Project 3 Learning Log - Horizon

May

 

I have started looking at textures for my next project.  I thought that cutting up a set of squares and applying various surfaces to them and then painting them with red and black paint would allow me to look at how paint responded to the different surfaces and would also give me some confidence using these two colours.

It was interesting to see what materials I could find just lying around the house. All of the materials were successful in a particular way, i.e. they all held some amount of paint to a more or less degree. There are some surfaces however that I don’t think I would want to make a painting on e.g. cling film or tin foil.

Looking at using red and black was quite liberating. I had been taught never to use black as it would deaden my painting and I have managed for 30 + years never to use it. I didn’t even possess the colour in my paint box! So I bought myself a mars black and a cadmium red deep. They are in fact two gorgeous colours and spending time looking at them in isolation and how they could blend together was a revelation of sorts. I particularly liked the red mixed with a little burnt sienna. This enlivened and enriched the red. I think that using these two strong colours produces work that is bold strong and dramatic. This is quite a contrast from my own work, which tends to be more subtle and delicate. It will be interesting to see what transpires!

I had looked at the work of Robert Motherwell in the ‘Looking at other artists’ project in YOP course and had especially liked his series Elegy to the Spanish Republic. This is a set of paintings dominated by arrangements of large black ovals and vertical stripes loosely painted on white or coloured canvases. They tend to include small areas of red. The paintings seem quite violent, fleshy, intense and demanding. I found them absorbing and provocative. I think perhaps this was where the idea to use these two colours might have originated. I also think the abstract expressionists are masters of texture e.g Mark Toby’s Canticle, and the works of Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock.

Canticle by Mark Toby

I began this project by doing a number of sketches, pen and ink, watercolour oil pastel of fenland views. I was attracted to the compressed strips of colour on the horizon and the large flat fields. The horizon is often broken with clumps of trees, agricultural buildings, spires, pylons or cut short with a hedge. I found these close horizons interesting as there is no indication what happens beyond our very short view. There were perfectly nice, but were a little cliche. I’m hoping that they become more interesting with the limited palette and use of texture.

June

Study 1

Furrowed Field

I began with applying a wash of red and burnt sienna. Pure red is just a bit too much for me. Then added some issue to create an interesting sky. Some of the areas were left plain to vary the texture and simulate clouds. I added some heavy lace to create a horizon of shrubby trees and added some darker colour to this to make the skyline more dramatic.

The fore ground was created with lines of string and some flicked paint.

 and rubbed some of it away to increase the texture. A light wash was used to introduce some pale blue. I used some daler board and stuck some heavy lace on the horizon to create an interesting area. I think this worked quite successfully. The lace creates an area of trees and has an ambiguity that allows your own imagination to ‘fill in the blanks’. I’ve used tissue in the sky, and string, paper, sand

Study 2

LastLight

This study was started at the same time as Furrowed Field, on daler board washed with cadmium red, and burnt sienna. A higher horizon was created with the heavy cotton lace.  The foreground was initially washes of colour indicating the direction of the furrows.

It was about this time I started a started a colour sketch of a field with a strong horizontal hedge on the horizon and a large triangular hedge on the left. I thought it would be an interesting composition but I just never felt quite happy with the picture. Eventually I realised that what was bugging me was the intrusive hedge that was dragging my eye away from the area that was most interesting – the foreground. When I took it off the frame and cut it down `I was much happier. This event made me realise that I had not done any proper investigation into the development of the compositions. So I stopped painting and went back to the sketch book. 

My original acrylic painting of a wheat field near Fulburn Fen

This was quite a learning moment for me. I immediately returned to the work I had done at the beginning of the previous project where I was exploring the composition and subject matter in a creative way in my sketch book. Using tracing paper I played around with various positions for the horizon and detail for the foreground. I realised that the foreground was just as interesting – if not more so, than the horizon itself. I enjoyed using different papers and media to produce these ’thumbnails’. Some of the ones that I felt were most successful included using photocopies of earlier sketches, collage and ideas from project 2.

 I really enjoyed doing this and found that I was able to develop lots of interesting ideas that could be developed into studies. I liked the spontaneity and vigor of these sketches and hoped I could bring those qualities  to a larger sudy.

My "revisited" composition for Wheat Field near Fulburn Fen

I was then able to return to the started two studies I had started earlier on daler board.  The sky in Furrowed Field had some ultra marine and white added to it. Eventually the white was increased so that the sky became almost featureless drawing attention to the strong textural quality of the landscape. Last Light had a strong area of bright white added. This brought a dynamic element to the painting which sillouhetted the trees. Some of the lace that was on the horizon was pulled off, leaving a negative image where the lace had been. This had a pinky red wash applied to tone it down.

 Initially this painting had a much longer area of field, which I cut down to create a more balanced composition. I doing so I cut a section from the middle. When I joined the two pieces together I added a strip of card which had it’s finished surface removed. This rough absorbent texture created a new area of light, which was highly effective, especially using a limey green and a small area of cobalt.

The fore ground need some drama so I began by sticking some small random paper squares on the surface, reminiscent of the chunks of soil cut by the plough. I built this up with small squares of oil painted canvas, snips of mesh and some sand, and some flecks of paint. I then used a felt tip pen to draw some smaller squares. It was looking much better but was still needing something special. I began to add the coloured spots in red, violet and cobalt, even better. The diagonals improved the composition by linking the two areas of interest and increasing the depth of the painting. It also helps to ‘bed down ‘ the texture in the foreground.

The final touch was the dashes of lime green to the foreground, like little shoots edging through. I like it that they are a different shape, perhaps a bit more organic but still very structured.

Furrowed Field was also in need of some help. I had applied some pale blue flecks and some sand to add interest but I felt it was lacking, When I looked at some of the papers I had used for printing I came across this one with it’s diagonal ridges. When I cut them into narrow strips and lay them over the bottom of the painting I was pleased with the effect. Some light washes over the area near the trees and a strong limey green line on the horizon finished this painting.

STUDY 3

Very Large Ploughed Field I

This study developed from one of my little thumbnails. It is unusual for me to paint with such an overtly feminine colour as pink but I liked the atmosphere in this painting and the dramatic combination of colours. I have always liked Kurt Jackson’s use of narrative in his paintings and felt that some of the marks that I like to employ were ‘script’ like. I thought it would be an interesting development to use a descriptive narrative in the mark making of the foreground. The words ‘very large ploughed field’ are repeated over and over in different sizes to describe visually the soil of the field. This is a simple painting, much of it quite crudely painted. However there are subtle tones within the light areas and ochre has been added to the pink to reduce the cloying nature of the pink. My earlier splodges of colour were too small and I had to be quite bold here with more intense colour than I would normally use. This was a good exercise is scale and colour. I like the strong black lines in the horizon – echoed in the calligraphy of the fore ground, and in the contour lines, which have been softened with grey. This is an ambiguous painting as to season and content. I like that the viewer has an opportunity to invest their own impressions, experiences and ideas onto mine.

STUDY 4

Very Large Ploughed Field II

I was attracted to develop this study by two particular things, the soft grey sky with black and blue, and the calligraphy in the fore ground. This painting began with a layer of tissue to create a softer more absorbent surface, which was then washed over with cadmium red and burnt sienna. I then used acrylic white, black and ultramarine to create a dramatic sky. The foreground was painted in cadmium red, bunt sienna, black, burnt umber, magenta and a tiny amount of sap green mixed with ochre. A blue wash was added slightly below the horizon to create a shadow reflection of the clouds and a white strip to reflect the light behind the horizon. Green, yellow, ochre and a little blue were all used in the horizon whilst still allowing the original wash to show through in some areas. 

The sky line was created using photos of surrounding landscapes and as we live in an area of industrialised farming the pylons are a dominant feature.

STUDY 5

Large Wheat Field Near Thorney

This acrylic painting was done using a palette knife and exploring impasto painting. I looked at the work of Francis Bacon in Manchester and Frank Auerbach at Tate Modern. They are large, dramatic, powerful, and strong paintings, which are almost sculptural in the build up of paint. I like the way that these paintings are almost constructed in three dimensions rather than two.

I enjoyed using the palette knife and the way the paint feels as you apply it. I like the way the colours blend on the canvas and the textures created as you apply wet on dry. The ridges and bumps create positive and negative areas.

I started with a few strips of tissue and a wash of cardmium red and burnt sienna. The sky was created with white, mars black, and ultramarine. I wanted to keep the skyline more neutral than in some of the previous painting so lost the dominant hedges and and indicated the distant fields with an area of light. The small clump of shrubby trees on the left of the horizon, give the eye a destination as it wanders round the painting.

Although this is only a study I think a large wheat field should be painted on a large scale.

July

STUDY 6

Large Ploughed Field III (the Wheat and the Tares)

 

This study began with some beautiful paper from Paperchase. I loved the stitching and felt this would represent the night sky in an interesting way. I then enlarged some sketches I had made for my printing project and backed them on some gold printed, paper. I liked the roughness of the torn edges against the crisp lines in the black paper and the richness of the tiny edge of gold – like the last light of the sun.

I then enlarged a number of sketches from my pen and ink drawings and tore them or cut them into small pieces and began to glue them on the card to create the dramatic patterns in this study. The overall effect was quite busy but when I added some larger strips the balance improved greatly.

I then enlarged a number of sketches from my pen and ink drawings and tore them or cut them into small pieces and began to glue them on the card to create the dramatic patterns in this study. The overall effect was quite busy but when I added some larger strips the balance improved greatly.

pen and ink sketch

Finally I added some pen and wash on the top. I felt this was appropriate as this was the medium of he original sketches and was sympathetic to what I had been creating. I also felt that these lines helped to unify the whole image of tangled stalks and undergrowth.

I think if I had created this image on a heavy cartridge paper or water colour paper it would have been interesting to have had some stitching in the foreground following the sweeping undulating shapes of the landscape.

STUDY 7

Large Wheat Field

This began as a development of ideas from the previous study. The board was prepared using strips of turquoise tissue paper, which was toned down with strips of white tissue. I then washed over that with a little pale grey so that the sky was less dominant.

I used photocopies of my painting Wheat Field near Fulburn Fen and cut them into long strips representing the shape of the wheat stalks. This was quite successful but on a largish scale the colour was quite monotone and needed more contrast. When I enlarged some darker copies they were not intense enough so I used some oil pastel and blended it on paper with a little white spirit. These were cut into wider strips as the scale needed to be beefed up. I also cut strips of my painting to add more vibrant colour.

The lighter areas were created using larger strips of photocopies of a pen and ink wash of bare hedge branches from Project 2

pen and ink sketch

The horizon has quite an industrial feel to it. Manmade structures are never far away in this highly cultivated, reclaimed landscape. It is easy to imagine industrial buildings beyond the fence, or a motorway.

There needed to be a strong colour on the horizon and perhaps the most extreme contrasts. To emphasise this I painted a light area immediately behind the horizon and printed on the top of that to create the skyline. I also used some of the textured papers that I had used previously and worked on them with washes and oil pastel rubbing. I took some of the sludgey oil pastel colours down into the collage areas to finish the study.