Yeah, too much other stuff going on in my life at the moment for me…
Lumen F In Artgraf
The day’s not over and I have gone for one more painting! While my mind was still in the zone I thought I’d do that second Artgraf painting, this time stopping at the step where I wish I’d stopped before. The model this time is Lumen F and this is her second appearance on this blog.
So, I started by sketching out an outline using a grid. Then I covered the page very lightly with yellow, blue and magenta pigment, trying to replicate the gestural sweeps in the pose while also trying to get magenta and blue in the darker areas and yellow in the highlights. At this point took a photo to show just how little this layer of pigment replicated the pose:
Then I got to the interesting bit. I applied water to all the darkest areas. When applying water to an Artgraf work like this, I can’t do big strokes because they would just spread the first colour I picked up everywhere. Instead, I stab in little bits of water and encourage them to mix together.
My plan was to stop about here but I couldn’t resist a couple of bits of tinkering. First I wet some of the mid tone areas wherever thought this would benefit the painting by bringing out the model more. I was careful to only wet mid tone areas where the pigment already on the page wasn’t too dark. Second, I wasn’t happy with the background. I had some shadows on the floor but nothing else. It was tempting to wet some of the background, maybe to even negatively paint Lumen’s face, but this felt too risky. Instead I went for wetting in a horizon line. But I screwed up, putting the horizon lower then the top of the shadow that I’d already put in. So my horizon instead became the gap between a couple of floorboards and was joined by a number of other gaps, going up to a horizon that was above the top of the shadow. And that was me done.
What I’ve ended up with isn’t perfect and this one isn’t going in the shop window.. From a pure figure painting point of view, the best thing about this one is the dynamism. Lumen is somehow unbalanced and the right arm looks as if it’s been quickly thrust out there to stop her falling over. This imparts movement and energy. More important to me, though, are the colours and how unpredictable they were. Not just in the figure either: look at those floorboards! I had so much fun watching myself wet this painting, never knowing which colours would emerge. And the undiluted pigments everywhere definitely look better than the background that was wet with kitchen paper in the last painting. I’ve discovered another way of using the Artgraf blocks. It’s been a good day.
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