Cloud Studies Take Two

Having reread tutor feedback from my last assignment, I have tried to produce some cloud studies that offers greater sense of structure to the clouds and painted in a way that hopefully makes better use of stronger and more varied colour mixes.

I feel the results are better than before, and am glad that I came back to this exercise:

Assignment 5 - Series of five paintings

"Blue Buda" series:

Working on the 5th painting in the series, was going to do a more  traditional making the Buda ornament the focal object, but decided by getting me daughter to hold the ornament I can also turn exercise in to a portrait study.

Work in progress..

Finished Painting

"A day in Hastings" series:

The next selection of paintings my family felt worked the best a series and best reflected the subject matter although they felt pictures  3 & 5 didn't sit quite as well in the series. They liked the combination of watercolour and ink, and commented that the sketchy quality of the figures gave a sense of movement to the scenes

Painting 1.

Painting 2.

Painting 3.

Painting  4.

Painting 5.

In following series of paintings based on those already produced I try to create a more refined, less sketchy version of the paintings or elements from these paintings. In some cases I am going back to the photographs I had taken earlier in the month, with more of a sense of purpose as to what I wanted to achieve...a tighter study of the of figures, but with minimal suggestion of anything else from the townscape.

    

Exercise Working with music

Music inspired watercolours, abstract doodles rather than anything more ambitious, I like what I am listening to but don't feel any strong emotion or different emotion based on what I listened to for this exercise. I tried to avoid painting pictures of the instruments I could hear or moving my paint brush across the paper like I am conducting but in some cases couldn't help but be influenced by the song title.

Caribou, Sun

Daft Punk, Verdis Quo

Jon Hopkins, Lost in Thought

Miles Davis, All blue

My daughter who gave me a list of music, after painting the pictures tried to guess which painting went with which song... All blue was the the on she got followed by Sun once she could see that the the tiles had played a part in what I had painted.

Lost in Thought, I feel, is the most successful if its possible, to measure the outcome... marks in this painting more than the others influenced by the music rather than producing something that I am trying to make work as a picture.

My daughter, unlike me, can play several instruments and has a much deeper appreciation of music (beyond my "oh, this is a nice tune") ... It would to be good to try and paint here interpretation of the songs... she could write down how she feels and I could try and paint a response... 

Exercise Themed collage and painting

View of Porth, Cornwall (from section three of the course) used as the theme for my collage.

Loom band craze has died a death in our house, so have used a few here to add texture the to beach / foreground.

I decided I want the painting to show that it is obviously influenced by the above collage rather than being another attempt at assignment three. 

Some of the collage elements are clearer depicted in the painting, but feel I have overworked the buildings.

Exercise Collage made from random elements

Looking at some of the Cubist works of Braque I am initially comparing them to what I understand to be the brief for what Cubism represents... real life objects represented from no one fixed view point... which for me has the effect of flattening the objects losing the three dimensional representation.

The collage aspect of the Cubist movement was a means of taking art away from being just about oil on canvas

The following Braque picture (link below) is typical of the image I visualise when think of Cubist works, muted colours,  musical instrument and and news paper clippings.

George Braque:  Daily, Violin and pipe,  1913


For me the Cubist works are like a flat time capsule.

I much prefer Braque's later oil paintings, compositionally the shapes and the flat colours have very strong collage like feel.

George Braque: The Black Fish, 1942


My version of Black Fish, using the masking fluid to draw in the objects before applying the paint, which to me gives the appearance of torn pieces of paper:

In the following exercise I have pasted pieces of torn coloured paper and pages from a magazine and the dropped them onto an A2 sheet of watercolour paper.  After several attempts at doing this I something on the paper that I found aesthetically pleasing,  glueing the pieces of paper in place I may have shifted them slightly to my advantage.

Collage step 1:

I am initially drawn to the areas of the collage where grey paper is combined with red paper

Grey and red, detail:

In the next step is to add other medium to the collage, thinking that whatever I do should push the focus towards these areas.


Collage after anding crayon and watercolour:

Having no obvious figurative elements to work with the initial collage I found my self filling in the spaces around the torn pieces of paper to the picture's detriment.

Another collage sticking with the red and grey colours that I like, also leave out the any other medium,  I like the order suggest by the paper pieces of the same size and don't want detract from this.

Exercise Mixed media on coloured and white paper

Found a photograph online of the artist Ambrose Mc Evoy, who's work I was looking at online having come across one of his paintings in a book on how current day members of Royal Watercolour Society have been inspired by the works of previous members.


 In this study I am painting on a white gouache surface which has a chalky/ blotting paper like quality.

In the next study I have added minimal detail for the face in pen, the watercolour in the face is purposely kept pale,  referencing what I like in some of the figure painting in Mc Evoy's work.

Here I am building up the facial feature  with linear marks, trying to indicate the contours of the  face

In the final study moving,  I am using linear pattern in  blue or yellow to define the tonal ranges of the face (dark and light) have initially defined the key features in red

Rose study. Pen, watercolour and coloured pencil

Selfie, or as my referred to it "watercolour cry for help".  Pen and watercolour

Exercise Using resists experimentally

Given past experience I am not a fan of resists, possibly because there an element of preparation that prevents me from putting paint on the paper... like taking time to work things out in a sketchbook before moving on to the final piece ... I acknowledge the benefit or not jumping straight in would result in a better final outcome,  but once I find the time to paint these initial steps  are quickly forgotten.

In this sketch I have drawn the outline of a footballer in masking fluid and used wax the define the lines and some creases on the footballer's shirt

There is a print like quality to the end result, which I like  but this is a happy accident rather than a an intended outcome.

In the following study I painted a boxer a, celebrating a victory, here I had clear vision of the end result.. get the detail of the boxer down first and then add the background dark with the odd light sprinkled about where the crowd would be seated. 

Once the boxer was dry I rubbed candle wax over the painted figure only so that I could be as heavy handed with the back ground as I was wanted, I dabbing the excessive paint off of the figure... 

In the following exercise I have taken frozen watercolour and left it to defrost on  paper that I had loosely drawn a pattern on with masking fluid, my take on Andy Goldworthy Snow ball painting referenced in the course notes.

Didn't get the coverage, to get the full impact of the masking fluid marks, should have made more watercolour ice cubes.

Looking for figurative elements in the outcome, I turned the painting up side down.. I can make out some sort of elephant type creature,  standing next to a cobra...yes vivid imagination.

Black pen and watercolour picture based on the above:

In my second ice cube painting, I have purposely combined grey and reds having been drawn to this combination of colours in the first of the collage exercise.

As I placed the masking fluid and frozen watercolour on the paper, I am thinking volcano