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Soraya started two paintings this evening - neither
was finished, but both were taken far enough to show many of her thought
processes. The first painting used an ink sketch as the reference. A few bits of newspaper and tissue were PVA-glued onto the piece of mountboard, for texture - and thoroughly dried. She recommends synthetic brushes for acrylics: w/c ones for thin paint, stiff ones for oil-like effects. |
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A complimentary colour is good for the
underpainting? Heavy use was made of a one-inch flat brush. Don't dilute
acrylic inks in the palette - do it by judging the amount of water in the brush
when you pick up the paint. Onto the wetted board she started with yellow ochre acrylic ink and then spread out towards the edges with lemon, a day-glow pink, crimson, purple and finally a dark blue/indigo (or was it sepia?). Rough slashes of dark colour defined the approximate positions of the main features. Dry the underpainting thoroughly. |
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Figures imperceptibly took form by drawing in the
negative shape, putting the same colour in many parts of the picture. I think
it was Brian Richardson who was reminded of a sculptor's claim that the figures
were in the stone waiting to be dug out. Little bits of oil pastel (easily scratched off if you change your mind) and water-soluble crayons were introduced quite early. Even a light background can be darkened immediately behind a mid-tone feature to make it look lighter. |
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The umbrella was put in very roughly, echoing the
pattern of the towel. The bottom left was given colours from the top right.
Highlights, too, defined shapes where the object and the background were
similar in tone or colour. You can still move things by extending the background into an existing figure. When Soraya stopped she thought that a typical picture like this would take about 8 hours to finish. Don't try for photographic detail: "Paintings are to be looked-at, not smelled" |
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| Only 20 minutes was left for the
second painting - this time from a beach photo (no time for pix this time). A
time constraint helps to ensure spontaneity. Magenta and violet underpainting and blocking in of rough positions of figures etc. Yellow ochre started to kill the blueness (don't worry about the runs). |
Water needs lots of layers of
different colours. Use the brush carelessly to denote movement. Dry very well before glazing.As before, the detail gradually emerges as negative spaces are drawn around the figures. Sam Dauncey |
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As a support for pure pastel, there's nothing to beat 500-grit
wet-and-dry sandpaper attached with spray mount to a firm base like mountboard.
However, to get big enough sheets you probably have to approach an engineering
supplier or go to someone like Jacksons for Arts Spectrum or Sennelier
supports. If you let the paper colour of ordinary pastel paper show through in the final picture it will fade. Soraya used black wet-and-dry, making sure to cover all of it with pigment before the picture was finished. To avoid too much dust, Soraya now generally does the first 3/4 of her pastel paintings in acrylic (which has extra benefits: creating a good tooth even on smooth paper and not killing the tooth of sandpaper). Not this time, though - the whole thing was in pastel. |
| Soft pastel is basically pigment-on-a-stick with just a little binder and filler (more binder and filler in students' quality, so it tends to be scratchy and less enjoyable to use). Soraya was using Unison (lovely soft chunky round sticks) and Conté (harder smaller square sticks for finer detail). Colours and textures differ between makers, so she does find herself using other makes too. | She like to minimise the amount of blending and blowing ("produces in a nasty grey") but it's very useful for getting rid of the background support colour. When you are blending, use plastic gloves (like motor mechanics use). |
| Because she'd left her sketches at home she positioned the main
features with neutral Conté line ("easy to move things if I get it
wrong"). Then immediately in with patches of very dark darks between flowers
and stems and for stems themselves where the background was going to be
lighter. Then the very pale petals started going in. It was soon very obvious that once a stick had been picked up for petal, leaf or what have you touches of it were put in all over the picture area. The vases had been put on a piece of pink (complementary colour) tissue paper and a crumpled scrap of the same paper appeared amongst the flower heads to add interest. |
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| The whole picture gradually emerged, all in quite broad
strokes of colour. Quite late in the first half, Soraya decided that one of the
big flowers needed moving. The area was brushed and rubbed out (not really such
a nasty grey, see below, because only the right colours were there) and the
petals sketched back in with 1/2-inch x 2-inch strokes of fresh pigment.
Whenever you have blended pastel it is essential to go over it afresh, to
sharpen the area up. It was not until well on in the second half that the real shapes of the petals were put in. Even at 9:15, new features were being sketched in with the same neutal Conté, the final colours being applied once she was happy with the positioning. |
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Finally, "Don't try to copy my way of working - find your own".
Demo's do not show "normal" painting. For example, after an hour or so
concentrating on a picture she tends to get too tired to continue with it. It
would be put to one side and after a coffee or a bit of washing-up she would
move with a fresh eye to a different picture, possibly in a different
medium. Fixatives? Only if necessary to firm up the base for the application of fresh pastel. Oh, and if you don't have "proper" fixative, cheap hairspray (without the oily conditioners in expensive ones) is just as good. The painting was far from finished, we were told! Soraya did put a mount around it - a good thing to do well before you think you have finished - and it looked pretty good to me. |
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Soraya started with some general comments on acrylics. Compared
with watercolour, she liked the ability to apply successive washes of acrylic
with no risk of mud. White acrylic ink was very good for covering existing
colour (no need for masking fluid). Student quality is perfectly adequate for
earth colours but you need artist quality for brightness. She did not paint over a drawing but had a full-size one for reference. This had been produced from several photographs - if you only have one you tend to copy it. Since she was using "oils" techniques she worked on mount board (or one can use any non-oily surface), with the board nearly vertical. |
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Working mostly with square brushes throughout, she started by
laying in rough areas of colour:- yellow for the bright centre; blue for sky;
purple for darker areas etc. To hold the picture together she added at least some of each colour diametrically opposite where she first introduced it. The blue umbrella was the first detail hinted at, then the vague shape of the flower seller, the dark flower-containers (burnt sienna and ultramarine) and other dark purple shadows.. |
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To avoid mud, you still have to wait for the acrylic to dry. So she
usually has several paintings "on the go" and makes it a rule not to work on
any one for more than about an hour at a time. As she introduced more extremely rough features it became clear that detais were going to be defined by painting the negative shapes. The value of the very tonally textured background became clear then - it was not necessary to have an exact match with the existing background colours. |
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The figure on the right and the plastic-grass-covered boxes were
then introduced and the trees built up. The evolution of the colours occasionally called for changes elsewhere, for example scumbling in a slightly different sky colour (more cerulean). Very soon, the figure on the right was lowered to allow the patch of red interest (an awning?) to be introduced. |
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The underside of the umbrella was strengthened and detail touched
in with a knife. Flowers, too, were dabbed in with a palette knife The back-lighting allows the distant figures to contrast clearly with their backgrounds. However the whole image was transformed when the white highlights were added (the more you look the more you will find). Blending wet into wet gives the final more subtle variations of light and dark. |
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