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

Exercise Magnification

Came across a picture in  a book of John Ruskin's  Study of a spray of Dead Oak Leaves  (c.1879), Which helped me decide on the subject matter for this exercise...definitely an an object from nature rather than a man made item. The following quote by John Ruskin certainly supports the benefit of this type of exercise

‘We cannot learn to paint leaves by painting trees full; nor grass by painting fields full. Learning to paint one leaf rightly is better than constructing a whole forest of leaf definitions.’


Fortunately, given the time of year finding a dead leaf was not going to be a problem, a quick walk the the dog and I had my leaf.

I did think about painting holly or an ivy leaf rather than a dead leave but I find the earthy brown colours more aesthetically pleasing than the greens I would have had to have used for the live leafs.


Leaf study 1:

After this study I simplified versions  using resist techniques


Leaf study 2:

I have used masking fluid to define the vines of the leafs and wax to define the boundary of the shadow and the planes of the near side of the leaf. 

Leaf Study 3:

Here I am looking at the tip of the leaf through a magnifying glass, the brown takes on a more greyish hue and and the network of small vines become visible, lucky I have pen for dispensing masking fluid in a fine line and for the 1st time I feel a real need to use masking fluid.

Adding the blue background was very much a decision influenced by Ruskin's study. Looking at the at my finished study I am now looking at a map... Manhattan island rather than leaf.