Hi Guys
Well with many new students this term and people signing up to the website, I thought it might be of value to some of you to share my painting process. I want you to know this is not a static thing, I am constantly shaping my painting process from the artists I meet and established art educators that are so generous with their invaluable skills and ways of working. I do however want to mention a few names here that have informed me as a painter and art educator to date, these are Viv Ayres, Frederick Cuming RA, Nicki Heenan, Paul Wadsworth and Mary Gilkersohn to name a few. There are many more and I would be happy to explore this at a later date.
So for those who I have the pleasure of teaching know that I have a starting point of simplifying and cropping my source image, this would be the same working from a photo or if i were to be working in the landscape.
My first marks are the essential lines drawn into a small box an example of which is below.
I can tell at this stage whether the composition will work for me or not.
I then tend to make some quick small tonal drawings and paintings in grey scale, you can see this illustrated above and below.
this is a small colour study that I will use to inform the larger work and below I have shown how the family of colours have been mixed on my pallette. A little colour of each is mixed within each colour to help them relate and balance more. Our eyes have an inherent and intuitive ability to help us with this, I suggest you trust them to help you.
Below I have shown you the source photo that supported the colours mixed along with my memory of being there in the landscape.
From my tonal drawings and paintings i reduce the grey scale to a black and white pattern termed as a Notan,see previous blog posts for more detail.
As I am working in Acrylic or oil I m pushing the grey scale to black for the Notan pattern that gives me a really strong starting set of marks to work against.
The example below is the Notan start for 2m by 2m piece.
This is another example of the Notan pattern,giving a good strong but challenging first pattern.
Below is a quick small colour test oil on linen.
I hope you have enjoyed this and I will share my further progress with you later in the weekend
much love, happy painting. Do contact me with your thoughts and if you should be interested in my next Landscape day here in Cheltenham the date is 17th June and its booking online through Cheltenham Fine Art.