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Experimentation with the figure and medium

As part of the life drawing workshop with Northgate House Hospital Rooms project (https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/hospital-rooms-northgate-house) I had managed to abstract the figure to something beyond a representation of the figure in line, shape and colour. At the time these were just sketches but I saw something in them that I didn't want to just leave as a sketch tucked away in a drawer, I wanted to see how I could develop these into potentially a series of paintings.

I had a selection of pieces of thick MDF that I cut down to a size, prepared and primed with a view to creating a series of potentially four images from the sketches. I took the sketches and thought it might work if I created four different colourways, with contrasting background colours this might become something of a set. I had no idea whether this would work, whether the sketches would translate to the colours and also to oil. I had made a small version of one in oil on a piece of board and this still captured the essence of the original, which was created using charcoal and pastel on coloured paper. What I had failed to do is explore at a smaller scale a set of colourways for each sketch. I would only know if this would work as I took the mono sketches onto the board.

As it turned out the original image worked to a certain degree but only so far. Using oil paint on board to represent pastel on paper wasn't an easy thing to translate. One of the main elements that worked on the original was the strong outline that was then infilled tonally, this also allowed the paper to show through giving a highlight and allowing the form to be revealed. The black outline became slightly combined with the colour and although very dominating it also blended into the colour infill. Doing this in oil didn't translate. So in order to get eh thicker black line I started to use charcoal on top of the oil, I felt the battle with the material had begun.

Having taken the first one so far I thought it best to see while this one dried before I attempted any more, how the other sketches would translate and work with the colour backgrounds I had chosen. These were a struggle from the outset, the colour combinations didn't work, the lines wouldn't go down, the form wasn't working and highlights of the background colours didn't help to create the form... basically I was struggling to create the vision I had in my head.

The third image just didn't translate, everything about it seemed wrong, it floated in the space, the colour combinations clashed, the form was a struggle. This one I decided to leave, I was trying more and more to save something that couldn't be saved, best to leave it and concentrate on the other two and see if I could try a different approach to get them to a satisfactory result. The other issue I was struggling with was the blending of the paint, using MDF for work of this nature was quite harsh and with nothing being allowed to sink into to the background it was all just surface paint. It was always and experiment and I have learnt a great deal from the exercise.

I decided to see if used oil pastels on top of the base oil paint, when it had dried, to use that as a medium to replicate what I had originally been attracted to from the life drawing sketch. Things started to become more positive. I could blend the colours, introduce a base colour to match the background and bring that through the form, the outline I could not only make stronger but I could also play with the strength, opacity and blend with the colours - as per the original, which had only been a quick ten minute sketch.

I decided to apply this technique to both of the two favoured images and see how far I could take them, working into them as individual pieces but also as a pair. The oil pastels allowed me to manipulate image far more I started to feel I was making progress. The fact I had to discard two of the sketches was fine if I could make these two work. I took them as far as I could and then felt that they had been taken as far I was comfortable with. They weren't a disaster, they had finally come together and I had learnt a lot in the process. Using oil on thick MDF is fine but consider the type of work you are going to use it for, this would have worked better with acrylic of something in oil that was either more detailed and could be built up in many layers. Taking a pastel sketch and thinking it would work in oils doesn't always work, think about the background colour, why it worked as a sketch and whether it would translate. By starting with four images and dropping to two was fine, the others were discarded along the way but they were part of the process and without trying all these options I wouldn't have had the outcome I did.


The final two images are below. Lessons learnt.


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