art – Page 37 – The Consulting Artist

Poppies

Two quick sketches made as I practiced with wet on wet painting.

These two sketches came about as I practiced with mixing wet paint on wet paper, and wet paint on dry paper. To start, I took a big brush and painted a broad line of water across the top of the page before adding the flower heads. The flower stalks were put on after the paper was dry.

In this first example I made the top of the page too wet, so that when I added the red/white mixture and the dark spot – things diffused too much. You can really see this on the left and right flower heads. With the two in the middle, I subsequently added a little more detail as the paper dried. I like the effect I got by going back and adding something as the paper dried.

In this second example – I used less water to start which made it easier to get the softer effect of poppy petals.

La Piscine

As an untrained splosher of paint – I get frustrated, a lot. The desire I have to attempt to bring a vision either from my mind or from real life, onto paper, is limited and often completely thwarted through not really knowing how to work the materials I am using. But I enjoy the process of trying – and sometimes something works – to an extent at least.

Whilst staying in Cagnes sur Mer this summer, water was all around us. The beach in particular, and the pool, featured a lot on this stage of our trip. Water water everywhere. It looks tantalising as the sun flicks and shines off it, and I thought I’d have a go at trying to paint it.

Rather than try to copy water – I played with the idea of a swimming pool in my mind, La Piscine. I did briefly think about calling this post Piscine About, thankfully I abandoned that idea. Anyway – here’s what I came up with after about three hours of dabbing, blotting, drying and mixing. The act of releasing myself from ‘what I think this should look like’, regularly proves to be a challenge, and an enjoyable one at that.

I subsequently had another go, this time putting some background colour on the paper first (a mix of white and windsor violet). I think this second attempt is just a mess – I failed to create much contrast between the shades of blue, and the violet doesn’t do anything for me either. Carole suggested I keep it and maybe use it as a background for something else. I might play with some of the travel ephemera I brought back to France and see if I can overlay anything interesting on here.

Both pictures are 24 x 32 cm on 270 g/m2 French water colour paper.

Here is La Piscine, framed and ready to go to its new owner.

The Point of the Journey

We have been travelling around France, basing ourselves in Paris, Lyon, Clermont Ferrand, Avignon and Cagnes sur mer. It’s a lovely adventure, visiting places for the first time and revisiting some favourites too.

As we travelled, I’m reminded of Kurt Schwitters – who sometimes used bus tickets (and other bits and pieces you inevitably pick up when you travel) in his art. I began to think about using a collage of our various tickets to try and represent our journey.

I figured I would try and cut shapes from tickets then try and match them all up into a perfect fitting jigsaw of travel. I sat at the table in our apartment in Clermont Ferrand and began. I cut the first shape – easy peasy. I began to cut more shapes and quickly realised that this was proving much more tricky than I first imagined. The light was poor and I had a small pair of scissors; the harder I tried – the poorer the fit between the pieces became. I cut and fiddled and positioned and repositioned, getting nowhere.

What you see here is the result of about four hours work – four hours! There’s really not much more to say about this scrap of work except that it really brought home to me the notion of ‘the point of the journey is not to arrive’. This odd endeavour has left me with a big stack of travel junk which I plan to revisit and try to create some kind of collage/mixed media work with. For now though – I need a break from bus and train tickets.