Self portraits

I decided to try a self portraits using the same way of painting that I used to paint the jam jars. One layer of paint next to another, hardly any drawing but trying to get the relationship of colours to work better.

 The first one looks a little more like me. Rather solemn and a bit grim but that is perhaps what I appear to be when concentrating.
To me it is a better likeness but friends have said not.

The second is not finished yet but, Although the resemblance is not there, I feel it is going to be a better painting. A lot has to change, my face is not long enough, not enough shape and a few unresolved bit such as the scarf and my mouth.

I need to do several of these to experiment with composition and colour.

This has been tweaked more to get the definition of the face better in balance with the rest. At least it is not as grim as the first one.. Still more to do!

The Jam Jars of Leith

The latest project at Leith School of Art was to concentrate for three weeks on one painting and I chose to focus on the jam jars connected with clutter.

Previously I had done a small painting of the jars on the windowsill at the same time a large sketch of them done with charcoal, white paint and then drawn with a brush.

 Matt asked me to do both at once, going from painting, small scale and then to large scale, drawing.
I was concerned about the composition but told not to worry, just work on how to put the paint on.
The large drawing was a challenge as it was suggested that I "hurl everything at it" but got stuck when trying to use ink and a dodgy piece of bamboo. Images of Jiacometti where shown, the idea of drawing with a brush, using paint like a rubber to make the lines thin and so I just used whatever was on the palette and tried to draw the jars. I don't feel it is successful at all and the smaller painted sketch is very drab, and uninteresting.

The larger painting done over the last two weeks is not finished and has changed from the beginning. Partly because the same jam jars were not available and partly because I realised that the painting was split down the middle by the arrangement of jars. This meant working out how to divert the eye from the centre of the painting and so I emphasised the red paper on the jar to the  left.
I am not happy with the painting so far as it is has little life about it and the colours are very drab.


With another week to go in order to finish it, I am hoping to bring it to life, give it some sparkle and resolve the composition errors.

After much dithering I decided to crop a couple of pieces which I feel works a little better.

This is a small pastel sketch done at home. I used the pastels like paint, mixing, rubbing out and general trying to create a more lifelike view of my own jam jars.

Reflections in a garden

This week I was working on a painting from my window of my garden. The difficulty was that the opposite window was reflected in the view.
I discovered that when I looked at the reflection, I could not see the trees but when I looked at the trees, I could not see the reflection. This shows that painting from photographs does not give a true representation of what we see. We focus on one thing and the rest is a blur. a simple reflection distorts our perception of what we think is real.

This is my first attempt of this kind of painting. The window frame with the reflection of the house opposite was very dark at first but when I looked more carefully, it was lighter because the leaves were shining through it.The prayer flags at the bottom of my garden were glowing through the reflection and the reflected sky, which was bluer than the sky in front of me,  had ghostlike leaves through it.






What this has taught me is that the theme of reflections is very complicated and shows me how the way in which I see things might have to be reassessed.

As well as considering how much I am expressing myself, if what I have painted is a reflection, then it is also a reflection of myself. I see the view, it is only through my eyes, slightly distorted and a sum total of my thoughts, conditioning and experience, and therefore, it is an expression coming from me.

Another thought.. if everything is a memory, experience and filtered through my mind, then I must only be a channel for what comes out on the canvas. Who am I if not a succession of memories and images?

Reflections on Clutter

Yesterday's class at Leith was to expand on the theme and take it further than just doing a competent painting.

I set up my still life and realise how much the reflection them was bringing up my lifelong curiosity about clutter and chaos.
Matt encouraged this approach and suggested two works for the day. One, a painting of what I had brought and the other was to be a drawing of all the bottles spilling out of the plastic bags.

 The drawing is in charcoal, A2, and started by being very carefully drawn until Matt came round to suggest that I draw blind, creating more rhythm and movement in the jumble.
I found it difficult because I was focused on the fact that it was all lines and circles. My need for structure got in the way.

More work to be done on this.

The painting changed from being a reasonable likeness of the objects to more of a muddle.
Again, the suggestion was that instead of arranging the objects, I should take in what was actually happing in the surrounding area. To create the difference between the objects and the chaos of what was really behind gave it more life and was more real.








Next week I have to talk to the class about what I am doing, where I have come from and why I am there, with a selection of my work.
I have given this a lot of thought and so far my them of reflections is going to include everything from puddles and shiny objects to myself.
I asked myself, " Why paint?" and came up with " Why not?" The next thought was that my reason changed from day to day according to what I felt like. Friday I go to Leith and so I paint without questioning why.
Then came the thought that I don't have the urge to express myself through paint because everything I do is expressing me. Emotions can come out through playing Beethoven, every mark I make on the canvas is from me alone and therefore says something about me. Everything around me is a reflections of how I see and hear my surroundings.
Krishnamurti says that we only know ourselves by relationship to others and what is reflected back to us and I can see this more and more. It is only me in my head and so impossible to be truly objective.

Perhaps the reason I paint is like keeping a diary? It is a record that I was here, what I saw, what I thought about. Ultimately of no interest to anyone but me.

My early drawings ( from aged 15/17years ) show that I was preoccupied with how things work and investigating everything from the insides of clocks to spaces between objects. That is still there.

What I am trying to do is get the essence of what I see and hear. The paintings that have worked all show this and it is about looking more and understanding more of what I see and feel.
The essence of muddle and clutter is a real challenge because I have noticed how much my early drawings and paintings have been very controlled.
Matt talks a lot about the need to keep a sketch book and constantly draw to explore. Blind drawing, less analytical and getting to know the subject from the inside is always being discussed.
I have realised that my sketch books are full of adequate drawings but not much is explored in depth.

Reflections

October 25th. 2013

The serious stuff starts now!

The brief for after half term at Leith School of Art was to come back with a theme for the rest of the year. This had to be something to work on and expand throughout the year.

I was thinking of movement which would include the sea, waves, people, musicians playing their instruments. etc. It occurred to me that to focus on the sea meant  getting there frequently to sketch in spite of being too far away and winter approaching. The cost of petrol, accessibility etc. was too much. As I am not in touch with musicians in the same way as I used to be, sketching them was going to be difficult.

I decided on "reflections" as my theme. It includes everything from a puddle to self reflection. Shadows and the nature of illusion came to mind and how what we see is only through our eyes, light distorts, glass, silver and water have no colour and yet are alive with reflections.

 The first painting was oil on prepared paper, A4.
I worked mostly on getting the metal bowl to balance with the white mug. As there is very little room to work in, they were balanced on my palette and the yellow paint ( right corner ) is what is reflected in the bowl. At first the mug was too white and I had to thicken the paint and add more  colour to balance it.

November 1st. 2013

The brief was to experiment, do several paintings and not try to produce a finished work.

First painting of the day was tentative, thinly painted and not working. Matt ( tutor) told me to do two very small paintings, quickly within the hour, using paint more thickly, cleanly and without using zestit to muddy the colour.


The painting on the right has a better composition and it made a difference being limited by size. Much easier to see just a small part of the image and make the most of the shapes.

I went back to the original painting and attacked it with more sense of what I was doing.

The final painting was the two items, painting more thickly, mixing more paint and slapping it on to create more life and less preoccupation with detail. One of my bad habits is to get too pernickety.

The composition is not good and it is still too tight but overall, better than when I first started it in the morning.

What I have learnt from this is how much I enjoy the complications of things, clutter and detail.
My brief for next week is to find more objects, arrange them better so that there is not the problem of space versus muddle.
I also have to make a list f artists whom I would like to paint like and those whom I definitely don't identify with.

Thoughts on Plato's Cave and shadows.

The allegory of the Cave is from The Republic presented by Plato. ( 514a-520a )
Written as a dialogue, it describes a group of men, chained to the wall of a cave, facing a blank wall. Behind them is a fire with things which pass in front of it and their shadows are projected onto the wall. The shadows are the only things that the prisoners see and only know life through them. The philosopher is the only person who has seen the reality of the world outside and can see what is really happening in the cave.

This theme keeps coming back to me in many ways and so I thought of investigating the concept of  light and shadows more thoroughly.
In psychology, the shadow side of the individual is seen as the side which is not seen but more hidden. The conscious self is more known and the subconscious difficult to acknowledge.

The light of the sun creates shadows and the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Perhaps this could apply to the individual int terms of knowledge? The more one learns and understands, the more one realises how little is known.

It is not possible to just have light and no shadow. They are different sides of the same coin and just like the performer and the audience. Both are joined together.
Without shadow, it would be very difficult to see the forms of anything as all objects would appear flat.
Water is transparent but it is the light and shadow which gives it form. A wave would not be seen if there were no shadow to give it shape. The ripples of the wind would not give water it's wateriness without light and shadow.
A face would have no form without light and dark.
These things are as negative space. If only the object is seen, it has no sense of relationship with anything around it. Without shadows, only part of the world is seen. Perhaps by examining the shadows more, the object becomes more real and the relationship between them more intense.

All these things seem so obvious but if I am trying to draw and paint, and find what really interests me, it is this. How the simplest things in life are the subject for the profound and through them, the way to explore what matters most to me.
The more I learn, the less I know.

Day 2 at Leith

Today was spent at Port Seton, first hour mooching around, eating bacon rolls and getting a feel for the place.
I decided that I could not resist being as near to the sea as possible. Rocks galore, pools, gulls and sea.
The weather was grey but rain stopped by 11am. sunnier as the day progressed.
The formation and angles of rocks was intriguing and the sense of time, solidity of rocks compared to the transparency of water, was something I never tire of.

The brief is to get rough ideas this week, think about it for a week and come back next week to get more information and solidify any thoughts.

I decided to put as many of my sketches a possible onto this page. Two five minute sketches a day come to a lot. Some were rubbish, some slightly better. However, this is for the record not to be judged!

 This sketch was done with my left hand ( less dominant) and in three minutes.

                                                 Sketch done in fifteen minutes.

Same sketch but done in 5 minutes.

           

                                  One minute looking at the subject. Two minutes drawing from memory. Three times..

Sketch of the other side of the muslin.

                           Margaret, working in the dark!

Lynne trying my Viol.  Three minutes.

                    Prayer flags in my garden.

Clothes and my glasses. Three minutes

                                                     Empty bottle. Five minutes.



















Day out at Port Seton.

First attempt at the rocks and it got rather fiddly.

 This time I tried to get the over all direction and movement of the formation.

Got down to the rocks, sat on one, tried to get more information but found it too much to see and kept losing my place.

                           

                    More of the angles of rocks from higher up plus attempts at sketching the gulls.

More detail of rocks closer to me.

First day at Leith. Painting Course

Today was the first day with Matt and it was an initiation from the start.
Firstly, I had severe problems with my hearing, ( Hyperacusis? ) and was feeling very unwell.

The first thing Matt did was to go through the rules and his expectations. Punctuality was vital. Homework to be done. No chatting in the studio.
Then a series of slides of sketches by various artists. That was to be our task for the day and the next three weeks. Sketching, observation and more and more looking. Practise every day until drawing and seeing were a habit.

His way of teaching is inspirational and difficult to explain. If I could learn by osmosis I would but I feel as though I have only just started to take it all seriously enough to learn.  His energy is immense and enthusiasm for seeing the world phenomenal. No drawing or painting from photographs. Face the real thing!
The reason is that we see differently from the camera. His example of looking at a still life of old cans of paint was that we see with memories of other things. Memories of paint tins rusting through lack of use, walls and doors being painted in the past. Associations with the memories. All these things come into play when doing a drawing. Seeing life as it is with the whole of ourselves not just the mundane is the aim.

His aim is to allow us to find what is important to us and let it grow organically. We are all different and it is not the subject which is important but our feelings about certain things ( colour, light, movement, detail, etc..) which is what he wants to see.

The morning was spent doing blind sketching, sketching from memory, using the left hand, continual line drawing and looking more and more intently at what we were seeing.  ( Still life) And then spending time later in examining every aspect of what we were seeing.
I got confused and tired! Temporary muddled thinking and went off at a tangent doing sketches of the other students. He came to my rescue and I think I understand more of what is needed.
Apparently my reaction was very common!

The start of something new. Thoughts on what is to come.

I now have the brief for my next year at Leith School of Art and it is to read "Findings" by Kathleen Jamie. This is going to be the theme for the whole school for the year. Work to be done can be based on the literal or the philosophical ideas expressed in the book.

I have read most of the book and my first impressions are that it is remarkable, beautifully written, immaculately observed images and quite profound in places.

What struck me about the first chapter on lightness and darkness, was the assumption that darkness was connected with Christianity and was negative. This is an alien concept to me. The author's search for complete darkness in order to experience the other side of the brightness which is often artificial, was something I would never have thought of.
I immediately thought of the symbol for both in Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang with the corresponding dark or light spot in the other representing the fact that in darkness is always an essence of light and in light there is always the presence of dark. The literal translation of the sunny side of the hill and the shadow it casts on the other side, which can always change according to the viewpoint.

What struck me about the book, " Findings" was the constant reference to the past, death and decay, with a reminder of the technical, plastic age we are in now. References to what had gone with what is in it's place, the past compared with what is now, the sense of regret and even stronger feeling of grief came across the more I read. The descriptions of solitude in West coast islands, birds, land and the Scottishness of these places was ever present. Silence apart from the sounds of nature with the occasional foray into humanity was most evident.

My reaction was to look up the philosopher, Roger Scruton, to see what he had to say about beauty because that was a word that summed up what seemed to be missing in kathleen's book.
I found his book, Beauty, was full of references to the world of classical music, opera, literature and art that I was familiar with. His logic and critical analysis was superb and I found his book much more to my taste. I was in familiar territory and, although there was much that I have to re-read, I found more idea pertaining to how I was going to tackle painting this Autumn.
The two books complement each other and are both full of inspiration. One, because it is alien to me, and the other because it is familiar.

Findings.... What we find depends on where we look!

Such a simple statement but it feels very important to me at present. There is a chance to look where I have never been before but also a chance to consolidate what I have already and see it afresh. My life is very rich, full of colour and music. Will I be persuaded to look more at the natural world which decays and is transitory in it's very nature? The Buddhist in me knows that everything is impermanent. There is beauty in everything but there is also a world of culture which is immensely rich.
Back to Roger Scruton...

New Paintings

This is a selection of paintings done in the last few months. Sketches were made last year, seasons change and I tried to capture how I felt in the situations.

Late summer in Kippen

Light on the sea, Arran

Winter walk in Kippen

 Light on the Fields

 Coming Home in Winter

Looking Back to Kippen

String Trio

Open Studio 2013

Journey towards Abstraction

The task for the day was to draw chairs, in all sorts of shapes, sizes. etc., on tracing paper, then to move the images around until a satisfactory composition happens. Draw the image on A2 paper, using charcoal and rubber, and then start to abstract it.

I found this extremely difficult as I was not sure what I was doing or why.

Moving the images around over white paper seemed great fun but when it came down to it, I could not get a satisfactory composition. Echoing shapes, finding structure, all seemed impossible. I started to wish that I had different drawings.

I tried a simple sketch to get the idea but it still seemed very contrived.










FINAL DRAWING

This is my final drawing. Charcoal on A2. I am not happy with it as the composition is not good. The page is just split diagonally and the drawing is not abstract at all.
I seemed to resort to looking at the lines and negative space in the same way as drawing the chairs in the first place. on the whole, a failure to abstract.



SECOND DAY OF ABSTRACTION



The following Friday was to introduce colour.
We started the day with a talk by Jane on the basic principles. (see below)
I also did a few tests of colour to see what combinations worked well.

I retrieved my sketches on tracing paper, tried moving them around, doing sketches of possible compositions.
 I felt very unhappy with the whole process.

After a strong coffee and lots of thinking, I came to the conclusion that what I was trying to do from these individual drawings of chairs did not make sense to me.
If I was to make something out of a drawing it seemed more sensible to stick to my original vision and go from that rather than from something that felt more detached.

I went back to my earlier drawing of the chairs. (see below)

This was my attempt at focusing into the stack of chairs and looking at the negative space, shapes and textures.

The first painting, acrilic on A2 was done very quickly, looking at shapes, colours and patterns. What I wanted was for the top part of the painting to be quite dynamic but the bottom to be more rooted, yet holding it together by the lines and shapes.

The second painting was experimenting with different colours and getting in closer with the shapes.
Not quite successful but better that last week's drawing.

The third painting ( right) was to use mainly blues and more tone and try to think more of the composition. The yellow was added to bring more sparkle. ( complimentary colour)

On the whole I felt happier with the day painting from from my original drawing rather than trying to created something from bits of drawings.
Perhaps the whole point of abstraction for me is to go slowly and let it evolve in time rather than make a huge leap not quite knowing what I am doing.