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Free plan 008

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

Yes, the heat gun really has died this time. The switch has gone all wiggle-de-woggle-ly. A highly technical term meaning doesn’t work!

I’ve posted a picture of a quite developed, but still uncomplete art work. I’ve been taking pictures as I’ve gone along and this is the 8th photograph. As the piece is yet to be finished, it has no name. As such, it appears on my flickr site as free plan 001 through free plan 008. Now I’ve had a complaint that this is no name for a lady. True. But I’ll wait until the lady is ready to make her debut in the world; her proclamation of being a complete work; before I worry about her title.

The second piece of feedback I’ve received is her breast is too large. I sit here and defend it as being in proportion as my eye looks to the reference photograph (a 1920s black and white photo). I remain more concerned that her calf is too fat near her ankle. Also there is a little piece of lighter red on the right hand side of the picture which continues to irritate me. And if I’m in the mood for documenting what is bothering me, I’m not sure about the dark pink on the underside of her arm either.

Car = new part and now moving

Mobile phone = new battery

Heat gun = CPR (i.e. pushing and proding of button) applied and resuscitation achieved

If I get some new light bulbs, my run of things breaking, should hopefully be over for a while.

I am very sad to announce the death of my heat gun.

Detail 6

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

I received the following question on my flickr site and thought it was good fodder for blogging.

“I wonder if any of the seemingly random collage elements actually end up being the most logical after the piece is finished? or rather do you plan the whole image out and then meticulously collage appropriate elements, like the clocks?”

The easy answer is that I do not plan the whole image out. In fact, the less planning the better! I am prone to perfectionism in my life. It drives me nuts. I am not able to shut it up very easily. I therefore deliberately do things in my art that I can’t control… like washes, or charcoal, or drawing in pen. About the worst thing I can do, is sit with a pencil, an eraser and sketch, because super P has a field day.

As for are the collage pieces random? Well… do I put my hand in a tray and decide to work with whatever I pull out? Apart from tearing randomly from the dictionary on whatever page it happens to fall, no, I don’t do completely random.

But, it is not a planned process. I simply look through my materials and pull out what calls to me. I don’t worry whether what I’m pulling out logically goes together. I just select whatever says “pick me!”

I rarely go looking for a particular thing… a clock, a gargoyle, or a button. Yet because this is a commission, some elements are deliberate e.g. the music. 

The clocks are a case in point where a seemingly random thing, can end up being one of the most logical. I had no intention of putting clocks in this piece. Yet, when I was browsing my collage materials and saw them, I was reminded of a comment made by the person who has commissioned this piece, so they went in!

By the end of the painting, you may not be able to see those clocks anymore. Often the words I may include are at least partially covered as well. Yet I strongly believe that even if the element has long since been masked and is invisible, that whatever it is, still contributes to the feel of the piece as a whole.

Free Plan 004

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

I bought 2 canvases for one commission. I had a plan and I started on one. I quickly became hemmed in, worried and feeling stuck in with the painting, so I splashed some burnt sienna on the other one; sprayed it liberally with water, and turned the canvas. I turned it a few different directions; sometimes quickly changing from one to the other; tilting at different angles. I suppose it felt a little like watching rain drops as they make their way down glass, or watching fish. You’re thinking, but you aren’t really “doing”.

After the burnt sienna wash, a few more washes were added, and then some collage… and yes… more washes. And I feel that I a painting is developing here. I do not know what this painting will look like, but this canvas to me as far more energy, warmth and emotion than my planned piece.

But back to the planned piece for a moment. I agonised over painting over the entire canvas… but I loved the bottom of the painting so much and it had taken me so long that I couldn’t quite do that. I knew if I didn’t change something significantly, I would never be happy. So I set about re-sculpting the other 2/3rds of the painting. At first, the attempt seemed like it would bear no fruit and that I should have whited out the whole canvas. Perhaps because it seemed as if it could get no worse and the obliteration of the entire painting was starting to feel inevitable, I was able to throw caution to the wind. I slapped collage pieces onto it; quickly painted over a section with phthalo green, quin red and a dash of cad yellow. All of a sudden, promise returned. When I did that my perfectionism; worry; concern; fussing… call it whatever… left and I got a reward.

I wish I could make that feeling leave more often.

More blending

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

I love mixing colours rather than buying different pre-mixed colours. One of my favourite combinations is burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.

Before I say anything more about colour mixing, I have to acknowledge that a lot of the blends that I use and the core set of paints that I use come from the Michael Wilcox book “Blue and Yellow don’t make Green”.

Burnt Sienna when combined with Ultramarine blue can form a lovely dark brown - similar to a burnt umber. If you tend towards the blue side, it makes a lovely grey-ish blue but still with a beautiful warmth.

Burnt Sienna must be one of the colours that I use the most - I seem to always be buying replacement tubes. If I want a darker brown - near black - I mix burnt sienna and phthalo blue. I haven’t use black itself in an age…

The piece feature uses four colours - raw sienna, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and white. I love the earthy and muted tones that I have created to date. It’s hard to see on the picture but there are a tiny spots of almost pure ultramarine blue which add a spark to the piece. It isn’t finished yet, although will not change radically from it’s present appearance.

It’s lovely to have my blog back - must thank my brother for fixing it!

Instability

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

Playing with photoshop is both fun and frustrating. The image to the right was based on a sketch which feature an orchid (a paph commonly known as a slipper orchid), a chequerboard floor which I had laboriously coloured in, and a victoria cross medal.

That’s probably a strange combination of images but then again… why not? I put together whatever jumps out at me at the time. If I think too much about whether they should go together, I find that my art feels a little too forced.

Anyway, back to photoshop. Some people can make the most amazing digital artwork. I’m sure that if I were to undertake a course, or even a little more personal reading on the subject, that my skills in photoshop would move forward in leaps and bounds.

But no matter how learned (or not!) I come to be on the subject, I know that I will continue to love sloshing paint around. There’s something about the whole painting exercise that is special in it’s own right. The fact that whenever you wear “painting clothes”, you somehow manage to avoid getting painting on them… but as soon as you dare paint even the slightest thing in something decent; that’s when paint will adorn your clothing. The fact that brushes become glued together because of my laziness in washing out the gel medium. I give them the stick test. If the brushes still moves - even as one whole piece - then it’s a viable brush. Once the bristles are the same rigidity as the shaft of the brush, it’s a stick and not much good for painting any longer. (You can tell that I buy cheap brushes).

I know that this post is perhaps a little waffly… if there is such a word. Perhaps that fits with the neat and rigid sketch which has become grainy, blurred and had the chequerboard floor pulled in different directions, like when you drizzle chocolate in a vanilla mix and run a skewer through it… Perhaps the picture title fits the post as well.

Warm up exercise 4

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

Expectation is a strange thing. When I start a piece of work hoping for something special, I often end up disappointed and scratching my head for ideas. A week ago, my two art buddies, suggested a “warm up exercise”… getting an image of a face and painting over it heavily. Over the next four nights the picture grew for me. Both in size as I extended it beyond the original collaged piece, and in texture and depth. Dress making pattern was added to her face; as was gel medium transferred writing, leaves, twigs and sequin waste stencil patterning. I enjoyed making this piece and at the end… I conclude, no expectations = nice result. Amazing what one can do without any pressure from within to create “art”.

Originally uploaded by scroobious_pip

Not only did this warm up exercise, take the entire art night, but it has continued into tonight as well!

I love art night. Well, actually, I have to confess that I don’t particularly relish the 45 minute drive there in usually heavy traffic; nor the drive home, or getting up the next morning when I didn’t go to bed until 11:30; but apart from these very minor things… I love art night.

The three of us meet physically and artistically, and then we each wander in our own direction… metaphorically speaking.

Take last night’s warm up as an example. To not worry about the image, we each selecting a magazine or photo to work from. The idea was simply to paint flesh tones.

Let me first point out how courageous Ursula was… because she chose to paint one of her children. I think this is courageous because nearly every art book I’ve ever read on portrait painting says that children are much more difficult than adults. The more wrinkles the better! (Perhaps this is why one of my favourite pieces I have done is of a 104 year old man!)

Megan’s courage took a different turn. (I would be hyperlinking to their blogs here, if only I could remember how!) While Ursula had such smooth skin to work with, as her opaque paint covered over the image, she had another copy of the photo as reference. Megan on the other hand, “opaqued” her image with no reference point, so it left her guessing where the upper eye lids and eyebrows once were.

Mine… well a very different sort of courage. I started trying to paint realistic flesh tones, but the perfectionistic part of me started to kick in, so I reverted to using any which colour I liked. Part of me would say that was wimping out, and didn’t take much courage at all. But finding a way to defeat… or at least put quiet… one’s perfectionism for a while, is no easy feat. I am sure that any perfectionist who has ever found themselves cursing their inability to just let something be “not right”… will understand what I am talking about. I could easily talk myself into thinking that the two artists across from me were being bold and I was reverting to my comfort zone. But in a rare moment of kindness to myself, I think that is unfair. There were three artists in that room, each challenging herself. As I say, we meet physically and artistically, and then wander in our own direction. Which is how it should be really… and I cannot think of two better people to share that experience. Thank you both.

It is fantastic weather for heavy long winter skirts. Today I wore the first skirt I made in dressmaking just over a year ago to work. It’s long, brown and so full of fabric, that if you kick your shoes off and curl up your legs, it could double as a blanket. Ironing it was a challenge. In the end I gave up looking at crinkles that I believed I had already eliminated and ironed, once, twice or three times over. As there is so much fabric in it, I hoped the crushed part would fall in the folds.

And I was right. Because once I had it on, I could no longer see any wrinkles.

Tonight, I finally finished the hem on another skirt that I have made with the help of my very knowlegdable, but slightly eccentric, dressmaking teacher. Some people would look twice at you, when you turn up with an 1890s skirt pattern. But I guess that’s one thing I love about dressmaking and my teacher. I can make clothes for me. They fit me, they express me, they are me. I love this skirt which is actually the “mock up”. But instead of using calico, she sent me off to find a fabric that was not too expensive but may just be wearable. The fabric is a grey-green with a lovely weave. And to top it off… it has a gorgeous button (not done justice by this photograph). Some were expecting a more spectacular feature button given the time and energy that went into selecting it. So it was to my delight when another dressmaking student said to me - I love the button!

Wearing clothes you have made, is special.