Some sources of inspiration

About a year ago, I started using my Facebook page as a “visual diary” of interesting artwork I come across online. The idea was to have a reminder for later research on particular artists or other topics related to art.

What I tagged were mostly paintings, many rooted in the classical traditions but also abstract paintings. One very interesting Facegroup page I follow is “I Require Art” (https://www.facebook.com/IRequireArt?ref=profile). Over the last couple of months, they brought up several less known works by artist like Van Gogh or Picasso, but also pointed me to artists I had never heard of, both from the U.S. and other parts of the world, contemporary, “modern” and traditional.

Anselm Kiefer 1981 Margarete

Recently I tagged the painting “Margarete” (1981) by Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945), because I wanted to keep track of it for Part 5 of this course, as an inspiration for mixed media approaches. It is an oil painting which includes bundles of straw. The painting’s subject is embedded in Kiefer’s engagement with German History and the Nazi era. Margarete refers to a personnage in Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue”. Much symbolism can be read in the intertwining of straw and oil colour. I’m particularly interested in the haptic qualities of that painting and the use of unusual materials. I guess I’m going to do more research on Kiefer.

Sue Hubbard on Anselm Kiefer’s work and the relationship to Paul Celan’s poem: http://suehubbard.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=109&cntnt01returnid=57

Brian Eskill 2014 Road close to home

A second important source of inspiration is the Facebook Group “En Plein Air Paintings”, where contemporary professional and amateur artists post their recent paintings. The group has around 11000 members mostly in the U.S., but also in other contries, with often 20 or more postings per day. The submissions cover a broad range of styles and are very interesting to follow. I haven’t posted there yet because I consider my attempts too weak to present them to a broader audience. But the value of the group for me is in seeing so many different styles and approaches, and I learn from looking at the paintings and how others solved problems I encountered myself.

Today there was a painting I found particularly interesting and very successful. It is by Brian Eskill, his first posting to the group. I think he’s relatively young and completely unknown as an artist, maybe an art student. But the painting impressed me because it is such a successful translation of an apparently uninteresting suburb road into a painting that’s pleasant to look at, with a great composition and harmonious choice of colours.

I appreciate how the artist has simplified the shapes of houses, cars and trees, and how he suggests rather than explicitly painting everything he sees. The painting style reminds me a bit of Edward Hopper but is livelier because it retains the “rough edges” where Hopper smoothed and cleaned. I’m totally impressed and think this is the way I’d like to go as well, apart from suspecting this artist will make his way. The style is not directly transferable to watercolours, but the approach would work for me similarly: Reduction of details, retaining the essentials, and keeping it light and lively.

Brian Eskill 2014 Road before the house
Posted to the Facebook group “En Plein Air” Paintings
https://www.facebook.com/groups/104484319588591/?fref=nf

Painting a landscape on coloured paper

I started this task based on the two landscape sketches I made recently while in Crestwood, a little town close to New York. It is a view over a water basin of the Bronx river which I painted while sitting on a huge fallen tree. A large branch of the tree formed an arc over the water, and there was a complex visual pattern of dark branches and their reflexions on the water.

On the spot I first made a watercolour sketch of the scene (A4) and then a pencil drawing of the tree in my brown square sketchbook (21 x 22 cm), and also took some pictures for later reference. I chose one of them for this exercise on coloured grounds.

I started with another watercolour sketch on white paper and then made a tonal study in grey pastels to help me sorting out colours, the lighter and darker tones and also the various textured areas.

Then I made two paintings on coloured ground. The first was on green, the second on light brown wash in the same A4 watercolour sketchbook. I employed some white gouache for the lightest areas and switched to a flat brush for the trees in the second painting.

While painting, I had some trouble with my choice of subject, because I found it too loaded with details and lacking an open view. I found it difficult to paint smaller elements or the narrow, lengthy shapes of reflecting areas on the water. These areas are not very recognizable in the paintings. I think the depiction of foliage, reflection, tree in the foreground become better over the paintings of the series. If I were to do it again, I think I’d choose a more open view and reduce the amount of details included in the painting.

Guided reflections

Which is the most successful landscape study and why?

I think the final one is the most successful, because this is where I achieved a more skillful depiction of the elements in the view, and also because the background colour (brown) blends into the painting without looking strange.

Is the atmoshpere different in any of the pictures? If so, say why you think this is.

Yes, I think the painting on the green paper has a bit of twilight appeal, while the final (on brown) looks bit sad. The most friendly atmosphere is probably in the paintings on white ground, because the colours look brightest.

What problems did the tinted papers present?

The tinted papers changed the colour hues and toned down the entire scene. One of the challenges was to brighten this up a bit and not produce a very dark painting, or an effect of all mudded colours. I think the painting on green paper looks quite artificial, probably because of the blueish green I used. The brown paper blended more naturally with the colours I added on top.

Were there ways in which the tinted papers helped you to find your landscape colours more easily?

Maybe I did not choose the best subject for this exercise, because my landscape was so dominated by green tones and there were not many other colours. I don’t think the tinted colours were particularly helpful for my colour choices.

How important to your paintings were the gouache and/or oil pastels?

I used less gouache than in the earlier two subjects (shoes and still life), and no oil pastels. I found my background colours relatively light so less need to brighten up larger areas with gouache. Maybe I could have included more light in the foliage of the trees on the opposite side of the water basin. It did not occur to me to use oil pastels here. Maybe they’d have worked for the non-reflective areas on the water surface.

Can you see how you might exploit some of these approaches in the future?

I did not feel very comfortable with the tinted grounds nor with the additional media. Difficulties with watercolour medium and the composition were too dominant. If I were to do it again, I’d prefer working on a larger scale and I’d choose a different composition with a more open view.

My aim for this course was to learn painting with watercolours and currently I don’t feel that my skills are very good. I feel I’d still have to do simple paintings to become better with the medium, before switching to experimental stuff. I enjoy experimenting but at this point I feel it’s a distraction from what I set out to learn. Maybe for me it would be better to take some time off and simply paint with watercolours, then come back to the experimental approaches. As this is not possible time-wise, I’ll see where this gets me. Currently my attempts with tinted papers and other media feel a bit half-hearted.

More Artists: Naiza Khan

Looking at this artist, I’m following up a suggestion by my tutor. I first looked at the recommended “Shifting Ground” series (from 2011) and liked it. I don’t include any pictures here because their download was blocked. Most paintings in this series consist of large watercolour blotches that are combined with very fine line drawings of buildings or other constructed elements. The buildings were small in size, compared to the watercolour blotches, and this creates a very interesting shift in perspective. I also like how this brings out the characteristic flowing effects of watercolours.

I find Naiza Khan’s work is interesting and unusual. In this series I like how watercolour as medium has been given room to speak for itself, the chance effects of pigments flowing in water onto the paper support. This is something I’d like to develop in my own work as well.

From skim reading, I understood that Naiza Khan’s biography of living in a politically unstable country has found its way into her artwork. On a second go, I went though the complete gallery of works and was quite impressed. The Ruskin Drawings (1987-90) from her time as an art student convey the imagery of being haunted – by nightmares or bad memories maybe. They are visually very appealing, with much energy and intense contrasts.

The series of works over her career are on varied topics, very sensual and in parts quite explicit. Not the kind of stuff I’d want to make but I appreciate that her themes follow ‘personal obsessions’, which is what I still have to discover for my own practice.

I also like the “emptyness” of some of the works. There’s open space and few marks that create larger entities. By contrast, my drawings and paintings tend to be “cluttered”, there’s too much squeezed into them. Another aspect I’d like to improve in my works.

Overall, quite an interesting excursion into the world of a modern artist. By personal preference, I’m more into traditional painting and would rather research classical artists. But looking at contemporary artists with non-traditional approaches is interesting nevertheless.

References

http://www.naizakhan.com/

Drawing on a coloured ground

I got back to my two onions and combined them with a spice mug and a pitcher, placed this on a black table and used a yellow towel for the background. Then I made a drawing in the sketchbook to test the composition and look at the tonal values. I wasn’t overly happy with the arrangement but thought it would work for the task.

The paintings did not turn out very well. I found the instructions confusing in that they did not make clear what the focus of the task was – colour temperature, tonal values, or combining drawing media with watercolours. Correspondingly, making the two paintings felt like muddling around without knowing on what to concentrate. I used Scarlet Red for the warm colour ground, and Indigo blue for the cold colour ground.

The main difficulty I had was that painting on these grounds felt like “fighting against” the background colour, rather than working with it. The scarlet red went totally Kitsch when I applied white gouache for the highligts. In the remaining time, I tried to “cool down” the overall effect of the intense red background. I added white to the background to prepare the yellow overlayer, which became a psychedelic orange tone in stark contrast to the blue-violet of the pitcher. By contrast, the Indigo in the second painting caused all colours I subsequently applied to look very weird and unhealthy, and I remember that I tried to “warm it all up”. The colours of the spice mug are quite good though.

I’m not satisfied with my watercolour technique in these two paintings. It felt like a step back into fiddling with detail and not applying enough water, so there’s no flow in the colours. I used coloured pencil in the first one to intensify the blue of the pitcher. In the actual painting the pitcher has a stronger violet tone, not the blue of the photo.

In the second one, I used yellow oil pastel to intensify the background colour.

Overall, I did not particularly like the effect of these coloured grounds. It may be due to the particular colours I chose, maybe they were too dominant. The background colours in the previous exercise worked much better for me.

There is indeed a difference in colour temperature of both paintings, the first has a much warmer overall effect than the second. But I wasn’t able to use this effect to bring elements to the fore or send them to the back. Maybe this has to do with the still life subject because the viewer knows that all elements are approximately at the same distance, so the distance effect of colour temperature does not work. I don’t think the cool versus the warm background convey a different sense of distance here. The distance effect might work better with landscape subjects.

I’m not sure what I’m going to make of this experiment. I don’t particularly like the outcome and feel that I have still so many basic things to learn with watercolour that coloured grounds are not something I would want to include in any painting for now. I do see some potential in creating interesting effects from layering and using opaque light colours over dark tones, like the yellow-orange background in the first painting. But maybe I’ll change my mind. It’s been very often that I did not like something right after completing it, but a few weeks later I was better able to see what might be interesting or valuable in it.

Brooklyn Museum Workshop, including exhibition visits: Swoon and Judy Chicago

This summer, I participated in a workshop at the Brooklyn Museum entitled ‘Abstraction from Nature’. The workshop encouraged us to engage with two current exhibitions, Swoon’s ‘Submerged Motherlands’ and Judy Chicago’s Early Works. We also went to the Brooklyn Botanical garden for a painting session.

The workshop extended over 8 weeks in July and August 2014 and we met Saturday afternoons for 2 hours. This was the first time I participated in an art making class since starting my studies with OCA. I very much enjoyed being part of a group, looking at other’s works and having a real person instructor who provided immediate feedback and help when we got stuck. Important was not only the individual feedback, but also listening to feedback others received and also the interactions among participants. I became aware what I was missing as a solitary student in distance education, which was not sufficiently compensated for through online interaction and written tutor feedback on assignments.

That said, I highly appreciate the possibility to study via distance education, but I more and more realize that I need to complement this with real-world interaction.

Starting out: Swoon’s ‘Submerged Motherlands’

In the first session, we went to the exhibition with the instruction to take some time for looking and then draw some elements with recognizable shapes from the installation. The task was not easy because of the sheer dimension of the installation. The photos can hardly convey how huge it was – the people on the lower left of the photo give an indication.

Students chose a wide variety of subjects. I opted for “easy shapes”, taking the instructions literally, whereas others ventured to draw sections of the huge tree or the upper lace-like parts of this monumental sculpture.

Later back in the studio we were supposed to work over the drawings using ink washes that should include different tonal values. We were told to cut these shapes out and later mount them on cardboard to include them in a three-dimensional group work, but this idea wasn’t actually followed up and so this session just served as a warm-up.

Painting from nature

In the next session, we went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which is just around the corner of the museum. Equipped with watercolours, we were advised to walk around a bit and then sketch out a landscape view we liked. As a second step, we should develop it further as a watercolour painting.

I painted a scene that included some stone benches and a view towards a pathway and some trees. I liked how the sunlight came through the trees and illuminated them. I also made a photograph of the scene, but the painting was made directly on location.

Developing the abstraction idea

The instructor’s ideas for our workshop became somewhat clearer to me when he outlined them again. He wanted us to develop something that extended from the original painting space into all directions, thus creating a three-dimensional work. His suggestion was to take shapes from our painting and repeat these as simplified forms, cut them out, mount them on cardboard and then compose a layered, three-dimensional image.

The next several sessions were devoted to working this out. Initially, it was all very vague to make sense of this abstract instruction, but then the idea took off in participants’ minds and we mutually inspired us to interesting creations.

I worked on shapes to complete the elements that had been cropped at the edges of the original painting: A large and a smaller tree, a fence, a bush, and three stone benches. The painting itself was mounted on a large black cardboard. Another cardboard was attached at the bottom in a 90° angl to provide support for a construction to attach the mounted shapes.

This was the arrangement I wanted to retain. The next step was to build the backside construction to keep the shapes at different distances from the background.

Judy Chicago – Early works

Towards the end of the workshop, we all went to the Judy Chicago exhibition, showing some of her early works. This was a very irritating experience for me, probably because I had never before studied an overtly “feminist” artist or works from the late sixties/early seventies feminist movement.

I had real difficulty relating to the works, finding them cold and polished. Somehow they were emotionally inaccessible to me. My attitude changed while I wandered through the second exhibition room and took a closer look at the “Female rejection drawing #3” (1974) with its handwritten notes below. The notes thematized Judy Chicago’s image of self and her experiences with others – her fears of rejection in close relationships and the difficulty of coming out as a lesbian woman in a feminist context. From then on her drawings and sculptures began to make sense to me as expressions of her personality. But a strange gut feeling remained and I was not able to like her works.

It is also difficutl to say in what ways might have an impact on subsequent work for the workshop or OCA courswork. I do remember that I was impressed by the psychological effect the exhibition visit had on me – it felt like stomach turned upside down and I needed some time to get back to normal.

Completing the installations

The remainder of the workshop sessions was devoted to finalizing our constructions. The shapes were attached using cardboard as distance holders and with several layers at different distances there was quite some fiddling with the cardboard and glue until the whole thing became sufficiently sturdy.

Zen Browne, our instructor, began attaching the finished works onto a wall for us to look at and the more that were added, the more we became impressed with what we as a group had accomplished. Starting out with a vague idea, the resulting installation was colourful and every work was different and particular.

In the final session, we could either make last touches on the work or make a painting inspired by it. I made a watercolour painting that took up the visual effect of the black cardboard background and the shapes that extended beyond it.

Overall, I think the workshop was an enormous enrichment. I loved how it was ‘un-academic’ in approach, just designed to have fun and enjoy ourselves while doing something creative. I felt that I loosened up in my application of watercolours and got more confident to try out new things and follow up ideas. It encouraged me to add real-life events and meeding people to my practice of art making. It is all a bit difficult when working full-time, but I think the benefits absolutely outweigh the additional investment in fees and time.

Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum

I was thrilled about the announcement that our works would be included in the museum’s Educational Department exhibition, starting in September 2014 and staying on display until around January 2015. I went to the exhibition opening and was approached by one of the staff members to explain the workshop’s idea to one of the visitors, a young girl. That was about the first time that I was questioned in person about some artwork I had done, an interesting experience!

Resources

Swoon exhibition pictures from http://www.clawclaw.com/2014/08/swooning-over-swoons-submerged-motherlands/ and http://www.life-creative-collective.co.uk/swoon/

Brooklyn museum, educational program: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/education/

Swoon Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/swoon/

Judy Chicago exhibition: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/judy_chicago_los_angeles/

Tonal studies made on a coloured ground

Tonal sketches: Searching for a subject

In 23 x 30 cm mixed media sketchbook:
– my two work lamps (black fineliner)
– plants at the kitchen window (gray pastels)
– the blue shoes (coloured pastels)

The blue shoes on coloured grounds

I decided on the shoes because they seemed to work as a subject for this exercise.

23 x 30 mixed media sketchbook
– line drawing of the shoes (pencil)
– watercolour sketch on white ground to study tonal relationships

A4 watercolour sketchbook
– on purple ground, light source to the right
– on blue ground, light source to the left

Large study on A3 watercolour paper, on orange (burnt sienna) ground

Reflections on my learning

I had been quite skeptical about the idea of using watercolours on coloured grounds. I thought that watercolours need the white paper shining through which gives brightness to all colours. I thought that starting from a medium toned ground, paintings would become quite dark and dull.

But using opaque white paint helped to exploit the full tonal range. The coloured ground changes the colours quite unexpectedly and I found the overall effect quite dramatic. I got along well with the instructions of adding the very obvious dark areas before working on the in-between tones. Compared to the standard rule of working from light to dark, using dark tones early on was more intuitive for me.

The white was not opaque in the two sketchbook paintings, so their purple and blue backgrounds are quite visible. I applied the gouache more thickly in the larger painting, but still there’s an undertone which gives an interesting texture to the whitish background. The background tone holds the painting together, similar to the coloured washes we experimented with in earlier parts of the course.

I was a bit unsure how much to leave of the background colour as medium tone in the painting. I saw the options of adding only lighter and darker tones, versus locating it lighter or darker than the medium tone and adding other tones accordingly. The purple study appears almost monochrome, with the greens resulting in gray to black colours, and no other colour except white for lightening up some areas. The second study became more colourful overall, as I applied a warm brown tone over the blue ground. The blue still shines through in the wardrobe. The third study on burnt sienna ground is quite monochrome again, but in a much warmer tone overall. These effects are all quite unexpected and I guess it takes some practice to make the best use of them.

I’m still a bit skeptical about the technique of using opaque paint with watercolours, because painting like this feels closer to traditional painting with opaque media. It felt more natural, compared to the difficulties I have with using watercolours and working with transparency, but it also felt like avoiding the essence of watercolour painting.

So yes, it definitely expands my possible range of techniques, but I think I still need more skills in “traditional” application of watercolours. Strangely enough, I consider the shoes paintings among the best I’ve made for this course so far. Maybe that was because I was “allowed” to paint the dark elements relatively early, instead of having to work “from light to dark” which is very counter-intuitive for me. Maybe I should depart from that guideline for watercolours on white grounds as well.

As for the subject, yes I think the shoes were appropriate for the exercise, but I had some trouble keeping up interest. Finding a subject was hard. I would have preferred a still life arrangement with fruits or vegetables, but found that too difficult. I also considered an interior view but didn’t find one I liked for this exercise. The shoes worked well because I could arrange the light source in a consistent manner over several days where I worked on the exercise. The shapes were well defined and there were strong shadows. The problem was my feeling of “this is an irrelevant subject which I’m doing only to fulfil the task requirements”. It’s a recurring problem and I hope to gradually get better at finding more interesting subjects. So yes, it was technically appropriate, but personally not sufficiently engaging.

The onions

While working on the shoes, I considered these two red onions as an alternative subject for studies on coloured grounds. I made an initial watercolour sketch, then a drawing to study the details more closely, and another watercolour sketch.

Although there were interesting tonal fields in the arrangements, I found the onions too complicated for now. I liked the monochrome red-brown tones of the arrangement but thought something more colourful would work better.

On the one hand, I think the watercolour sketches are weak because they are not very accurate in the details, but on the other, I like how they are painted and there’s some charm in the looseness of application. The second one is slightly overworked in the shadows, but works better in the onions’ details.

I also like the pencil drawing and that I used smudging to create soft tones, which is a new technique for me.

It’s all very imperfect but I appreciate the tiny steps of progress I make in handling watercolours and also in drawing skills. Maybe I get back to the onions with a later exercise on coloured grounds.

Fallen tree and other sketches

I recently started a new sketchbook to take with me every day. It’s a small square format of 21 x 22 cm in brown rough paper. I chose this book because the brown paper helps me to tackle one of my weaknesses, which is making marks that are too faint, resulting in drawings that have only a very limited tonal range. The dark paper makes that problem even more visible and pushes me to make darker marks with more contrasts. I observed the effect in the sketchbook I use for printmaking, so I thought it would be a good idea to keep at it with the watercolour course as well.

Brown square 21 x 22 cm sketchbook
– At the bus stop (black biro): I started looking from the outside, with the bus front and the bus stop signpost, then continued inside the bus with the view out of the window and the man sitting opposite me. The contrasts are still too faint, but I like the combination of different views in a single drawing. I realised from the tonal grounds exercise that I can add lighter colours here as well to broaden the tonal range.
– Large tree, bushes and a rock in central park (black fineliner and coloured pencils): I used the opaque white pencil to lighten up the rock. The black fineliner did not work well for making larger areas of deep black tone. I still have difficulties drawing greenery.

Sketches made during an excursion to Crestwood, NY
– A4 watercolour sketchbook: A view on a water basin of the Bronx river, sitting on a fallen tree. The tree’s branches stretch out and divide the view.
– Square brown sketchbook: The fallen tree only, using Jet Black pencil. Some improvements in mark making, still needs more contrast.

I took several photos of the location and might get back to that subject later on.

A4 pencil sketch: View from the end of the Railroad Trail in Tarrytown, NY. I’m finding landscapes very difficult to draw. This is another subject I might take up again later and use the photos I made on location as additional sources.

More artists: Sigmar Polke

Today I went to the Sigmar Polke exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). I had high expectations because Polke (1941 – 2010) was introduced as a highly experimental and influential German modern artist. I thought the exhibition might be a nice starter at the beginning of part 5 and provide some inspiration.

I’m probably repeating myself by stating that I’m generally not very much into modern art because it’s too conceptual for my taste. But I went to the Mike Kelley exhibition recently, following a recommendation by my sister and was really impressed. I wrote about the visit in my drawing 1 blog (http://www.patricia-karsten.de/wp-drawing1/wordpress/?p=2922). That visit slightly changed my attitude so I was a bit more willing to have a closer look at another modern artist.

But what I saw in the Polke retrospective just didn’t appeal to me visually. For me, it was a collection of strange ideas, presented as works of art. Some political content, some sexual content, expression of protest against ‘the establishment’. I’m quite critical of society myself but wasn’t able to relate to Polke’s works.

From the visit I realized that I’m interested in different things, not so much into making visual jokes. A politically or socially critical message is not detrimental but I think I just have a different taste. I’m back to my base line attitude, similar to explaining why I don’t like capres. I just don’t like the taste. But I can absolutely respect people who find them delicious. It makes no sense to argue whether they taste good or bad.

Resources

MOMA exhibition website: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1407
Exhibition review: http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1911649/print

Tutor report: Assignment 4

Overall Comments

Hello Patricia, I’ve spent time reading through your blog in detail for this assignment feedback. I can see you have explored ideas and approaches suggested by the course and that you are constantly questioning and reflecting on your progress. I think you have made considerable progress in this section but also appreciate, from your log, that it is not necessarily the sort of progress you had hoped for. I will comment on your assignment piece and some of the individual pieces below, and will attempt to address some of the points you have raised.

Assignment potential (after Assignments 2 and 4)

I understand your aim is to go for the Painting Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are likely to be successful in the assessment.

Feedback on assignment 4. Landscape painting from mixed sources.

This assignment requires you to work on paper that is A3 or larger. Compose a landscape that includes 3 of the following 8 aspects of landscape.

Linear or aerial perspective
Sky and or water
Trees or rocks
Animals or human figures

Prep work.

You have explored several of the elements above in your prep work for this assignment. I was a little disappointed at first to think that you were going to do an assignment piece based on a photo and a mobile phone photo at that and in fact your final piece is based on the mobile phone photo. If working from photos, I would recommend you take several photos from different angles, using the benefit of the camera to quickly frame and explore different compositions. Also do close up photographs of different elements, textures, changing light and changing positions of people. You would take 30 or 40 photos of different aspects of this setting and then print several off, enlarged to work with, pin them up on your wall and use them and onsite sketches to work from. You may have done this and if you have I would recommend that you print off and put the photos and sketches in to your sketch book along with any notes , ready to submit for your final assessment at the end of the course.

I was relieved to read in your blog that you had already visited this garden and done sketch work there at an earlier date and that you also, after making a start on the prep work, revisited the location. This gave you an opportunity to explore several aspects in more detail such as the linear perspective, and to some degree, aerial perspective with your study of the daffodils in the foreground, and also the qualities and techniques involved in painting moving water. Whilst your onsite work afforded you the opportunity to consider executing the final scene from different angle you chose to stick with the initial composition for your final piece and this is a strong composition.

Interesting prep work pieces are P1080029, which shows an understanding of the structure of the piece and P1080051. This is the most fluid and painterly version of the piece. The way you have had the confidence to suggest rather than painstakingly render detail gives a lovely freshness to the sketch. The actual qualities of the water colour medium come through in the larger blocks of colour and the way the two people are just about recognizable is more intriguing than seeing two detailed and described figures. The use of pencil lines in the mid ground and in some of the foreground (this could have worked well on the individual leaves of the daffodils to create aerial perspective, ) and yet none in the background emphasizes to some extent the aerial perspective. In this piece ideas and lots of different elements are starting to come together. I am aware that you have had to overcome some of the difficulties associated with painting outside and appreciate that feeling uncomfortable is not entirely conducive to creativity! However, it looks like the pencil sketches must have taken a considerable amount of time and I think you would have benefited from doing quick watercolour sketches, on even a small scale, with a travel watercolour set. You do note that you feel work done onsite is more spontaneous and has a different quality to it. You are doing well at gradually building your confidence in this area.

Final painting

This is an accomplished piece in many ways Patricia. It’s a complex scene with several different factors to bring together to give a coherent whole and I feel you have done this successfully. Technically you have covered all of the requirements set out for this assignment to a good standard. What I feel it does lack is energy, emotion or atmosphere.

I looked back to the work of yours that I thought had a real atmosphere about it , the interior apartments, the basket chairs and the colour and tone work you did in part 2, in order to draw your attention to the difference between that work and your assignment 4 piece, and that is how I came across the gallery Terraces work .

Terrace view I, II, III, III sketch 2 – . This work is excellent. I am sorry to say I didn’t see this last time. I didn’t realise I needed to look at the gallery as well as the blog. So I apologise for that and also the fact that I made a comment in your sketch book section saying it’s hard to get an idea of your sketch book work, that is still true to some extent but this work fills in some of the gaps for me. (I am just wondering how we can be certain that the assessors see all of this work as they will have less time than I do to get an overview. I think it will be important to send all of this work in, in sketch books for assessment.) These are wonderful pieces. Most of the gallery work I have seen, but there are some real gems here that I have not. I have to be up front and say that obviously at this stage , there is also the matter of taste to consider. I love work that looks quite frail and at times vulnerable. That is a personal preference, but I think some of the Terrace (and trees in central park) work really has a special quality to it.

Terrace view ii sketch 2 and terrace view II both have depth of field, aerial and linear perspective, beautiful fluidity of the medium, and lots of expression in them, they are similar to the watercolour sketch for ass4 that I commented on above. They are in my opinion accomplished watercolours and your job now is to recognize that and when editing through your work to make sure you recognize the qualities. What are your thoughts about these paintings in particular?

When you look at them in comparison to your final Ass. 4 piece which qualities do you prefer or not?

Feedback on other work in this section .

1^st Ave sketch in felt pen, despite lack of varying pen thickness this is a great drawing. Life energy and a vibrancy to it.

View on 1^st ave, watercolour also a great painting with lots of energy.

Out of the two Brooklyn Bridges I prefer the less defined.

Think about why you are drawing these views. Is there anything in particular that draws you to them? Is it because they are more private and you are less likely to be disturbed and this in itself is an interesting parameter for where you find yourself. In terms of a context for your work, think about this aspect. You are on roofs, under bridges, there are no people visible. What does this say about you too, as a person and an artist.

The skies are beautifully simple and effective.

The clouds paintings are very good. They are all beautifully rendered and it’s hard to pick one above the others but 10 is particularly simple and effective. You don’t seem to have translated this same style or approach in to your sky dominated landscapes. I wonder what the reason for this was?

Painting water. 2 and 11 jump out at me. 2 because of its simplicity and the evidence of the brush strokes adds to the energy of the painting. 11 has a life to it and the moving water is captured again with energy, and this is a strong composition.

Overall your pencil sketch work needs to have a much wider range of tones in it. It is all the same tone and this then translates in to the final pieces if you work from sketches. I think you would still benefit from doing much quicker and more spontaneous sketches just to develop your vocabulary of mark making.

The final human figure in the landscape, the picnic painting is very strong. It’s a more detailed style than your most accomplished pieces before but in this one you have captured a quality of light that brings vibrancy to the painting and the content of the painting suggests a narrative of some sort. The earlier human figure sketches have an energy about them too, good work.

Strawberries 1, lovely composition, depth of colour, beautiful manipulation of the media, a frailty to the painting which all add to its overall impact.

Cuba sketches, less evocative when they get tighter.

Sketchbooks

See comments above. Regarding pencil drawings and sketch work evidence required for final submission.

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

You have reflected well on your approach to watercolour painting in this entry. You are also starting to think about how you might develop your work after the course as well as considering how what you’d hoped to get from the course has matched up with reality and you are contemplating how the course might be falling short for you in this respect.

There is less research and reflection on individual artists in this section but you have approached this thorougly in previous sections. In part 4 you are more concerned with the idea of what is abstract and that is a very good line of research to develop. In terms of studying the painintg degree it may well be something that you contemplate time and again.

I notice you mention style and how to develop your style in your log and that you also feel restrained creatively at times by the project briefs. I can understand and empathise with this. The water colour course is conventional in its approach. Hopefully part five will allow you a little more creative freedom and I think you will find that if you continue with the degree level 2 painting courses also allow more freedom in this respect. I think you can also do a more experimental level one theory course which encompasses several of the arts ‘The Creative Arts Today’ as part of your painting degree. It is largely theory based but does allow for some development of contemporary knowledge which can feed in to your practical approach on later courses. Taking for example your approach to landscape painting, or painting outdoors. You could choose to paint specific sorts of landscapes because the appeal to you in a conceptual way, a political way, an emotional way or a way that comments on the society around you. Think about these isuues when you are feeling restrained and see if they can add more to the purpose of the work for you so that it’s not just going through the motions of techniques.

Suggested reading/viewing

I’m going to take onboard your learning log comments not to overload you with input. What I want to try and do here is give you references to two or three artists who’s work may broaden your experience of what an accomplished watercolour painting is allowed to look like. And I hope that by seeing their work you might feel more confident to develop your own work in a direction that I can see you already have ability. The artists’ whose work you admire doesn’t always match with what your own style might be so this is something to be aware of.

Here’s an interesting blog to sign up to and this post on watercolour is a good place to start. http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/exhibition-review-rws-contemporary-watercolour-2013.html

I notice the Christine Berrington piece may be of interest to you style wise. Her website is down at the moment but it may worth looking out for it. The work of hers that is available to see on line is illlusrartion based, which is very different from the onus of the Painting Degree, however from a watercolour point of view it is worth looking at her illustration work of trees and parks in order to get an idea of how she uses greens and intensity in the greens to capture depth of field. Other wise much of this work is a little too graphic for the purposes of fine art.

Another interesting take on watercolour from last century.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moynihan-dead-tree-at-nigadoo-lake-t06840

Also have a look at the work of Naiza Khan. For the style as much as the political content as I know you have touched briefly on this in your last log (politics ) and it doesn’t play a part as such in your own work.

http://www.naizakhan.com/gallery/shifting-ground/#!prettyPhoto[shifting-ground]/5/

You are signed up for the painting degree and whilst much of this level one course is about introducing you to some of the basic techniques in watercolour, you are also at a stage now where it would be good to start thinking about the content and context of your work as well as the style. Your uniqueness will come from a combination of content context and style. It can take a very long time to develop your own style but being aware of the changes in your work is a good starting point on the journey.

Pointers for the next assignment.

Reflect on the different approaches you have taken to watercolour over the course so far and consider which you feel most comfortable with.
In your log and sketch book start to consider context in your work and how you approach the set projects in a way that is personal to you.
Develop pencil sketch work tonally (think back to the drawing exercises in drawing 1, and the left hand work etc too) and consider how using that as prep work translates in to your painting style.
On this final section be brave, make mistakes, push yourself and have fun.

Assignment 4: Landscape painting

I had considered going outside to find a nice motif for the assignment… but again reverted to photos, for practical reasons: Availability, the possibility to plan my painting and study times – and not being subjected to weather hazards. Summer in New York is typically hot and muggy and it’s not very pleasant to stay outside.

So I went through my photos and found one which I made this spring, using a mobile phone. It depicts the midtown mini-park associated to a synagoge. It’s close to my workplace and I sometimes go there for lunch. It features a high, terrassed waterfall, a magnolia tree, walls covered with ivy, and flower plants changing in the seasons. I found this photo to be a little gem because of the young couple sitting by the water, giving the scene something very lively.

The scene comprised several of the features we were supposed to include in the assignment: Human figures, trees, rocks, water, and linear perspective. So I decided to have a go.

The couple

The first element I studied was the couple, using pencil in my sketchbook. The first attempt was a little smallish, the second try below the first worked out better. I found it difficult to capture the essential marks in the face of the young man, but was surprised that I managed to convey the asian character of the girl by the form of her cheeks.

I used an enlarged view of the photo and drew right off the computer screen

The greenery

The second element I liked a lot were the yellow daffodils to the lower left. I saw them as contoured blue-green leaf shapes with curly yellow flower buds in between, before a darker background from the shady root area of other plants. I found this visual pattern quite typical and studied it using coloured pencils and wash.

I also studied the magnolia which was just beginning to flower, with thin green and large white flower buds. The challenge here was the light stem before the dark background, and keeping some white for the flowers when darkening the tones.

I realized that I had to practice in watercolour as well, to tackle the problems with that medium too. So I made a third close up, choosing the dark green conifer on the mid-ground roof top. I included the surrounding buildings as context. I liked this one because I felt that my use of the brush, laid flat to the side, began to work for the depiction of the plant. I liked how the lighter and darker green tones worked together within the branches. I also liked the quality of the washes I produced for the surrounding buildings and walls.

Sketching the waterfall

I found the waterfall the most difficult and challenging element of the scene. I had made a first drawing of this waterfall about 8 months ago, on location, while working on part 3 (painting outside, http://ocawatercolour1.patricia-karsten.de/?p=741). The waterfall is quite fascinating to watch, with the water falling down over the stones which form little terrasses. The water masses also make an incredible noise.

I had the idea of using wax or oil pastels as a resist to reserve white space for the foam on the water, and tried this out in the A4 watercolour sketchbook. The wax crayons were too thin to work as a resist, so I added a layer of oil pastels before applying more paint. The effect was not as clear as I intended and I wasn’t sure whether I’d want to use this technique for the final painting.

I decided to make some more pencil drawings to study the tonal values of the rocks and the falling water, and went on location several times over the next days. The two portrait format drawings were made on location, the landscape format was worked out from a section of my selected photo.

These drawings are more refined than the earlier one in black ball pen, including more tonal variation but lacking a bit of contrast. I was focusing on depicting the moving water and think the drawings made on location better capture the water’s energy and flow.

It may have to do with the different size dimensions – working in front of the real, large-sized object versus working from a small computer screen. But it may also be due to the richer sensual impact on location – looking at a real, three-dimensional moving object is different from looking at a two-dimensional photo snapshot.

On a third occasion, I made a watercolour sketch of the waterfall on location. The format is roughly A3 (34 x 24 cm). It was a novel experience – having my watercolour box and a glass of water with me, and painting in public. But the little park is quite protected and it was early evening so less people around, and I managed to concentrate and not feel overly self-conscious. I quite like the result, as it’s light and fresh.

Tackling the entire scene

After having studied the main elements by themselves, I wanted to see how the entire composition would work together. I knew I’d have to work quite large to have the space for details. The first attempt was roughly A3 size (38 x 28 cm). I used watersoluble wax crayons, a box of 12, which is actually a nice medium because it permits to start with a drawing and then work over with water to achieve denser colours, as in a watercolour painting.

A difficulty is the restricted palette and that using black to darken the values smudges all colours, even if applied only in traces. So I used purple and brown for the darker tones and was very reluctant to work towards the muted colours of my photo source. As a result this piece has a slightly psychedelic colouring.

But I liked how the elements came together on the page and decided to begin with the final piece. I chose the largest format I have – 60 x 45 cm (18 x 24 inches watercolour pad), and made a fairly detailed pencil drawing, trying to get the linear perspective right and the shapes and lines of various elements. I made a break before proceeding to painting with watercolours due to other commitments.

To loosen up a bit, I wanted to make a quick watercolour sketch in large format before tackling the final painting. Inspired from a technique used in the Summer Painting Workshop at the Brooklyn Museum, I chose a charcoal pencil to draw some outlines, then applied generous washes for the main elements of the painting. I tried to work out the greenery and the water without getting too much into detail work.

I wasn’t really satisfied with how I depicted the plants in the foreground. I felt that I had made too many brush strokes, rather than setting those significant ones for the shapes that defined the contours of the daffodil leaves. But overall I fairly liked the approach and the resulting painting.

The final piece: Townscape with waterfall

Then finally I got to the large painting. I worked approximately 8 hours on this one. I tried hard to get the tonal values right without painting too many layers. Already by its size, I find the painting quite impressive (60 x 45 cm). I have somewhat mixed feelings with this painting. On the one hand, I realize that I made quite some technical progress, for example in the depiction of plants. On the other hand, I think there is not enough room for the fluency and chance effects of watercolour as a medium. But I managed to retain some transparency and I won’t work over it any further. May future pieces bring more progress!

Assessment of my learning (Guided reflections)

Looking at my work for Part 3 (Painting outside) and Part 4 (Landscape painting), I feel I’ve come quite a long way. I feel more confident with the medium and made technical progress in many ways. Deliberate study of landscape elements in part 4 permitted to focus on particular difficulties and I think the effect is visible.

I think my biggest step forward occurred while painting skies and clouds. I had a real lightbulb moment in the final sky dominated landscape – an entirely different approach, loose, with much water and liberally mixing in pigment and letting the medium do the work. I wasn’t able to repeat this for the assignment piece. I tried to in the large preparatory watercolour painting, but I guess in the final piece, the composition I chose seduced me to work more tightly and focused on detail.

Working on the assignment was also satisfying because I felt that I developed a systematic approach with the preparatory studies, without exhausting my energy and motivation for the topic. I found this mildly surprising and it may have to do with the availability of the real thing, beyond the selected photo source. I think the excursions to the waterfall and making sketches and a watercolour on location greatly helped with keeping up the flow.

I think the waterfall was the most difficult element and it did not turn out quite as I had imagined, but nevertheless I think it is recognizable and somehow corresponds well in style with the rest of the painting. The greatest achievement for me personally is how I painted the daffodils and the other greenery. There are different green tones, the shapes of the flowers are nicely “accidental”, and there is a silhouette of daffodil leaves behind a darker background, just as I wanted it. The plant to the right in the foreground also turned out nicely, with some characteristic leaves and dark negative space in between.

Linear perspective is quite prominent in the composition due to the buildings in the background and the ‘built environment’ nature of the scene, and I think I got this mostly correct. I considered using a ruler to obtain real straight lines, but decided against it with the rationale of training my eye and hand on this. There are many painterly details which I wouldn’t have seen or wouldn’t have been able to depict before part 4 – like the trunks and branches of the magnolia which alternate from light before dark and dark before light background. So overall, I’m aware I made quite a step forward technically.

Creatively, it’s a different story. I feel quite restricted from an overly prescriptive course concept. Working full time, I have extremely few time available for painting, and this is filled up with guided exercises. To develop creatively, I’d need more freedom to explore my own topics and paint what I’m interested in or deem necessary for technical reasons. So in this creative aspect I only see minimal progress. I do take my freedom in choice of medium for the preparatory studies. But I don’t feel that the course concept helps me much in finding my own voice. I rather feel distracted and hindered from developing my own interests because of the sheer amount of exercises, research points and tutor suggestions. I do appreciate creative input, but in my case, less would be more.

Ideas and plans for future development

I’m not sure about my future development with watercolours. I see the danger that with the course ending, I won’t get back to the medium because it still isn’t anchored in my creative aspirations. I do like other people’s and artist’s watercolours, but I struggle seeing my own as valuable and important for me personally. It may have to do with the enforcement of certain topics to make student work comparable and easier to assess.

Despite this, I feel that abandoning watercolours would be a real pity so maybe this aspect of developing my own interests should be the most important thing to focus on in the final part of the course: Finding my own, personal approach and beginning to use the medium creatively to express something personally meaningful, rather than focusing on the technical aspects of project exercises.

During parts 3 and 4, again and again I came across the watercolours by Winslow Homer which has become a favourite painter. I admire the freshness, clarity and simplicity of his watercolours, and achieving this has become a practical goal in my own paintings. I know I’m still far away from this but it’s good to see paintings that work for me – this helps a bit to sustain while struggling with the difficulties of the medium.

During part 3, I brought up the topic of abstraction on several occasions in the reflections on my paintings, in particular when I struggled with detail and over-attachment to realistic depiction. Tutor feedback on assignment 3 included some pointers to abstract artists and the suggestion to do multiple versions of the exercises, trying out different approaches. Somehow I had lost track of the topic until re-reading the feedback while working on assignment 4. So I took the time for some research on the suggested artist. What struck me most was the feeling that I had a completely different concept of abstraction compared to those artists.

Common understanding seems to focus on artwork with geometrical shapes and colouring without recognizable reference to actual objects of the real world. By contrast, I had in mind the process of abstracting from knowledge about the objects towards ‘painting what I see, not what I know’. To me, this means an improved visual analysis. For example, when I paint a chair, trying to capture the shapes distorted by perspective and the colours changing according to light and adjacent colours, rather than depicting an idealized version of the chair with plain angles and singular colour everywhere. I’ve followed up the suggested artists and wrote a blog article (http://ocawatercolour1.patricia-karsten.de/?p=1548) about abstraction and what it means to me.

Another topic that came up in tutor feedback on assignment 3 was the question about the influence of the societal and political context on my paintings. I must admit that I am a very unpolitical person and tend not to engage in political topics. Likewise, I wouldn’t want to make art to exert political influence or put the finger on societal problems. But I’m quite conscious that there is a great luxury in having the kind of secure and quiet life that there’s room for making art just out of pleasure, compared to many people living in different circumstances. A motivation beyond this relates to my background in psychology and the idea of using art as self-expression in psychological therapy. I’m actually more interested in the psychological than the technical or political aspects of art, and am often fascinated about an artist’s personality when it shines through his or her style.

One example that comes to mind is Egon Schiele, whose style runs through all his motifs, people as well as objects. I don’t think this influences me to attempt drawing or painting in a similar style, but it makes me think about what might become my own personal style some day, something recognizable like the human handwriting or the voice of a person. And so this is a full circle, I’m about to search for my own voice, in art.

More artists: Abstract paintings

Working on the Part 4 Assignment piece confronted me again with the topic of abstraction. Getting back to my tutor’s feedback on assignment 3, I took the opportunity to look at the abstract painters suggested and reflect about the meaning of ‘abstract’.

Contemporary: Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach

I’m not particularly into this kind of painting. It is decorative but doesn’t talk to me.

Tauba Auerbach (England, Contemp.) http://taubaauerbach.com/works.php

Tomma Abts (England, Contemp.) http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/tomma-abts/

20th Century: Kandinsky, Miro, O’Keeffe, Martin

Wassily Kandinski (Russian, 1866 – 1944)

I remembered the very graphical and geometrical, colourful works by Kandinsky from other occasions, but don’t like the geometrical style. But my taste seems to have changed with age, because I remember that in my twenties I was quite fond of playing with shapes and colours in similar ways. While researching, I was surprised to find paintings with more realistic forms that referred to real objects, as for example in the landscape below, which I actually like for its expressive colours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky
http://www.wassilykandinsky.net

Joan Miro (Spanish/Catalan, 1893-1983)

Miro was also known to me and I can’t say anything else but that I like the colourful and playful paintings, of which I’m including two typical examples. About two years ago I experimented with printmaking and watercolour layers using the ‘Wall for David Fernandez Miró’ as a starting point. I loved the various shades of blue background tiles and the black linework and abstract creature shapes on top of it.

Dominant blue tone: Woman in front of the sun, 1950
Earth tones: Constellation Awakening at Dawn, 1941

Ceramics: The Wall for David Fernández Miró, 1983
http://catalogue.successiomiro.com/catalogues/ceramics/mur-pour-david-fernandez-miro-1983-436.html

Georgia O’Keeffe (North American, 1887 – 1986)

I had come across Georgia O’Keeffe last year in November, when I had been deliberately researching American painters for the drawing course. I have also been to an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, ‘American Legens: From Calder to O’Keeffe’ where some of her colourful floral works were shown.

I am quite fascinated by her work, but with few exceptions don’t think they are abstract in the same sense as the geometrical works by Kandinsky or Miro. I rather see them as based on observation of natural shapes and reduction to basic forms. As an example, I’m including one of the more abstract ones (compared to her floral or landscape paintings).

Blue and green music, 1919-21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_and_Green_Music

Agnes Martin (Canadian-American, 1912 – 2004)

I have never heard of Agnes Martin before. Her works seem to be mostly in soft colours, creating fabric-like patterns. I find them aesthetically pleasing, but cannot relate personally to this style.

The islands, undated: Presentation of works online at Pace Gallery http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/290/agnes-martin
Untitled, 2001 (blue stripes): from http://drawingroomlondon.blogspot.com/2010/05/agnes-martin-at-timothy-taylor-gallery.html

A different concept of abstraction?

I was quite stunned when I followed up the suggestions from tutor feedback. At first sight, they had nothing to do with what I had in mind when stating that I’d like to develop towards abstraction. I wouldn’t count these artists among my favourit painters, although I’m generally fond of abstract paintings, maybe even more than realistic paintings. I began to analyse what may have been the reason for the apparent contradiction.

Firstly, it may have been the choice of artists. When I think of abstract paintings, I think of Picasso, Richter, de Kooning, but also Cézanne or other painters whose style is very different from the geometrical style of Kandinsky or Miro. It is abstract, but still there’s much reference to real world objects (Picasso, Cézanne), or the abstraction is very organic and open, almost like withered by nature (de Kooning).

Then I realized how difficult it is to actually define the meaning of ‘abstract art’. The easy way would be something like ‘no real object recognizable’, but this would exclude many paintings I’d consider abstract, and it wouldn’t even be a clear demarcation. For example, Georgia O’Keeffe depicted organic forms of flowers in a way that changed them to something very abstract. I see much realism and observational skills in these paintings, so according to the simple definition, they wouldn’t be abstract. Or what about Picasso whose abstract women have their eyes and noses at unusual places and still remain recognizable and convey emotion.

It occurred to me that what I had been referring to was something dfferent: The process of abstraction during work on a drawing or painting. At the heart of my struggle was the inability to depict the objects as I saw them, because I wasn’t able to properly analyse what I saw, or maybe I didn’t even see properly (due to far-sightedness), or maybe it was also the technical problem of transferring to paper what I actually saw. I remember this vividly as it happened while I was working on the assignment 3 watercolour (The Cloisters, an ancient building surrounded by trees and with a group of trees in the foreground).

My idea of developing towards abstraction was not to abandon realistic depiction in favour of a focus on geometrical shapes and colour. Or maybe yes it was, exactly this, but in a style quite different from late Kandinsky, Miro or Mondrian. I would like to simplify and ‘paint what I see, not what I know’ about the objects. How this relates to watercolour is still a different question. So actually I’m more confused than ever by the various meanings of the terms ‘Abstraction’ and ‘Abstract Art’. What remains is that I would like to improve on observational and technical skills, and I hope that with more practice, I’ll also develop a style that suits me. I’m definitely not into photorealism, but I can’t say what I’m actually aiming at, maybe I will only recognize little steps towards the direction that ‘feels right’ for me.