Robin Child, some more

Drawing from the middle, leaving daylight between colours allowing them to breath, drawing the shadow line. The Fauves. Above all enjoy the colour. 
This was from a photo taken at the end of the car park (a field) at Sarah Raven's garden in Kent.







and then on the final day

Tenerife, and I have yet to go there. 

Robin Child Course: Dynamic Drawing with landscape

OK so he's moved to Budleigh Salterton.  It is lovely but a wrench from Devizes. This course was about how to integrate the chaos of landscape and what we see with how we can organise the rectangle in an acceptable way.  The artists used were Jacques Villon, Ivon Hitchens, Paul Cezanne and the Japanese woodcut printers such as Hokasai.
Draw to paint: translate the landscape and then allow the painting to translate the drawing.
Drawing is exploring NOT explaining.
We start with Arcadia, the dream.  The personal versus work and how the Italian masters tensioned the rectangle.
Drawing is a manifestation of the excitement of seeing.

these are my own drawings:



followed by an oil painting

 
Hitchins drew by middles not edges.
Delacroix, the first colourist leading to the Fauve.  (Manguin) What is light? and the drawing of shadow tracks.  Constable: Nature/chaos leading to order informed by our own emotions.

This started and a drawing from the farmland behind the South Farm but became a vaster landscape.

Hitchins: drawing a continuous line, not looking at canvas.  Wide canvas allowed a wide angle or zoom and can be read from left to right.  Draw the rhythms in dark and find the linear rhythms.  No focal point, but did use golden section (sometimes x2).
My own attempts

water based ink on foam board

a further experiment to see if this feels more "wood like"

switch to water based ink on card

then rollering ink onto card  to explore surfaces

switch to water based ink on card

This is just mark-making initially 

Summer term starts 2011

And I am going to look more at surfaces, changes with the effects of time, distressing with sand blasting, fire or just plain sand paper.  Micro versus macro, the mechanical giving way to chaos.  The use of stencilling this week and how that could mimic metallic edges.
These are drawings in charcoal and graphite and chalk on paper.  Next time acrylic on mdf?

meanwhile back at the farm

2 more images in my Cars in a Wood series with the background image appearing first.  In the above image a Healey 3000 should emerge.

Two images from Ute Rakob scanned from cards she gave us.

Altare degli animali
 An image that measures 75x35 cm/ 145x50 cm/ 75x35 cm

Vom Roten Buch
measures 50x65cm

recent trip to Vienna

Recently back from rail trip through Vienna, Prague and Berlin.  In Vienna met artist Ute Rakob, trained in the Viennese School and is a serious artist.  Her work turns thrown away material into icons of great power and beauty.  Here she is in her studio with a painting of her manikin.  Each painting can take many months to paint. They have a profound, meditative, timeless quality and the transformation and closely observed surfaces of textiles and metal I found very enriching.

another Morris Minor comes off the production line

The dialogue with a pattern and the discovered car. Here are the series of images leading to the final one.

blog coherance

chat with John: does my blog lack coherance?  Do the elements have anything to do with the images that arrive?
  I do refer to the list as it goes up on the wall.  The link may not be obvious and I think it very easy to justify post hoc.  I'll just have to trust myself but realise comments like this are really vital.

this is to show another image being build up. There is a pattern and flakes of paint/metal/glass and from that I try to find the next image.  Would this be easier screen printing? the layers?   As the next layer goes on so the pattern underneath can be rediscovered.  The pattern also provides something to "kick" against.

a sequence showing the buildup of the image.  What dominates this image for me is the initial choice of colour. I very rarely use this green and find that with the (initial) cobalt blue that it was too garish and lively but with french ultramarine became more exotic.  As though I was now in a rain forest, not a wet wood in Surrey.  The painting has its own life.  Again when painting this image there is the possibility of discovering what is underneath.  Not very different from walking in a wood in Surrey.

Sounds a bit corny but this is the coal face for me now. Polarities are where the drama lies: death/rebirth, transient/perminent.Patterns: crystaline, leaves, rust, textiles, materials, reflections, patterns of light.and how to get them- repeated marks, the twisting of my body or the holding of tension and music could help.

Cars in a wood: the elements

Leaves: wet decay, carpet/ random, smell of mould.  Decay means life.
Metal: sharp, jagged, uncertain, rust/solidity/smell of oil/ the metal core of the earth. We are the stuff that stars are made of.
Paint: peeling, temporary surface
Rubber: lasting, inflatable
Trees: The rhythm of the wood, the cycle of blanketing with falling timber and leaves and beetles, the sound of broken wood under foot.
The Earth: The uncertainty, the pit, the smell

Icon: The Car-  needs recognition/ personal link/ The ultimate fragility and can be recognised, just as it sinks back into the earth from whence it came and from where we come from.  And the poingnacy of the links that still be imagined.  The Temeraire would have had so much human drama caught up in its woodwork.

A morris 1000 in the woods.