Art History – Page 40 – Marion Boddy-Evans

18 August 20145 December 2021

Monday Motivator: Relying on Colour & Brushwork

“When [Monet] reduced his compositions to horizontal bands or combinations of simple shapes, he relied on colour and brushwork to bring the painting to life.

“…every area of the painting is enlivened in some way… a sense of space and recession is created entirely by nuances of colour and inflections of the brush.

“…thick strokes of paint which were allowed to dry before surface colours where added

“…skip strokes, where a loaded brush is drawn very lightly across the canvas so that it skips, depositing paint where it touches, allowing the colours below to show clearly through these superimposed accents, and thus creating an active interplay between the success paint layers”

(Source: Monet: Nature into Art by John House, page 87/92)

The way we apply colour, which colours we use and how many are in a particular painting, all form part of our individual painting style. I was talking to an artist over the weekend who’d been working with some new colours, getting to know which had the degree of opacity she was wanting and which were too translucent. Adding titanium white came up; being so strongly opaque it can shift a transparent colour into translucent, but with the problem that it also lightens a colour.

Might this be counteracted by subsequently glazing over with the transluscent colour to enrich it? But that would add another round to the creation of the painting. More work and more time, as well as a delay in getting where you want to be. Ultimately the answer lies in trying each, in painting up a colour chart, in getting first-hand knowledge of the properties of individual pigments.

If you’re feeling jaded [colour pun intended], have a rethink about the colours on your palette. Do you use mainly transparent or opaque? Are there any you’re no longer using? When last did you try a new one? Do you layer it or physically mix? Are you using too many? In some of my seascapes I’ve used only titanium white, Prussian blue, and raw umber over a cadmium orange ground, though generally there are a few more colours involved, especially when it comes to mixing interesting darks.

21 July 20145 July 2019

Monday Motivator: Touches of Colour

“The freedom of Eardley’s gestural painting in her landscapes is contained within very well thought-out compositions. The use in all her paintings of brilliant touches of colour in key positions shows her schooled eye for balance and dynanism.”
_{Source: Joan Eardley by Fiona Pearson, National Galleries of Scotland p9}

Brilliant in thoughtfully positioned and in intensity of colour. To take one example from the paintings Scottish artist Joan Eardley: look at the reds on the chimneys of a painting titled Snow. Then at the yellow in the bottom right-hand corner, which is echoed in the central foreground. Muted to an earthy, ochre yellow it dances across the landscape, ending mixed with the red as a touch of orange in the distant cloud.

Small touches of colour that change the whole mood of a painting, and pull your eye across the composition. Did Eardley plan the placement and choice of the beforehand or did it evolve? I imagine a bit of both. Ultimately it doesn’t matter when it was decided, only that it was.

14 July 201422 July 2018

Monday Motivator: Intentional Effort

“Monet sometimes worked up to sixty times on the same painting…

“…building up his textures in stages, and then strategically scumbling, overpainting and glazing them

“…calculated and intentional effort

“…myth of Monet’s apparently mindless spontaneity

“…Monet’s painting was the product of a consciousness deeply committed to its own material and emotional resources and aware that viewers, to one degree or another, had resources as well.”
_{Source: Monet and Modernism page 136/7}

A painting looking spontaneous, random, quickly done and effortless all too easily belies what’s gone into this result. As it should, because the artistic effort shouldn’t be what the viewer is most aware of as they look at a painting.

Rather it’s revealed by the painting changing as the light conditions vary, emphasising different layers and altering the optical mixing. By a painting seeming one thing from a distance and another at arm’s length. Rewarding close looking, showing you more the more you look. There are layers of thought, memory, experience, and time, as well as the paint.

7 July 201422 July 2018

Monday Motivator: Not the Obvious Colour

“Sometimes you can express the color of something without using the obvious colour … You build up a kind of colour that is purely an interpretation of the truth.”

Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography page 52

Wyeth also talks about picking up a tube of watercolour from a disorganized box and working with whatever colour was in it, taking advantage of the accidental.

If you’re not quite ready for this (I’m not sure I am!), how about sorting out your tubes of blues, reds, etc, and grabbing one at random rather than picking a particular blue, red, etc?

30 June 201422 July 2018

Monday Motivator: Every Drawing Should

Every drawing should tell a story, the tale of the looking, the seeing, and the making. …the drawing is as much about the artist as it is about what is being drawn.”

Drawing Projects by Mick Maslen & Jack Southern, page 20

The “tale of the looking” are the lines/marks in a drawing that have led to the final drawing. The lines in the wrong places, the imperfections, the hesitations. Don’t erase to eliminate, but leave an echo which will add to the final drawing. Drawings that show how they were created, what the artist looked at and how they progressed, end up far more interesting than neat, clinical, faultless drawings. Drawings with individual personality rather than drawings with bland facelift perfection.

Drawing Tip: If you can’t help but desire that every wrong mark is eradicated, then work without an eraser. Start with light pencil marks and move slowly towards darker as you find the “right lines”. Try working with a hard pencil, such as a 2H, initially, then swapping to a 2B.

23 June 201422 July 2018

Monday Motivator: Going Back

?There are always new emotions in going back to something that I know very well. I suppose this is very odd, because most people have to find fresh things to paint.”

— Andrew Wyeth, quoted in The Helga Pictures, page 94

Being familiar with a subject isn’t the same as knowing everything about it. On the contrary, I think the more you paint it the more you discover. In landscape painting, weather, season and time of day all have an impact on what you’re looking at. Your own mood influences your perceptions on that day. It’s never identical.

A painting need not be one moment in time, but various moments, combining observations, experiences, and memories into one image.

16 June 2014

Monday Motivator: At First a Speck

?At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.?

From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Isn?t this how a painting happens: the first brushmark, so important at the time but ultimately a mere speck.

A mist of possible ways to approach an idea, finding clarity by moving with and through them. Colours shifting on the surface, possibilities changing and solidifying.

12 June 20142 May 2019

A Sky That Tastes of Rain

“A sky that tastes of rain that’s still to fall /
And then of rain that falls and tastes of sky?”

from a poem by Douglas Dunn, Tay Bridge

These two lines have been generating images in my mind since I came across them on the Scottish Poetry Library’s website. (Poetry is visual and emotional life put into words; it helps show the world anew. Like art, you have to hunt around for the bits that’ll resonate with you.)

In paint, there’d be a some “rain colour” in the sky, and some “sky colour” in the rain. Or perhaps a “mother color”, which is a color used in every mixed color in a painting (it may itself be mixed or a single pigment colour). I’m mostly seeing is as combinations of two favourite colours — Prussian blue and burnt umber. Together with white, these produce beautiful greys.

Adding a fourth colour will give a sense of season and time of day. Sounds like a series… Prussian blue, burnt umber, titanium white plus one other until I’ve worked my way through all my paint tubes. Or perhaps “plus one other and whatever yesterday’s other was”.

10 June 20146 August 2019

Paint with a Beginner’s Mind

Whenever you find yourself thinking “I can’t do it” or “I don’t know how” add a three-letter word to your mental dialogue. Add the word “yet”. Say “I can’t do it, yet” and “I don’t know how, yet“.

Give yourself permission to spend time learning, as well as to stumble and fail while you strive. Abandon the expectation that it ought to come easily (whatever that “it” is) and use the fear of failure as motivation to continue rather than quitting or not trying at all. Learn to “Fail better”¹, be open to “what if I…” curiosity.

In the same interview that yesterday’s motivator quote was taken from, artist Alan McGowan mentions the Zen philosophy of a “beginners mind”, saying it is

“not easy to do and it’s quite scary because there’s always the chance that it will not work at all, that it will turn into a big mess… There can be an expectation from others that one should always be successful, that a picture should in some way be an expression of expertise, especially as I teach as well. But that’s a bit of a trap. The risk of failure is for me an important part of the whole process of painting (and drawing) and so you want to keep that possibility open; that it could all collapse.”

Stop caring so much about it looking to others as if you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re busy learning and discovering as you go along, so you do indeed not always know whether what you’re doing will be successful. But the end product (a “good painting”) isn’t the sole objective, and often not relevant at all. Having an intriguing and interesting journey is also an objective. A drawing/painting that’s about observation, about the process and techniques, not about ending up with a pretty picture.

A beginner’s mind means:
1. Focusing on the moment. What might be the next step in a painting’s creation. Not obsessing about what the finished painting will be.

2. Endurance. Sticking with it, layer after layer. Don’t be preciously protective about any “good bits” in every single drawing and painting. (Ideally none, but that’s near impossible.)

3. Embracing uncertainty and working through it. Don’t habitually erase and restart; go forwards not backwards.

4. Enjoying the journey. Enjoy the art materials you’re using and try different paints, papers, brushes, colours etc. to find new favourites and fall in love anew.

5. Being patient and impatient. Grant yourself time to learn while being constantly eager to learn more.

Further Reading: How to Live Life to the Max with Beginner’s Mind by Zen master Mary Jaksch.

_{References:

1. Writer Samuel Beckett, in Worstward Ho (1983): “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”}

2 June 201419 August 2019

Monday Motivator: Suggesting Rather Than Delineating

In order to truly see nature anew and not merely register it, habitual perception must be made more difficult…

“[by] merely suggesting rather than sharply delineating objects, emphasising ambiguity and openness, employing serial methods, and including the viewer in art [a painting] becomes an incarnation of the creative process.”

— Art historian Karin Sagner-Dychting writing about Monet’s late paintings, Monet and Modernism, page 29

Or put another way: look harder and don’t put in so much meticulous detail. Don’t tell everything in a painting, leave parts open to interpretation for people to determine their own story from it. Don’t have detail across the whole painting down to the single brush hair level, but let what looks real from a little distance dissolve into pieces of colour as you look closely. It’s far more interesting.