WHAT?
I am trying a range of different techniques for this assignment, based on the work I have done so far. Here I wanted to look again at a slightly unfocused background painted in thinned oil paint, with a close up focus on the immediate foreground in thicker paint straight from the tube.
NOW WHAT?
My subject was a eucalyptus plant growing in a large terracotta pot on our patio. I am fascinated by the leaf arrangements of eucalyptus, and wanted this to be my focus.
My palette was titanium white, madder lake, ultramarine, lemon yellow and burnt umber.
I chose to work on a 30×30 primed board. I began with my method, from Ex 4, of putting down a ground of gesso mixed with a dash of oil paint; I began with a dash of lemon yellow, and added in a trace of burnt umber at the end.
Next, with thinned paint, I roughly indicated the corner of the patio table and some other patio plants, added some shadows with very thin madder/ ultramarine mix and a fan brush, and then brushed very lightly over the whole with a large dry flat.
Next I came to the eucalyptus, which I wanted to apply in thick paint using a palette knife. I roughed in the stems in a mix of lemon yellow/white, and then mixed my base leaf colour – I started with lemon yellow and ultramarine, knocked the brightness down with a tiny bit of its complementary colour, the madder, and then toned it down further with some of the white to give that slightly greyish-green. I applied this quite quickly with the knife; my intention being to get the paint on the board and then work into it.
To be honest, I began to flounder here, torn between keeping the thick paint gestural, and yet feeling that the close foreground needed to be detailed (to contrast with the fuzzy soft-focus background), which I found tricky with the thick paint and the knife. I had painted the two more distant stems with a brush and less paint, so I repeated the trick of light stroking with the end of the large dry flat – frankly this went less well, I dragged too much paint, so I stopped. I tried to add fine details using my long-handled rigger, but my motor control was just not good enough, so I gave that up and swapped to a short sable. This got swamped by the paint so I reverted to the rigger, but held close up and my hand resting on a mahl stick. The outcome, I fear, was neither one thing nor the other – but I learned a lot.
NOW WHAT?
I think I rather expected to be able to immediately be able to create a convincing impasto – a bit like a cross between Frank Auerbach and Bob Ross. Turns out it’s not as easy as it looks…..clearly the hundreds of hours of practice is mandatory.
Also, the soft-focus background was too sparse, and rather unclear around the table leg. Would almost have been better to have no background at all and aim for a more botanical-style painting. As it is I have ended up with an uninteresting background and an unclear foreground, and it didn’t feel worth trying to rescue. Onwards and upwards.
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