Painting Workshop

A workshop in two parts.

A. Acrylic painting on primed board from image on folded paper.

B. Acrylic painting on stretched from second image on folded paper.

Both elements are examples of how as an artist you can iterate work and develop work from reference, whether you are finding it difficult to find a direction or looking to start something new.

PART 1

Initially started to look at the shape the object had left and then painted the actual object. Using acrylic was limiting and frustrating. The colours blended well but they also dried very quickly on the palette meaning it created issues in matching already created colours to continue the painting.

Interesting method of iteration. Good to learn about the priming of the board (MDF) with Gesso and to consider the crop and composition on the board. (Virtually everyone centred their piece, although some did look to focus on a certain element and off-set the image on the board. Trying to re-create the image of the folded paper proved very difficult as by focussing on the various planes of colour and palette meant the actual item (the folded paper) became lost. Even by trying to define the shape and looking at the shadows and highlights it still didn't seem to bring the item into play.

PART 2

The second exercise using two images on stretched paper.

The two pieces of paper had contrasting images. One by Roy Lichenstein and the other by Maya Rochet. I thought by using two contrasting images it would help to make an interesting composition. It might have done as two pieces of paper but it made it very hard to depict the piece. It did however make for some interesting crops to be considered of r further iteraton.

When the detail becomes more interesting than the whole. Is this wrong? Or does this create further options for iteration?

There was also the struggle with the medium. Again acrylic proved difficult to control and to keep the colours alive. With oils would this be easier to keep working at and to consider layering and developing?

I decided to find a further image and see if with less of a contrast I could try this technique again. I had an image from the current Olafur Elisson exhibition and tried using this.

Your uncertain shadow (colour) (2010), Olafur Eliasson. The person in the image on the right is Cornelia Parker, who happened to be viewing the exhibition at the same time as us.

Again after painting in acrylic the limitations of the medium was soon realised and I decided to look at close up crops and see if one of these could be painted. This time in oil.

Again these provided further options to paint if I so desired. Simpler, bolder images. Should one of these be selected and painted in it's on right? How much detail do you consider or replicate or how much do you use this as a start point and move things on from here. Maybe more vibrant, maybe more defined. Also to look back at the original image to revise the palette.