whilst digging about in my photos folder i came across these photographs of my painting fyre, as a work in progress… so perhaps this is a good opportunity to talk painting methods and processes…
[primed, stretched canvas, with addition of a home-made acrylic gesso..]
usually i use a mixture of chalk and dilute PVA (or rabbit skin glue with the smaller panels to make traditional gesso) , though i add some ’sweepings’ and marble dust or a little more chalk or plaster to add irregularity to the texture (too much plaster with no adhesive and it will crackle and fall off.. as i have discovered in the past..!. sometimes you can fix these accidental flaws, incorporating them into the work (i know now how far i can go with a textured mix on a flexible substrate)..
this canvas was worked on horizontally then put upright on the easel where gravity did its bit.. i reworked some of the medium as it was about to set, and used a water spray to loosen up some areas,… it’s a very intuitive process.. then later i scumble glazed some cadmium and lemon yellow for the upper section..]
[a few more semi-transparent glazes were put down to dull it slightly and add subtle texture which i left to dry, then more washes of yellow and some scrubbed-in and stippled mix of burnt and raw umber across the middle... i also use scrapers, wire mesh, a water spray, old sponges, to cloth rags, newspaper, tissue paper.. at this early stage i was looking very closely at the surface, observing the developing texture and patina.. it's the printmaker in me..]
[here, you can make out some of the scrapings which i probably blotted a bit to soften them... the colour was applied with a brush, and was a mix of burnt umber and alizarin with a smidgen of violet.. i think the camera flash has made the yellow more pale than it actually was... i didn't mind the drips... i also had some reference photographs that i had taken of the side of old boats and corroded metal which also influenced the process]
[more yellow.. this time i added a bit of cadmium red which is a middle red, quite warm, and the bottom section is mainly umber with some violet to darken and a bit of alizarin.. alas after this (late May 2008) i didn't take any more pictures until it was completed (July 2008), but i progressively added more layers of intense orange to the upper half, using a lemon yellow base, again dry brushing, scumbling, blotting with rags... the bottom section was progessively built up in mainly vertical brushstrokes and smears and then finished with a transparent glaze that was most likely alizarin-tinted so that in some lights it shifts from a dark earthy brown to a pinky violet.. it is not black..]
i work with very few acrylic base colours; again because of my printmaking background.. in intaglio especially, a lot of the colour blending happens in the wiping of the plate.. i used to make some of my own inks, a ground paste of powdered pigment and linseed oil.. the acrylic colours i currently have are: cadmium red, alizarin crimson, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, ultramarine, burnt and raw umber, violet, and mars black, which i often see as a sooty warmish black… i know a lot of artists stock more colours such as yellow ochre, payne’s grey, hooker’s green, burnt sienna, but i’ve stuck rather dogmatically to my own colour sytem which includes just two of each of the primary colours, one cool one warm, plus a turquoise and violet, which makes colour-mixing more interesting.. i’ve got more into using just acrylics in the last couple of years.. because of their quick drying nature in situations when you want to put down progressively darker or more pigmented layers of colour.. many people are surprised that i have used acrylic paint as i often mix it with an acrylic medium or varnish to build up thin layers, or i might add powdered chalk to get more of a matt colour, rarely using them in their neat consitency, thus avoiding the plastic sheen.. i don’t want my paintings to be overly or uniformly glossy, finished with a sheen of varnish, as i prefer the subtle surface contrasts of matt with shiny…
[Edgescape FYRE]
i was influenced by the media images of bush and forest fires across the world, which, with high resolution cameras, make for quite stunning imagery.. i was also intrigued by this duality in the reading of images, of disaster as both awe-inspiring beauty and deeply tragic scenes… this painting vacillates between the micro, as a deeply encrusted, textured elemental surface, into the macro vista, as an imaginary landscape, a burning horizon perhaps, depending on your perception of it.. it’s part of a theme that i will continue to develop further… charred earth, burning fields, scorched forests, smoke clouds, volcanic dust, toxic mists, polluted riverways…scenes from the aftermath of a catastrophe.. to coin a well worn phrase, there’s no smoke without fire….
view this abstract painting with other textural paintings in the edgescape series..
