Painting 101: Week 3

Another week is over and I am horribly behind. I should have paintings ready to make cut outs for. I’m not even ready to start doing the under drawings for the paintings yet. I don’t know what I’m going to do to get by. I have two weeks to go. I’m going to have pull a lot of late night shifts.

Of course this would be easier if I could work for more ten minutes at a time.

I’m not sure if my output is going up or down. I’m staying in for longer, but I’m spending more time in the studio (And less time sleeping) but I’m also spending more time just lying about doing nothing or reading. I will say that reading books feels more fulfilling than just browsing the web. And I get over it and want to get back to work sooner. The problem is the downtime when I’m doing nothing and that my periods working I’m sure have gotten shorter. My energy still isn’t there. In fact I think it getting weaker. Maybe it’s just a reaction to finally being away from the net for hours at a time. But I want to keep working at it.

I will say reading books doesn’t throw me off my stride and break my drive the way that using the net was. When I come back after a bit of reading my focus is as good as it was and my quality of work is as good as it was. But it’s not motivating me, at least not much. I think I got better results when I was reading this book on Acrylic painting techniques

500 Acrylic Mixes by Sharon Finmark. A quick read but a fun one. And I think weirdly some of the techniques mentioned in here have helped me with my coloured pencil drawings. But we’ll get to that later.

When done with that I borrowed out two books of poetry. Which is strange for me as I don’t normally read poetry. But I borrowed out ‘Ted Hughes Collected Poems for Children’ because it was illustrated by Raymond Briggs. I was hoping seeing his work would help inspire me with my own coloured pencil work, ironically I ended up borrowing the black and white version. I also borrowed the collected poems of R S Thomas, being considered one the most best Welsh and Christian poets of the 20th century he’s been on my radidar for a while. And strangely I’ve been enjoying both enormously. I normally find poetry just bounces off me. But this really does work for me. Maybe I’m just growing into it. So is it inspiring me? A little but not really. I do find myself reminded of why I got into this line of work to begin with. All the hopes and dreams I had ten years ago.  How excited art and making art used to make me feel. And thinking maybe I could feel that way again. But this nostalgia isn’t translating into actual work. I should look into re-engaging with this old drive at some point. And if reading poetry will help me with then then that’s a good thing. But for now I need something that will get more to do more work now.

Art books seem to have given me better results than poetry. And Poetry still doesn’t throw me off my game as being on the internet. But I think I’m just going to have to start being strict with myself. Say “John, you MUST work for this long. And you must only break for this long. And you must only break for THIS long”. I’ve tried improving my output through pure motivation. I must now try grinding as well. This ism going to hurt. Hopefully what I’ve learned about motivation will help and I can learn a bit more about it soon.

I will say that I notice I can go a bit longer when I feel more confident in what I’m doing or it takes less less brain power. Maybe that means I’ll be able to do more if I get better? Or at least I know I have some more energy than just the small bits I’ve been doing sometimes.

 

So I am at least trying to make things better. But what has happened this week?

 

I had to make some cutouts from paintings to put in front of my current painting for my final piece. Apparently we have to put all these disparate elements together for the final painting which will be the final piece. I think I know what I’m going to do. But I’ll talk about my plan in a later journal.

I’ve been basing work on on the novel Peralanda by C S Lewis. A story about a man sent to a second Garden of Eden on the Planet Venus. Shown in the novel as a water planet with yellow skies. My green woman is the new Eve, who is described as having green skin.

The only reason I’ve given her a muscular build is it’s my preference in women, and I find it easier to draw. My wax paintings from last week were also inspired by Perelandra.

This was inspired by a scene near the end of the novel where a massive centipede-like creature comes out of cave, appearing like a monster to the hero.

This one was meant to represent night in Perelandra. With the new Eve looking out across the sea, wondering where her Adam might be.

Even this was meant to represent something of the mood of the novel. Or maybe in hindsight the water like nature of the planet.

I will try to incorporate these ideas for my final piece somehow. But for the cut out section I knew I wanted to keep with this theme.  So I picked out some ideas that worked for me. I’d make paintings showing

• The new Eve wearing the clothes she’s given by the un-man and discovering vanity.
• The new Adam holding a trident, looking stern and regal.
• The great wave separating the new Adam and the new Eve.
• And the fixed land that serves as Perelandra’s forbidden fruit, in the distance.

I’d try several techniques to get the pics looking as good as possible. I started with doodles then moved on to Black and white Thumbnails (I’m getting good at those). The some detailed B&W sketches. And finally I’d draw the whole thing out in coloured pencils to get an idea of how I wanted it to look.

 

In my next journal I will show the work I did and the differnt techniques I used to record it. hoping to figure out the right way to record the work I do for these projects.

 

See you then.