Research: composition, tone and perspective

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I selected works by JMW Turner at Tate Britain to look at composition, specifically perspective and tone.

J,W Turner, Rome, from the Vatican. Raffaelle, Accompanied by La Fornarina, Preparing his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia, exhibited 1820. https://www.tate-images.com/M06112-Rome-from-the-Vatican-Raffaelle-Accompanied-by-La.html

JMW Turner, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus, exhibited 1839. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-ancient-rome-agrippina-landing-with-the-ashes-of-germanicus-n00523.

Light streams from the right and behind, so the orb in the sky is the moon. A key mid-tone compositional element is the bridge receding from the right across the painting. The city seems to float cloud-like above this, with the roofs, and upper moon, high key and light tone contrasting with the sky, but the lower city merging with sky, stone and mist sharing close tonal values despite difference in hue. Size, warm tones, high contrast and detail bring the boats, bridge towers and figures right and left to the fore. The focus of the painting could be considered as the central negative space of the water lifting up to the positive shapes of the city.

A response to Turner by Mark Rothko sits flanked by two unfinished seascapes.

JMW Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters, c.1845. https://www.tate-images.com/n01990-Sunrise-with-Sea-Monsters.html

JMW Turner, Seascape with Distant Coast, c.1840. https://www.tate-images.com/N05516-Seascape-with-Distant-Coast.html.

Research: abstract composition, tone and colour without form

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At the end of November, I viewed prints by colour field artists by appointment in the viewing room at Tate Britain. I had planed this to consider colour use, but now focussed also on composition and tone in these abstract works.

Reflections X, Helen Frankenthaler, 1995. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/frankenthaler-reflections-x-p12090

Grey / Blue on Green, John Hoyland 1971. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-grey-blue-on-green-p01215

In this series of abstract prints I was first struck by the accidental formation of human figures, a hooded form in Reflections X and heads and shoulders emerging behind the rectangle in Grey / Blue on Green. Both have strong shapes with distinct borders. Borders is essentially built of two distinct tones. In Grey / Blue / Green, seen in real life, the cool blue/grey foreground almost hovered or floated or vibrated over the warmer neutral shape behind, an effect I think of the two contrasting hues, and even the overlying orange block, having nearly the same tonal value.

Magellan II, Helen Frankenthaler, 2001. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/frankenthaler-magellan-ii-p12071.

Grove, Helen Frankenthaler, 1991. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/frankenthaler-grove-p11353.

Two of Frankenthaler’s prints gave me a sense of an emergent landscape. Magellan II had a cartographic quality, understandable now I see the title. Grove felt like a nocturnal view over land, perhaps with time lapse photography of the moon’s transit. Although it seems a dark toned image overall, there is shaping both of the brown landscape and bright figures in the sky by vertical irregular streaks with high tonal contrast. Three circles are apparent in the land mass only by colour but not tonal contrast, camouflaging them.

Green Orange Pink, John Hoyland, 1971. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-green-orange-pink-p01207

Memphis, John Hoyland 1980. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-memphis-p05549

Splay, John Hoyland 1979. ‘Splay‘, John Hoyland, 1979 | Tate

Dido, John Hoyland 1979. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-dido-p07514

In Green Orange Pink, seen in real life, the pink foreground sits forward of a peach shape behind: with similar tonal values and close in hue, these shapes were uncomfortable, almost disturbing to look at. Memphis is nearly entirely blue: it is tonal variation that makes the shapes stand out. However, the weak sun behind clouds, the yellow disc, is distinct in colour but or similar tonal values to the background blue. There is a narrative progression in the shapes: circle, triangle, square, irregular. In Splay the shapes recede into the background being similar in tone which is dark overall, whereas Dido has satisfying bright cheer of distinct shapes in contrasting colour and tone.

Blues Reds, John Hoyland, 1969. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-blues-reds-p04374

Vigil, John Hoyland. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hoyland-vigil-p05567

As I looked at these, I reflected on the process from idea to experimentation to making to artists selection to purchase to curation to display, view and interpretation. There are choices all the way. However abstract the idea and making, familiar shapes, landscapes and figures emerge through selection, even just on deciding which way up to place the image. Colour field abstraction is a way for us to see what we want into an image and to respond emotionally to tone and colour without form or representation, like different moods created by musical scales shifting the third by a semitone,

I also accessed two prints by Barnett Newman: Canto XIV 1963-4 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/newman-canto-xiv-p01040; and Canto X, 1963-4, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/newman-canto-x-p01036.

In passing, I was struck by this piece by a contemporary of the colour field artists, “balancing shape and colour without hierarchy” in the composition

Some sketchbook studies

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It’s some time since I sketched in watercolour. I have tried to be more reflective on my process. These were done in November, going out either by bike or on foot. I used a 6”*8” Stillman and Birn beta sketchbook, a squirrel mop brush, watercolour (cobalt, cerulean and ultramarine blues, aureolin and lemon yellow, rose madder genuine, raw sienna and burnt sienna) and conte crayon.

The second sketch was of a flooded ford, done as dusk fell and it started to drizzle. I has a very wet surface that took the imprint of the bike box as I cycled home. One might call this “atmospheric” but this was unintentional.

I tried this sketch again at home. The compositional elements were the near and further telegraph posts linked by a loop of wire, the footbridge, the semi-linear lower and mid branches the seemed to recede along the line of the bridge, and the reflections.

I have never mastered the delicacy building an image in watercolour washes in more than a decade of use., and typically use ink, crayon, gouache and other media with watercolour in composition. So for this course, I went back to mark making and colour mixing exercises before continuing to sketch. I also looked again at the techniques of a water colourist I’ve long admired, urban and plain air sketcher Marc Taro Holmes.

These are the blues I have in tubes mixed with cadmium yellow for greens, or a little or more cadmium red, then the greens and red mixed for neutrals. a hitherto neglected blue, cobalt turquoise emerged as surprisingly versatile source of grey neutrals with the red. Cerulean watercolour is a muted blue, not a shortcut to a bright sky as I had thought. Prussian blue and its descendant winsor blue look to be versatile additions to the palette.

These are the reds I had collected over years in tubes, or mixed with cadmium yellow or cobalt blue for oranges or purples respectively, then merged to make neutrals.

On the second trip, I used smaller sable brushes rather than risking flooding the small paper from the mop. I aimed to build the wash from small adjacent areas painted either with gaps for edges or allowing runs to form. Initially I set out to intensify the colour from first application, to avoid it seeming insipid, and to retain freshness and transparency by minimising reworking.

I found the previous sketch turned out too colourful and bright for the winter muted scenes. On this next attempt, I worked a first layer just in greys from cobalt turquoise and alizarin crimson. The compositional elements were the bright sky behind and through the bridge enclosed by the dark reflection on the water, and the sweep of the receding canal and fence.

For this third sketch of the day, the compositional elements are the flight of locks indicated from below by the receding white posts and dark squares of the overflow channels. The distant trees are too prominent, large and dissonant in colour from the composition. The foreground is overworked losing vibrancy. This was a more controlled sketch with the book and palette placed on the lock gate rather than being held.

On a drizzly day, these two little sketches were done in monotone watercolour on A6 rough watercolour paper, at Packwood House Warwickshire. This first was completed with lifting out and stronger tones in the car as the house and gardens closed.

This initial wash was speckled by drizzle. Still I like it better than the subsequent version painted in the dry by adding in stronger tones referencing a photograph, but losing that speckled wash. I don’t quite know what this statue of a child with a cornucopia held from behind by an infant satyr is actually about.

Still life in white

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This was a white bowl, with two pebbles and a polished stone on a rough white board, in artificial light.

To get a range of tints with zinc white I mixed emerald/permanent rose, primary cyan/cadmium red light, cadmium red light/ultramarine/lemon yellow, burnt sienna/ultramarine, burnt umber/ulteamarine, permanent rose/primary yellow, Indian yellow, and yellow ochre.

The ground came from a previous exercise where I’d brushed all the colours together into a warm grey on gesso’d canvas.

OCASA workshop: Drawing the Imaginary Space of the Film Scene.

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Open College of the Arts (OCA) tutor Justine Moss led this workshop with a brief to extend and adapt a scene from a film, reimagining ourselves inside the filmic space through timed drawing exercises, exploring and extending mise-en-scène, the arrangement of actors and scenery on stage or the physical setting of an action (as of a narrative or a movie).

The film The Duke of Burgundy depicts the intense emotional relationship between two women in scripted prolonged role play, exquisitely staged in a chateau with extensive library and a formal academic environment dedicated to the study of moths.

I missed the point to start with and began drawing the actors not the setting.

Switching to the background, I began to see the skill of the director staging each shot carefully with props, like still life’s, reminiscent of Cezanne or Matisse.

Here the idea was to draw the film setting, then put in characters and then something that develops the narrative, perhaps the next thing that happens in the film, or something that takes the story in a different and unexpected direction.

In my drawing, the next thing that happens is that the third person taking tea in the film is unexpectedly a giant moth.

We were asked to take a scene and draw it from above. Here, the older seemingly dominant woman, in cloak and black hat with briefcase, comes down the steps of the chateau behind her younger apparently submissive partner in soft skirt and blouse seated on a white bench on the flagstoned terrace. There is tension in the air but all is not as it seems.

The next task was to draw the character but change the scene. The older character gives a seminar to an audience of rapt intent women in an oak panelled hall, but her mind is on a species of moth going into hibernation in the browning leaves of a woodland in autumn.

From colour to white (view from cheap hotel)

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I’d had an idea based on a photo I took last week of the view through the window in the Travelodge in Chichester. The buildings are viewed through dirty glass in a grimy white frame all covered in a sheet of Perspex, with light reflections from the room.

The first attempt was on canvas primed with about a couple of layers of sanded gesso. The palette was based on ultramarine and burnt sienna, with some raw sienna and cobalt blue. It was a bit haphazard. I thought to work in layers as the scene unfolded back to front: buildings and sky, window frame, reflections on Perspex; gradually whitening as I moved forward. These three shots are of one session, without drying between layers.

At this point I abandoned the painting, dissatisfied with how the buildings were drawn and the depth of tone. I destroyed the image, merging the paint into a uniform grey ground for a future painting,

I thought of a different approach, to paint in one go all three components of the scene, background building and sky, glass and frame, and Perspex sheet. I would try to see all this as a whole, but broken into a mosaic of interlocking segments of colour and white. I worked on canvas stained yellow with acrylic in gesso and sanded.

I tried to plan the palette using various combinations of ultramarine, cobalt blue, primary cyan, yellow ochre, Indian yellow, lemon yellow, permanent rose, alizarin crimson, burnt umber and burnt sienna, all variously mixed with zinc white, to get a richer variety of tints. I worked upside down to try to abstract from the scene. I worked quite dry, using the brush tip not heavy strokes, with small amounts of paint and a touch of Rublev oleagel gel (linseed oil and smoked silicate) to increase transparency.

In the next layer, a few days later, I painted in quite a lot of zinc white tints with oleagel to increase transparency. I worked back in with stronger colour in places to solidify the buildings seen through the window and Perspex.

This is not the abstract in white tints I had envisaged. Working from a photograph always pulls me towards copying rather than painting the impression in my minds eye, but perhaps my minds eye is not strong enough.

Pumpkins and complementary colours

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I mixed a range of variations on blue/red or violet. Alizarin crimson and cadmium red hue were each mixed various blues – viridian, primary cyan, cobalt blue, cerulean and ultramarine. Zinc white was added to make greys or lighter violets or browns. The complementary colour was Indian yellow with zinc white. Paint was mixed and applied without mediums or solvents onto a deep red brown coloured ground, brushed with solvent free medium which was rubbed down with tissue. In places paint was scraped back to ground with a knife.

Still life pumpkins

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These were exercises in colour use and mark-making in oils from end of October.

Greys: emerald / alizarin crimson, oxide of chromium / violet (background) and ultramarine / burnt sienna, all with zinc white. I worked into this with Indian yellow, scraping back to the ground (s’graffito), then cadmium red/lemon yellow mix, trying for a brighter glow.

This was a new attempt of the same arrangement, on a purple ground.

I had two panels: cadmium red / cadmium yellow / cobalt blue (yellow orange pumpkins), and alizarin crimson / lemon yellow / ultramarine / zinc white (white pumpkin). Alizarin crimson / oxide of chromium / zinc white formed a third mix for the background. Colours crossed over between objects though. The main thing I tried to do was to use near neat paint in single brushstrokes, minimising mixing on the surface. I also worked on adjacent contrasting edges at the same time, pumpkin against shadowed background, white against orange. I was trying to work on how these different objects interacted in colour and tone.

View from a cheap hotel

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In August I stayed overnight in the Premiere Inn in Barnsley, Yorkshire. In the morning, I sketched the view out of the window.

This was an exercise I undertook during a Open College of the Arts Student Association Making Day, in early October. This continues a theme that started accidently as an exercise in painting in September.

I had two canvas panels prepared with six layers of sanded gesso: the last layer, for one panel, I added some acrylic red paint to make a coloured ground. I decided to paint these panels with two images from the same view across the lumbar yard and main road beneath the hotel window. I opted to build the images in muted neutrals (emerald/alizarin crimson, oxide of chromium or sap green/persian rose or violet, burnt sienna/ultramarine; all tinted with zinc white) on white ground, and in monochrome (ultramarine/cadmium red/lemon yellow plus zinc white) on the red ground. I flipped the board and worked with the reference photographs upside down to try to think abstractly about tone rather than form. I used paint neat or loosened with a drop of solvent free medium.

Colour Field painting: Rothko and Mitchell

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I walked the Seagram Murals, nine huge canvases painted in maroon, red and black, clockwise. I read them as a progression, a graphic story, like the Stations of the Cross, as the focus gradually shifted from two slits or tears in a panel to one opening or portal, from blacks to reds. All are muted. Matte paint gives way to gloss. Rough edges, and a tonal gradient in the fourth panel, cause the images to shift and shimmer on prolonged gaze, an illusion, like movement arises within flame lit cave art. They are hung with space in between and space in the room, even to sit, but the low lighting and single opening onto the light of Joan Mitchell’s Iva builds the sense of a sacred space, like a cathedral or rock tomb. People do come in and stay to look, but as many put their heads round the door and leave hurriedly. These are meant to overwhelm the senses, and to induce a meditative state.

Coming to Joan Mitchell’s Iva from Rothko’s Seagram Murals is like emerging from underground into sunlight. This has a collage effect of colour blocks, some disconnected like Matisse’ Snail. The colour blocks are built of multiple gestural strokes of paint, overlain and overlapping colours. It consists of three panels, and in each the paint is largely contained within margins, there is not a sense of extending beyond the boundaries of the painting, more like a stained glass window than a landscape. Still there is a gerographic or cartographic quality, a sense of showing sky and fields, even though colours are inverted from convention in the middle panel. The palette creates blacks and dark reds, light blues, white greys and orange, no greens. This is the artist’s response to her dog Iva, perhaps reflecting its colouring, the gestural chaotic strokes within boundaries suggesting its movements and behaviours, the sense of being outdoors but within physical boundaries like a park or mental ones through training and obedience.