Open Studios Week Activities

Back in Edinburgh last week after an amazing weekend at Inchnadamph. I tried to continue my momentum in the studio, but I was a bit distracted by all the activities in St Margaret's House - it was 'Open Week'.  Thanks to all of you who looked in to see me and my studio - always good to chat.

I did manage to do a little work.  I thought I should have a go at continuing with the beeswax to create encaustic paintings, following up from the course in August.  The smaller one - a morning view at Luskentyre was based on this acrylic painting.

I had a nice purple pigment and thought this picture presented a lot of potential for exploiting the colour. The start I had made was a bit rough and ready - too textural, I thought.

 I carried on working into it and it ended up like this - a little smoother and more intense colour.  I've decided to leave it now, for the moment. I THINK it may be finished...

I tried another Harris painting, focusing on the view of the North Harris hills, really based on this painting.

I had changed the composition a bit in order to fit with the piece of hardboard I was using. I had left it looking like this. Again a bit too textural, I thought.

Again I worked into it further and introduced more colour, more enriched.  I left it looking like this. I'm not sure if this composition works quite as well.

I have set it aside for the moment - not sure if it's finished yet.

My other main activity this week was a session at Edinburgh Printmakers (had to close my studio that day!). I wanted to make a new plate after my 6 week absence, but I've been thinking so much in colour recently that I found it very difficult to settle down to doing any meaningful drawing.  However, I had some 'MMR' (plastic film) and I finally managed on Wednesday to do a few drawings.  I was intending to make a copper plate etching, but I realised that there was quite a lot of tonal variation in the drawings. So I was persuaded to buy some (expensive) 'Toyobo' and use this instead.  I ended up doing two etchings - and I was really pleased that I remembered most of what I was supposed to do (using my notes) although I did get a bit confused over exposure times.
The first is a view similar to my Crannog view (based on Loch Assynt). It turned out like this.

The second was a drawing based on my Aberdour tree.

These are kind of interesting. I'll need to consider how much better they would be if I had reduced the exposure time. I did enjoy doing the drawing - I used some special pens that were left to me years ago.  I've never really found a proper use for these pens over the years and so I was pleased finally to use them productively this week.

Anyway - open studios week has now ended, so there are really no excuses now for not getting on with more work - but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Harris Paintings Emerging

Continuing to work up north despite missing my studio in Edinburgh. I managed to rearrange one of the rooms as my temporary studio so this helped to put me in the right frame of mind.

I was trying to continue the approach I had started to takewith the 'Two Beaches' painting (previous blog post), focusing hard on not overworking my pictures. I'm really aiming to try and find that freshness and looseness that I manage to capture in sketches. Much more difficult to achieve in finished pictures. I know I have to be a bit bolder about when to stop.

I also decided to focus on beach patterns. Because we had been staying so close to Luskentyre Beach, we had walked there a lot – early morning, daytime and evening – so had seen it in different lights. In the past I have shied away from attempting to paint something like an expanse of beach, but I do remember Matt tutoring us to attempt difficult things – not to avoid them – otherwise how will we ever paint these difficult subjects. So with this resolve I focused on a view looking south from Luskentyre.

I made a start with a square format and a view looking south from Luskentyre. Started in pencil and random gouache, then a little light acrylic wash.

I was thinking of early morning colours - pale blues and purples. Added more wash - sparingly.

Now I realised that I needed to get rid of some of the brighter gouache, and think about the sand patterns.

I was still a bit worried that this was too bright - lacking the subtelty which I wanted. So I had to knock it back in places without spoiling the freshness. This was the tricky bit. Here's how it has ended up.

OK I think. The yellow is interesting. I had seen a piece of yellow plastic floating in the sea the first morning - perhaps that inspired this...

I thought I'd try another scene - similar to the first picture but in landscape format and even colder colours - no yellow.  Still trying to get those subtle sand patterns.

And I had a go at a picture based on some other interesting patterns in the sand. Colours are a bit warmer in this. It's hard to get the colour of the sand at Luskentyre.

Also went back to an unfinished painting. I had left it like this a few days ago, looking a bit dead and uninteresting.  Well, it didn't excite me. This was based very closely on a sketch. Was I trying too hard to reproduce the sketch?

I decided to try and 'improve' it with my new techniques.  I added some conte to the sky and some white gouache and improved the sand colour. This is as far as I've taken it.

I think it's a bit more interesting now. More dramatic too.

But these pictures were all done using acrylic as the main medium. I have some pigments etc with me, and wanted to have a go with some of the things I'd learned with Jill at Lookand Draw. So I tried out that first picture again in encaustic. This is a very small picture. I quite like it.

Maybe it's a bit 'knobbly'. But I like the colours. Much more vibrant than the acrylic.

Then I had a go at another encaustic, a larger pic, based on a scene of the North Harris Hills. It's less successful – probably needs more work.

 What to do next? So many ideas - for printmaking and little pics. Or should I try more acrylics? Time is running out up here...Must get busy tomorrow.

Reflecting on a week of paintmaking

I've learnt such a lot about making paint this week. It is somewhat scientific, and I found that I was thinking back to my studies for higher chemistry many moons ago.  Emulsions and polymers.  I think my favourite has been making and using Egg Tempera, particularly painting with tempera on card.  Here is the one I like best. It was really a test strip, but I like the quality of the finish.

My other favourite from the week is the work we did with beeswax and encaustic.  On Friday we painted over our beeswax pictures with encaustic - a mixture of beeswax and turps, with pigment mixed in.  So my painting of the boathouse ended up looking like this.

I quite like this - and I definitely like the general effects you can get with encaustic.
My other picture - of the dog walker - I changed somewhat radically.  Jill said...why are you trying to do a figure painting when everything in your sketchbook is based on landscape images? So I converted it into a painting of Applecross.

It's not finished yet - still a bit more to do - but it's got some potential, don't you think?
So a great week and great inspiration to take forward.

Our Paintmaking Continues

I've now just completed Day 4 of the Look and Draw course.  Yesterday was Egg Tempura: today was beeswax paint. Quite a contrast!

Yesterday we took the yolk of an egg, pierced this in order to remove the skin, mixed it with a little water, and then added pigment. Most of the pigments we mixed into a paste with a (very) little water  before adding the yolk, but not for the Titanium White which we mixed directly with the yolk (or added into other colours).  We didn't use the whitening.

Some books suggest that there are certain rules to be followed for the making and using of egg tempura, but we learned that this isn't necessary.  We used the tempura paints first on a piece of card and then on one of our gessoed grounds.  I really liked using it directly onto the card and I'm going to investigate whether or not this is long-lasting.  These images show what I managed to achieve on the gesso.  I thought I would focus on a landscape motif, based on a view from the beach at North Berwick looking over towards Fife (one of my sketches). Here was my start.

And here was how it looked after a bit of work - with the island and the Lomonds on the horizon. Sorry about the quality of the photo.  I quite like this.

I had mixed various colours, and thought I'd do an underpainting, but look at this....it looks like a piece of rusty metal.

This, of course, is my masterpiece of the week...haha. I was so pleased with this, I did another panel the same.  Joking aside, I did enjoy using the tempura - it was easy to mix a range of colours and it didn't dry out too quickly.

Today we were using beeswax. I was keen to experience this as I was hoping it might help me to be less precise about my painting style - to loosen up a bit and be more abstract.  It was a lot of fun, but I think it was mainly the fun of experiencing beeswax for the first time.  We added pigment straight into the melted beeswax and applied it to the board (no preparation required).  It was quite random and free - just adding more beeswax layers and then ironing over these or using a heat gun to re-melt the colours. But Jill reminded us that we were making pictures - what on earth was I doing?

I decided on a figure-based picture - was thinking about Peter looking after Poppy today and came up with this figure with a dog (in case it isn't clear - on reflection, maybe the legs of the figure need to be longer.) However, after this I made an attempt at a landscape view. This is based on an image of a boathouse on Jura that I've been working on. I had been thinking about this for an etching image, but here it is so far in beeswax.

Hmm. Interesting. Definitely not my usual style. Where is this going?
Encaustic tomorrow....