First Print and progress with painting
I made my first tentative steps in the print workshop today. I have a stock of aluminium sheet that I was intending to paint on but the sheets are a bit small for that.
drypoint plate
They are the perfect size to make drypoint print plates though, so yesterday I scribed my first experimental with image. Taking the image of the blurred leaf photographs as inspiration, I thought that the intensity of a crosshatched line would describe the darkness well.
Shot of the first print. Not great lighting!
This painting has sat still for a little while, I am not sure why I felt it difficult to continue. I find the potential of paintings sometimes a little daunting. I am learning that I often over paint. I do this because of a lack of confidence in what I have to offer. Trying to be all things, to balance enough concept or intellectual underpinning with a sense of honesty and to build that sense of intensity and heightened emotion. It always feels so much better when I just paint. I only remember that though after wrestling with worry for a while. This is how it is progressing.
Its good to see the painting progressing, its an intersting piece that one. I don’t know what its looking like in the flesh at the moment(I know when I last saw it i thought it had a lot more to it when seeing it face to face than in an image) but of the two pictures you posted here the second one seems to works better. The top one having more contrast makes the leg stand out a bit too much I think, which with it being right in the middle of the canvas seems to draw your eye a bit too much to it. Maybe that doesn’t happen so much when the scale of the picture is altered to the size it is in real life though. I think I also like the figure blending into the background in quite an obscured abstract way too.
The leg is far to heavy and clumsy at the moment. That drawing will get fixed as it progresses. The leg will stay where it is but it will have more curve and elegance.Its all about trying to build a mesmerosing surface at the moment. Thats what is most interesting about the photograph. Thats where all the work is for now and then I think the painting will start to become something in its own right. Glad you liked the second image as thats the latest one!