The use of photography by painters as tools and sources for
their artistic work and for documenting their creative lives has existed since
the post-Impressionists in the later 1800s.
Its hard to believe that my living and working as a painter 150 years later,
my practices in the early 21st century have not strayed from these
original uses of the camera. And much like the artists who first used their
camera to capture many things including family life, models, landscape, they would also not have
considered themselves photographers. I would also never consider myself a
formal photographer, although one rarely finds me without somesort of camera
nearby. I love that I have the opportunity to “click” away on something I find
fascinating visually that would have otherwise been impossible to pull from my
memory or to stand and sketch or paint. Taking photographs and documenting this way is an integral part of me living a creative life.
En route to Virginia, I
had heard this unique story on NPR regarding the urban legend of shoes being
strung from inner city power lines. I
had always thought this had an association with gang affiliations and crime. However, NPR demystified this narrative by sharing stories of children being released for summer vacation and throwing their sneakers up in celebration. The story stayed with me
and when we arrived in the village of Carytown (a playful and boutique / café
laden walking part of the city) in Richmond, I was drawn to this spot where a little turquoise house had been wedged between a couple of commercial buildings. The directions of the lines of the trees, the verticals of the buildings, the pulsing of the bricks and then the strong horizontals of the power lines... I fell in love with this composition. Well, I don’t habitually use
my photographs as a direct source. I can and I do sometimes, but for teaching sake I did for this one.
....Lets start in the beginning.
Here is the original photograph. It doesn’t matter what my support is
for my work or the medium but I always do a little underpainting first. This
one started with a soft pink color. It is a mix of several layers of gesso that
has been tinted and painted on panel. Before any drawing took place, I played with the shape of the composition and its relationship to the surface I was going to use. Then with willow charcoal I lightly located on my photograph and panel the centers for horizontal and vertical edge, and drew a few graphed lined on each to make sure the photograph and painting would be aligned. I use willow charcoal (this is a very soft drawing stick which come in a variety of thickness - I choose the skinny). I love it for its "forgive-ability". You can wipe it away. Let it slide into the paint without being noticed. And it just feels good between your fingers. In this step I was most concerned with placement, compositional design, and where edges between visual elements met i.e. where exactly do the power lines cross the house etc. You can see the size of my panel is about 14 X 20 and I am using a table easel. For various reasons I can go into later, this is the max size I would use on a table easel too.
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| STAGE 1 |
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| STAGE 2 |
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| STAGE 3 |
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For the next stage, I mixed up some mid value ranges of the colors I planned to "block" in the painting with. I then applied the paint mostly with a straight-edge palette knife and used a smaller flat brush for smaller areas. This process was very quick and wanted to also use the knife to scratch back into the surface while the paint was still wet or drying to allow for some of the pink underpainting to come through. The paint at this stage was applied rather thinly..
In STAGE 3 I began to observe the sense of light in the painting more and began to work both the values and the cool / warm variations of the forms to reflect that light source. I also started developing some of the details including the shoes, the contours of the windows. These parts were painted mostly brush but I also used rags, a spray bottle to keep or get things damp, my finger, and the palette knife to work the surface.
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| STAGE 4 |
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You can see the tree starting to extend up as well as more description added to the building in the distance. My own studio windows are extremely light filled...can you tell? No complaints here but sorry about the triangular light falling on these ones.
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| The Painting Set-Up |
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I've never believed that artist's needed expensive set ups or supplies to make good work. But I do believe in good paint. My favorite acrylic brands are Golden's Fluid Line and Amsterdam. My paint palette's are often tupperware containers, paper plates and I ziplock ALL of them in the zipper locked bags. Its amazing but those bags can keep my acrylics wet for weeks! I don't have the advantage of spreading out my chosen colors like I do in other mediums but I can pour out a generous amount and not feel like I have to use it right away! Acrylics can dry in minutes. One of its bittersweet qualities. I also use mason jars for water because they clean well, rarely tip over, white cotton rags I buy from Goodwill, and a water spritzer from home depot. My acrylic tubes are stored in an old sewing machine table's drawers. My palette knives are: ones with straight flat sides but one comes to a point the other to a squared edge.
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| STAGE 5 The details |
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In this stage I am still refining colors and redefining edges. Here I am using a small long round to place some of the tree branches. These trees are variations of mauve and ultramarine.....and with touches of warm pink. I am so still pushing and pulling the colors all across the board - making the brick building bounce a little and adding information about the structure of the turquoise house - bricks, wiring. This step takes the longest... and as I am doing this I am asking myself - is this painting doing what I originally wanted? and if not, what is it missing?
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| THE FINAL STAGE |
Here its. Was this ...interesting? helpful? what?
