yellow cow update

here is the update, the third application of paint… another technical painting (sigh)  i’m trying to learn colour theory by doing…but it turns out there are other technical problems other than colour theory.  thank god i didn’t attempt kandinsky!  imagine the size of those problems!

 all i did was paint the lower left of this pic, the rocks and the leaves… that’s abt 3 hrs of my life spent scratching on that small surface… wow, am i anal-retentive or what… but i got to use a fan brush!  hehe 

interestingly, this third application of paint is when oil as a rich medium is starting to show.  i was complaining abt how the cow looks as though it can be blown away, well, that’s cos oil should have a certain ‘gravitas’ abt it, and this is mostly through how you manipulate layers and layers of quality paint.  since i have neither quality paint nor layers upon layers… it pretty much sums up the pic.

the pic is also uneven, as you can see from the cow, the lower right areas and the background… the lower right has 1 1/2 layers of paint… why this odd number, that’s cos the paint isn’t applied very evenly the second time… the brush i was using couldn’t absorb enough paint on it (lack of quality again).  the effects aren’t good or bad, it just isn’t appropriate for this painting, as the original painting has this this ‘flattened’ and ’smooth’ look abt it. 

also, some pple seem to ‘get it’… that is, the feeling of oil as a medium… two of my classmates seem to have ‘it’ with their landscapes… incidentally, the two of them are some of the older folks, retired too.  i wonder if being free of worries is one factor that enables you to paint more freely.

an aside:

the original yellow cow by franz marc has such a carefree and whimsical attitude… it’s so playful… the colours so vibrant, you’d think that the painter was some cheerful chum living in lala land.

his biography is anyting but.

roadblocks

any journey will inevitably throw up some roadblocks…

am happy to discover a major one:

since the journey began, drawing and painting has been mainly technical, which is fine, since all art must have craft as its foundation… except that i’d like to feel something for the subjects i draw/paint

this prob explains why my stuff always turns out ’nice’ and twice removed, like some spaced out tourist gazing at scenery that doesn’t quite register

fuck nice.  i’m sick of embracing pple and things at a distance.

i’ve known for some time what needs to be done, but never worked up the nerve/courage to attempt these, just worrying i’d mess up, and find out i’m just kidding myself, i can’t really draw.  juz one big crazy mistake.

the way out, i’ve inadvertently discovered, is to trick yrself into trying…  by ‘unformalizing’ the process, making it as casual as tossing yr clothes in the washer. 

an example:

a white canvas is usu synonymous with oil painting (for me), and since oil painting has such an incredibly rich and complex history (just think of all the famous artists)… stepping up with a paint brush is almost tantamout to challenging this history.  something which i feel totally inadequate for, like, “how dare i?!” sort of thing.  other pple do not seem to have the slightest problem, but well, this is mine.

the best way out of this psychological struggle, is to switch to cheaper materials.  1) they no such associations.  2)  cos its cheap, you fool yrself into thinking you can afford mistakes, literally. 

it’s very effective, as i’ve accidentally discovered when my dad wanted to throw out a piece of cardboard.  i applied gesso and drew my granny instead.   

here are the first portraits of pple in my life.  so this time art is truly personal.

art lessons 29th mar – chalkyness, glazing and how fast does paint dry?

brought my camera, but forgot to take a pic of the work in progress, yellow cow, so no pic update.  i wasn’t on earth last week.  my absent-mindedness was off the charts.  will do so this week.

an odd thing happened tho.  the oil turned really chalky, almost pastel-like.  SE explained that’s cos all/almost all the colours were mixed with white, and the white that i use, (titanium white), is actually denser than say other whites like zinc/lead white so that leads to the “chalkyness” once it dries.  also, it could be the quality of the paints, i use a combo of winton oils and daler-rowney.  probably student grade?  i dunno, that’s all i can find in artfriend, and is there any other art shop that sells quality paints besides creative hands?  sure there are, but they are so gawddamn $$!!  so student quality is fine since i’m still learning technique and copying masters, like duh, i’m a student…  just for laughs, here is the dodgy plastic bag i use to store paints:         

transporting this bag around kinda makes me feel like an itinerant painter in ancient china.  haha.  i could get a nice wooden box to store ’em, but then i’d probably forget where i’ve placed the box… better to have this bright yellow thing screaming for attention. 

anyway, there are 15 tubes, so that means my present colour palette is 15 strong.  too much actually.  the best masters are minimalists.  wish i could learn how to mix all types of colours from the basic 3 primaries + white and one other colour just for kicks. 

which means, i’ve gotta know my paints well to exert more control over this slippery medium.  it’s quite odd, come to think of it, how many of us paint w/o really understanding the quality of our individual paints.  we don’t really need to know all the brands or all the colours under the rainbow, just simple stuff like which is our fastest and slowest drying paints, how chalky each is, the names of our paints etc.  these are the things that directly impacts the quality of our paintings right?  so why is it that we don’t learn such stuff?  laziness?

hmmm, the devil or is it god that is in the details?   

so this is a lil experiment i’m doing now.  just squeezed all 15 colours onto a disposable palette to check which dries fastest and which slowest.  also, i’m gonna see which ones have alot of white/is chalky. 

the 15 colours:

from right to left:

titanium white (W), flesh tint (DR), lemon yellow (DR), cadmium yellow pale hue (W), yellow ochre (W), burnt sienna (DR), burnt umber (W), permanent alizarin crimson (W), cadmium red deep hue (DR), yellow green (DR), viridian hue (W), prussian blue (DR), coeruleum (DR), french ultramarine (W) and permanent mauve (DR). 

incidentally, the paints that look dry even at this stage are:

cadmium yellow pale hue, yellow ochre, burnt umber, yellow green, french ultramarine and permanent mauve.  interestingly, all except yellow green and permanent mauve are from the Winston brand.  hmmmm.  this could just mean that Winston oils are just generally faster drying.

 now, the other impt question is which colours have a lot of white/is chalky.

one way to test this (albeit quite unscientifically) is to spread the paints with yr fingers (something i learned from SE).  see below:

no prizes for guessing:

white duh

ok, seriously the most noticeable colour with the most white is flesh tint, when you spread it out, the colour almost disappears.

the next is actually burnt umber, yellow ochre and to a lesser extent, cadmium red hue and yellow green.  this is quite surprising cos burnt umber and cad red are so dark, i’d expect them not to have so much white.  also, the two yellows do not have much white, again, quite surprising.  permanent mauve looks chalky too. 

this is really unscientific, cos there is one impt variable here, the colours are not from the same brand.  nevertheless, it is good to find out that just cos a colour is ‘dark’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain more white than other ‘light’ colours. 

interesting.

now, i’ll just have to observe how the paints dry over the next few days/weeks.

SE also spent some time talking to me abt glazing, cos i’m really interested in how the old masters painted… but that is another topic for another day.

juz for fun

thinking of painting this… picasso’s ‘the reading of the letter’ 1921 (my rather crude sketch)

somehow, the introspection and subdued colours of the original painting might be a good contrast to a previous painting i did in 2004.

done in gouache, my unlettered life before oil. 

the colours are really jumpy cos complementary red and green are beside each other.

watching paint dry

literally.  i’m stuck technically and psychologically.  did not write ‘cos the last week was painful to record - if real work is making mistakes and living with the consequences, then last week was hard even though i mostly watched paint dry. 

the roadblock:

here’s the foundation paint for the next painting - the dimensions, 86 x 51cm suits landscapes more than portraits, and i’m a pple freak, so… huston, we have an unnecessary problem right from the get-go.  what in the wide world am i gonna paint now?! 

 

the weird size is an impt story of solving a technical problem to create a creative (composition) problem.  which is to say, by trying to be clever, i became a moron. 

the original size was to be 86 x 61cm (i got 34 x 24″ stretchers, which is abt right for a portrait), but the left over canvas was not enuf to stretch over it, so i bought two 20″ (51cm) stretchers instead. 

oh, clever lil me. 

the real deal is to change yr materials to suit yr needs, NOT change yr composition to fit the canvas.  DUH.  what was i thinking?  ans: i wasn’t thinking.  hindsight is soooo wonderful…

i had an uneasy feeling while putting the canvas together, but i ignored that and compounded the problem by painting the foundation without any clear idea of what i wanted.  i hoped (naively) that it would ‘come together somehow’. 

watching paint dry on this canvas for the past week is painful, i’ve learned why landscapes are usually elongated and portraits are not, the hard way, by making unnecessary mistakes. 

the right size can dramatize yr message.  it’s as simple and as fundamental as that.  that’s why landscapes are elongated and portraits are usually not.  gonizing abt what to paint, how to fit a portrait onto this odd size has really jabbed home that point.  constantly.  maybe its a gd idea to leave this alone just to remind me to think.

see, size pre-determines yr composition, you don’t really compose a picture, the size composes the picture.  staring at this canvas for hours confirms that.  even before the brush touches the paint or the canvas, the preparation of materials needs to be considered very carefully. 

so now i’m stuck creatively because of a technical issue i did not treat seriously.  psychologically frustrating, haha funny in a human way.   i guess most pple live like that most of the time, we try our darnest to fit ourselves into a mould instead of moulding our lives to suit us.