Race to the Post

After discovering just last week that I must finish all I have in hand by the middle of May & not the end of June, I have quickened my pace.

1- Sculpture Paintings

This weekend I worked with Richard, the model, on drawings for the 'sculpture paintings' (he was, as I expected, great! Not only does he get the pose I want right away--& hold it--but he acts as well. I say angry, he becomes the embodiment of anger, I say fearful...)

I have worked out all the essential detail necessary to plan the placement of the two figures on the wooden boxes, & hence, the boxes themselves. I will undoubtedly need more sessions when it comes to painting. Here, a few of the couple of dozen sketches;

I spoke with Malcolm in the wood shop about my plan &, from some sketches on paper towels, Malcolm gave me advice about thicknesses of wood. He also advised I move the parts with strength from the chunky frames I had planned, & thin plywood, to thick plywood & thin frames. Explaining that the mitred edges of the plywood will come out cleaner if they have a bit of heft.

We have a plan & a start date. I will get B&Q to deliver directly to the workshop the day after Easter break. Tonight, I will begin the calculations for the sizes of the boxes & quantity of materials I will need.

Calculating the dimensions of the nine boxes :( total height: 180 cm

with figures

boxes alone

calculating how much plywood in square cm, 

& how much wood beam in linear metres

2- Sculpture Painting, table size

I bought a wooden beam 6.9 x 7.0 x 240 cm from which I cut a six blocks of different sizes, & two with an angled side. I sanded them &, first, dipped them in white paint, & then gave them another coat with a brush. I have designed them for the figure of a falling man. It will be about 22 cm tall. I will see how this one comes out before attempting the second.

3- Vase I

Phil fitted me out with almost all I need to make the lead collar for the big vase. By sheer good luck, in a very old box, we found a square piece of lead sheeting, nice & thick, of exactly the right size (nothing else in the box would have worked to make it of a single piece). He didn't have any round-headed punches small enough for the detail I want, so I intend to buy some 12 penny nails & shape them on Phil's metal grinder.

I got all of the extra bits I wanted to attach to the vase done today & began painting over them. Excepting the lead collar, I am finally coming close to the final, enveloping, layers which I have been counting on since the beginning, to pull it from its present garish chaos, to something more harmonious. I have had a few failed projects this year, I hope my vague inner vision for this vase, comes together now at the end.

4- Vase II

I met with Matthew, the potter, about the design for our second pot. We looked at a photo of a Guanche pot whose shape I liked well enough to photograph in a museum in the Canaries. We talked about its dimensions &, endlessly, about possibilities for the handle of the lid (the pot I photographed had no lid). While designing the exact proportions for Matthew this afternoon (drawing below), I decided to do away with a handle altogether. 

So, I may have a new pot to work with as soon as the end of the week. I hope to finish the first with another week's work or so but, to complicate things a little, I have decided to do this new one as a proper ceramic, that is to say, all the decoration will be fired. I am now thinking of using the mural I did in the studio at school as subject. It would lend itself nicely to the second vase's shape--the large figure looming over the lid, the cringing figure painted over the shoulder of the pot, & perhaps, the tree sgrafito'd in the background. It also, by coincidence or sub-conscious, plays well with the subject of the sculpture painting. Oh, & if Phil can facilitate, I would like to forge a thick, rough metal ring for the hole in one of the handles.

5- Painting

I began preparing the big canvas (5 x 4' 150 x 120 cm) with a mixture of earth (dried on the radiator) & PVA glue.

I then painted over the whole surface to both soften the edges of the pebbles & stuff & to insure their firm adhesion. I also used the white paint to add more texture--allowing the paint to drip & also by dripping a la Pollock from a copper pipe

Third step: I painted over it again with Raw Umber (acrylic) adding more drips (shiny here because it hadn't dried yet). 

My reasoning for adding texture is that, since I am playing with the idea of kinetics, a randomly-uneven surface will disallow straight lines, making it livelier.

Finally, this weekend, at the end of our second session of sketching, I got a few strokes down just to see it started. (Section of canvas)

Idea on the train

When I saw this warning sticker on the train door:

it occurred to me that I might do a series of warning stickers of my own. One might even make full size facsimiles, attach them to train doors next to the originals & surreptitiously record people's reactions. 

Here's a sketch for the first idea that came to me:

Idea for Vase

Embossed lead

Daily Plinth

New series on the interesting Daily Plinth Site : Art in the 21st Century

Progress review (& orientation)

I am satisfied with the progress I am making on the projects Keith & I discussed. Even though I have been putting a lot of hours into etching (4 plates in the last two or three weeks) I have also kept the ball rolling on the other stuff.

I am having a great time in the print workshop doing etchings! There are so many possibilities that I have decided to be methodical. I am concentrating on one aspect per plate. The first, Death on the Bus (pictured a couple of posts below) I limited strictly to a relatively formal cross-hatching. Working up layers for dark areas, instead (as I mentioned in a previous post) of using finer hatching.

Advantages include: A good range of subtle variation especially in swatches of dark area. Darks that lack the velvetiness of aquatint but whose small perforations lend an interest only line can.

Disadvantages: A rather staid, Victorian feel. One misses curved line & instinctive—expressive—flourish.

Death & the Multitude also took me two plates & four proofs to finish, the same as the old man on the bus. I used this one as an experiment with combining different depths of bite. I like the result. One can layer hard expressive strokes over cottony, shallowly bitten layers. Since it was unrelated to examining the potential of varied darkness of line, I also let my hand loose to add noise (such as the squiggly lines around the border) & a kind of uncontrolled doodle mark I have used extensively over the surface generally. I also added tiny circles here & there; I won't know if they are discernible until tomorrow's acid bath. But, as I often find myself doing when painting I think that small, almost subliminal surface patterning, will add liveliness & interest to the drawing.

In fact, typical of having done the drawing without reference, it has come out a little cartoonish, a little rubbery, which makes the surrounding effects the stronger part of the print's general impact.

Here, the four states:

Plate II proof I

Plate II proof II

Plate II proof III

Plate II proof IV—final

And with final drypoint retouches (with less plate tone because 

I took the trouble to scrim with care)

Vase:

I have done at least one thing to bring the vase forward, every day (excluding week-ends) since the end of January. The vase's direction is still vague. So, I am taking a step at a time & waiting for an inner vision to coalesce. For the moment, I have been adding texture, mostly.

Summarily:

• I blocked the figures in with palette knife & thick acrylic layers over dried layers (over the graded blue background)
• After having struggled with many craquelure recipes & preparations in my life, with mixed success, I found the pseudo-plaster, plastic concoction that I ordered Online, excellent. One coat—the thicker you apply it, the bigger the cracks. I did the shoulder of the vase to the opening under the lid, in: thin-thick-thin layers, as I worked from top outward. I then applied a kind of Tuscan-wall-orange, somewhat opposite to the Ultramarine & Cobalt blue backdrop. If I had found the material sooner, I would have covered the whole vase as a first step.
• I made moulds for sperm & breasts in many sizes, which I poured in latex. (I may use sperm for his fingers). I attached the first two breasts (of 20 or so) on Friday, using a good quality epoxy (overkill, perhaps, but I don't want any problems with bits falling off later). Once I have epoxied all the extraneous parts that I am going to, I will begin working over them with acrylic paints to bring them to the same stage of finish as the bodies. I will also need to rework the heads that were partly covered by the crackle layer. But I have decided it is a good thing. I would like the heads to stand out in higher relief than their bodies.
• Another day, I took my Daler-Rowney FW acrylics (which disappointed me with its lack of bonding strength when I used them to paint on copper) &, using the eyedroppers incorporated in the lids, I dripped the paint at the point where the craquelure ends & let it drip to different heights while using a stick to make a web-like pattern out of the drips as they fell. Cadmium red on Ultramarine blue! The vase's overall coloration is tending to garish but these are early layers yet. I trust I will find the right solution as I muddle through. So far, I think it has only become more interesting with each addition, fingers crossed my luck holds till the end. 

 

'Sculpture Painting':

Leading from my last discussion with Keith, I took his suggestion for interacting figures, instead of single ones, as my starting point. I looked at a lot of things, especially figure groups by Rubens, & Greek vases & the like. And finally, hit on a memory of Bronzino's sexy Venus & Cupid. The dynamic contraposto combined with the spiral way the figures slot together—with some small changes—would be interesting from all four sides. 

I did a few sketches including some where I sketched the body separations in cubes, & I made the changes to the composition (including the removing of Bronzino's loving attention to the cherry-like qualities of Cupid's burnished bum :) & drew it from every side, before making paper cubes, two & a half inches to a side, to try the thing out in three dimensions. It was then that I realised that, for the piece to be successful, it needed more than an interesting painting on a pile of cubes & that, in fact, I shouldn't be using closely grouped figures at all. Aside from the painting, what needs to also be interesting is the pile of boxes itself. 

I then started sketching figures divided by empty areas that would be spaces between the cubes. I also looked for differences in width & depth so that, when looked on from any side, the boxes will stick out more or less not only in silhouette, but also toward & away from the viewer. I don't know where the idea came from, but I considered two adults pulling a child by opposing arms. I also tried out an exaggerated one-point perspective in the directions the adults pulled (obliquely toward the top). I am now more hopeful, however, for another idea I have sketched, two men; one menacing, the other defensive. 

I am now waiting to hear from Richard, whom Rebecca contacted for me, to arrange some sittings where I will try the idea out with sketches from life.

Changed the position of both of her arms

Changed his position

Considering non-cubic boxes

A plan for making a form in which to pour plaster cubes to try out different approaches (I realised that it would be easier to cut cubes from wood—easier to make as well as easier to make different sized boxes, as I realised it needs)

Paper cube construction

Granite cylinder (sideline):

I will do my utmost to spend little time on this—that I won't let it distract me from the end of year objectives.

I found a cylinder of Granite on a construction site, 10 centimetres in diameter & an uneven 20 or so of height. I have built a clay base for it so that it stands upright, & I have attached it with epoxy. I have done a couple of sketches of ideas for the terracotta figure I want rising from the top.

Kinetic figure painting:

I have a canvas that matches the one I used for the painting of Vaish. I have decided to continue the exploration with a companion piece with male model. I have done no sketches & I don't know in which direction my experimenting will go. I want it to grow from the simple beginning I plan, of its own accord: feeding on its own inspiration spontaneously. The idea I have to start with is a figure based on Ingres' Oedipus & the Sphinx.

I am waiting to arrange with Richard for this too.

Chapbook:

Outside of school work I have also continued making regular additions to the, now six month old, project.

Darwin's Fish:

On hold until I can find a little time.

Telly award

I just applied to the Sky artist of the year award! Shortlist will be out at the end of March

Death on the Bus, etching

I have learned a lot in Cameron's etching class. As well as my own faltering attempts between classes. By doing it wrong, I learned:

• For dark areas it is better to do more layers of cross-hatching than it is to do finer hatching.
• Differing depths of bite can be used in combination to good effect
• ALWAYS use your own bottle of Nitric acid & don't ever let ANYONE else use it! (the difference in strength, from what I saw, can vary by as much as 75%. If you're grabbing a bottle at random from the print shop you don't know how depleted, or strong, it is.)
• Now that I have done my first steel plate etching I have one reason at least, to favour copper. Mistakes, or gradations, can be introduced with a burnisher & scraper more easily on the softer metal. The steel also has a stronger plate tone, since it isn't as smooth as copper, which can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your aim. I realised that, for instance, if you were to burnish only the highlights, you would get spots that were more white (paper coloured) than the general background tone. That is to say, you would have the option of creating a three tone print. Dark in the etched areas. Medium background tone. Light in the burnished areas.

The first proof of my first steel plate was promising.

When pulling the second proof, however, it suffered foul bite throughout when I left it in acid that was stronger than I expected. I tried to bring back some of the contrast with several hours of wrist-breaking scraping, burnishing & drypoint, & I think, the general effect is not bad--if only it weren't so dark overall that it doesn't invite examination. I did a pen drawing of this subject, too (pictured in the post beneath this one) from my imagination. I like the subject well enough that I will try one more etching on a new plate.

Finally finished my third treatment of 'Death on the Bus', etching on copper. 2nd plate, 5th proof

Here they are together. The original photo:

The pen drawing:

And the painting on copper:

Another one for the Danse Macabre Chapbook

I am going to do this one as an etching. I'm using a steel plate for the first time

Sculpture Painting

A new idea. I have made these small maquetes with the idea that they could be constructed life-size Out of plywood boxes. I am calling them 'sculpture paintings' until something less inelegant occurs to me.

Big Brill

Big Brill fish. I'm not sure how I will finish this yet but it is fired & ready for me to come up with some idea. 60 cm width

Death on the bus

I did the pen drawing, below (22nd of January), from this photograph I took on a bus

I have been working on an etching of it. Here three states

Cameron Ross has been giving me etching lessons on his own time (thanks Cameron!). He showed me how to do aquatint with acrylic spray. I wanted velvety darks in the background, but, though I was glad to learn the technique the darks went too far & there was no saving the etching.

I bought new copper to try again, & used the ruined plate to try out the new Daler Rowney, FW acrylics. I discovered them watching the fine illustrator, Scott M Fischer's videos of his process for painting on copper.