Finished Painting

These are the final images of the colour painting. I think that I am now happy with it, I have wiped a lot of the paint away using a rag and turps and added some textured brush strokes I think that this makes the painting appear less flat and it now has some depth to it.


This is a close up showing where have wiped away some paint and added texture







Mark Rothko
White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)
1950, oil on canvas




Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple, 1949
Oil on canvas 84 1/2 x 68 1/2 inches (214.5 x 174 cm)

These are some examples of Mark Rothko's work. I really like the brush stroke effect in his work, it appears thin yet textured, I tried to create this effect within my painting.

Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn
Untitled, 1949
oil on canvas
48 x 41 in.

I like how ramdom this painting looks and the way the texture of the paint looks.

James Elkins: A Short Course in Forgetting Chemistry

When Elkin says that 'painting is alchemy' he is saying that no knowledge is needed about the materials and how to use them, that a painter will know naturally just how to use them. I don't believe that this is truly correct I think that there has to be some teaching otherwise how would anyone know how to use any materials. My understanding is that each painter becomes a master to their own style and so the skill and perfection needed to blend or mix a certain colour can only be mixed by the painter themselves as it is their touch and what they see that makes a certain colour the right colour that they need to use. It comes back to the question of 'when is a painting finished' it is only the painter who knows the answer to this question and so it is only the painter who has the natural ability to create a piece of work to the way they want it and to the quality that they want to achieve.

Derek Jarmen's Portrayal of Caravaggio

The Caravaggio film was very much about his lifestyle (particularly his sexuality) rather than his painting, I think that this was due to the fact that Derek Jarmen is a homosexual as well. I think that it showed how he rebelled against the church and painting was his escape. He would use commen everyday people such as prostitutes to pose for his paintings and I think this shows the style in which Caravaggio painted, which was to paint life as he saw it. The film allows you to see into Caravaggio's life and the way in which he painted, I think that if you know about someones life it becomes a lot easier to understand why they painted the way and the things the did.
I thought that the film was really fascinating in the way that lighting which was used made the film very theatrical. Most of the scenes looked like a painting and it wasn't until one of the actors moved did you realise that it was the charactors posing for a painting.

Films: Peter Greenway and Jean-Luc Godard

Peter Greenway
At the start of this film I really enjoyed looking at the maps, I thought that there were many interesting drawings, I found the lines and the marks very interesting. I started to get very confused by the film, like many people in the group, when I was trying to listenin to him talking and telling a story aswell as looking at the maps. I began to concentrate to much on the story as it became very hard to follow and very random and at the time didn't realise that it wasn't relevent to the images. I think that it would have been better if the audio was more informative of the maps.

Jean-Luc Godard
After watching the Peter Greenway film I had total lost concentration. This film was also very difficult to watch properly because it had subtitles because it was french and the subtitles were at the bottom of the screen which I could hardly see. The only part of the film that I really remember is near the end when we got to see the process of how a painting was created, I think that this was a really interesting process to document.

Further Development

This is a photograph of the coloured shapes showing how the light has created a shadow on some of the edges of the shapes depending on how they are layered.

This is a photograph of the development of the painting after I have tried to create the shadowing from the shapes. I think that after painting in the shadows, using burnt umber, the painting looks less flat, however I still think it could look a lot better. I will have to wait a while before returning as the paint at this stage is very thick.

These are close ups of the painting showing the shadowed effect.



Howard Hodgkin
Rain 1984-9
Oil on wood
support: 1640 x 1795 x 51 mm
painting

Night and Day, 1997-99


I absolutely love Howard Hodgkins work. The overlapping of the colours, the texture of the paint and the visability of the brush strokes gives his work a lot of depth and movement. I like how his paintings still have at times a watered down effect, and I think that once my painting has dried a bit I would like to try and wipe away some of the paint in some areas to create some light in the colours.

Development

Patrick Heron
Red Garden, 1956, Lithograph on paper
support: 640 x 507 mm
on paper, print


Horizontal Stripe Painting: November 1957 - January 1958 1957-8
Oil on canvas
support: 2743 x 1548 mm
painting

Yellow Painting: October 1958 May/June 1959 1958-9
Oil on canvas
support: 1524 x 2138 x 30 mm
painting

As I was using oils, once I had put a layer of paint down I couldn't add anymore snd so the first layer of paint was very thin and washing. At the time i didn't like this effect, but after looking at this watery brush stroke effect it began to grow on me and I will try and develop the effect further once the fisrt layer has dried.

Colours!

For the third painting of the brief we were giving a bag of foams shape with which we had to create an interesting composition by laying down the shapes onto a piece of paper (all the shapes). This is a photograph of my shapes. After creating the composition we then had to paint it any way we wanted to onto an A1 canvas using lots of colours in either acrylic or oil, but without using white or black.




Wassily Kandinsky

Farbstudie


Improvisation, 1910
These are some examples of Kandinsky's work which I looked at at the time I started the paiting. His paintings are very vibrant which is how I want mine to be.

Collings: The Inner Life of Painting

Painting creates an intense feeling inside of pure satisfaction that nothing else could probably compare to. Paintings is instinctive and it is a need rather than a want, it has to be done, and not until what was meant to be said it presented is this satisfaction present.
I'm not sure I agree with Collings that art today isn't connected with the past I think it very much is otherwise art wouldn't be able to grow without the connection to the past.
Painting has become used less in modern times as a way of expressing oneself and in been put on the back burner for a resurface, we are nowadays subjected to non traditional questionable art that consists of installations, random objects and certain settings. Art has become more about the idea behind the piece and what it means and represents rather than the skill and technical ability to create a piece of art. From the outside, to someone who isn't interested in art, it is difficult to explain these pieces and you are presented with 'anyone could do that', yet what they don't understand is why a person has created that and what it means to them and everyone else.

John Berger : Once in a Painting

From the extract I understand that a painting itself physically never changes itself, it is how the viewer percieves the painting that may change over time. I think that I painting preserves the feelings of the painter and how they felt at the time rather than the preserves the moment. The moment in which a painting is painted is a considerable amount of time and so it would be difficult to capture that moment, however it is possible that a painting preserves the feeling of the painting throughout the whole process of making the painting. It is this change of feeling towards a painting that lets the painter decide when they believe a painting is finished or not. Although a painting doesn't have a beginning and an end it is easy to see the journey that a painter has been through and the finished painting is a representation of the end of that journey.

Painting Complete

This is my completed painting, I have finally decided that it is finished. With my final touch ups I have added plenty of white to lighten the painting as a whole and has added some depth which has stopped it from appearing as though it is floating.


Georges Braque
Violin and Candlestick, Paris, (spring 1910)
I sa this piece and it reminded me a lot of my own piece, the cubist style has create a figure shape in this painting. I really like the colours that were used, it makes it very natural and organic, almost like wood.
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Claude Monet
Venice Twilight (1908)
Water Lilies, 1914

These are some paintings by Claude Monet, I wanted to look at the way in which the paint is blended together and the backgrounds are created.

Final Piece

This is the section of the soutine painting that I decided I would stick with to paint my final piece. I chose this section of the painting because I think that it is enough to represent the painting as whole. It shows the blood and gore without showing the whole of the carcass. The head itself is enough for you to understand the painting as whole, the main reason for this I think is the way that the head is hanging from the hooks, it is a very strong image.

More Drawings

This is an oil pastel drawing of the whole of the painting, I thought that it would be interesting to see how it would look in oil without using oil paints. I deffiantely like the way the colours blend together much better than the acrylic paints.
A5

This is another oil pastel drawing of the part of the painting that keeps attracting my attention, I think this close up also looks better than the acrylic close up paintings. Using acrylics makes it difficult to blend the colours together because acrylics dry very fast, however, I do like the brush stroke effect that is created when using them.
A6

More Test Pieces

These are varioous test pieces at different sizes of A4 and A5, this felt a much better size to do some practice pieces on. I tried out the tonal painting agian using only the burnt umber which I think were quite successful pieces, I think that I managed to pick out the various tones from the Soutine painting.



I then decided that I would also try some colour test pieces using these smaller sizes. I painted them using different techniques such as painting using just line, texture, shapes, etc. Using these tehniques has helped me to decide what technique I will be using for my final response.

Chaim Soutine
“Flayed Ox” 1926
Piece of Beef, 1923
Side of Beef, oil on canvas, 1925

Colour

This is a close up painting of the whole head. I still don't think that this piece works it is out of proportion and the colours are a bit pinky. I think that for my next test pieces I will start from scratch and do them tonally using only the burnt umber before trying again with the colour.
A3