Hi Guys,
Welcome to my post this week that will be supporting our students learning from" Cheltenham Fine Art" and also showing you the finished paintings that are the conclusion of the process I have been sharing with you.
This week in my landscape course, supported by tonal sketches, photos and Notan patterns along with new colour mixing skillls, we have been looking to put into practise a process I use in my own work, that of "working from dark to light and thin to thick". The reason I prefer to use this method is that it limits me having to keep going backwards and forwards from dark to light and ensures a good balance of colour throughout the piece I m working on. It is well worth persevering with looking at subjects in this way as I feel it prevents me from getting too bogged down in details.
My students will tell you that I liken this process to doing a jigsaw of patches of colour, where you mix up the colours you see from darkest to lightest, looking for that colour all over the picture plane.
I have started by using my tonal, Notan and image to create my first marks onto the surface using as larger brush as I have which is a 6" decorators brush with the aim of keeping the paint loose and the marks energetic and all the time I m connecting to the verse that runs throughout the painting support.
These first layers are applied with thin acrylic quickly as the paint is open for such a short time, but the positive of this is that it focuses you to commit to your mark. Next I add oil layes of colour, to add depth and a good quality of intensity of colour. These oil colours I can mix all at the same time so that I am able to create families of colour, this increases the harmony and balance of a piece. Examplesof this are below.
This il colour has been mixed with cold wax to improve my being able to draw through the layers.
These are some of the tools that I used for making this piece and includes the small colour study that was done in oil on cotton.
Here is the finished painting 2m by 2m 'Love Held Supported' and below are the words that run through its layers.
This painting is on exhibition upstairs in the Wilson Cafe, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum now and until 19th June 2017 as part of Cheltenham Open Studios 2017.
Please pick up a guide for this from the Wilson or Tourist information or from me. My house is open during this I am venue 52 in the guide and I will have more work at venue 16 and venue 3, do pop along and see us if you are able.
I hope you have enjoyed seeing the process I will be posting the process of the sister painting to this in a while
Thank you