Monday 9 May 2011

Course work: A second start on the “Scanning Vertically” drawing for Stage 2 of Project Four; this one seems to be going a little better than did the first.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh Art Since 1900 (Vol. One)

Thames & Hudson, New York, 2004

Pp. 10-24

Sunday 8 May 2011

Course work: Started the “Scanning Vertically” drawing for Stage 2 of Project Four, but am unhappy with it, and will start over.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Stallabrass, Julian Contemporary Art

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004

Pp. 1-10

Weekly reflections on learning experience:  A fairly productive week, although I lost one day to fence repairs and another to driving my wife to the airport (460 km round trip).  I’m a little confused by some of the instructions for the present project, and hope that all will become clear as I work through it.

Saturday 7 May 2011

Course work: Cleaned up my work area in preparation for next painting.  Laid out the preliminary drawings and the two paintings for Project Two and Project Three, and reviewed them in preparation for answering the following questions from the text:

“Did the paintings develop in ways you had foreseen in your drawings or did you find, when you began to use colour that they changed in unexpected ways?”

The major change in the design of the Project Two painting was the decision to show the bed as unmade.  I could have made the tonal contrasts stronger. The intense light coming through the south-facing window proved difficult for me to suggest.  In the Project Three painting, the changes that developed were somewhat more extensive, and were made in part for design reasons and in part because of a slight change in viewpoint.  I now think that my decision to paint Project Three as a view from an illuminated room into early-morning light was a flawed decision, and that the painting would have been more effective by reversing these conditions.

“Did you come up against any of the problems mentioned or did you have different ones?”

The major problems I encountered have been described in earlier comments.  I think that the tonal and color relationships are close to what I saw; even though the morning light was of fairly low intensity, it still tended to overpower the white of the window-frame, causing it to appear greyed on the inside and a light yellow on the surfaces directly adjacent to the windowpane.

“Have you managed to get a sense of three-dimensional space in your paintings through the use of colour?”

I think that a sense of depth is shown more successfully in the Project Three painting than in Project Two; the distant tree-line allowed me to use a cooler color and less detail to suggest atmospheric perspective, and the use of overlap was also helpful.

Did the Project One Stage Four sketchbook drawing; it seems strange and out of proportion to have part of my feet and part of the ceiling fan in the same image.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Butler, Christopher Postmodernism

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002

Pp. 110-127

(I am glad to have at long last finished this difficult book; I read it with the intent of gaining some insight into the postmodernist mind, but have not gained any sympathy for the movement.  Two quotations from the text seem to explain the movement in toto: (Postmodernism)”…seems to be self-indulgent and self-absorbed, and ultimately uncommitted to anything that matters.” “Postmodernists are by and large pessimists, many of them haunted by lost Marxist revolutionary hopes, and the beliefs and the art they inspire are often negative rather than constructive.”  I have difficulty enough with modernism, and will have to leave postmodernism to a younger generation.

Sketchbook work: A sketch from an image of a statue entitled “Mourner No. 52”, found on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art website.

Friday 6 May 2011

Course work: Made some additional minor changes and corrections; at this time I think that Project Three is complete.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Margaret Davidson Contemporary Drawing: Key Concepts and Techniques

Watson-Guptill Publication, New York, 2011

Pp. 84-119

Sketchbook work: Three eggs, erased out from a charcoal ground.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Course work: Painted the cedar tree on the left side of the window.  Some trial sketches done on a digital image of the work to date lead me to think that adding the pecan trees on the right would make the overall composition too busy.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Further investigation into Matisse’s  Fauvist period.

Timothy Hyman Bonnard

Thames and Hudson, London, 1998

Pp. 181-213

(This is a readable book; it would have been improved my more color illustrations…how can one appreciate one of the great colorists with black and white images? ) Timothy Hyman Bonnard

Thames and Hudson, London, 1998

Pp. 151-179

Sketchbook work: Two pages of compositional studies using three eggs of slightly varied size and shape.  I think the first and last are the most interesting; the third could be improved by reversing one egg and correcting the problem with shadow tangency.  An interesting exercise that came to me in half-sleep, perhaps as a residual influence of Terry Frost.

Monday 2 May 2011

Course work: Further work on the window, and some additional work on the grass and weeds.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Margaret Davidson Contemporary Drawing: Key Concepts and Techniques

Watson-Guptill Publication, New York, 2011

Pp. 38-83

Sketchbook work:  Although I did not paint this in the actual sketchbook, I thought that the oil sketch I produced based on the sketchbook work of the preceding two days should be included, as it is a logical progression from the previous sketches.

Sunday 1 May 2011

Course work: A good bit of additional work on the Project Three painting; the entire

sheet has paint on it now,  and I’m almost ready to start work on the closest trees.

Reading and theoretical studies:

Timothy Hyman Bonnard

Thames and Hudson, London, 1998

Pp. 151-179

Sketchbook work: Revisiting yesterday’s topic, I attempted a sketch wearing the helmet in very subdued, strongly-directional light, using ink, compressed charcoal,  colored pencil, and a dab of white acrylic. The helmet made it difficult to work, and the poor light made it difficult to see, but there are a few things about the sketch that are pleasing.  Using the compressed charcoal to blend the edges of the ink and to tone the colored pencil worked reasonably well, and the four media employed seem compatible for a subject of this sort.

Weekly reflections on learning experience:  The days that I did not paint this week were spent in part thinking about and working on solutions for the small difficulties that inevitably occur during the course of a painting.  I am still trying to arrive at a satisfactory combination of greens that will allow me to depict the fairly-well-lit grass on the top of the dam, the shaded grass on the face of the dam, and the partially-lit grass and weeds between the window and the pond.  Choosing to paint the scene in early-morning light, looking out from an illuminated room,  has caused me some problems, and there have been delays owing to bad weather and electric service outage. The change in proportions needed to go from the original drawing to a sheet of different dimensions, and a slight shift in viewpoint to eliminate the fence (which I found undesirable from a design viewpoint)  have also caused me some problems.  Reading and theoretical studies are pretty well on schedule; sketchbook work is only fair.  Overall, a pretty good week’s effort.