Planning discoveries

I am currently working on the final assignment for the printmaking course. The project involves a monoprint plus relief print.

Part of the instructions reads as follows:

Begin by preparing several sketches and ideas in your sketchbook where you combine colour schemes, line drawings and designs. These will help you establish and decide on a final idea. Good preparation is always essential when preparing a new project. Do not be afraid to try different colour schemes using watercolours, inks or coloured pens and pencils. [OCA, Printmaking 1, p. 172]

Most of my print designs have originated so far from sketches done here and elsewhere, ideas captured as I come across and later referred back to. So, yes, there is a definite use for the sketchbook. But as far as the printmaking process is concerned, I have a hunch that the use of drawing media becomes somewhat limited. I think what I'm trying to grapple with is the sentence that

Good preparation is always essential when preparing a new project.

I fully agree. Agree on the basis that this is true when preparation is understood to be wider than the use of drawings in sketchbooks. Thus, preparation for the printmaking involves: printmaking. The making of a variety of marks, colour schemes, overprinting, wiping out on paper, different formats and different pressures when pulling the print.

To me it seems that the use of colour schemes is also limited when explored in sketchbooks. The property of the printing inks cannot be replicated through w/c, coloured pencils or acrylic ink; so, any sketchbook work is very preliminary.

For this project, I decided to prepare practically - by printmaking - rather than other media sketching/drawing. And in doing so, working my way through the various stages and its design/material/composition decisions that it required and how these related to the idea of an image I had in mind.

Starting point: The image in mind is one of a a series of very ripe cornfields in a late summer sun, somewhere along the Ruta 5, south of Santiago, Chile. A series of rather minimalist lines of the field patterns and some photos I took have been calling me persistently to do something with and the monotype seems a perfect opportunity.



Stage one: Preparing a ground for a monotype. I'm after a high chroma orange background to set the tone of the overall print. I'd like it to be densely build-up itself, before I begin with the monoprint itself. My first idea is to use a board of polystyrene and ink it up: first in hansa yellow, then in hansa yellow with a tiny bit of naphtol red. These two layers are done quickly. They dry with a heavy bumpy texture and form the base for more overprinting.

Stage two: Orange lines. I am experimenting with a darker orange/ red to overprint; trying out if I can cover the previous printing fully, partially, lightly. At some point I begin to scratch marks into in to: lifting ink with the palette knife.

 

Monotype, two layers polystyrene, one perspex plate, 20x20cm

And, I am ending up with beautifully thin lines. The plate, despite vigirous rubbing doesn't transfer strongly at all (probably because of the strong texture off the polystyrene layer), thus, the distinction between covered/uncovered orange areas is hardly discernible. What is however visible are these long, rather elegant lines where the ink assembled on the plate.

I think I have my lines for the monotype. I am unsure about the polystyrene effect though. It seems rather strong. It's very intriguing in itself, but possibly not for the design.

Planning: a process of experimentation and discovery. This can be done in a planned, systematic way. But I know that for my own working process, it needs to be step-by-step. Now, I may go back to the sketchbook to continue with the next stage.

There are some more prints that followed on from this discovery over at my other blog.

Now... what to do???

Ok, ok... I kind of outmanouvred myself with the two previous ones. It's not that I don't know where I want to go with them... but at the same time they are at the moment not much more than markers for the future. So, the blog is acting - again - as a notekeeper.

The blog as notekeeper is a rather comfortable format, I think. It's a bit more sophisticated than my talking into my recording machine (well, the latter still needs some work on how to retrieve info I record) but it's the textual with a bit of visual format nicked from elsewhere on the net that works well and easily for me.

So, the disfigured faces of abused women and the kids that get sucked into the pavement that is the UK care system are there. They are also there along with some private notes of all that won't be possible and needs to be avoided. -

Putting them in here is easier than using the sketchbook. - Recording textually comes with my job and moving into some more visual seems to take a lot of time. Though - and here's today's theme (well, the obvious one at least) - I am becoming more and more excited about my recent sketchbook acquisitions.

Why?

Because they are larger and larger still. They are at least A4 - which when opened (it's a hardback rather than spiralbound) gives an A3 to work with which was exciting for the Chile sketches. But the one at home - the IDEAS book - is an A3 and when opened A2. It's fabulous, rather heavy cartridge paper which is happy with pastels, oils and printing inks so far. Being able to develop and spread out across a generous 58x42 cm is such a revelation (I know, some of you have been saying this for a long time, but now I've tried for myself, and guess what: you were right ;))

Here's a taster... But the proper stuff is coming soon when I move onto the disappearing spectres with my exploration. Before that, though, there will be one more post on seeing and classifying, and on the mysteries of some anonymous junk that ends in my inbox.

Tomorrow, or the day after (depending on how my exhibition preps are going.)

Elqui Palette in A3 sketchbook, Soft pastel and oil


Fieldlines in A3 Sketchbook, Lino prints

An end of January recap: organising, notetaking and subject matter

I am trying to get to grips with a number of different strands here right now, and I don't think I'm managing too well. Too many other things are calling for my attention and while I've so far been rather good at avoiding nasty winter illnesses, a tonsilitis rather effectively floored me for the past week. The throat is no longer sore, but... wow, I had never noticed just how tiring a trip to the post office can be (well, that 100 metres to and back).

In any case: enough late January winging

[hahaha... whingeing is of course what I meant;
what a nice buckage* I produced at the end of this month]

• Linocut printmaking
• Colour, marks and general influences in Wolf Kahn's use of pastels
• The facilitation workshop, specifically: production of knowledge

For most of these, the scenes are set: it'll be about the pondtreedarkwinterreflections that have come out of the visit to the bull's hollow. I'm very happy to stick with these scenes (two or three) at the moment and keep working with them.

Sticking with a couple of compositions that work well and keep intriguing me usually seems like a good idea. It kind of does away with the need to sort a composition for each new piece and allows instead for some more systematic - and yet at the same time: more playful? - exploration of media, colours, marks and all the other stuff around them.

The pond reflections in some sense feel like an easy option: I am painting stuff I've known for so long again. I keep thinking around this one, and whether it actually matters? Oh, well, yes it matters quite centrally. I think one of the things from last year I learned was the dynamic and energy I got from painting something known and familiar. From taking it from something known and familiar and slowly, patiently letting it go elsewhere; in part wilfully - and, dear, did I try to push those fields to transform and become something new from all that was old.

Over Christmas, I realised that there is almost endless possibility in continuing with that. And how enjoyable that is: take something that was taken for granted and let it go, run with it, see where it takes you and it may surprise you. It's like Benjamin's sock: where does observation turns to narration, poetry; where do past facts turn to memory and the making and invention of selves, a history that is imagined and yet filled with so much memory at the same time.

This all provides a little bridge across to the facilitation workshop again: and the questions it posed for me about different types of knowledge and understanding; and the realisation just how much I've learned and begun to understand through painting.

Relatedly, I've changed my writing and recording arrangements. A new laptop allows me sitting on the sofa while blogging... does it show in a sitting-on-the-sofa-chattiness? Similarly, I have finally taken the digital recorder I bought for work and interviewing home with me and am experimenting with recording notes and thoughts verbally, rather than in writing.

I am used to take a lot of notes in writing, either longhand or in the computer. But most often, the reason something doesn't get recorded is that I can't be bothered to type/write yet more again. So, I am curious whether having spoken files will see to that in some sense. Generally, I think I am someone whose thoughts and arguments are becoming much more quickly much clearer in conversation, when spoken. It's quite often at those moments that I feel something coming together. So, maybe I should just organise the 'talking to myself' element of that.

And: if it's noted, I can chuck it out of my mind, I no longer have to keep thinking about it in worry that I may forget. So, Folder A on my rather impressive Olympus recorder has various thoughts on labour politics on it, notably (a) the wildcat strikes at UK refineries against the use of foreign workers; (b) comments on an article on Rosa Luxemburg, experience and organisation, and (c) notes from the class I taught on Wednesday where we discussed the end of career.

Well, this post was supposed to be on some earlier experiments with pastels on dark paper. Have a taster of these. I think they will be on show tomorrow.

Pond reflection on darkness #1
Soft pastel on board

* buckage, n. , first usage c2001; denotes the wilful combination of two unrelated words into a new creation; usually based on some metaphorically imagery employed by Gesa Helms, etymological origin: a combination of the English nouns bucket and luggage for a bucket full of unnecessary luggage that one carries around.
Does that sound about right, P.?

Tell me, what is your question?

I have been experimenting with Participatory Action Research (PAR) of late to be able to understand group processes in organisational settings (e.g., labour market training initiatives, young people’s involvement in volunteering etc.).

Central to PAR is a relatively short and reiterative cycle of observation, analysis and action. It employs a set of ongoing inquiries – for oneself, personally; for the group setting which is at the centre of that piece of PAR and the wider context. So, at any time, many questions are being asked. The course I went to over the weekend was Part 1 in Group Facilitation run by the Business and Management School at Bath University.

As part of the weekend, we were early on asked to formulate such inquiry for ourselves. It’s a different take on asking about participants’ expectations for a course. But, formulating it as a personal inquiry is more specific as it:

• Has to be compelling
• Needs to energise you
• Makes you want to answer it
• Leads you into the unknown.

The last point is rather crucial: how many people do ask questions to which they actually already know the answer? It’s about comfort zones: doing stuff as usual and knowing how you will get an ok result. And: both in question and in our way of going about answering them, that comfort zone will show.

I think this goes for any piece of (social science) research but also for fine art pieces, doesn’t it?
Learning, however, really only happens outwith that comfort zone: when stuff is difficult, when it’s something new, unknown, experimental and a bit scary.

So: the unknown bit is crucial.

….

Part one on learning and creativity is thus about asking compelling questions: What is the stuff I want to find out more about? Get to know? Try out?

For pretty much any of my paintings, there were questions like this… some more compelling than others: how can I work with light? How can I include those fabulous clouds? Some were plain daft questions: when will cartridge paper dissolve?

If those questions weren’t there, I end up with pieces that clearly didn’t rock me; were so/so; quite ok but really rather lukewarm.

It didn't rock her

... so she said after I had sent her some snapshots from the prints I was truly excited about. Well, admittedly, I. only got two small, poor lighting pics sent over IM for a quick look. But nonetheless, it left her very unexcited.

Even to my comment that most of the times still life doesn't rock, really she replied: no, some of them do. LOL.

Orchid and Vase (They do not rock)
Monotype on blotting paper
40x30cm

That leads on to work process: Assignment One of the printmaking is on monotypes; it's set out in such a way that there are four projects: markmaking; masking; textures/different colours; freestyle.

Markmaking made me crash into hurdle #1: mixing ink, keeping ink fluid and getting a good print - it was really about painting on the plate and taking a print. I tried, tried some more and failed some more, and quickly moved to project #2 [which turned out a lot better, see here]; I kept reading on to the freestyle bit and quickly came up with ideas for the four freestyle projects to do, starting sketches, collecting things to include and general plans for that. In the meantime I kept playing around with the inbetween parts: masks, different masks, different colours with different masks, collecting more leaves, seashells and other things for texture etc etc.

So, project 1 was still lacking 'a still life including two objects, negative space and shadows'. After six, seven attempts at various jugs, plants, cafetieres, pears and some more, I had previously given up.

But the inbetween parts meant that I got a clearer idea of colour and contrast with the prints, got to know that dried ink doesn't get fluid again [uhuh... eejit], registration of plate is important so that you get the alignment right and so on. Knew a bit more about the paper, the transfer process, that the clean-up isn't really such a pain...

So, when I then turned to that dreaded still life including two objects I chose colours (orange and green) and objects (orchid) which had worked well in the masked prints. And, heyho: I have a print that does work in terms of composition, it's a reasonably clean print, has two objects, shadows and negative space. Well: it doesn't rock, I agree. But in relative terms it does well. And: it completes the task.

I think the painting on plate bit is too painterly for me; I like the roller, sponge, water stuff better. But more of that later.

Now onto the prints for freestyle, jippieh... good that I have some ideas.

I wish I was

ACEO Colored Sands #9,
Watercolour on Paper

... a synesthesist.

To hear colour, or to taste words. But above all I would love to see music in colour. Wouldn't that be great?

Not about translating, transferring or changing state from one sensation to another, instead they are the same. They don't exist without the other... Hm, thinking about it, I am not sure if I cared enough about tasting words or sounds - too much bad taste.

But the music/colour assemblage would be fabulous.

Have a look at Philip Schreibman's Gallery to see (hear?) what I mean:

Or, similarly, the Belgian Synesthesia Association on Art and Synesthesia


And then I wonder: how would I know if I were? How do I know what it is that I experience?

On accidental loss

There's been an expression popping up throughout a number of discussions between Casey, David, Brian and others. I think it was Casey who named it first: in order to finish a painting one has frequently to 'kill the precious thing'. The one that you keep closest, most valued within the painting is so often precisely the one thing that stops you from finishing.

It's something I know too well: again and again I find that it is precisely the object, line, colour that drew me to that particular scene or composition in the first place, that proves later to be the weak point, the nag, the problem. It's a funny one. So, in many ways I wholeheartedly agree with this proclamation.

But, then again: to KILL it? My mind kept going back to it - and I also see that Casey refers to the messing up of a new truck rather than death. My mind kept wandering to some of the collage work I've been doing. The beauty of collage, as well as pretty much all other art is, that stuff, mistakes, failures do get lost: they submerge, recede in the background, become unnoticeable. Yet, all the same, they remain - and I think they do so very much being alive and not as corpses.

So, my proposition is on losing rather than killing. And I've got a good quote to give you a sense of what I mean. It's one that's been keeping cropping up in my academic work, and while I have difficulties with the sense of solidity it conveys, it - on one level or another - gets me to where I want to: lost.

"I wanted to see Kafka’s tomb. Knowing perfectly well (having verified it so many times) that you cannot see what you want to see, I went to the cemetery to see what I could not see. It’s the law. All is law. It’s because of desire. The law makes its nest in the peels of desire. Go on: you will not enter. If you did not desire to go, there would be a chance that the door would open." (Cixous, H. (1997), ’Attacks of the Castle’, in Leach, N. (ed.) Rethinking Architecture, London, New York: Routledge; p.303.)

Fields in Blue, WIP Detail
Mixed media on board, 50x35cm

One v many

A follow on from the previous two on canvas making and serial production.

When I had made the canvasses last week, I made a few at once. It makes sense once you got going to do so: not much cleaning inbetween, etc. On Saturday, however, I only took one with me to the studio.

There was some deliberate logic behind it. That logic went along the lines of: take your time, dear, just keep working on one and not on several at once. Part of that logic was trying to be more thorough, another part was my apprehension to another round of friendly jokes at 'Go, Gesa, Go!' as I'm - maybe except Chris - the only one in the group who works on more than one painting at a time. In fact, several do work on the same painting for 8 or ten weeks. I simply don't.

The road to the blue trees, WIP, Mixed media collage
70x50 on board, Detail

I work on the same theme for a long time. I also do a whole number of colour, composition and value studies of the theme for ages before I start painting. But when I start painting, three or four paintings at once just about feel right.

And you know what: I should have stuck to that. Should have taken the other canvasses with me, too.

So, slowness is part of it, but in a kind of not very obvious way - it's the slowness on working towards the oil paintings through pencil, ink, gouache and acrylics; it's also a slowness in going back to the painting several weeks after I last touched it. But that's combined with a distinct and deliberate moving quickly between different paintings in one session.

What does that result in? I don't know, but it feels right. It feels right as it makes each painting less precious, less singular and thus possibly more spontaneous? It means I don't worry about whether that line is right, that value is spot on or whether that mark is precisely the way I want it. It becomes clear in a muddled kind of way.

So, one v many is quite possible one in many.

Paintings I like #2: Bird Cloud, Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger, Vogelwolke (Wolke nach dem Sturm),1926
Oil on canvas, 44x72cm
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA

Vogelwolke - Wolkenvogel; Bird Cloud - Cloud Bird.

It was the onomatopoeic [that sounds rather posh for the German lautmalerisch that I had in mind] qualities of the German title of Feininger's painting that kept me occupied when I first saw it: The sounds the words make.
Or was it the vast expanse of the cloud over a low horizon seascape...
Or was it the beauty of the concept: an airy cloud in the shape of a huge bird.
Or was it the yellow of the beach and the lonely figure on the left.

In any case: it's been a firm favourite of mine since I first came across it in print. The format and the rather restrained composition: strong horizontal lines, a single figure to the front left and above it all the majestic cloud, its wings, its beak.

After my sketching of lonely women in the Fogg Museum I ventured around the corner and stumbled right across it. Didn't know it was there, so it was an absolute surprise, gave me goosebumps, made me circle around the painting for ages, up close, far away, almost poking my nose at it, trying to figure out how Feininger made all those lines, variations of colour - restraint and yet so varied. Walk away, went back - in the process almost ignored the excellent German expressionists that hang close by: E-L Kirchner, Otto Mueller, Max Beckmann. Sorry, guys - you'll have to wait until the next time.

It's all about the Vogelwolke/Wolkenvogel today.

Two sketches of the Bird cloud, 1924
(top one in pencil, bottom one in ink and wash)
Also at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA

And these I found in my Feininger book: sketches after he saw the Bird after a storm, note how he changed the composition to a horizontal one in the oil painting, done a couple of years after the sketches.

For those precious found papers

... there are image transfers.


In one of my recent envelopes I received something too precious to cut up, glue on and paint over. It's a handwritten letter from my friend's gran. I think I'm getting very sentimental about things like that, in particular since I have only one grandparent left (who incidentally doesn't write letters but talks on the phone once in a while).

I did a big of digging around - remembering that much of mixed media and altered media works with transfers - image transfers with gel medium, alcohol or various other ways - not dissimilar to monotypes in printmaking.

So, I scanned in the letter, printed it on ordinary paper, treated the surface of the receiving paper with some acrylic gloss medium, positioned the print out onto it, used the back of a spoon to burnish the paper thoroughly before starting to peel off the print slowly.

There are various posts - some tell you to remove the print before it's totally dry, others want you to wait til it's dry - the paper separated quite neatly to leave the ink printing on the receiving paper. Some of the stuck on paper can be peeled off carefully once the medium has dried. But it requires some experimenting with best times, best effect etc. And once finished and dried should be sealed with some acrylic medium before proceeding further.

Transferred onto the prepared collage background.
Left the original plain paper, right the collage piece with
two layers, one in black and one in blue -
I'm pleased that the blue transferred quite strongly too,

I actually liked the effect of some transfer paper remaining stuck.

This plain paper transfer is a really simple technique - it produces a soft type of transfer but even for writing it seems to work to the extent that I was looking for.

Here are some useful posts and sites I've come across in the process,

• starting with the WetCanvas post on image transfers here
• the plain paper transfer is taken from this site here
• and Toni's A Spattering blog has a couple of further useful posts on transfer techniques here

Using the project for this kind of technique explorations is really good fun: it's plenty of reason enough to try out some of the more involved collage techniques as well as to push what particular media can or cannot do. - Otherwise it would be too much of an assembly line of artist books, anyway, wouldn't it.

Maybe you want to know, but I've now received twelve envelopes with various bits and pieces of recycling from Chicago, Ayrshire, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow, Newcastle (Australia), Jerusalem, ... and I've been told there are more in the post from Jerusalem (again), Birmingham and Sunderland... very good. I probably need a bigger box for the envelopes soon.

Collage techniques

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

... by Gerald Brommer (Watson-Guptill, 1994) is the title of my latest art book acquisition. I've been browsing through it and have been enjoying it very much so far.

The book features the works of many different (North-American) collage artists and starts off with an exploration into attitudes, materials, and techniques.

Rather than doing a proper book review - too close to my day job - here are a few of the eye-opening sentences from the introduction of the book. So, let me quote extensively (;))

Artists explore abstract, representational, semiabstract and nonobjective imagery through a variety of collage techniques. In some ways, collage lends itself best to dynamic and vibrant treatments of abstract and nonobjective imagery. Yet, as soon as I say those words, a transparency of a representational image jars my senses with its sheer beauty and simplicity. Collage is a layering of thoughs and ideas as well as of paper, fabric, glue, and paint. As they work, collagists amass history and emotion along with their gathered collage materials, and viewers add yet another layer of meaning. (p. 9)

Brommer continues further along this line of layering, adding history and presence:

The very gathering of materials is a historical process, and collages might even be considered biographies of the lives of the artists-or even as historical artefacts themselves. Collage artists often speak of providing a second life for found papers and objects... (ibid)

And so he writes on, and I am finding resonances with some of my previous thoughts and practice; e.g. in the way that findings enter works (see an earlier post on this here), but also how imagery are captured, mediated and transformed into something different, (as in this post on work flow).

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

The very idea of working with discarded, recycled, and found materials is working away in the background of my mind as a way of asking all my friends in far away places to send me some of their found papers and materials to be brought together in something new... oh, there seems to be another project for the future.

.

Problems to projects

Water spray and a low sun

Mixed media collage on paper, 40x30cm

My mixed media experiments are continuing.

This one had started as a very cautious exploration of gouache and pastels. A few weeks later, I got back to it with some tissue paper and glue. Reworked it, kept reworking it, reorganising a poor composition and kept adding more torn bits of tissue paper, watercolour washes, gouache, ink, charcoal, felt pen and yet more pastel to get to something better.

I am beginning to see how a poor painting - or a problem - turns into a project: part intention, part process, I can go with it where the materials take me. I liked where I got to today, in particular since it transformed thin paper into a thickly textured board with all sorts of things on it - and I haven't even begone to use grit, sand and mud ;)

This is where I started:



.

How much texture do you need?

I have written much recently about the importance textures have for me in paintings.
In fact, when I begun to move away from pastels to paint, I was keen on working with oils precisely for their ability to layer heavily and thickly. In fact, one of the first purchases for my acrylics (which were the paint I started with, rather than oils) was heavy impasto medium.

In any case, talking about textures also made me realise that it's more subtle than 'a lot of texture'. In fact, with may heavy layering and impasto I often find I lose the interest in some paintings - e.g., while I admired Leon Kossoff's drawings at the National Gallery, I was rather quickly moving away from some of his oil paintings.


Similarly, Strindberg's abstract and evocative land- and seascapes are heavily textured but... hm... I dunno... I haven't quite figured out what it is about texture/too much texture, but my first hunch is a question of opaqueness and how much light is coming through the painting. Strindberg's waves and clouds are very dark and brooding, at the same time he seems to work liberally with white to lighten his darks, yet it seems flat and opaque.

August Strindberg, Stormy Sea, Broom Buoy
Oil on Board, 1892
Nationalmuseum Stockholm

Does the light of the canvas balance texture?

There's a question to contemplate for a bit... or maybe it's a different question that needs asking...

Experimental photography

Fox Talbot, Botanical Specimen, 1839
Photogenic Drawing

A BBC4 documentary on the Genius of Photography was repeated tonight. It's second part examined the impact of experimental photography as art - notably for surrealism and dadaism. Intrigued by the experimentation with subject - e.g. extreme close-up and the taken-out-of-context - as well as chemicals, I had a look for some of the images and techniques used.

A couple of names stand out - and stand as exemplars for processes, ideas and practices:

- Fox Talbot's sun pictures of the 1830s where he created light sensitive paper on which he could 'draw' by placing objects on top of the paper and then exposing it to the sun.

- August Strindberg's celestographs, exposing photographic plates to the night sky to capture the cosmos.

- Man Ray's photographic experiments: photograms or rayographs; with the solarisation process which makes human skin appear aluminium-like. But also, his 'straight' photography where abstraction is achieved by omitting scale and recognisable reference points. Most notably in the famous Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, 1920, Dust Breeding

Here's a great article by Ben Lifson, a US-based photography teacher, on working with abstraction to composition. Well illustrated and written, it examines different genres and approaches to explore the potential for abstraction while looking at the composition of various artworks. Beginning with landscapes by Constable and Corot, the article then moves on to abstract photography. It is well worth a read and the illustrations are very useful.

Details of mixed media

Colored Sands Study, Detail
Acrylic paint applied with palette knife and scratched,
some gouache and some pastels
Mixed Media on board, 35x35cm

I've been a bit preoccupied with my decision to paint my living room last Sunday - and a week of evenings spent painting white walls (and discovering far too many missed spots here and there) took over from other painting. Yet, one thing that keeps in my mind is how flat photos of paintings tend to look and that the excitement of actually making paintings is for me very much in the textures and layering.

So: a brief post today with some of the offsets and upsets of last weekend's desert landscape. Here's the detail which brings together and sets apart the blue/violet calm:

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

Acrylics, gouache, then pastels

This is what I did this morning. Having taken my camera with me, I took pictures of the process for this desert landscape.




Step one: placing major shapes and colours with acrylics (brush and knife). I was particularly keen to get the rock faces (dark purple) placed and also to create the highlights in a light/mid value rather than too light. These are a couple of layers of acrylic washes. I mixed gloss medium with the acrylics to increase brilliance.
There is a bit of wiping off, sponging on, splashing and scratching going on across the painting.



Step two: working over the acrylics, I added gouache layers - to increase variation and add local colours, notably reds/oranges and greens.

Colored Sands Study, 35x35 cm
Mixed media on Colorfix board

Step three: Adding pastels - creating texture; integrating colours: notably moving pale blue/violet throughout the painting, taking back some of the strong yellow/greens and to place some orange highlights; creating detail of ridge in foreground and defining rock in middle ground.

I'll talk about the composition tomorrow - this one has been giving me some headaches but I think I may have found a solution for it...

What's in a title?

I've been thinking more about titles, titling conventions and the associations with a painting's title. During this, I came across - again - Robert Genn's twice weekly email newsletter Painter's Keys, which I had meant to subscribe to some time back. He has written up a very interesting post on the issue. Among other things, Robert says that

Abstract art can present titling challenges. The formal values of the work itself may be mentioned--e.g., Red on Blue. Titling can also give viewers a clue that might help them on a voyage of imagination and discovery--e.g., Talisman. Sometimes, in this direction, you don't want to say too much. Brevity is enigmatic. (Robert Genn)

Numerous responses by other artists and their approaches to titling their art follow the original article. Reading through these, I must admit I am a bit partial to Sheila Grabarsky's titling in series - the series that form the basis of her artworks are those relating to personal events in her life, such as the birth of a granddaughter, a new cat, a place she lived in and so on. As such, they are really diary entries and without immediate relevance to the actual piece of art. But for her, this also allows her to free herself of having to worry about titles.

As for my own titles, for most of them I am very happy to denote the part of work process they originated from:worked in series with a series title which is playing with some prosaic origins - e.g., Bedrock & Cloud (as my bid for physical geography); Land Marks (as landscapes developed out of abstract marking and mixed media work; Textured Walls (as abstracted details on indoor walls); Window to the Sky - probably my most romanticised title - I somehow had associations to one of my favourite books by the East German post-war author Christa Wolf - Der geteilte Himmel... Yet, suitably shortened to WTTS #45, that association quickly disappeared. :)

Some pieces get two titles, e.g. the WTTS #22 for my dad is also Am Abend - in the evening; others are a bit more associative such as Spring in the Sky; and finally there are some ironic one - such as The Runner (!), or The Liar Selling Snakes at the Market (!!). Yet, as for the more abstract pieces, I do wonder if it makes sense to be less descriptive of process or content.

Here's the piece that triggered this line of thought... and: can you find the girl in a white dress on the wall?

Textured Wall #1, 50x70 cm,
Pastel on Board
Gesa Helms 2007

Gouache links and sources

I've been doing a bit of digging around gouache techniques, resources and artists.
I was hoping for an amazon one-click solution but was sadly disappointed. There seem to be very few technique books around.

The one that is consistently recommended is that by Pamela Kay, Gouache: a personal view, Atelier 1995. Yet it looks as if it's difficult to get hold of (an Amazon price tag of £95 isn't very encouraging). Katherine at Making a Mark has written up an excellent post as part of her floral project on Kay's floral artwork, which is very much based on gouache.

I have also found a couple of interesting blogs by artists who work with gouache:

• Erik Tiemens' Virtual Gouache Land

• Jared Shear's Terra Peer
  

• I found both through Charley Parker's Lines and Colors , who has a whole number of review of art blogs on his site

Gie's a gouache

In the fields, Mixed media on paper
40x30cm

My favourite Saturday morning art group is back again, and while it will take a while to balance Friday evenings with Saturday mornings, it was exciting to be back - it's a great group of people and many of them have been going for a long time.

I'm keen on doing more work with oils but am not quite in the mood for that yet. So, I took my tubes of gouache along - I got them as a present early in summer but still haven't tried them out - what have I been missing!

It's funny how some media just feel right straight away and others just don't. From pastels I moved to acrylics and I remember vividly the intense frustration when everything just ended up as muddy, plasticky grey. In constrast, oil paints were just a revelation - their luminosity, the various oils and assorted accompaniments to go with them (even smelly turps) just add to the experience.

So, gouache has been a plan to pursue for a good while - really as a means to keep mixing media with pastels, and there's plenty of artists who did precisely that - mainly Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas - to which I won't link now but make a mental note of yet another draft folder file.

High pigment load and their ability to mix, remix and keep playing with makes gouache an exciting water-based medium. Their opaqueness (or is it opacity?) makes them ideal as underpainting for pastels - just see in the sketch above in particular with the blues and magenta where the intensity of hue would be difficult to achieve solely based on pastels.

The painting is based on one of my outdoors sketches at my parent's place.... low in a field of grasses with a high horizon lines made up of trees - some cobalt blue would have been better for the sky, but there is always another time. The mixed media are gouache, acrylic ink and pastel.

Here's to new paintings and explorations.