Smell and feel as you draw

On Saturday I spent a focused two hours at Flatford Mill.  My friend, painter Ruth Philo, was holding a walk draw along the banks of the river.  We began by emptying our minds of all that we brought to the session.  Ruth suggested writing words but instead I looked at the bridge and put a few strokes of colour down.  I worked in a little bound book I started years ago in Maine.  It is about 4 x 5" and I have recoloured the pages with pastel.

The group was all artists and we all were attracted to our particular motifs so split up and found a space. We were given an amount of time to use but most of us ignored the time and were surprised when we had to regroup so quickly. Ruth came over to me while I was drawing this first drawing and spoke about the blue space beyond.  It's that betweenness that I am attracted to, I told her.  Ruth was able to identify the subconscious stuff that happens before I even begin.

During our walk draw, Ruth talked about the smells, the feel, getting those kinds of details down.  I suppose it's a subconscious thing with me, but would bringing that to the fore help? Can you feel the grass in the pastel, I wondered.

Are there memories associated with the landscape that take you in a particular direction, to a particular place? What do you want to remember about the walk?

In this last quick sketch I was aware of time and I wasn't feeling the landscape in the same way. There isn't even air.

Beads Like Eggs,  pastel on paper, 6 x 6 

Hudson went back on Sunday and on Monday the Easter eggs were the most obvious trace of his visit. I hadn't been able to work much in the studio while he was home. So as I began again, I felt I needed complexity and I wanted to revisit the necklaces. I tried to feel the edges of the eggs, to think about dipping them, to feel the hat on my head, the necklace around my neck, to draw the bulk and the sheerness of the varous cloths. I was back to the nest. The colours came from the eggs, eggs made by the three of us. But as I drew I knew that I was a bit stifled by the colour and it didn't make sense without a lot of detail.

Scented Stocks, pastel on paper, 6 x 6

On Sunday I bought some flowers on sale.  I put them all together and my studio has been smelling of scented stocks since then. This time I wanted to capture the smell, or at least the joy of the smell.  I didn't want to get trapped by the muddy green of the vase so before I began I decided on a different colour for it. I made a nest on the chair and balance the jug on it.  

Painting like I draw?

Orange Roses and Fan oil on canvas 40 x 40 cm

At the moment, when I draw,  I'm focused on a few competing concerns:

                                        - making order out of confusion

                                        - colour

                                        - rhythm, including pattern, light, marks, shapes

                                        - joy

When I began this painting  I decided to work from something I would choose to draw by building what I thought was an interesting interplay of colour, light and shape. When I make a drawing I usually complete it the same day.   It's different for me with painting. In order to acheive the same sense of colour and light when working in oils I need to let the paint dry and come back to it over a period of time. Flowers don't last and I find that working from a photo immediately changes the feel of the painting.  I also find sustaining the mood over a period of days is difficult too.  Usually I change what I want to say with time, but in this case, even though the flowers had died and I had invent some to make the painting work; even though tthe background had fallen away from the wall, tape had come undone, etc, the finished painting feels believeable and as though one moment in time.  

Looking at paintings on Pinterest has helped me to trust my still life paintings and given me license to do what makes my heart sing.

How precise should a drawing be?

When The Mountains meet the Sea, (pastel on paper 65 x 45cm), 2016

I'm persevering with my determination to make work in varying sizes and because I find it difficult to understand how to scale up my marks, I am using small drawings and working from them as a way to overcome this barrier. Because the goal is to keep things loose I am mostly using the colour in the original and just focusing on making lively, bigger work.

As a recall, when I was making the original, I wasn't true to the scene before my eyes as I worked.  I moved things around and eliminated things from the view when it felt right.  So, when I go back to work from the drawing, I find things that I believe in the original don't make as much sense when larger.  A small stroke estimates something in a general way when working small, but feels as if it needs to be defined more when bigger.  BUT LOTS OF PAINTERS ABSTRACT, so why do I find this so difficult?

When to stop?

Silver and Matisse Necklaces, 6 x6 " pastel on paper

As I get to the end of a painting, drawing or print there is is always that lingering doubt about whether I am 'finished' or not.  For me being finsished is about everything coming together in a balance of some sort.  Of course that doesn't mean I use a uniform approach.  I need to have enough interest to hold my imagination and expectation, but it needs to feel intentional and there shouldn't be anywhere in the image that is sticky for my eye, unless that's the objective.  So I look and look and try not to stepover the line between finished and stultified.  

I thought I'd finished Silver and Matisse Necklaces and then I realised that there was some confusion on the right side of the chain mail necklace.  I'm not sure if I rubbed it while I was working elsewhere or whether I just missed pulling it into focus.  I touched up a few other spots tand then the pastel was finished.

Painting from daily drawings

Oil on canvas 25 x 25cm

                              Jar Jug and Vase with Flowers

It's difficult to photograph wet paintings but it's even more difficult when it's getting dark when you do it, so I will shoot this again in the light, but I wanted to end my week with a finished painting  that I began by referring to one of my daily drawings that I'd made earlier in the week.  

I love seeing them here together.  And can remember each of the choices and struggles I had to get to the finished painting.

Pastel on paper 6 x 6"

Different media for different purposes

Sue pulling on sock, Pastel on paper 22 x 24cm

Figure with Beads, pastel on paper 6 x 6"

At my life drawing group recently someone asked me how I came to begin making my 6 x 6" pastel life drawings.  I told her that it is all about the colour.  It's interesting the way different materials work to enhance the subject matter and what I want to say. I find pastels and their direct colour suits me when I want to get something down and I want to create a mood. They can also explain light. Big charcoal drawing are about gesture and light for me. I often use my drawings to begin something else. Figure with Beads was a starting point for Japanese Interior with Figure, if you can believe it...

Homework pastel on paper 6 x 6"

Because oil paint usually requires time and different ways of applying it, I use it to describe different things. I have the same preoccupations but the process yields different results.  If I were someone who made pictures in the same way every day I suppose my results would be different and much more similar to each other, but the way I was taught, by my California School abstract expressionist teachers, was to begin every day as though you know nothing and find a way through. Perhaps that explains my willingness to work across media 

Japanese Interior with Figure oil on canvas 40 x 40 cm

Spring Beads and Royal Blue pastel on paper 6 x 6"

Feeling unsure

Imagining Vuillard's Bouquet (oil on canvas 30 x 30cm)

The first few days of my weeks feel busy with life drawing, a visit to the care home and a morning in Ipswich at the refugee centre.  So even though I draw everyday, on Thursday mornings I can feel unsure.  It's not that I have a lack of ideas, it's more that I have at least two whole days stetching ahead and I don't remember where I was and what comes next.  It would be easy to do all the other things that I have neglected but I go into the studio and I begin. 

I was tempted to paint over something I had hoped I'd finished but I stopped myself.  It felt tight and joyless but I have a habit of painting over instead of waiting or solving a problem.  I was already frustrated and I hadn't even got my brushes out. I and then, sometimes when I feel like I can't paint, I can trick myself into painting and something simple and surprising appears.

Flowers On Orange Tablecloth (oil on canvas 40 x 40)

 

With my painting, I am trying to let the painting tell me what to do instead of recording what I see.  The painting on the bottom became the painting on the top.  I think it may change again...

Carnations, Christmas Beads and Smoking Jacket (pastel on paper 6 x 6cm)

And I continue to draw my beads.