Been a while since I posted owing to lots of different reasons, health, the awful weather which is depressing to say the least and even the inclination to do much of anything.
Did manage the other day to pick up a painting from a young artist though. This I bought whilst at an Art Exhibition some weeks ago and liked the look of it. It is very heavy however as the artist used something like Contiboard or some other compressed wood panel to do their work on, so at the moment it’s just leaning on the floor against the wall in my lounge. It will take a bit of hanging and will probably entail a long supporting batten underneath a rear support, so a bit more work than usual. However it will be worth the wait as it is a superb painting. It’s a large Chimpanzee by the way and will join the many other wildlife subjects dotted around the house.
But what of my own stuff and “flights of fancy” – Well this is a raptor in flight……
Eagle flight
Used a different technique on this one from some of my previous efforts and pleased with it I have to say. Very much a sketch and watercolour, what in fact used to be call a “watercolour drawing”. This is I suppose from the classical discipline of disigno or drawing where the visible outline of the subject was traced in preparation for the paint application.
So too this is what I’ve hopefully managed to convey – for as with everything on this blog it is virtually contrived from a computer on a screeen and with no real painted input. I have also used a watercolour or catridge paper simulated background which suits the style I think.
Sticking with birds and flying – here is another watercolour of some geese in flight -
Morning flight - Geese in the morning light
From an original photograph by a friend (PedroEric) I took the image and simplified it down to a pure paint on a canvas background this time. Though it’s difficult to determine just what the medium replicates – I mean it could be oil or acrylic to be honest but I prefer watercolour. Here though the painting appears to be applied directly with no under-drawing or tracing on any subject outlines, so in a way it is much more immediate and I like this one because of this fact.
So even though this is again a computer simulation (photographic manipulation in this case) I’ve managed to get a sense of that real spontaneity of the actual painting process – as indeed the Artist would paint in real life.
A different style now entirely and with considerably more in the way of expression -
Eagle eye - power of expression
A lot of stuff going on in this image and heavily influenced by the likes of Van Gogh with short sometimes thick brush strokes especially in the handling of the background. This image has impressionist leaning towards expressionism a bit like Van Gogh’ s progress in his life. Indeed I started this off as a quite mild coloured pictorial image but as I went on altering and changing here and there, I noted it was getting “darker” and more expressive. I think it was as I got around to the eye of the bird – close up they are incredible and they look at you with such a burning intensity that’s quite disconcerting the first time you encounter it.
An so it was with my interpretation of this subject, as I could “see” much more in this than first envisaged. So the eye became a sort of focal point receptacle for that much more. It’s dark depth and reflected images began to impact quite strongly on me and accordingly I altered the paint brush stroke intensity and added much more information into the finished image.
Had I been painting this for “real” there is no doubt it would have ended up being very “dark” and heavily expressionist in it’s final appearance, but here it’s showing maybe a strong hint of that – in fact step back a fraction to view it and it looks quite pictorial again, even benign – which it certainly is not.
So three quite different styles for three different subjects – solo soaring, geese flying in formation and the solitary predator.
Something for everyone perhaps.
