Painting structure

Another 6x8 monotype, this time trying to collage drawings and ideas in a painterly way. All the colour is invented.  What I notice about working with Akua Intaglio inks is that cleaning between colours is problematic because although you can do it with water you really need warm soapy water and then the brush should dry and when I am working quickly I just never seem to realy clean my brushes properly so I get a muddy feel unless I am fastidious, which I never am...

I also forgot to roll the release agent onto the image before printing until I had the paper ontop of it, so I had to lift up the corners and roll and I got bits of red all over the place, accidentally. 

I took a photo of the plate before I printed it.  It's interesting to see how different the final print is...

Thinking colour in monotype

The first thing to say is that this image isn't really accurate in terms of colour, the original being more subtle with richer oranges and not so much red. I need to calibrate/profile things better between camera, monitor and printer,  but I don't want to invest in any more equipment until I am happy with the images I'm making...

The next thing to say is that this is that Akua Itaglio Ink and it just doesn't hold the line as well as oil based ink, so far.  I used a zinc plate whihc does seem to help and I think I'm beginning to use the pigment better, but I had more detail in the face and during printing it smudged.  I rolled the release agent over the top, pre-printing as I worried that the ink might have dried too much for spoon printing. Rolling a film of relase agent makes me nervous and it did throw up a few specks of random colour so I added a few finishing touches after, perhaps that contributed to the smudge problem.

The struggle of working big

So this one is big - 24 x 36 Inches and has been a few different paintings. The original painting was landscape, with some interesting shapes and some painting that I liked, but the subject was ultimately unappealing to me.  So I turned it portrait direction and in Bob Lahotan style I looked for something, somewhere in the original painting to begin with again.  Eventually it happened but the second image referred to a 5 minute sketch from life drawing and although it had potential, I didn't believe it. In Septmeber, I  had thought I'd do a series of hat paintings based on a trip to a day of open gardens when I followed a hat around.  That felt like another place to begin again  so I painted in the figure. It needed more stuff, so amoung other things, our bowl, lamp and sideboard appeared today. 

I continue to struggle with tight and loose, how much to define, colour and grey, line and all that decorative.

I think my mother would recognize similar painting on her folding screen, so maybe this is how I paint, my handwriting?

Clearing Snow

Having used the pure pigment of gouache, these Akua intaglio inks are a bit pale by comparison, but I thought they might be able to approximate snow light in their own way, so I moved aside the oils and began.  Even though I find making monotypes so arduous at the start, as I begin to finish there is usually a sense of wonder and delight.  They take time, focus and luck. I love rubbing the paper with the wooden spoon , lifting up the corner and seeing what it all means in reverse etc...

Snowlight colour studies under the influence of Hiroshige

No sun up this morning while walking the dog and the colours and light at the end of the lane reminded me of Hiroshige. I wondered whether using Horoshige's colours in one of my colour studies would create the feel of snow. I tried to think about colour ratios, very loosely, and grabbed, tore and cut paper quickly. I wanted to keep away from reproducing the structure. Clearly missed an opportunity to use my favourite melon orange, in my haste, though.

Snowlight by woodshed

These 'snowlight' oil sketches have become a part of my day.  The snow is still pristine in our Nayland Farm micro-climate. the original is a bit duller, a bit more like the grey snowlight of today.

Snowlight in studio

Heavy snow last night and overcast today. I only have titanium white, I wonder what lead white would do? 

Also making snowlight mailart, drawing on colour studies and gouache painted paper.

Snowlight (inside) 2

The snowlight is flat today.  They say snow is coming and in 'pathetic fallacy' terms the snowscape looks malevolent, not playful.
I realised I don't have a col red (carmine) in my oils, so found it difficult to get a low key fuscia.  In the end I turned to my neocolour.  Love the colour studies book! Also finding it manageable to do 5 X 7 oil sketches.

Snowlight (inside)

This snow light is beguiling! That high key blue-green white-light through the window changes everything. Another tiny 5x7 canvas.

The light of snow

I'm spending my evenings working through David Hornung's book COLOUR: a Workshop for Artists and designers. As I often point out, I am terrible at following directions so this morning when the weather station alarm woke me (-10C), I suddenly realised I had been mixing my chromatic greys/grays incorrectly and the first thing I did after taking pictures of the pink trees and the blue sky etc... was to re-do last night's assignment. 

I think I was primed from that and was about to work one of my ongoing projects when I noticed the snow light.  I found a canvas 5 X 7 and tried to record it. They say it will be snowy for a few days.  Beautiful light!

Waking to a New Year

Listening for Children

Upstairs I rake sounds through floorboards

tweezing the prosthetic ‘a’ to make sense

of chirps below.  My cheeks decipher walls,

a toe tug and time between years.

I count vertebrae,

sink through baklavaian sheets,

sleeping between teenage sounds,

wonder up aisles of half centuries,

while threading chain to sprocket

with bare hands.

RG 1.1.13

Young people sleeping in the studio.  Limited by the trash in the office bin.

Fresco from a drawing

Fresco on lime plastered wattle and daub frame 10 x 12

I've been keeping up my blind drawing, or morning drawing, depending on whether I can grab my glasses.  Jane Lewis lent me her copy of Barbara Rae's drawings and that spurred me on to use some colour as I draw.  The original drawing was pen with watercolour over and I thought that would be a good starting point for my next attempt at the plaster experiment. It hasn't dried fully yet, so I'm not sure what the final piece will look like but this feels more like me than previous attempts.  I like working in wet plaster more than on dry with casein, I think. 

pen and watercolour on paper

Figures in response to Delouis

Day one on a 60x40cm canvas.  Taking up the idea of the hat again and using memory (open gardens 2012 on Mount Desert Island) and imagination but letting colour, shape and mood lead me. Trying to be me, responding to colour, painting about what interests me, unashamedly: people, landscape, objects, colour, oh everything! What I was really struck and delighted by in Delouis was the way she uses paint.  So I'm going to focus on that next. I used my palette knife on the trousers - a departure!

Complacencies of the peignoir

soft pastel on paper 22 x 24cm 

It's easy to avoid things that others scorn. And then I read Messum's catalogue about Nancy DeLouis - she has an upcoming exhibition there and I have to admit feeling affected by her view of the world, a 'feminine' view. It's easy to think you need to change and go a different direction even when you get a thrill out of decorative work.  It's easy to see yourself as dated (rehashing) and then you talk to a few fellow women artists and feel that little bit more confident. 

I've been getting up early and enjoying those hours of the day before anyone else has risen.  I want to do everything, read, write and draw immediately and at the same time. It's often the everyday that take me in.

ZEST OF THE DAY

That hour between

fill of day,

nothing of night

Pre-dawn

milky, lemon zest

stolen before

morning peeled

from night

Ideas that feel

like balancing stones

Hope’s black, cold, clear

watery worlds Those

glazed limpet walls,

smooth, brittle lazuli

beads of dawn. 

‘There is no whiteness so white as the memory of white.’

The title of this post is something Giorgio Morandi said, according to Barbara Haskell in her book on Milton Avery.  I have been reading.  Haskell also refers to Okeefe who said , ‘nothing is less real than realism.’ I have been dreaming about those words and working.  I think some of the struggle has been about ensuring, to myself, that I have some skill and that is easy to translate into drawing correctly and perhaps drawing realistically.  Diebekorn reminds not to believe in the first thing.  I don't BELIEVE in today's beginning oil sketch, but I do know that I need to trust my memory and my sense of colour and not worry about creating 'feminine' art.