WEEK 2
This week we were going to do landscape painting - but this year our UK summer is not happening yet! We are waiting for the sun to come out and have started on individual still life painting, a great challenge to deepen knowledge about composition, learning how to use depth and perspective in a small space and how to make marks that are telling about the different textures and structures of objects - how to feel with your eyes and simply letting that flow into your brushwork. The still life is also a great opportunity to learn to resolve formal problems of any kind.

I have used this wonderful invention, the laptop, here again.
The students made their original sketches to get to know their subject, with a view to compositional choices and tonal values to give the painting structure and coherence. By doing tonal sketches one ignores colour as an initial step to be able to see these tonal values.

As a second step I have taken pictures of the view of the still life that is going to be painted and converted them into black and white pictures on the laptop. We compared this to the sketches and this showed up clearly where tonal value differences should have been observed better, and really brought clarity into the final composition.

To experiment we have even taken this a step further and converted this black and white picture into a "drawing" (in PaintShopPro), which helped to consolidate the composition further. Mind, that all of this is only a tool to clarify and isolate visual information and should never be used instead of handmade, original sketches of what you are going to paint.

You only really "see" something, after you have investigated it through drawing. Before that you simply think you see it, but you see what your mind tells you or allows you to see!

So we are looking forward to another great week!
There will be progress photos of these paintings as well when you click on the name of any of the stuends at the top of this page.


END OF WEEK 2

Well, I must say, this course has exceeded my expectations - and according to the students, also theirs!

They have done so well and learnt so much, gained so much confidence in a short time regarding how to handle oils, basic composition and techniques.
Week two seemed to be really important for all the things learnt and touched on during the first week to take fruition, settle and consolidate.

The new paintings were approached confidently and all students showed increasing skill in combinations of alla prima painting and glazing techniques.

If you have a look at the paintings, you will see that they did not exactly choose easy subjects for their still lives either.

Soozi likes non-contrived still life and instead of setting one up, she had a look around and enthusiastically presented me with a chair that she had come across, on which my husband had flung a leather coat and a sweater? A difficult subject to paint, with lots of visual texture and movement, that has to be structured compositionally and has to make use of the rhythms compositionally, so as not to result in a painting were the viewer has no focus and the eye finds no rest. She has not finished her painting yet, but will return to do so in the next few weeks.

Last week's figure was mainly impasto painting with the palette knife. She reared to go and impulsively changed her painting around completely a few times, where one could have worked gently with the elements that were established already. This week she managed to take things slowly and sensitively started to build up with glazes, planned her composition and then launched into alla prima brush painting to accentuated the focus of the painting, and the composition is starting to take shape.

Richard has also chosen a difficult subject, with complicated reflections of his still life in the window pane behind. He had a great breakthrough in his application of paint (I finally got him to let go, carry his bride over the threshold and apply paint freely without worrying too much) and just have a look how lovely he painted the goat skull and the table cloth etc. The reflections were built up in glazes and I shoed him how to create layers, which colours work and how to dry scumble into the glazes to establish vague highlights to be glazed again. Richard had to miss a day and also will return to give his painting some finishing touches on the last layer, the window pane itself, the window frame and some other details.

Pam's choice of still life was also not exactly easy, as she chose a corner of the studio with some plants and her first painting propped up behind them. Anything that it repetitive in itself, such as a plant with "the same" leaves all over again, is not easy to resolve, because one has to be able to keep up interest and variation, to render each leaf individually, see its character. She has resolved this very sensitively, with great feeling for colour, which is her strength. Pam has also had some breakthroughs in starting to see which areas have to be left alone when they work and not "clouding" everything over, re-working to much.

I advised her to get her composition and basic drawing right first, as one of the reasons for the problem before was, that she kept re-drawing at later stages, obliterating some lovely areas in her first painting and losing freshness. Yes, painting is constant re-defining, but in Pam's case it is better to split up these stages until there is more certainty in re-working and re-defining areas, without causing damage.

She has learnt a lot about spatial relationships and composition, selective use of edges and integrating her lovely descriptive line (which always shoed in her original oil sketch but was then gotten rid of) for that purpose.

Pam also has to fix a couple of things to finish her painting and she wanted to return to apply a couple more glazes, when the painting is dry.

Nickie's choice for a still life is a view from the studio, in close up. She had to miss a day and still has a bit to go to finish the painting. As in any
plant painting, also here repetition is a problem and she has learnt a lot about how to create depth and render repetitive elements different and interesting.

She also had a sudden breakthrough in looseing up and not applying paint too thinly and tightly, which can be clearly seen in her progress paintings of the leaves. Nickie is also keen to come back in the next couple of weeks to build up the next layers, towards the highlights and further definitions of the large flower in luscious thick paint, while applying the next glazes to increase depth and glow in her background.

So, as you can see, great progress was made and everyone has really started to understand what painting is all about - and I am afraid they are probably getting quite addicted to it (how come I expected that?)

We finished our two weeks of hard and exciting work with a bit of wine and a chat after a general "crit" - and the handing over of some individual certificates for each one.

There will be some observations by the students re their experiences on the course shortly, so come back soon to have a look!

click here to go back to week 1