The Self-Isolation Residency 7th April 2020: Day 9

Today has been an important day in my work process, it always is the first day that I start to actually paint. I mention my work process, it hadn't really crossed my mind when I started this blog but this will be an excellent way to demonstrated the thinking and working processes of an artist. I'm not saying that we all work in the same way, but on the whole its pretty similar. I have done this deliberately before, but as I say this has come about more or less naturally; but of course now that I'm aware of it I will continue the idea. So what I will do is photograph and post images of the painting(s) at various stages as the they progress. Many of the photographs may be like the ones today, just quickly snatched from the easel whilst the painting is still wet, so apologies in advance if they're not always of the highest quality.

Before I say a few words about what I have painted today I just want to mention a little more about the composition of the painting. With myself represented in the middle of the painting by the chair with all of the other objects are placed in a natural way around the chair, as though I have been recently interacting with them but have just vacated the space for a few moments.  My book and reading glasses can of course be on the chair, as that's where I would have put them down when I left the room. Now that the space has changed to put the chair as the main focus of the painting everything suddenly becomes easier, the pictorial space expands to encompass a much larger part of my studio which will allow me to include more objects such as my easel, my brushes and some of the things on the walls. The next thing is the selection of the objects, I want some things that are personal to me, my glasses for instance. But I also what things that tell the observer about me in other ways. They wont be perhaps as obvious as they were in the original photograph that I posted, but I hope that everything in the final painting will have a meaning. I was tempted to list what I will include and why, but where's the fun in that, lets see if it can all be read from the painting as it should be.

Anyway, back to paint. I am approaching this painting in the way that I usually do, although there are 2 slight variations in the way I begin a painting. When I am doing an acrylic study on paper, as I am today, I often work just with the white paper, but when I work with oils on canvas I often work from a black background. For me the vibrancy of of the oil colours is enhanced by the black. It's a little amusing to me actually, because this is the only time I use black, I never actually paint with black and none of the black under painting will show in the final painting . The image at the top of today's post is pretty much how I always start, by sketching out the basic idea in red, again its a vibrancy thing and I'll talk about that more in a future post. Once I have this structure in place I begin by thinking about the tonal balance of the painting, too many students underestimate the importance of tone, but its usage can either make or break a painting. My approach to tone is to simplify it to begin with, I break the image down into just light,  middle and dark and rather than work with white, grey or black as you might imagine I choose to work with yellow, red and blue respectively (bottom image). Let me stress at this point, my usage of these colours in the under-painting in no way reflect the actual colours of the objects in question. If something is dark for instance it is painted blue at this time, even if it is a glass of red wine. Again we come back to vibrancy  and how the under painting effects the finished piece.