Three Abstractions
Sep 28, 2009 On my Easel
I thought I’d give you all a little update on what I’ve been working on recently. My time has been split between three very different abstract paintings. I love working on more than one piece at a time. Each piece informs the others and your ideas can bounce around. The painting process becomes more fluid. Not to mention, you have something to work on while one painting is drying!
You may remember the canvas I cut up. Well, here it is in its current form. I rearranged the pieces, layering them on top of each other, then painted the light blue rectangular shapes. Then I rearranged the canvas again to form this composition. I thinned the oil paint down with poppy oil, which was a mistake! At one point, my paintings were drying too fast and was I advised to add poppy oil to make them wet for longer. Well, for some reason it had the opposite effect and the painting dried within hours. That was what I was expecting this time, but it’s been days and the paint is still wet! I’m waiting for it to dry so I can work out the next step.
I’m at a bit of a loss at what to do with this one next. My instinct would be to collage these pieces somehow: glue them together or glue them to a backing. The problem is that the glue wouldn’t stick to the oil paint. Until I figure out a way to put the pieces back together I can’t really do anything else! I considered sewing, but that has so many historical connotations I’m not sure I want to go there!
This piece is entirely different. I was in the middle of reading my book about Rothko when this idea hit. Here I’m using thinned out oil paints to produce flat, transparent shapes. The plan is to keep applying these washes, alternating between the colours to create a sense of layers and depth. The drawing line was something I added after the fact using an oil stick.
To get the composition, I worked from a paper maquette. I painted shapes on the paper, cut it into smaller squares and rearranged them, then painted more shapes on top. The idea is that these squares could be endlessly rearranged to provide a random, geometric composition.
I really like this process of producing a composition and I think it could be used in future pieces, but I’m not sure this painting is going in the right direction. It’s really just an experiment at this point. The colours were inspired by one of Rothko’s works, but I have to admit that I am more drawn to the colours in the maquette.
And finally, here is the insanity that is my living room floor!
My other half went away for a few days and this is what happened! I tried combining the ideas from the other pieces (transparent layers and collaging), using the same process I did for my other abstract paintings. The difference being that the other paintings were made of wood veneer while this is made from cardboard.
I’m really enjoying how the cardboard works. It has all the characteristics that I liked about the wood (it’s lightweight and it tears easily) but it’s not as awkward or painful to work with. I like the way it curls a bit when it’s wet and I will be able to achieve much more depth without the heaviness of the wood.
This is done in acrylic paintings, which makes it much easier in a practical sense. It dries faster, less worry about getting paint everywhere, and I know I’ll be able to glue it eventually.
I’m sort of at a crossroads as you can see, trying to figure out where to go next. Each of these paintings is exploring a different idea, or a different form of the same ideas. Of the three, I think I’m most excited about the third one, but we’ll see where I go from here!
Tags: abstract, acrylic painting, oil painting
How to Survive an Art Critique
Sep 24, 2009 Art General
In art school, the most stressful part of any class was always the critique. This was when you put the results of your hard work up in front of everyone, explained what you had done, and waited for the criticisms - ahem, feedback - to come rolling in. This was when you put it all on the line and found out whether anyone else thought what you were doing was valid or not.
You may not be in art school, but life is full of times when you need to put yourself out there for other people’s judgements. Whether it’s an informal critique through a gallery, an artist talk or exhibition, an open studio, or just your friends coming to your house, chances are you’ve been in a position where other people have seen your work and have had something to say about it.
Even if you are perfectly happy with what you’re doing and don’t really care what others think of it, it can be hurtful to hear negative comments. If you’re already unsure or a little insecure, it can be downright damaging. Heck, even the positive comments can be baffling , leaving you to wonder, “is that really how people see my work?”
As an artist, you’ll constantly be the recipient of comments, criticisms and general feedback about your art. You need to learn how to deal with these without letting it effect you too much. Here are some strategies to help you survive a critique.
Remember Where They’re Coming From
No matter how objective a person tries to be, their own beliefs, likes and dislikes, and experiences will colour any comments they make about your art. Other artists especially can tend to give advice that encourages you to work like they do. This isn’t something they do on purpose, it’s just that they are coming from a place that’s familiar to them. I am more likely to critique the formal qualities of an artwork because that is what I work with myself.
Take it With a Grain (or a Shakerful) of Salt
People can only give their opinion. There is no right or wrong. Even if the one giving advice is a respected artist, your professor, or a gallery curator, that doesn’t mean that they are the definitive voice on the subject. Their opinion may be slightly more educated than others’, but it’s still an opinion at the end of the day. Don’t take any critique as gospel. You need to weigh the advice and use what you can.
Ask Yourself, “Is it Relevant”
You need to examine any advice you’re given and determine whether or not it relates to your art practice. If you’re getting critiques that seem to focus on completely different issues than what you’re interested in, it may mean that your “message” is somehow being diluted by something that you’ve overlooked.
I experienced this when I was at school and started painting tools on doors. I painted tools because of their relationship to construction, but I really only thought of them as shapes in a composition. In my critiques, I got all kinds of feedback about the connotations of the tools and what that might mean. If you think the feedback you get has nothing to do with your work, you need to figure out what to do to get more focused. I ended up doing away with the tools altogether and just painting rectangles!
Remember it for Later
Another strategy is to file away criticism for later. Often, it’s difficult to take it all in at once. It’s easier to mull it over when you get the chance and sift through to find what you can use. Often, the feedback you get isn’t relevant now, but it might be relevant later in your career. I still go over my critiques in my head, several years after the fact, to see if there’s anything new that I can take from them. Ideas that seemed completely off the wall at the time might suddenly be very intriguing!
Don’t Take it Personally
If you have a particularly bad critique, or lots of negative feedback, try not to take it personally. Most often, people are only trying to help you, in their own way (which isn’t always helpful, of course, but it’s the thought that counts!). Sometimes, it seems like people go out of their way to be mean and nasty. In those cases, you still need to remember that it’s not about you! It’s about those people and their insecurity and their issues. You’ll need to develop a hard shell, but just remember, it’s something that we all have to deal with!
I hate to say it, but this goes for positive feedback too! Enjoy it because you deserve it, but try not to let it go to your head! At the end of the day, it’s still just one person’s opinion, and it could make the negativity that much harder to take. I wish someone had told me this in high school! All throughout high school I got awesome grades in art; I was one of the top students. I went on to university and suddenly I was surrounded by all the other people who were top students in their schools. It was a hard adjustment, as was my first C+!
Is it True?
This is where you really need to be honest with yourself. Don’t brush off every negative comment and think that everyone else is just too blind to see your true talent. Take a good hard look at yourself and ask yourself, “is it true?” And if it is, suck it up! Don’t wallow in it! Figure out what you need to do to fix it and do it! It won’t be easy, but it’s necessary. If you continuously disregard criticism, you will never grow and reach your full potential!
As for the strange comments…
I’ve gotten a lot of strange comments on my work. Not bad ones, but ones that made me think “what the heck?” People also seem to like giving really weird suggestions. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me that my abstract paintings should spin. To me, the idea is absolutely absurd; I couldn’t think of anything I’d want to do less than that! But that’s what they see, and at the end of the day I’m just grateful that something about my work moved them enough to think beyond what was in front of their eyes. My advice: laugh it off and don’t worry about it!
There you have it, my guide to surviving a critique! What strategies do you use?
Tags: art school, critiques
Book Review: Rothko, by Jacob Baal-Teshuva
Sep 22, 2009 Book Reviews
As some of you know, I’m a big fan of Abstract Expressionism and when I saw Rothko, by Jacob Baal-Teshuva, I was instantly drawn to the bright, glossy cover. I was a little bit skeptical, only because books like these often don’t offer anything besides reproductions and a simple biography. They are usually a shallow survey of an artist’s life and usually leave you wishing for a more in depth look at the artwork. A quick flip through the pages revealed that there was at least as much writing as pictures and one look at the price ($16.95) sealed the deal!
At that price, this book would have been well worth it for the reproductions alone! You will find over 80 images of Rothko’s (and other’s) work, all in full colour and many full page reproductions. While I can’t attest to the accuracy of the colour (having not seen all of Rothko’s work in person) I can say that the images were bright and luminous, the colours vibrant and sumptuous.
This book covers Rothko’s life and career from his childhood in Russia to his suicide in 1970. The biographical parts of the text tended to be a little dull, and often unnecessary. I was left wondering why I needed to know what Rothko’s father did for a living, or what name his brother took upon moving to America. At times, the biographical info was plunked into the middle of an explanation of the artwork, with no indication of how the two were related besides the fact that they occurred at the same time. Interestingly, while Rothko’s father is talked about in some detail, his mother is hardly mentioned at all!
It was during discussions of Rothko’s work and the art world of the time that the writing came to life. The author does an excellent job at setting the stage for Abstract Expressionism. It’s fascinating to read about the interactions Rothko had with other artists. He was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Clifford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman. Rothko’s relationships with these artists, and the profound effect they had on his work, are described in detail. It sounds like it would have been a wonderful time to be alive! These artists were all working towards a new form of art, painting together by day and philosophizing together by night.
The best part of this book is that it is full of first-hand quotes from Rothko and those around him. Some of these quotes are confusing and take some time to wade through: “I will say without reservation that from my view there can be no abstractions, any shape or area which [lacks] the pulsating concreteness of real flesh and bones. Its vulnerability to pleasure of pain is nothing at all” (pg 45). Others, though, are direct and to the point, profound in their simplicity: “The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity” (pg 38). These serve to illustrate the man behind the paintings: intellectual and thoughtful, but often defensive and misunderstood.
The book chronicles Rothko’s rise and fall. It begins with his early surrealist work, then to the transitional multiform paintings (which I’d never seen before and was hugely impressed by!), to the colour field paintings he’s known for and finally the darker versions of these in his late career. As he became more successful, it seemed that Rothko became less happy. His work became dark and gloomy, lacking the luminosity in his earlier work. Towards the end of his career, Abstract Expressionism was already going out of style and Pop Art was on its way up. Of Pop Art, Rothko said, “Are these young artists plotting to kill us all?” (pg 67) which seems to sum up his negative attitude prior to the time of his death.
I usually skim through art books, looking at the pictures and reading captions, but this was one of the few that I’ve read cover to cover. It’s a relatively short and easy read, but full of information on Mark Rothko that goes beyond basic biography. Rothko, by Jacob Baal-Teshuva, is both a good read and a good reference.
The Art of Collage
Sep 20, 2009 Art General
Have you ever collaged? If not, I suggest you try it! Collage is a great, pressure-free way to explore and experiment. Free of the “high-art” connotations of painting and the technical pressures of drawing, collage is the perfect way to let loose!
I got into collage in my third year of art school. We were doing an independent project and I had decided to work in a sketchbook. My plan was to draw sketches from life that would later lend themselves to more developed drawings.
To my surprise, I found my drawings becoming more expressive and abstract. I began bluing little bits of paper onto the pages and everything took off from there. The collages seemed to take on a life of their own!
What I ended up handing in at the end of the project wasn’t several large scale drawings as I’d planned. I handed in my entire sketchbook, which had become more like a journal, probably the most honest journal I’d ever kept.
I’ve been hooked on collage ever since. You might even say that some of my paintings are a form of collage!
The most attractive aspect of collage for me is the total lack of expectation and pressure. Painting and drawing are so bogged down in art historical context that it can be difficult to shake the pressure to create an art piece. That expectation can be like a weight pressing down, smothering your creativity and expression.
Collage can free you from these expectations and let you express yourself in new ways!
How to Collage
Well, there really are no rules!
All you need is some paper or different colours, patterns or textures, and some glue. A glue stick works best, or rubber cement. Start tearing up and gluing bits of paper down. Try to work quickly and intuitively, responding to your work instead of starting with an idea of what you want to create.
I usually start by gluing down bits of paper randomly. As more paper is added, I become more elective and try to find where each piece fits. If I can’t find the right place for a certain piece of paper, I leave it and try a different one.
To start with, you might find it helpful to limit yourself to certain colours. The majority of my collages are done in black, white, gray and orange. This helps keep me focused and creates a sense of harmony in something that could otherwise become very chaotic.
Reductive Collage
Don’t forget that collage isn’t just adding paper, it can also be taking it away!
This is the fun part!
Try tearing up stuff that you’ve already glued down. Move it around, glue it somewhere else. Collage should be a fluid process of give and take, add and reduce. If something doesn’t feel right, tear it off or cover it with something else.
Adding Other Media
Once you feel you’re finished with the gluing part, consider reworking your collage with other media. You could use ink and water, charcoal, pastels or anything else you have lying around.
Drawing into your collage is a good way to finalize things. You can add depth, create a focus and integrate the bits of paper with each other. You may also find that you move things around during this process too!
What to Collage
You can collage basically anything! Get creative! I’ve used photocopies of old journal entries, old doodles and drawings, pieces of paper that I’ve written my name on, interesting articles printed off the internet…
You could also collage with anything lying around your house: magazines, newspapers, junk mail, old bills, packaging and wrappers. Anything goes! Have fun and don’t be afraid to experiment!
How to Draw the Ear - Tutorial
Sep 16, 2009 Drawing, Tutorials
Here is the long awaited tutorial on how to draw the ear! This follows the basic structure of my other tutorials, which include the eyes, nose, and mouth. For further reading, I also have a post that outlines some general tips for drawing ears. For clarification on any of the terms or techniques you see in this tutorial, click on the links!
Here is the reference we will be using. You’ll notice that the photo is crisp, and that there is a good range of lights and darks. I’ve used CorelDraw to make the grid lines, but you can also do it by hand.
Start by drawing your grid and transfering your image. Use a harder pencil at this stage so it’s easier to erase later. The ear is a delicate structure and it requires delicate drawing. Pay close attention to the lines and curves. Remember to outline not only the contours of the ear, but also the major shadows and highlights. Make your highlights bigger than you want them to be so that you can blend into them without disturbing the white of the paper.
Carefully erase your gridlines and use your B pencil to shade in the midtone values. This is everything but the darkest shadows and the highlights. With ears, it’s especially important to be aware of your edges. Some edges are very sharp and others are very soft.
Go back in with your B pencil again and build up another layer of darker midtones. You don’t really need to press any harder, just gradually add graphite until it becomes darker. Don’t worry about the hair at this point; leave it for the last.
Next, use a 2B pencil to shade in the darkest shadows. Make sure you blend the shadows into the midtones. You don’t want a hard line where one meets the other. On the other hand, areas where there is a cast shadow will have a hard edge. Look closely at your reference to find the hard and soft edges. At this point you can shade in the hair, but before you do, use an H pencil (or harder) to draw a few highlights. This will indent the paper and you won’t be able to shade over top.
Now get out your blending stick and start smoothing out your shading. Work from light to dark and make sure that you blend out any hard edges that shouldn’t be there.
The last step is the finishing touches. These include using your kneaded eraser to re-define highlights. Make sure they’re the right shape, in the right place, and blended properly. Some highlights are very sharp while others fade off gradually. You may also need to use your 2B again to define some edges and deepen shadows. For the hair, use a very sharp 4B and draw with quick flicks of your wrist. The lines you made with the hard pencil show through as highlights on single strands of hair.
Voila! There you have your ear! Don’t forget to check out some of my other tutorials… have a great day!
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