in the shape of complex street scenes with a lot of activity and well-developed composition.

The exhibition tour focused exclusively on the Glasgow room of the exhibition: a series of somber interior pieces and some of her lightest, and most complex compositions of street scenes: groups of children playing, skipping ropes, pushing prams, holding arms and hands.

These street scenes share a number of common elements in terms of composition - as you can see from the two images I've included from the catalogue: A fairly linear composition of road, pavement and shop fronts provides the urban, highly-structured yet dynamic backdrop for various groups of children.

Joan Eardley, Children in a Glasgow Back Street
Oil on Canvas, 74x140cm
Private Collection

The figures, not unlike the backdrop, are composed of what appears almost incidental and random colours, marks and textures. In both scenes, it is difficult to disentangle the actual work process - what shapes, marks and textures were laid down before and after each other. This sense of spontaneous development is all the same held together but a strong composition.

There is in fact a third, and later street scene, in the room - my personal favourite - the pavement is sloping upwards to the left corner, the children are in lighter, almost pastel colours, angled too - and in fact, the whole scene - titled Glasgow Back Street with Children Playing - is marked by a greater sense of abstraction: rythms of colours and shapes moving through a group of children where only the faces are discernible (unfortunately it's too large to scan): but, go and have a look for yourself.

The exhibition room with these street scenes also includes a number of interior scenes, a few years earlier, the four scenes depict Angus Neil - close friend and frequent sitter - in altogether more sombre and structured paintings. Yet, again, each features strong bursts of colour to offset the muted greys and a glorious sense of detail. I have included The Table as an example, and although the catalogue reproductions are pretty good, you need to think of the yellow in the top right as bright and shiny, and the red stripe in the left background as vibrant too. I very much like the contemplative calm of the model playing off the lived in/off table and the sun-lit window.

Joan Eardley, The Table, 1953
Oil on Canvas, 61x91.5 cm
The MacLeod Collection

I seem to be running out of time again and yet have to write about the workshop session and my impressions/insights from the series. So, again: more to follow.

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Compositional struggles

On-site sketch, Maktesh HaGadol,
W/C on Moleskine
24x21 cm

Yesterday's desert landscape has been the latest in a long series of attempts of grappling with one scene from my Spring holiday to the Negev.

Following on from several on site sketches, pastel sketches, some more compositional pencil drawings and a round of gouache and pastel sketches to establish highlights, I still felt that the composition of what I started with was too complicated and unnecessary. I felt I was struggling with elements where each elements worked in its own right but not as part of the painting.

Cropping the image on the left to leave out a difficult-to-read midground was my solution for the time being. It seems to work a lot better through this simplification. Click here to see the cropped image.

Pastel/Gouache on paper, Maktesh HaGadol
40x30cm

Pencil sketch of ridge detail

Working with progress

The landscapes from earlier this summer have been sitting in my living room and I've been going back to them frequently to work them up initially as oils and pastels. The plan is that once I've done a few more realist, scenic compositions I can then go and abstract from various parts of the actual paintings, rather than using the initial sketches and photo references.
The progress on getting to those abstractions, however, has been a bit slow. Nonetheless, one of the larger pastels is getting to the point that it is almost finished. I've been reworking it a quite a few times and now feel that it's almost done. Funnily, the very reason for starting this scene - a series of strong, almost unreal, shorelines along this loch shore - has been what's been problematic.
Just for fun, I thought I'd post a before and after picture to offer as sense of working through a painting and exploring the success of a particular composition.

Shoreline repetitions, Pastel on board, 70x50cm

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now, dear reader, can you spot the 10 changes between the two paintings? Happy searching!