Painting 1 (UPM); Assignment 5 – preparation (6)

WHAT?

I wanted to try another painting on a white background, building up very dilute layers of oil as if it were watercolour – as I had tried with some tulips from my garden in one of the Exercises. Having enjoyed painting my front gate most recently, I thought I’d have a go at my front doorknob:

SO WHAT?

The perspective, as well as the construction of the doorknob, were going to cause me some issues here; I began with a blind continuous line drawing as is my practice, and this was a real mess, so I made a detailed pencil drawing to nail perspective, construction and tone.

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I decided to work from my pencil drawing without further reference to my photo or the doorknob itself. I laid myself out a simple palette of ultramarine blue, burnt umber and titanium white (although in the end I didn’t use the latter at all). 

Working on an 18 x 24cm canvas again, I made the decision to divert from my drawing slightly by leaving the edges of the painting undefined. I mixed a very watery dilution of burnt umber and lightly marked in some structural lines and edges to guide me with a large flat brush, and put in some blue washes to define some key tones, then left it overnight to dry.

The next time I swapped to my large filbert and began to add more dilute oil washes to build up the image. I reached a point where I felt I was losing the definition of the structure of the knob, and here I stood back and took stock. The painting still retained its watercolour-y feel, and my burnt umber underpainting still showed through. I had hit a problem which doesn’t often happen to me – to decide whether to stop here or go on; usually it’s either obvious to me that more is needed, or I feel the picture is enough (or I’ve lost the will to live with it) and so I stop. Here though, a clear decision was needed:

to leave the painting as it is, like a watercolour, or

• to let it dry for a few hours and work on it more so it became more clearly an oil painting.

I chose the former, partly because I liked the watercolour effect, and also because I was afraid I would start to blur the structure further unless I abandoned my big filbert.

NOW WHAT?

• Despite loving the free-gesso-sploshing style I enjoyed in my last painting of the garden gate, I feel there is also space in my practice for this sort of carefully constructed work which is built up over time using dilute layers.
• I am beginning to really appreciate the possibilities for mark-making of a filbert.
• A tonal drawing remains so valuable, especially in this type of image, which is to all intents and purposes monochrome.