Another Obama-burger

(I'm collecting these, be glad to know of others)

What I like about Rubens

This self portrait by Rubens draws me back again and again, for the drawing rather than the painting. In this case by "drawing" I mean the proportions and the solid sense of three-dimensional form. The bulk of the body is exactly right, as shown by the left hand in its placement and size, and the right hand, and the placement and size of these light areas against the dark robes. Together with the exact right distance from the head, these "facts" tell you all you need to know. It is masterful, it is magnificent, and I never get tired of looking at it. The bulk and the rightness give me an aesthetic buzz the way a sequence of chords gives pleasure in music. I suppose this makes me an art nerd.

This is a broad definition of drawing. Drawing is often interpreted much more narrowly, being limited to "lines" or the "shading" (a word that makes me cringe). I think of drawing as everything except the colour, but in actual fact I don't make much of a distinction between drawing and painting at all, and in things like portraits it's mostly about the drawing, whether with paint and brush or by other means.

As an aside, the expression "out of drawing" means that a drawing is off in some way, usually proportions or foreshortening, similar to what "out of tune" means in music. When a figure drawing or portrait is out of drawing, it makes the person look deformed, it may be ever so slightly, for instance the gaze of the two eyes. If you have to wonder it is probably wrong. The sad thing is that the artist is often unable to see it, such is the nature of the artist's ego.

In figurative painting the drawing shows, it can't hide. But Rubens had no need to hide his drawing, he was one of the all-time great draughtsmen. For proof, check out Daniel in the Lion's Den. All those heads and paws and hindquarters and jaws at every angle and in every variety of foreshortening imaginable -- he makes it look easy but it sure is not. I could draw a lion in the zoo for years and years and not get one paw down as well as Rubens has got eight whole lions in one painting.


He may have had an ability to see and rotate three-dimensional forms in his head the way some computer programs can create rotating 3D models. It's possible, if one has the gift plus training and practice. 

A lot of drawing is just getting things in the right place, but it is very hard and goes wrong as often as not. So celebrations are in order when it does go right.

A great Rubens website

Stained glass at Sacred Heart Church

Two stained glass windows seen on Sunday gone in the Sacred Heart Church on Richmond Street, Port of Spain, and below, a close-up of the plaque telling who the donor was and who the window is in memory of. They set me to thinking, about life after death and all sorts of related things, but I haven't got the thoughts sorted out yet and if I did probably wouldn't say, so the pictures are just for the record.

Art in Theory 2

A couple more snippets from Art in Theory.

August Endell (1871-1925) gets the nod because he turned out to be right:

"For they can clearly see, that we are not only at the beginning of a new stylistic phase, but at the same time on the threshold of the development of a completely new Art. An Art with forms which signify nothing, represent nothing, and remind us of nothing, which arouse our souls as deeply and strongly as music has always been able to do." (published in 1898)

-- page 59

August Macke (1887-1914), idealism showing through:

"The joys, the sorrows of man, of nations, lie behind the inscriptions, paintings, temples, cathedrals, and masks, behind the musical compositions, stage spectacles, and dances. If they are not there. if form becomes empty and groundless, then there is no art." (published in 1912)

-- page 95

Art in Theory 1

Just got this from Amazon a couple of days ago and I'm pleasantly surprised. I read a book by Harrison and Wood from the library some years ago and my personal verdict was "No." So it took a long time to get around to buying this, and the scale was finally tipped by a recommendation from an OCA friend. I looked at it in dismay, paged through the Contents (18 pages) and wondered how to tackle it. Dip in here and there? Or begin at the beginning? I could never read it all, but eventually I decided to begin at the beginning with a flexible approach, skipping without guilt anything that's too boring or tedious or incomprehensible.

The book, 1248 pages, consists of extracts of texts on art theory. It's similar to and complements Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (1945 to the mid 1990s) but it covers a broader time frame (1900 to 2000). I'm pleasantly surprised because there are so many painters here and lots of interesting stuff that I haven't seen before. There are many theorists and philosophers as well of course, especially later in the century. As I plod through it, I'll post the odd quote here and there.

This one comes from an essay by Maurice Denis published in 1909:

"We affirm that the emotions or states of the soul provoked by some spectacle, create in the artistic imagination signs or plastic equivalents capable of reproducing these emotions or states of the soul without the need to create a copy of the initial spectacle; that each state of our sensibility must correspond to an objective harmony capable of being thus translated."

-- page 48.

News of the day

President Obama arrived half an hour early this afternoon along with several other world leaders for the Summit of the Americas here in Port of Spain.

The blurred photo isn't the fault of the camera, it's because I had it on the wrong setting and everything was happening so fast.

How Rembrandt drew Jan Six's bridge

Rembrandt, Six's Bridge, 1645, etching, 12.9 cm x 22.4 cm 

(about 5 x 8"), Rijksmuseum

This is one of my favourite Rembrandt drawings, who knows why? While looking it up today I stumbled on this account of how it came to be made:

"The love of his art caused him to be always provided with the materials for drawing and etching, so that we have these transcripts of nature fresh from the fountain head. We know this from an anecdote mentioned by Daulby. In describing the etching of "Six's Bridge," in his catalogue, he says, "This plate was produced by an incident which deserves to be related. Rembrandt lived in great intimacy with the Burgomaster Six, and was frequently at his country seat. One day, when they were there together, the servant came to acquaint them that dinner was ready, but as they were sitting down to table, they perceived that mustard was wanting. The Burgomaster immediately ordered his servant to go into the village to buy some. Rembrandt, who knew the sluggishness of the Dutch servants, and when they answer austons (a-coming) they are half an hour before they appear, offered the Burgomaster a wager that he would etch a plate before his man returned with the mustard. Six accepted the wager, and Rembrandt, who had always plates at hand ready varnished, immediately took one up, and etched upon it the landscape which appeared from the window of the parlour in which they were sitting. The plate was finished before the servant returned, and Rembrandt won his wager. The etching is slight, but it is a wonderful performance, considering the circumstance that produced it." It is not wonderful on account of the rapidity with which it was done, but the genius and science that pervade every touch, not only in the general arrangement, but in the judicious management of the smallest darks; they are all in the most effective situations. When the plate was bit in, the name was left out; it was afterwards added with the dry point; also a little shading was given to the hat of one of the figures on the bridge, which in the rare state is white."

From Rembrandt and His Works by John Burnet FRS, London, MDCCCXLIX. (1849?) -- but really from the Project Gutenberg ebook of the above book, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22690/22690-h/22690-h.htm

And to think, it was 200 years before Impressionism.

Recycling cardboard

Small pieces of cardboard can be used to paint on and I rescue them whenever I can. I've primed these with a thin coat of glue (white glue mixed 1:1 with water) and now they can be used for any medium including oils since the priming seals the surface and prevents paint from being absorbed into the cardboard. The glue looks whitish and semi-opaque when wet but is transparent when dry. The one on the left is bowing with the wet glue but the card is thin and pliable and can be mounted on something else if the work is worth keeping. If preferred the priming can be done with acrylic gesso instead which gives an opaque white ground.

I like having a few of these around ready-primed. Being cheap, not to mention virtually free, one doesn't feel inhibited or afraid of wasting materials when using them. These are ordinary grey cardboard. The brown corrugated cardboard can be used too but it isn't quite as good.

Set-up for exposing the screen positive

I just found this picture in iPhoto. I've posted a similar picture before, but this one explains better what actually happens when exposing a film positive and making a stencil on to light sensitive emulsion.

When doing the screenprints for the landscape series I did everything myself, naturally (who else would do it?) and made many mistakes -- but was startled and brought down to earth by my tutor, who said that in his day they had technicians to do this sort of thing. This was deflationary, for sure, but it seems worthwhile to me to have a total grasp of the process through doing it myself.

The photo shows how the lamp is rigged up at a specific height above the screen -- books can be added or taken away under the board as necessary to get the exact distance, it's a very flexible set-up. Also worth noting, there's a sheet of black paper under the screen frame to minimize reflected light, and a black cloth along the back to block light coming in under the door.

The screen is placed on the black paper, fabric side up; the film positive is placed on top of the fabric, and a sheet of glass is placed on top of that to ensure good contact; and then the light is turned on for six minutes. You can just about see the green light-sensitive emulsion on the yellow screen fabric. For the larger version of the tree I got a film positive made from my jpeg at Print on Demand on Tragarete Road.

That series

This is it, on Picasa, all six pictures. Click one to see at a bigger size.

Or (some html, not sure what it will do . . . )

Home Thoughts From Abroad

Bad Paintings of Barack Obama

A link with explanation at the Telegraph

and a direct link to Bad Paintings of Barack Obama

Oil or acrylic?

Guitar Player, acrylic on canvas, about 8" x 8"

Which is better, oil or acrylic? Why use one rather than the other?

For a while now I've been using mostly acrylic. It's better suited for the kinds of things I've needed to do for OCA courses, and it's definitely better for packing up and sending off to a tutor. It dries quickly and can be overpainted far more easily than oil. Acrylic gear is lighter than oil to carry outdoors. It's less messy to clean up than oil, needing only soap and water. It's almost essential for many contemporary techniques such as layering and dripping and a lot of mixed media work.

But it has big disadvantages too. The main one is that the paint shrinks as it dries, losing up to a third of its volume. This means that a passage that looked well-covered while being painted can end up looking thin and streaky after the paint is dry. Acrylic also gets more transparent or darker as it dries because the binder is a glue which is white and opaque while wet, but which dries clear. These two together, the shrinking and the darkening, mean that what you see is not what you get.

Guitar Player, oil on canvas, approx 7" x 7"

Oil on the other hand is far harder to work with than acrylic. Any given piece is more likely to be a total failure, and it's messy while working and to clean up. But to give oil its due, if you leave a brush overnight loaded with paint, little harm will come to it (though it's not a good idea). A major plus is that the colours are the same when dry as when wet, the only medium where this is so. Despite all its difficulties I prefer working with oil and get more of a feeling of achievement if a piece comes out well.

But the bottom line is that both have their pros and cons, and personally I wouldn't want to be without either. Now that I'm venturing into printmaking the same issues are beginning to crop up. Oil-based inks or water-based? Some things never change.

The twisted tube comes to a sticky end

This is what happened when I went to open that tube of white oil paint mentioned in an earlier post (Twisted tube) -- the head and top of the tube came clean off. It just came away in my hand with no effort or force at all. On the bright side, it's easier to get paint out of the tube now, and I've wrapped it in plastic film to prevent the paint from drying out.

Before and after

Big studio clean-up this past week. Here are the promised before-and-after pictures:

Can't think of anything else to say!

Beginnings No. 1 final stage

. . . except the series isn't called "Beginnings" any more, it's not even "Remembered Landscapes". This is the final version of the first piece with the tree screenprinted on. I guess there's some explaining to do, and I'll do it in a few days. In the meantime I'm still recovering, and the last few days I've been doing a massive studio clean-up. Before and after photos coming soon!

Related posts:
Series overview
Beginnings 1 stage 4
Stage 3
Stage 2
Stage 1
Choosing a theme

Vote for top artists of 20th century

Vote here for your top artists of the 20th century at the Saatchi Gallery website

I voted for these. [In brackets, their ranking and the number of votes after I was done.]

Pablo Picasso [1; 121795]
Paul Klee [19; 111912]
Anselm Kiefer [63; 82626]
Alice Neel [147; 78573]
Andy Warhol [9; 112772]
Auguste Renoir [51; 83819]
David Hockney [81; 81950]
Agnes Martin [185; 60769]
Sean Scully [388; 49555]
Joseph Beuys [32; 107115]

Evidently it's a Phaidon list and not everyone who is anyone is on it.

Vote here for your top artists of the 20th century

Finding the best exposure time

Light-sensitive emulsion, also known as photo-emulsion, is wonderful for making certain kinds of stencils in screenprinting. In particular, it's useful for reproducing detailed ink drawings with fine delicate lines which would be difficult to do any other way. On the down side, timing the exposure correctly is tricky. If the time is too short the image will wash out too much. If it's too long, the image may take forever to wash out and parts may not wash out at all. So, getting the timing right is of the essence.

There's no hard and fast rule because every set-up is slightly different. The one good rule is to do a series of timed exposures to establish the best time for one's specific set of variables.

My variables are: A 150-watt flood lamp; distance from lamp to screen, 17 inches; diazo photo emulsion on the fabric side only (underside). After doing a series of test exposures (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 minutes) the optimum time turned out to be 5 minutes. This is an amazingly useful thing to know. I had been using much longer times and was having a terrible job washing the emulsion out.

Two kinds of sketchbooks

Looking through my sketchbook for something to post, I found this pencil drawing of Joseph Beuys's coyote from I like America, America Likes Me (video), done many months ago, approx A4.

These days my sketchbooks look more like the one below, a combination sketchbook/journal/logbook. with things stuck in at will and still evolving.

Endings and beginnings

Ghost print of a monoprint, letter-size paper, oil-based inks

Last night I finished essay No. 2 of 2 for this course, on "Illusion and paint handling". It feels great to have it out of the way. I've been researching it for months and writing it for weeks, including paring it down to fit into the word count. In these painting courses I'm better able to predict when an essay will be done than a painting. Does this mean I'm in the wrong field? I still have a lot of logbook stuff to put into a coherent form but the essentials are in the notebook. So, nose to the grindstone, the end of this tunnel is in sight. And I'm so looking forward to getting onto the advanced painting course, which I've already signed up for and which is really exciting, and also the printmaking course which I've also signed up for and which is even more exciting. Last week I sneaked in a couple of rank beginner monoprints and was transported. Such possibilities! 

.

Series overview

The work goes on and the pieces accumulate. Every day I lose faith in the series and in myself and every day I tell myself to just push on, it's got to be done. This is a literal snapshot of where it's at right now, with a long way to go and a deadline in the middle of January. The pieces are at various stages, some more finished than others, the nearest one just started. I seem to be learning mostly how not to do stuff next time. For instance, I tried to give each of the pieces its own identity while maintaining a resemblance to the others. The idea was to avoid repetition. But I'm learning that a series needs a strong family resemblance and repetition, probably more than I have here. And too, I wouldn't embark on a series again where much of the information would have to come from photos. I tried a real live Trini sky in one and it just didn't work. So it goes!

Words and pictures at the V&A

These are some sketchbook pages from an OCA sketchbook workshop that I attended in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum on October 12, 2008. In the afternoon session we had a choice of projects and most people including myself chose the "Walk around the V&A" option, drawing as we went. My aim was to do as many quick drawings as I could, of whatever caught my eye. The drawings and the notes tell their own story so here they are. The notes can be made big enough to read by clicking on the images to enlarge, though I can't say the same for the handwriting.

Beginnings 1.4

Since the last stage I've done some soul-searching, which led to re-thinking both the concept and the individual pieces. It ended up with simplifying the concept even further so that it's now down to remembered landscapes. This one has changed somewhat but not as much as some of the others. It will stay like this for a while because I'll be putting it aside for the time being until some of the others are done.

Earlier stages:

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3

Related posts:

Choosing a theme

First reasonable screenprint

It's taken a few months but I've finally got a reasonable silkscreen print, in fact four of them. I made the stencil with drawing fluid and screen filler and printed the image onto Grumbacher pastel paper which took the acrylic ink very well.


Each of the sheets of paper measures 18 x 12" and is a different colour. I hand-coloured one with metallic inks (below).

Beginnings 1.3

Stage 3

Here's the next stage of this painting. Not an awful lot has been done, except I've repainted the sky again and put in the house. I'm working on the tree separately but am having misgivings about not only this painting but the whole series. Nothing like showing something in public to bring the issues into focus. If the photo seems a bit weird it's because I don't have a regular camera at the moment and took this rather awkwardly with a webcam. 

Earlier stages:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Related: Choosing a theme

Twisted tube

I'll have no camera for a week or ten days and will be unable to post updates to the series until the new one arrives. Meanwhile, this picture shows how not to design a paint tube/cap.  The tube is more than half-full but when trying to get the cap off, the tube twists in the opposite direction and eventually springs a leak. (I've only had it happen with this brand. Other similar-looking paints open normally).

Beginnings series, No 1 stage 2

Stage 2


The whole land area was too small, compressed into the lower third of the canvas. I didn't want the top of the land at the half-way mark either, so it's now at the Golden Section which is much better. I've repainted the sky, not sure I like it.

Stage 2

Earlier stages:
Stage 1

Beginnings series, No. 1 stage 1

The revised series for my major project is provisionally titled "Beginnings". In addition to the other things, I thought about the size, the surface and the medium. The maximum size is limited by the cost of sending the work to England eventually, but for this project I wouldn't be working at a large size anyway because of the silkscreen prints which will be part of the process. So the size will be 16 x 22", and the surface will be canvas which I like because it's versatile and tough. The medium can't be oil because of the silkscreens so I'll do the series in acrylic. I still have to decide between thick paint or thin and drippy paint in transparent layers. Either could work, and a combination of techniques could work too. I feel I will need to maintain some sort of consistency across the series, to bolster its identity, but I'll go with a combined approach for now to give myself flexibility. The first piece will be a sort of pilot. If it doesn't go well I may need to rethink the process.

Beginnings, first stage of first piece

The subject for the first piece is the same as the first one for the original "Transitions" project but with different handling, and this is the first stage, the basic division of the canvas, which I chose to do in thirds. After a couple of days of studying the result, I'm thinking I don't have enough space in the foreground and will need to fix that. But at least acrylic is easily overpainted and I can change it. I fear it will be a very ordinary landscape but at the same time I'm determined to be positive about it, it's been way too long already.

Testing

I'm posting this link to the Theme post again to see whether e-mail subscriptions are working, because yesterday's post didn't arrive in my mailbox as it should have. I've taken out some widgets in the sidebar in case they're affecting the mail-out in some way.

Choosing a theme

Choosing a theme

I've been bedevilled by indecision for months now on the major project for my current level 3 Painting course at the Open College of the Arts. The task is a series of six paintings on a theme. It doesn't sound so difficult, so what's been the problem?

First, I had immense difficulty choosing the theme. Once you get to thinking about it, there's no such thing as an easy theme. Like an essay in an English course, a series needs a point of view. I think I'm an intuitive painter by nature, and in a way, the idea of painting a series is anti-intuitive. A series needs advance planning and may involve some repetition. But back some months ago I wasn't thinking along those lines. It was more a question of whether to choose something from the list of suggestions offered in the course book and just blaze away, or whether to devise something of my own, or what.

I did try something from the list. One of the options was "Flowers". I paint still life quite often so that would seem to be just the thing, but I didn't feel enthusiastic about it and it fizzled out. No point of view, I thought, or none that I was aware of. I might think diferently about that in future.

Eventually I did come up with a theme, provisionally called "Transitions" that I thought would be exciting to do and would stretch me as a painter. It would focus on different things that had
influenced me over the years. I worked on this for months, and produced a lot of stuff, including numerous experimental studies and a couple of attempts at finished pieces. But somehow, whenever I tried to map out how it would go overall, a sort of visual outline, I had trouble getting past four pieces.

One of the problems which I became aware of only gradually was that the "Transitions" idea, while it might be exciting, doesn't play to my strengths, which are drawing and painting from life. This is why "Flowers" or the "Park" might have been a better bet after all, and would be more in line with where I want my so-far non-existent style to go.

However, having put so much into the "Transitions" idea, I was reluctant to drop it altogether without resolution. I wanted to carry it through and see where it would take me. So I had another battle with the dreaded visual outline. I finally got one done, and looking at it objectively, along with research on famous themes such as Monet's Haystacks and Van Gogh's Sunflowers, it became clear that the project as conceived was much too broad and diverse and it lacked cohesion.

So, I narrowed it down and tightened it up, and it changed into more of a "Childhood" theme, which, surprise, surprise, is in the list. It still doesn't play to my strengths, because I live thousands of miles from where I grew up and have to work from family photos and memory. But it's more coherent as a series now, and once I got to this point, making a visual outline of the six pieces went more smoothly.

One of the things I've learned so far is that it's better not to go against one's nature if at all possible. But I'm still glad to be doing this project, however it turns out, because I need to get it out of my system.

I've also learned that, for a series, the visual outline should be done early rather than late. If it's not working out, something may be wrong with the concept.

I'm planning in the next few days or weeks to post one of the pieces in progress at different stages -- good, bad or awful.

Brushes and acrylics

Click on photo to enlarge

This is what acrylic does to brushes, I don't know why. It might be that the acrylic causes the bristles to become brittle so they break more easily. Such wearing-down doesn't happen with oils. For this reason I use cheap brushes for acrylics and replace them often. Just today I got four flats, sizes 7 to 9, for less than one US dollar each.

There are times, though, when the job needs a good brush, and for those times I have the set shown below, which I think are made of nylon or something similar. They have lovely spring and precision and are a joy to work with. They were far from cheap so I'm taking the very greatest care of them.

The goal of the century

This is off the beaten track for me, but Maradona is in the news again so we looked up the famous goal on YouTube, and here it is . . .  (against England, in Mexico in the 1986 World Cup)