In terms of development, I feel the parts of the course that
have furnished me with the most creative resources were:
Landscape exercises
– this is the area I always struggle with the most but, as with everything, it
is the things we find most difficult that make us think and work harder to
achieve a satisfactory result. The three
versions of a “soft landscape” of Langdon Hills totally infuriated me because I
wanted to be able to achieve a realistic but expressive result without becoming
bogged down in detail, resulting in a tight, boring painting. Acrylics are not my favourite medium anyway,
but for speed, sometimes they have to be used when you are applying layers (in
the confines of a timed course) and so I was determined to find a way I could
use them effectively. The technique
employed (large brushes heavily loaded) worked well for the soft landscapes but
more so for the hard landscape of Bow Lane, a detailed townscape image which I
created without pre-drawing, and which I was very pleased with.
I also found the personal development section beneficial in
terms of creativity – personally, I would have liked the section earlier in the
course. I think using different
materials / textures / ways of applying paint could be useful to many more
sections of the course. One of my favourite
paintings created is the elephant over a heavily textured canvas of torn kitchen
roll and cleaning cloths. Using a
dilute, transparent paint over texture allows the paint to move and run in ways
which cannot always be controlled, so you have to be more relaxed and just go
with it.
In contrast to the transparent paint used above, I have also
found that I paint better using thick oil paint without dilution – if I use a
painting medium to make the paint more fluid, I find that I am too conscious of
edges, resulting in fiddly paintings.
Also in terms of texture, I found coating the canvas with a
thin layer of texture medium (applied with a brush) stops me feeling the need
to be too fussy with edges, and I have used this in a number of paintings: head
and shoulder self-portrait; aerial perspective and Painting 1 of Assignment 5. All of these paintings were completed on this
layer, with old, rough hog-hair brushes and only two sittings, and are some of
my favourite paintings from the course.
