New Canvas Works

I am continuing to work on the ideas from my mindfulness sketchbook pages.  I am still working on the boundaries in the landscape subject and the sketchbook pages are an extension of that. 

I am specifically looking at the shapes that fields form, I love how no matter how hard the farmer tries, they are never square due to things like hillocks, burns, buildings, pylons, rocks, uneven ground.  The shapes of the fields are endlessly fascinating to me.

So drawing those shapes and expanding on them became a great exercise in meditation and the results are now creeping into my everyday work.

It is harder to go bigger, so I am doing it gradually, from 6 or 7 inch square in my previous post to one that is 10inches square and one that is 16inches square.  I am challenging myself with the square format to see how the shapes work.  I don't want them plonked in the middle, so I am experimenting with the placement of them as well.  I also want to do some long thin formats too.

More ideas than time, as usual!

The first one is more or less finished, it is 10"x10" and very precise.  I worked in a very strict, planned manner, drawing things out before transferring them to the canvas and keeping the paint as even as I could.

The second one, is still in progress, sorry for the slightly fuzzy photo, even though we have daylight until the wee hours here in Scotland, we do have cloud and that has reduced the light quality. 

Here I have worked in a much more intuitive way, applying paint, oil pastel and charcoal and letting the shapes form themselves.  I am also applying the paint in a more textured manner.  Although much harder to work this way, I do find it more satisfying and more painterly.

I still have a way to go with this, but I like how it is progressing.

The Bigger Picture

In yesterday's post, I showed you a painting for Summer of Colour that I made in two pinks and orange.  What I didn't show you, was the bigger picture - the image was just part of a larger whole.

Here is the larger painting in progress, you can see, I have already made changes to the parts shown yesterday.

There is much more still to be done, but I am loving the process.  It is an extension of the ideas that have been forming during my mindfulness sketchbook sessions and it is such fun to be able to get them onto a larger canvas (well, board in this case) at last.

Boundaries Series - Push it

During my mindfulness sketchbook sessions, I find I spend more time drawing with charcoal on top of previously painted pages.

Liking the results in the sketchbook, I decided to try it out on a prepared canvas (the one in the last post, that looked like a snow scene).

First I painted over the lovely burnt paper effect (it is OK, I now know how to replicate it if or when I need to), with a few layers of acrylic paint.  I always start with darker colours and work towards lighter as I progress.  Well, when I say always, I mean mostly (sometimes I deviate from this).

Now, I rather liked what I had so far and I really didn't want to change it that much, but, you know and I know, that to progress with art, we have to push it - we have to push it real good!

So I pushed it and I am not entirely happy with the result, I overworked it and lost the translucency that I a wanted in the negative space, I was battling with the texture, it was making the drawn and calligraphic lines that I wanted broken and untidy, the tonal contrast is a bit too harsh to my eyes.

But I am happy that I tried and I have pinned this up on the wall, where it will stay with many other experiments until I AM happy with the results!

A Few Sketchbook Pages

I posted about my sketchbooks a couple of months ago and how I like to call them Carnets de Travail after Elisabeth Couloigner's workbooks.  I feel a bit wrong calling them sketchbooks, when very little actual sketching gets done in them, I just paint, experiment and try out ideas.

Anyway, I have been working in them some more and here are a few pages that I have finished recently.

 

 

Sketchbooks

Can you call them sketchbooks if very little actual sketching gets done in them?  One of my favourite artists, Elisabeth Couloigner, calls them Carnets de Travail - workbooks.  I like the sound of that.

Anyway, I have pages and pages in my Carnets of mainly paint, texture and some scribing, here are a few.