I’ve long liked the way Giacometti used line in his later paintings, and one of the challenges I’ve set myself for this year is to explore the use more line in a painting. On my easel at the moment is a large canvas featuring daisies in which I’d been doing this, working with a rigger brush, small flat brush, and acrylic marker pens. The latter feels like it shifts the making into “drawing” and saves having to constantly reload a brush, though they do create a consistent line (rather like a propelling pencil vs a sharpened pencil) rather than a variable one (as can easily be done with a brush).
You don’t see the line from afar, you’ve got to come quite close and then, for me, it rewards close looking. (And even closer to see the thin dark lines.) I’ve lost track of how many rounds I’ve had with each daisy, though there were at least two with dark and four with light. I don’t worry about counting, as it’s only the result that ultimately matters.
Here’s the whole painting as it is at the moment.
Here’s what it looked like the day before, prior to my ‘calming down’ the sky with a glaze of cobalt blue. I liked it at this stage, but felt it was too busy and distracting overall, that your eye needed a bit of respite.
