Yesterday I was at a Contemporary Landscape Painting workshop with Pippa. It was very stimulating, so I thought I’d pass the basics on.
We started by dividing a good sized piece of reasonably heavyweight cartridge paper into three rows and then making marks across each row with palette knife and undiluted acrylic paint. Desperately not thinking of landscapes we used a dark, medium and light colour in each, perhaps with a warm or cold colour relationship.
Make sure to leave a good quantity of white paper. On one row at least the dark should be black. The marks should overflow to give colour and texture subtleties. There should be slightly stronger areas of pigment and others could be almost scraped off. Don’t get too fussy.
Next take a small mount cut out and keep laying it over the paper to see if any interesting shapes or images emerge. You can twist the mount at whatever angle works. Pick as many images as you fancy playing with. They can’t overlap, as the next task is to cut them out and stick them to a sheet of paper to work on. In those bits you can think about landscape at last. You can paint over any bits that don’t work and add detail that adds more shape, distance and texture.
Lastly we did some larger (but still small for this exercise) pictures using the same stages on each piece of paper – Making flat marks in three colour shades, with different strengths, overlaps and textures. Doing it reminded me of Heather Burton’s advice to block in shapes quickly in flat colour at the start of a palette knife piece and the abstract session where we folded a paper that we had worked on to highlight different sections and stimulate new ideas.
The exercise aimed to give more liveliness to compositions. Using flat acrylics allows you to add layers of subtlety and detail afterwards.
I’ve written elsewhere about how we should recognise that a lot of our behaviours, including art, a just our own versions of other animal behaviours. So have you watched a dog lie down? It is intriguing. First comes the impulse, then the spot selection, then walking on the spot in a circle, the head is down and the terrain is checked visually and in terms of scent and finally a satisfied plonk to ground. During this the dog will also be checking its environment, including checking on other animals it wishes to please or stay on good terms with.
That certainly describes a good part of my art process, except with drawings and paintings I am mostly walking back and forwards to decide when it feels right. I can’t help checking what others think either.
For some people art is almost like a meditation, where you are paying attention to each mark and excluding as many outside thoughts as possible. Does that sound similiar?
For others art is a way of expressing anger but the same is true of that too. You need to look for the point at which the demon has for the moment been exorcised. If it is just for therapy then that is enough. If you want to get a message across to others then you can also think about how well that has been achieved.
Even if you are just showing off, you still need to go round those circles until you have managed something that will light up people’s eyes.
Personally I think that the more technical art gets the more danger there is of loosing the feeling involved. If possible you need to manage to balance technique and feeling until you are at the point where you can plonk down and relax, at least for a short while.
I had a discussion the other day about the fact that people often pay good money to have something look like it has rusted with age, the fashionable use of Corten steel being an example. I have a love of letting sculptures develop as they will over the years, with minimal interference and restoration. Wooden ones sometimes need more attention but I love the way the metal ones change. Different metals have different characteristics and alloying and oxidisation processes affect that. I think the sculptures have a better feel and texture if left to evolve, with minimal interference, though lately I have been using a weak oil paint and linseed oil mix on parts of them to slow and subtly alter the changes.
I’ve just hired time in David Mayne’s sculpture studio to realise a dream I didn’t really know I had. I’ve often told visitors to Yorkshire Sculpture Park about people metaphorically patting me on the head for sculpture I made when I was 16 and then looking around at the professional SCULPTURES. I couldn’t see how I could move into that world and moved on.
Sculpture by a sixteen year old
After making a few metal sculptures in recent years, I had a vision of making up a group and decided to indulge myself.
I’d recently made two butterflies based on the Ringlet and they seemed to please others as well. One of them was left by its new owner to quietly oxidise by itself which will look more like the Ringlet, which is brown. After installing the second and looking at the way the light worked on it, I decided to experiment with putting a weak mixture of yellow ochre and linseed oil on the butterfly and sap green in the case of the leaf. That has worked well, changing the subtle effects of the heat worked markings and slowing the ageing process but not stopping it and not having an enameled surface that will later flake.
I decided to do a set of ten based on the Ringlet again and also the Comma. Here is the result grouped in the corridor at The Sculpture Lounge.
The stands allow them to be displayed on a flat surface, where they can be bolted down if required. Equally they can stand on soil and the rod goes through the stand to anchor further into the soil. Tent pegs can also be used with the cross pieces (we live in a windy garden).
Here is a shorter one in the flower bed by our kitchen. The leaf is temporarily yellow with some oil paint and the sun. It will slowly change colour.
Unlike the Ringlet, the Comma is quite bright yellow or orange on the upper side of the wing. The lower side is dull and brown, so that they look like a dead leaf when the wings are closed. Clever eh? I have started patination experiments on the same lines to give a gentle aging and earlier colour indication.
Angela at the Shelley Art Group I go to said the other day that we should enjoy it when we work on something. Very wise. This when everyone else was painting a bit like Monet, while I just messed about. Previously, I’ve tended to expect to produce a finished product when I start painting or drawing. When it doesn’t work out right, I would get annoyed with myself.
Over the years the huge number of times I’ve been out sketching, often in public, have helped me relax more. Age and experience have probably helped too. Sometimes I even produce things that people really like.
Angela isn’t the only one who has recently helped me enjoy it more. When we were doing a session on abstract art there was a tip about folding up what you produce, snipping it and looking it from different perspectives. Now I’ve also got used to playing with palette knives and raw paint often mixed on the picture, that has also allowed me to take a more relaxed approach.
So when I wanted to paint a picture of Ruth sitting by the Coe river, as in Glencoe, from a sketch done when there were masses of dragonflies about, I started playing with both the picture and with different ways of doing dragonflies. I fully expected it to be haphazard, scruffy and throwaway. As it evolved I kept trying new ideas, Some work better, some don’t. Taking photos and cropping them allowed me to look at different compositional ideas and highlight what worked.
The bottom one of those is probably where I’ll go. Adding a bit of sky peeping through the foliage tells me to do a layer of sky first and then trunks and foliage on top. On the right I’ll probably make the foliage stand out as nearer to give more depth. I’ve got to add three people in there too. That should keep me occupied for a while.
If you are playing with acrylics, particularly with a palette knife, you can use cartridge paper or heavy grade lining paper but put a ground coat on beforehand, as it helps the paint move. This tip I owe to Julie and it helps make the acrylics behave more like oils, rather than the watercolour-like method used by Anthony Barrow. I am in the habit of using white gesso mixed with a touch of red for some reason.
Where I had little hope that I could manage it with my skill set, I now think I may be able to have another go using what I’ve learned. I may have accidentally produced a bit of a Monet as well.
Chimp keeping up with the craze for grass in the ear decoration
That picture is serious. Scientists have discovered that chimps adopt self decoration fads and crazes like grass in the ear.
This first bit of our art history covers a nice vague stretch from ‘the beginning’ to some time over three thousand years ago. As the latest indications are that hominids and probably Home Sapiens have been making tools since around 2.7 million years ago, that is a long time. Indications are also that different types of hominids overlapped, and in some cases, interbred for a lot longer than previously thought, so the history isn’t limited to Homo Sapiens.
Those early tools were made for over 300,000 years in the area around Kenya ( even since I first wrote this the date has been put back further). That means that there was a consistent culture passing on ideas and skills. As animals use gestures props to impress others, it is highly likely that humanoid groups did the same. Unfortunately evidence is slim. Apart from rare preservation of specimens (like Ötzi, the Alpine hunter preserved in ice from around 5,000 years ago), most artifacts made by early people are hard to find. The most commonly preserved things are hard materials like bone, stone and metal. Metal items particularly can be associated with richer individuals. Even large objects, such as canoes, are rare. The earliest so far, 10,000 years ago, is quite likely not the first. Items used by everyday people may not be as long lasting.
The earliest known musical instrument is a flute from around 50,000 years ago but even before that there may have been less robust noise makers and alongside that people will have vocalised and danced. They will almost certainly also have decorated themselves in some way.
In Australia indigenous art dates back beyond 20,000 years and that is from a people who had to migrate over millennia before they got to Australia. Discoveries are still being made using better dating techniques and both in Australia and Indonesia it is thought that examples may date from over 50,000 years ago.
When talking to people about art, I often mischieviosly refer to larger artworks and buildings as Totalitarian art. By this I mean work where someone has so much power and ego that they can commision art that is grandiose. Even today bigger scale art is given more respect than that of more modest size. Unfortunately people often admire this sort of art without thinking too much about the conditions involved in its production. I think all forms of craft and art have value. Some just grab you visually or emotionally and this effect varies from person to person. Some have more intellectual content or more subtle emotional effect than others and these often benefit from more study. No matter what the artist puts into the work, or intends us to think about it, it can sometimes be completely at odds with what people take from it. Interpretation is a personal and difficult thing. The further back in time we go, and the further from our own cultural assumptions, the more we need to take care before judging the work.
This post is a work in progress and I will add some visual examples of work and more detailed discussion to it over time.
Below is a list of selected early artifacts by date. The obvious, non building, art is in bold, but there will be art in later buildings, such as Knossos.
Ignoring the lists, categories, reviews and other opinions
I once heard a Blackbird imitating the ‘Captain Pugwash’ theme music, because it had been played so often on on a friend’s personal pirate radio station. The Blackbird didn’t call it Art, but many humans would have no hesitation in calling their own efforts at such imitation Art. Other birds create what many high minded artists would call Installations, to make courtship displays. Who amongst us that do art isn’t partly trying to impress others in the same way?
Mischievously, I have taken to saying about human art that it all went wrong when we stopped painting on rock walls. In the history of rock and wall paintings we have work that is observational, has elements of positioning and design, depicts heroism and teamwork, invokes spirits and memory, employs abstraction and symbolism and is also simply, stunningly, beautiful and skillful.
Just like Evolution has constantly kept re-inventing the crab, because it works, humans have reinvented ways of making art. To some extent this is often because part of showing off can involve denigrating previous efforts but there also exist a set of humans who don’t make their name by creating art but by listing, categorising, championing and judging it. One of our key historical sources on renaissance art is Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’. It does all of those things and also gossips, passes on myths and has always to be taken with a pinch of salt. Incidentally Vasari does mention some women artists but makes the usual assumptions about their art being less philosophical or heroic. As another aside, for those of you interested in the renaissance, if you look hard enough you can find the tax records of Florencians on line. They are full of fascinating pleas to pay less tax because life has been so hard recently.
When I was at school and first thinking about art as something I did and should know more about, I won the Biology prize and asked for The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. It was the first of many opinions and lists that I have studied over the years. What has become clearer to me with each thing I read is that a good degree of scepticism is required with all opinions (including mine of course). During years talking to people about art at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I’ve had some wonderful discussions and received interesting insights from others. I’ve also seen the light come on in people’s eyes when I give them an insight and permission to have an opinion, as long as they recognise that others might not agree and that better understanding often enriches experience.
The aim of what I am writing here is to help you see things more clearly with the aid of my lifetime’s experience of designing, creating, looking at and reading about, all forms of art and craft. Over time I hope to add to this post by highlighting some bits of the history to pass on some of that experience and knowledge to anyone reading. It will not be a long and specific list of art works. I want to widen the dialogue to include groups who are often left out of the story and to open our minds to let us do things without having to pay homage to particular ways of looking at the world. I have come to believe that we should respect what and who are around us and do our best to create what shows that respect and also tries to add our own perspectives and feelings to whatever we produce.
Last night we had a session at Shelley Art Group with Anthony Barrow.
He was very inspiring but threw a lot of information at us while painting rapidly. I work fast and free mostly but had to stop trying to take in every word to concentrate on transferring the ideas to the work. I thought I’d write what I learned and combine it with my own experiences to help others gain more from the possibilities in the techniques.
Thanks Anthony and also Sally for arranging the session.
This is what he produced as he talked, from a very small photo of the Langdale Pikes :
Let’s start with what we were painting on. Like Anthony I used 1400 grade lining paper taped to a board to reduce the curl as it got wet. You could stretch the paper beforehand by taping it down when wet. This would help the surface stay flat through the painting process. Mine still buckled a bit but is straight this morning. One advantage of the lining paper is that it is not brilliant white. So while the paper colour shows through with the wet on wet technique he used, it already has a warmer feel to it. Using acrylic you can then add white later if needed, either as as a wet in wet mix or a less transparent layer when dry. He also specified a reasonably large piece of paper. This is important to stop yourself getting trapped in detail and it also reduces the risk factor of over watering in wet on wet. You can scale down once you’ve become happier with the skills.
Next came sketching in the key shapes that are more important to get right. Using a colour that is part of the mix you want to end up with works well as many sketching mediums can interfere a bit, especially with wet on wet. When Heather Burton was doing the palette knife session she sketched the basic colour areas rather than detailed shapes, as she was using the paint in a different, undiluted, way. She knew that she could add detail later as the paint dried. Incidently Heather still uses thin layer with some transparency even with the palette knife, keeping the surface smooth to help adding upper layers. Because of the thicker paint and faster drying, it is also possible for her to scrape off areas of the upper layer to reveal more of the lower one.
What about that wet on wet technique? It’s scary isn’t it? It is easy to feel out of control but it tends to create smoother colour transitions. You also end up with nice thin transparent layers that you can then add on top of later. It is even possible to do that with water colour. Just make sure you have cloths or paper towels ready to dab off the worst mistakes and remember that with acrylic you can completely paint over the top later.
I’m not going to talk much about colour. Anthony was repeating for us the lesson of Jo’s session a couple of weeks ago. You can achieve a whole rich array of possibilities from a limited range of tubes or pots. Like all trained artists he obviously knows and indeed feels what different tubes can do in terms of warmth and transparency. It is hard to build up that knowledge, but starting with a limited range and experimenting helps. You can then add extras as you realise that a particular tube just adds something you want. Greens are particularly tricky.
Another little snippet Anthony said to me was that most people have trouble with foregrounds. It is not completely true, but in landscapes the foreground is often there just to look past. Unless it has something that you particularly want to come out in detail, a relaxed and sketchy approach to the foreground often works. Of course, unless you are way more naturally talented than I am, getting sketchy to still look true takes practice.
This is what I produced on the night. I’m a fairly literal person sometimes and like to respect the landscape I’m painting. From the photograph I was confused about the area in the middle, below the highest peak. As Wayne and I have climbed in that area, this niggled. Back home I found another picture and realised it was actually the area of rock on which we’d climbed, so that had to change. Next I realised that I had produced a misshapen version of the rocky middle right. One of the advantages of acrylic is that it is often easier to overpaint, if you haven’t gone overboard on texture. That bit got adjusted too. I decided that the picture we had been given was actually an amazing evening light, rather than a snow covering, so I adjusted accordingly. I also hardened up the mountain tops, that had been left blurred by the wet on wet. a few other little corrections and then finally I went back to that foreground. I decided to introduce a hint of another landscape layer nearer the viewer to add further depth and to balance the colours with the mountain shadows. I’m happier and have given it a single coat of varnish to bring out the colours. I’m finished now…. perhaps.
I hope that is helpful to anyone reading it. I certainly will be seeing if I can improve what I did last night and will think abut it all as an addition to my options in saying what I want to say.
I’ve been to the Sculpture lounge before to make sculptures with Mick Kirkby Geddes and David Mayne but this last weekend highlighted just how good they are as guides through this creative process.
Four people with different levels of experience and all of us guided through the choices very capably and skilfully. On the second day I was having a particularly trying day and making mistakes. Even though I don’t usually require large amounts of help, their joint radar was working all the time and gentle advice would appear at the right time.
I was making a design change to a previous mobile piece, then moving on to a butterfly on a garden obelisk for a friend. Both of these went well and were finished by the end of the first day. Ruth loved the butterfly and asked for on to go on top of one of our obelisks. Next day I got busy, but was tired and kept making mistakes. Cue David and Mick spotting my slips and digging me out of them.
The one above and immediately below is the one in our garden. I’ve added a transparent layer of green oil paint to the leaf since I first put it up, to tone it down a bit in bright light.
Sadly one of our cherry trees had become dangerously likely to split because of bark inclusion. It generated a lot of wood of one sort or another and a pile of wood chip for the garden paths. In amongst that I’m managing to find a toad and lily pads inside the tree remains. To be continued, as the wood dries.
