Color Planning & Fishing

An engrossing process involves choosing colors. THus, a process has emerged for actively choosing which colours to utilize. Beforehand this was sort of an ad hoc process, and, while I admit that books & manuals exist, I've always been too rushed or lazy to study the matter - save one time I learned about a technique I have alluded to, grisaille.

What has emerged is a bit of a record of which colours used bring about which results. Ideally, in the future, a record of how I arrived at each composition will remain, allowing me to reproduce a system I liked, find a colour again which I had mixed, and get used to using more mixes in the things.

1) I sampled and numbered all my available oil paints, separated by hue - the 'yellows' from 1 to 17, the 'reds' from one to 14, etc. Whites, Reds, Blues, Yellows, Blacks, Browns.

2) Take the paper canvas sheets and label each corner with the number of the piece being worked on. Then, dab points of paint, label, and mix. Some or all of these I then use to construct the landscape.

I have found this in general a good first step when I am looking at the book, the block of wood, and find myself COMPLETELY and hopelessly stuck! It can be a double edged sword, though, when the colour mixing process becomes more engaging that the painting!

3) create general personal colour wheels - something I've not done since first year of art school. Especially when playing around with a new pigment, and wanting to see where it can go.

This is all part of my larger goal with this process, which is to develop a painterly strategy that will eliminate that weird moment of vacuum, terror, and awe that grabs the jugular every blessed time the intention to begin a painting is framed.

Now, wanted to share re. this painting:

Fishing upon the Blythe-Sand, Tide Setting In - exhibited 1809

Oil on canvas
support: 889 x 1194 mm
painting

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

First of, a group, the Sandycombe Lodge Trust, is conserving a villa Turner apparently built himself (artist and architect as he was), allowing him to escape the big city and pursue restful hobbies such as fishing, walking and..as usual... making art:

He took his boat along the Thames, he walked the riverside and climbed Richmond Hill with its famous view along the ‘Matchless Vale’, and he drove out in his gig through what was then an area of woodland, farmland and market gardens – always sketching, sometimes painting, as he went. At Sandycombe Lodge a visitor remembered the artist standing by his drawing-room window, ‘refreshing his eye with the run of the branches’. Many of Turner’s most famous paintings date from this time, and were inspired by this Thames scenery, the Aeolian Harp ( l808) and England: Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent’s Birthday (1819) being two notable examples.

Secondly, though the painting in question does not belong to those mentioned above, it is one of the many he did portraying this activity. From the first one of his ever exhibited at the Royal Academy (shown partly finished here - since finished but not portrayed yet) onwards, fishing scenes of one sort or another play a large part of his ouvre - understandable due to the important role the sport had in his life.

JMW Turner would have felt right at home in Madison County, of course. A typical visit to local rivers and watering holes display the occasional fisher man, woman, families. The Laurel River, on the way to Hot Springs itself is one long highway of fisher people, with favoured spots demarcated by regulars with fishing canes, large canisters, and other objects.

As far as my version of 'Fishing...", something about the piece told me to use the pallete knife, as opposed to a paintbrush, to apply paint. Anyone who has ever iced a cake will know what this feels and looks like. Can't say exactly what led me to this - I know he has used it in his work, though possibly not exclusively in an entire painting - at least not during the current phase I'm covering (early 1800's). But viewing the piece let me see wide, discrete shapes among the cloud formations & a planar look to everything that led me to think "palette knife might work here". Skies are also more fun when we experiment with how to portray them. A quick application method, it does make it hard for a person to control what appears at times - plus you must really want the special texture to show up!

I had trouble finishing the water, though I knew I needed to, because I so enjoyed the look of the piece with the rough pallete application.

That's it, then. Before the week is out I hope to post photos of all completed works up to now - and possibly one more post or so. Also, please stay tuned for Rewards survey and other news from that end of things!

Materials Questions and Acquisitions

OK, so I have spent far more time than I would have liked researching the materials needed and intended. Part of this problem has consisted of not ever really having KNOWN some technical aspects of the trade, such as the technical names of brushes, primers, gessos, etc. I have used either default materials or intuited a lot when it came time to acquire supplies - I never undertook a systematized study of the whole thing. At some level I realize I need to just base what I am to do on what I already know, but I feel that, since I am already making an investment in purchasing new supplies, I need to know what I am getting and why.

So, the first part of my process has involved brushes. Through catalog consultation and web research, I have found out the names, sizes, and functions of various brushes.

Sizes: As above illustrated, sizes range from less -than - zero to 24. The typical brush range I use (since I tend to work small) is less - than -zero to 4 or 6. However, having a few larger ones at hand facilitates many things - especially when it comes to glazing.

Types: for a good primer, here's a very basic site. I will review what has affected me most directly.

Round brushes come to a point, are round, and are the most traditional shape associated with painting. They hold a lot of fluid, but can be too soft for some work. They are also not particularly good for filling in large swaths of space, flat or bright brushes are better for that. These two also allow one to cover wide space while still maintaining a sharp outline edge. Bright brushes have shorter, often stiffer bristles, which make it difficult for them to hold paint, they can be great for texturing, however. Filberts are similar to flats and brights, but have an oval shape at the top which will soften the edge and makes for a less 'square' painting experience. Rigger brushes are great for detail and long, thin lines such as tree branches, though I find them hard to work with due to being difficult to control. Fan brushes can be fun - their unusual shape allows one to do unusual things or blend colours in a gradient. Specific detail work is also possible, though generally the shape makes it a fairly inflexible brush to use all the time. The mop has become one of my favorite kinds, especially when doing any glazing - obviously fatal for any detail work, they however have the magical ability to apply a uniform layer of paint without leaving a single brush mark.

Some new brushes I am excited to learn about are the rake, the deerfoot stippler, the dagger, the spotter, and the angular shader. In particular these last 3 are indispensable to fine detail work - that which I anticipate most doing.

The second phase has involved - of course - the paints. This has meant cataloguing every single tube of paint I have (comes to 78), checking which are viable, which are almost expired, which are duplicates, and, in general, which hues or pigments am I really lacking. This has taken the better part of a day - as did the brushes study the better part of a morning.

It allowed me to make a mini-painting on which to try.

The main thing I want to discuss re. paints is the concepts of hue, saturation, and value. Here's a short & sweet video explaining the issue, and here a more involved glossary tutorial.

In a nutshell, hue is that which we call the colour. Blue, red, etc. In its purest state - unmixed with black or white, a colour's chromacity is at its highest. Saturation is a similar idea - does the colour appear weak or strong? A highly saturated colour will look stronger, an unsaturated colour will look weak or washed out. We can think about magenta vs. pale pink to get an idea of what that means. Value relates to a hue's lightness or darkness - a lighter colour has a higher value.

Tint, tone, and shade are additionally useful concepts. A tint is a colour of lower saturation due to the addition of white. Tone is a colour modified by gray, and shade is a colour darkened by black, thus lessening its value.

My next challenge will be to ascertain which is the best sort of gesso or primer to use. I have used the standard white acrylic gesso by default- occasionally using a grey or transparent gesso for effects. However, I have found out about other primers and painting grounds which, though more expensive, seem to offer something closer to what artists have traditionally used - in addition, these grounds promise colorfastness and better permanence.

I may spend some time looking at this, though, since I do not have unlimited time or means, I may end up just using the same gesso I have for a while.

Hoping that by next writing I will have gotten around to submitting a final materials list to the supplier. Even if delayed, I have enough with me to begin on schedule, on Feb 24th.