Fused Plastic Portrait 1

Working in the Bob Lahotan school or finding shapes that mean something to you in playful application of colours, I began dipping my toe in plastic again. First I selected some pieces with colour and patterns I liked.  My plastic bin is overflowing and I brought pieces of choice plastic back from America.  Jane Lewis brought me some recently too.  The shapes said Victorian frame, the Madonna figure followed.  Then Patrick suggested a touch of gold.  I hadn't set out to make portraits but I like the idea; will take the shape of this as a starting point for a possible new series.

Between raking...

Using the same format, pre- tinted paper. I am looking for new views,

Considering an exhibition bouquet

In preparation for the Colour Of Life exhibition I bought a few bunches of flowers and enjoyed making three little table bouquets to put on round tables where we had drinks and dolma. Daniela, one of the guests who came to see the exhibit, brought me a bouquet she had picked from her wonderful garden.  

Before the flowers wilted I wanted to draw them.  So far I have only managed one bouquet, Daniela's.  Perhaps it says something about the promise of spring or my joy at sharing my work with enthusiastic visitors!

The exhibition will be up for at least another month.  Please visit, if you are in the area!

orange journal and stamps

In love with a new (old) vase I found at the Needham Market car boot sale. On the right is the journal Carina sent me, beloved airmail stickers and new 97p purple-blue stamps.  Inside the tin are a stack of new cards I've made from crumpled, altered trash and plastic. I found that the tablecloth had a mind of its own and did not care about the pattern but was more determined to rely on brush strokes and value.

Drawing two life models

Today I had the pleasure of drawing from two life models: Sue and Pete. We do this periodically and each time I enjoy it more. I find that with two models, more than with one, there is a story to capture.  The drawing at the top was one of the shorter poses and is a smaller, roughly 6X6 drawing on a yellow pastel 'ground'.  The one below is 10x10 on a thin lavender pastel ground.

The Hellebore Palette

I love the acid green of euphorbia and the dusky pink of early spring hellebores.  The garden limited my palette and the other items I assembled were chosen to develop the mood from the little bouquet.  I found the new vase at the Needham Market car boot sale for 50 p and that's where it all began.  The card spilling out of my bag is a note from my friend and framer Jo Hollis, who bought a little pastel I am showing at Stowhealth. I wanted to include a trace from the previous painting so the blue above the cannister is one of those quick painting sketch afterthoughts from before. This painting is another 50 X 60 cm canvas!

Returning to still life

I've been reading a Matisse book on and off since January and on Monday I picked it up again. It's a fascinating book based on a show I never saw, which apparently was in London about ten years ago. The book focuses on the versions of paintings that Matisse carried out - canvases of the same size  but in each canvas Matisse would address a different interest.  I suppose if you're Matisse you can do that.  

On Monday Sue brought  a new decorative cloth to life drawing - it was great to have new pattern to consider next to the model. By the afternoon I had set up a still life in the studio to paint from full of colour and pattern.  It is one of my new 50x60cm canvases.  

As an after thought I used the painted paper from the first session's left over palette paint to do little (3 x 3 inch) quick colour studies imagining objects moving and colours being different.  

Recent life drawings

Drawing on the road

We went to Cornwall last weekend and this time I took my pastels. While H and P watched the rugby at a pub, I sat outside at a picnic table in the wind and drew. The beach was bursting with activity as it was the start of some nice weather.  Lyra even dipped her toes in the water. I limited myself to using some new Conté à Paris colourful but hard pastels and some rembrant grey tones. These are 6 1/4 x 5 1/2 ins.  

Again, while H, P, Steph and Ben watched the rugby and some revised for their AMK, I looked for something to draw. The boys keep their glasses in the window that overlooks the neighbour's house.  The Conté à Paris were in the car so this time I had my big box of assorted very soft pastels and no eraser.

Orlando Still Life

These daily drawings are small.  5 1/2 x 6.  I am trawling through photos I have taken, looking for inspiration.  I change them from RGB to grayscale so that local colour won't distract me and project them on the wall so that it feels as if I am looking at the scene.  I try to forget anything I know. This time I opened a page of Matisse, Le peintre et son modèle: Interier d'atelier to find the first few colours, then I diverged. 

Once I was finished I was suddenly uncertain. Was it childish and naïve, or successful? It was fun to draw and as I look again it keeps my interest. I'm falling in love with this way of working, as the rain falls and I have little desire to go anywhere else.

Yesterday I reworked an earlier drawing of the barn table, that was trapped in local colour.  I painted over colours with surgical spirit and then began again, trying to find colours that would evoke the scene instead of colours that were correct. 

Applying what I've learnt in life drawing

Earlier in the week I heard that I will be showing some work at Stowhealth, a local health centre that has rotating arts events. http://www.stowhealth.com/artist.php

I showed in their innaugural show, quite a few years ago.  It's fascinating to look at your work in the context of 'what will I show?' 

What I noticed as I looked over my more recent work was that because my monotypes aren't a feature of what I'll call my 'finished work', I haven't been drawing interiors or stilllife much, both of which are pretty central to my work. Once I made that connection, I wanted to begin, applying what I've been doing in life drawing with those other motifs.  

When I went to see Jo, my wonderful artist friend, framer, we chose one of these new interiors with figure.  I didn't scan it but this is today's little drawing.  When I got stuck I looked at Dorothy Eisner.

Collage to fused plastic

 Pauline Manders, author and my neighbour, comes into my studio regularly, so she sees what I'm up to and occasionally I show her things that others might not see. I am interested in versions of things and how to translate between media.  Colour studies became mail art books and pages of books become fused plastic collages. Pauline likes to see the progression.  It helps her to understand the end result.

To see what Pauline is up to, visit her blog.  I make her covers! http://paulinemandersauthor.blogspot.co.uk

painting from drawing

The first job is to look back over what I've done before.  I was surprised to see that in my paintings value and line  have been very secondary to my thinking, not always, but often.  My drawings are about colour too but line and value are much more dominant aspects.  So, I decided to work on that.

the top painting is very close to the original drawing.  The one below began with a drawing and then took on a life of its own. 

Drawing in colour

In the split second after a model strikes a pose, when you know you will only have minutes, to tens of minutes to say something, grabbing colours can be almost arbitrary. I usually start with three colours and then choose the next few to get a range of values and to complement my first choices. Sometimes the model is really quick and I barely have time to choose the first few and rely on what is in my hand to begin again.

I am starting to draw in order to paint, although in that split second I don't think I'm thinking about anything like that.  I am just trying to get the shapes in the rectangle to work together.

 Not all poses or choices work, but a piece of something unsuccessful may inform something later.

Abstracting and turning

So I continue to explore the theory that if you start from something you know and have seen then abstraction becomes believable. I began with my ruler and looked for the shapes.  Turning reality on its side was obvious.

Almost Achromatic Interior

I find myself looking for ambiguous interiors that get me close to abstraction. Because there were larger shapes, I challenged myself to use colour believably but not entirely based on the local colour.  I wanted to capture the feeling of the space and light in colour. I shifted between applying pastel, rubbing it off with a eraser and fixing it with surgical spirit.

Meanwhile we have been talking about minimalism at IUOMA. De Villo assembled  mail art that is minimalist. I was wondering if anything I ever do or imagine might be minimalist, thinking that it wouldn't and then I thought of a beautiful stained ink box  that i'd saved.  I titled it 'Spirit of Morandi'. Perhaps our minds pair ideas, images… 

Another view of Gurney in Somerset

Another drawing session where I used an image (taken recently) and  projected it on the wall; I translated the colours into tone and line. This drawing is 9 x 13.5.  Next I tried to change tone into colours using a previous colour study. I cut and fused the shapes as I saw them.  The initial result didn't suggest the space or the light so I cut it all up again and tried to feel the space and use some but not all of the elements in the drawing to suggest what to do next. When sewing, I made a conscious effort not to repeat myself and to use the stiches as lines more intentionally than sometimes. The edges of the fused plastic were not even once I'd made a back.  It was a wiggly organic form and I thought it might be a fragment, but in the end that didn't work.

Drawing Erin inpsires me.

I've only drawn Erin once before and that time I had a satisfying life drawing session too.  There were about 15 of us in the group today and it's customary to wander around in the break and look at each other's work.  I had a few compliments about this one, a ten minute sketch (5.5 X 6").  Sue wondered if I was inspired by one of the other artist's outfits, chartreuse and black.  It might work that way…

Sue asked Erin to do a 15 minute sequence of movement and we drew it.  We do this sometimes and it takes more concentration than anything.  The 'chartreuse' Erin was drawn shortly after that sequence.  I think drawing movement does something to your brain.

My 'style' of drawing doesn't really lend it self to movement drawing so results are never really anything, but the process seems to help, even more than a series of quick sketches.

This was my final drawing.  I think I managed to loosen things up again.  I think the other two are less successful, but they may have something for later.

Fused plastic response

Following on from drawing the Somerset space, I used the drawing to inform this larger (6x8") fused plastic piece, mounted onto cardboard and then sewn.

Exploring the rectangle

A few nights ago I woke at some ungodly hour and had one of those 'eureka moments'.  I realised that there was a way to feed my over-arching interest in breaking up the space of a rectangle with areas of colour and my need to work in lots of mediums and ways simultaneously that might not end up in an amateurish mishmash.

What if I hone in on motifs that break up the space in ways that remind me of what I like in my fused plastic collages and use those to draw from. Once I have a drawing I can use it as stimulus for whichever medium I feel the urge to work in.  It makes things simpler (eliminates lots of motifs) and hopefully will give me a body of work that holds together.

I took lots of photos in just that way while in Somerset and my home and studio are rich with material.  Today, to begin the theme I projected a photo of a hallway of a house we stayed in in Somerset on the wall of the studio and set up my drawing board some way away.  I tried to think of the rhythm of the place.  I wanted to get lots of information so I could make choices later. I was documenting the space first. I looked at Annabel Gault and Emily Nelligen.

I didn't want to use local colour as a starting point when I began my follow-up monoprint.  I looked at some Deibenkorn and tried to keep the rhythm idea and to select harmonious colours that would play in the rectangle in a believable way.  This was the first Akua Ink print made with wet paper in my new press. I rushed things a bit, because I was impatient to see how it would work. I am delighted with the intesity of the colour and can see lots of possibilities, even if this print is a bit lame. And I forgot to work backwards!

In a 2nd print (too awful to show), I used the ghost and worked with the leftover ink, working backwards this time.  I'm not too keen on the colours, cleaning brushes with Akua is a bit of a hassle and needs more determination on my part!