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.

yellow cow/franz marc

art lessons – forgot to add that i’ve also applied a first layer of paint to ‘yellow cow’ today!  here it is (to compare with the original, check category yellow cow)

technically, what i learned today:

• should have applied a foundation layer of paint… think it would have made the colours look richer… as it is, the colours look too ‘light’, the cow looks as if it can be blown away by the wind… noticed this with the previous lempicka… oh well, will apply at least 1-2 more layers of paint next few weeks.
• SE used her fingers (five!) to add shadows and movement to the painting.  she showed me which side of the finger to use for straight lines and round shapes.  also, she mentioned that cos of the angles, we can use all 10 fingers! if we want.  heh.  what abt toes? 
• i think i’m going through some long overdue cubist obsession now.  the previous lempicka was definitely cubist, so is this.  all my classmates are painting landscapes, but i’m fixated, stuck in the late 20th century.  also, i just fell in love with the colours of ‘yellow cow’… apparently, franz marc believed that colours had a spiritual value… i wasn’t surprised to learn that he formed a collective with kandinsky (another one of my fav artists!) and he also admired matisse’s works, both renowned colourists.  kandinsky wrote a famous article on the spiritual value of colours too. 

a lil more abt franz marc the original painter of yellow cow -

this is copied from the guggenheim museum’s website.  interesting chap, crazy abt animals.  but boy, can be paint! 

b. 1880, Munich; d. 1916, Verdun Franz Marc was born February 8, 1880, in Munich. The son of a landscape painter, he decided to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. From 1900 to 1902, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Munich with Gabriel Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez. The following year during a visit to France, he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris.

Marc suffered from severe depressions from 1904 to 1907.  In 1907, he went again to Paris, where he responded enthusiastically to the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the Cubists, and the Expressionists; later, he was impressed by the Henri Matisse exhibition in Munich in 1910. During this period, he received steady income from the animal-anatomy lessons he gave to artists.

In 1910, Marc’s first solo show was held at Kunsthandlung Brackl, Munich, and he met August Macke and the collector Bernhard Koehler. He publicly defended the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) and was formally
welcomed into the group early in 1911, when he met Vasily Kandinsky. After internal dissension split the NKVM, he and Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter, whose first exhibition took place in December 1911 at Heinrich
Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie, Munich. Marc invited members of the Berlin Brücke group to participate in the second Blaue Reiter show two months later at the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich. Der Blaue Reiter Almanac was published
with lead articles by Marc in May 1912. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Marc immediately enlisted. He was deeply troubled by Macke’s death in action shortly thereafter; during the war, he produced his Sketchbook
from the Field. Marc died March 4, 1916, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France.

telok kurau artists

so here’s what happened in art class today:

SE spent abt an 1 1/2 hr pointing out the various Telok Kurau artists (from an old poster hanging on her wall) and showing me samples of their work… interesting! 

 she gave me a few brochures (2000-2002) of their past works + a book on sg artists.  i wrote down as many names as she could recall.  here they are and their primary mediums, in no particular order of importance.

Amanda Heng (installation)

Baet Yeok Kuan (sculpture)

Chieu Shuey Fook (mixed media, metal)

Chew Piak San (watercolour)

Chua Ek Kay (Chinese painting)

Chua Say Hua (Abstract oil/Chinese/contemporary art)

Goh Beng Kwan (collage – recent exhibition at the Tyler Print Inst)

Goo Chuen Hang (Oil/Pastels – realist)

Hong Sek Chern, HOD at NAFA, wife of Chua Say Hua (chinese ink)

Lee Boon Wang (Oil/watercolour)

Lim Leong Seng (sculpture/oil/acrylic)

Lim Poh Teck (won Young Artist award)

Lim Yew Kuan, son of Lim Hak Tai – founder of NAFA – is this cool or what?! (Oil/Acrylic/Sculpture/ realist)

Loy Chye Chuan (watercolour)

Ong Kim Seng (watercolour)

Ng Siew Eng (Oil/specialises in the human body, actual interest in landscapes)

Tan Swie Hian (Oil/Chinese paintings)

Raymond Lau (Oil/Acrylic)

San See Piau (Pottery/Ceramics/Chinese ink)

Sim Lian Huat (Sculpture/installation/Oil)

Tan Kian Por (Chinese painting)

Tang Mun Kit (installation)

Teng Nee Cheong (Oil/Acrylic/human bodies/installation/peranakan culture)

Teo Eng Seng (installation/paper mache/acrylic/sculpture/mixed media)

Victor Tan Wee Tar (sculpture)

Vincent Leow (installation)

Chng Seok Tin (printmaking/sculpture)

Ho Yue Weng (digital art/multimedia)

Leong Kee Tong (oil/acrylic/abstract worked in community club)

Chern Lian San (sculpture)

there are several cultural medallion winners in this group, check out www.answers.com/topic/cultural-medallion for the full list (inaugurated since 1979).  as you can see, the artists listed above are probably some of the best in sg… 

SE’s teacher is Choo Keng Kwang, another illustrious name in sg art.  her next door neighbours are cultural medallion winner Tan Kian Por and NAFA founder’s son, Lim Yew Kuan… and today, i saw Swie Hian walking to his car in the carpark!  Vincent Tan and Seok Tin are blind, so they work with their hands (sculpture) now.  Raymond Lau suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, so we can usually hear him when he’s around.  i wonder how he manages to paint… i feel humbled and inspired when i go there, there are sgs who create despite many formidable obstacles.

i really have a lot to do and read up on these artists… 24 hrs a day is not enuf!

Moooooo….

just came back from art lessons.  after a quick shower and dinner, it’s nearly 1am.  am freaking tired.  nobody turned up today except me, so besides sketching my next painting in oil! (virgin moment!), SE spent some time talking about how some paintings have a certain ‘authenticity’ and ‘authority’.  these words are in quotation marks as it’s difficult to translate the Mandarin terms into English.  Half the time, i struggle to understand the exact nuance when SE explains certain concepts too.  [i often wish that our mandarin were up to scratch (all her students are more comfortable with english!), we could dig deeper into the techniques/concepts and have a richer understanding].  PITY.  oh well, it’s quite funny sometimes when we launch into an impromptu language class, and C will whip out her ever ready eng-man digital dict to try to bridge our gap.  lol.

back to the lesson… SE took three paintings as an example, and asked me to imagine them as people in a tour group i’d just met and ascribe them personal characteristics.  she posed a question, “if you had to give your passport to one of them for safe-keeping, which one would you choose instinctively?”  we agreed that one of the paintings was the obvious choice.  the answer led us to examine that painting more closely. 

 first we stepped back a couple of metres to take in a bird’s eye view, the standout points from this angle were the perspective, the strong focal point and the sense of movement.  next we examined the painting at close quarters and saw that this sense of movement, which gave it a certain dynamism, was really made up of different brushstrokes, use of different tools (palette knife, paintbrush) and texture (thin and thicker layers of oil). 

 the impt thing though, is that although all these techniques can be easily learned, the issue is whether the artist has the innate ability/intuitive sense to apply them appropriately at any given instant.  this is what differentiates a good painter from a mediocre one, and gives a painting that sense of ‘authority’ and ‘authenticity’.  also, according to SE, that painting’s author had a good grasp of grey.

“Grey?”  i queried. 

 ”Yes, because oil painting is often concerned with shades of grey and the relationship between them.  That is why oil paintings of apples look really old and unattractive, while advertisements/graphic designers will use bright, primary colours to make an apple enticing and crunchy.  the two mediums have such different results because their aims are different”.

 Wow.  that’s something i didn’t think abt until today!  the wonders of grey! so that’s why still lifes always look so dodgy… haha…. but then again, caravaggio’s still lifes look extremely scrumptious…. hmmmm….

although i didn’t do much today, the talk was a welcome break from just painting all the time in class, and hearing someone much more accomplished ruminate and reflect on painting is also illuminating.  quite enjoyed this session cos there’s so much food for thought. 

anyway, here is the current painting yellow cow (Franz Marc) i’m attempting… basically, the technical thing i picked up today is to ‘zoom out’ and take a larger view.  when sketching, it’s impt to block the shapes (like in the oil sketch), rather than be concerned with the undulating details (like in the pencil sketch) and to find the lines connecting the shapes.  ok, it’s difficult to understand what i mean in an abstract fashion, so just refer to the sketches below and hopefully it will make sense. 

       

original                          oil sketch                    pencil sketch

before i left, SE urged me to draw/sketch more again.  she told me that my last painting (dear blondie!) was good, and that although she doesn’t set homework for her students, she advised me to sketch more frequently, and to use oil to sketch, preferably on canvas too.  i think she wants to train me to be more confident and relaxed, and less self-conscious and tense.  i know i’m very tentative, cos painting (not to mention oil painting!), is so freaking new and i’m completely clueless even abt basic techniques like how to hold the brush when sketching vis-a-vis when painting, what brushes to use, what sizes, whether to sit or stand and how far back to evaluate yr painting etc. 

painting is very much like a subtle physical and emotional dance.  however, you’d only know whether it was a polka or waltz after the session has ended.  sometimes it’s a breakdance with bruises to show!

also, the funny thing with drawing, is that i’m really am at the mercy of the moment and i HATE feeling so vulnerable.  i guess it’s similar to being a medium waiting to go into a trance, you don’t know what to expect, can’t predict if the ending is going to be good or bad, and worse, can’t stop the process until it’s done.  3/4 of the time, i’m just so bloody relieved mickey mouse didn’t emerge and the results looks plausible, 1/4 of the time, i’m either elated cos it turned out much better than expected or just pissed off cos donald duck visited instead. 

well, at least the canvas i made was ok for use today.  heh.  my first hand-made canvas!  so proud of myself.  i applied the gesso too!  and today, i used turpentine for the first time (another virgin moment!) to dilute the oil for sketching purposes!  can’t wait to start using linseed oil too!  wonder when tho’… i LOVE its smell.  used it to varnish my easel TWICE.  ha.

ok, it seems a bit silly to be so happy abt small things like that, but well, everyone gets off on different things.