Work 1.
When I work from a photograph I have a tendency to aim for photorealism. I try to get away from it but with difficulty, so I decided to use this exercise to experiment with textures. I chose the photo below because it had the opportunity (and challenge) of creating different textures of grass, foliage and rusting metal -
To create the textures I used brushes, sticks, and sponges, and am fairly happy with the result - I managed to get a sense of depth, and I think the textures are realistic in my finished piece -
Work 2.-
For this exercise I attended a Hilary Dancer workshop. Hilary is a local artist who specialises in impressionistic, almost abstract cityscapes in vibrant colours, which I like very much, and as the words ‘abstract’ ‘impressionistic’ and ‘vibrant colours’ do not fit naturally to my work I was looking forward to the challenge. Hilary showed us her technique using acrylic paint and ink, foam rollers, flat brushes, credit cards and pallet knives, and from her selection of photos I chose to try this one -
I used a 44 x 60 cm canvas and tried to place my paint randomly rather than my usual careful style, to try to get the impression of the street and the window lights, avoiding going into the details of the picture to get an abstract and impressionistic result rather than a literal copy of the picture, and my result within the time constraints of the workshop was -
This isn’t a successful painting, it doesn’t really resemble the buildings, though I did achieve the impression of light on windows and a somewhat dark emotional expression. I could do more work on it and get to like it, and probably in the end I could make it into a satisfactory representational night-time cityscape, but that wasn’t really the point of the exercise – which was to get away from my usual technique.
It was therefore a valuable exercise – I learned alternative ways of painting, using an old credit card to drag the paint to make the illusion of windows and light, and I learned to use inks and colours that I don’t normally use in my work, like oranges and pinks. I think I could use this technique later in my work.
Reference
http://www.hilarydancer.com/Urban.htm