I've been working on my latest two landscapes at the weekend, taking them closer to completion, nearly there but still a bit more to do. Above is a snapshot detail of one of the paintings
After 9 days of holiday I have come back feeling tired (after a busy and fantastic time with my boys) but feeling refreshed and eager to get some new work underway. Monday I uploaded my photos from my various travels and chose a selection that had imagery suitable for some new work and then worked with these images and the memories invoked to envisage new work, ideas, techniques etc. So for the last two days I have been back in the studio working on 2 new paintings, one relating to The Peaks and the other relating to the Somerset coast. It's been great working on a different landscape and I plan to produce more work relating to other landscapes I have visited. The way I work means that I have to physically visit the landscapes I create, I need to spend some quality reflective time there, walk in it, feel it, experience the smells, sounds and the quality of light and weather conditions.
I sometimes feel quite a novice at this painting lark, and sometimes a little bit of a fraud. I get a lot of people asking how I paint,the techniques I use, how I plan them and what colours I use....but to be honest I don't really know, I don't have a formula that I use every time. I don't really sketch much out before hand, maybe the occasional line drawing to establish basic shape but that is very rare for me. I look at my images and remember being in the landscape and conjure up a vague image in my head over time, then i try to think of techniques that might help me achieve it. That's just a starting point really, the first couple of layers look quite awful (in my opinion) but bit by bit an image is created, not so much by design but by responding to the marks i make, many feel wrong, so I alter them. Trial and error is the main theme for mark making and colour choice,working by instinct which comes from the experience of the numerous paintings that have come before. Throughout the process I am constantly studying the painting, in fact I spend more time looking and thinking about the painting than I do making physical marks. I reference previous paintings and other artists work to stimulate ideas and to give a different perspective on what I'm trying to achieve. It's been suggested to me quite a few times that I should do some painting workshops but I really don't know what I could show people.....here's the paint, here's the canvas.....go for it, good luck! I'm sure if I thought about it long and hard enough I could streamline my process, sharpen the focus and come up with a formula for painting.....it would make me more productive and give the work a standardisation (style) that many buyers and galleries seem to want....but im sure the paintings would be a lot inferior. I will update the blog once I have images that are worth looking at.....I'm in the awful stage at the moment! |
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