Well at the end of college in the summer I decided to start
a painting that I’d promised little bro months ago. One day I found him doing his thing (he’s a
very talented psychic medium), at a mind body spirit type venue, although I’m
banned from going to anywhere he does his stand up audience thing as I might be
off putting,….. apparently. I can’t see
how clapping, jumping up and down, whistling, and cheering loudly can be off
putting in a quiet spiritualist gathering, (only joking,……. but I am proud of
him). Anyway, he had a table at this
venue and I’d suggested it would be a nice idea to have something on the wall
behind him and we decided a portrait would be good. I took a few snaps there and then as he is
generally hard to pin down.
The pictures from that day weren’t great I felt, mainly
because of the light. There was the
artificial light of the hall he’d been in and the daylight from a near
window.
Anyway, again working from photos I wanted to avoid being a
slave to them and at the same time wanted to try to portray a feel of little
bro and make a painting that also acted as a kind of advert for him, making
people want to approach him for a psychic reading. I kept this in mind and treated this as if it
was commissioned that way.
Well, stuck with the two directional light issue I decided I
would use this to try to create a spiritual feel as bro is a very spiritual
person. I wanted to convey this along
with his kind, empathic and friendly character.
After doing some compositional contemplation and
then coming back to my original idea like usual, I tried to loosely put down
some tones.
I’d tilted the
whole composition to make him less direct and add to the casual, friendly feel
I was trying to achieve, and by doing this the table edge created an
interesting angle which I thought contrasted with the roundness of the
ball. The ball I wanted in the frame but
not a focal point hence it’s a bit outside of the canvas. I suppose the pose is
quite a traditional portrait composition and the face hands and ball create a
triangle. Although the face is directly
looking at the viewer, this is softened by the tilt and by being off centre. This I decided was the painting where I would
finally get loose and more spontaneous. Well
that was what I thought then, now I’m thinking, Kim you did it again!, …although
it is looser than some previous work so I’m guessing this is a long slow process
of gradual undoing and experience.
Whilst painting this I decided if I could talk to any artist I would
like to talk to Rembrandt and Monet.
Rembrandt had it nailed when it comes to portraits and Monet had his
colour and light sussed. (Maybe I should develop my psychic abilities and see
if I can channel them).
Well during the school hols any hope of doing artwork or
having a train of arty thoughts went out the window. I was glad that little sproggie was back to
school before me so I have been working all out to get this done.
My intention was to make bro’s face and hands
the focal points. I was well aware that
he didn’t want his face to look red.
(Auburn haired people often have this skin tendency). At the same time I wanted his face to look
warm and glowing especially with the artificial light catching one side. The biggest problem I had was the background
really which I kept changing by applying glazes. To help with the glow to the face and
bringing the face in front of the background I thought ‘equilluminance’ and
‘complimentary’ hence the greeny/blue hue next to the right ear for example. I found myself having to mute the tones on
the crystal ball (I suspect it’s there just as a stage prop, and anyway, he
doesn’t have the accompanying head scarf and dangling earrings) and had to
dilute the contrasts and hightlights or it would have been too distracting from
the figure even though it was foreground.
At one
point I found the whole composition looked too cold for my liking and I had
kept the background muted and relatively cool to add depth but I realised by
warming the areas of background against the cool shirt tones it not only added
balance, but by contrast also helped to add a touch of depth separating the
figure and background. I also darkened
it a little especially on the lighter side of the face, again to add depth and separation
of figure from background. (This is
something Andrew Loomis mentions in his book Creative Illustration. I would recommend this book. It’s an old-ish
book and although the title is ‘illustration’, this was written in the era when
adverts were paintings and works of art in themselves.) Of course having made up the background it
meant I had to invent the reflections in the crystal ball. (That kept me busy for a while).
A friend of mine says working on a painting is very much
‘push and pull’ and during this painting I understood what he meant. It was a
case of trying to create depth and feel whilst also trying to keep the focal
points on what I intended. The background,
which has had various modifications, and is supposed to give a spiritual feel, now
reminds me of a nebula. Having your
head in the stars is not a bad thing and I think I will call it a day on this
one or I will fiddle forever with it.
Somehow, I also think my paintings look more like illustrations than
‘proper’ paintings. Maybe it’s the
medium? The fact it’s from photos? Maybe
they are too literal? Well this year I need to come out of my acrylic comfort
zone and use oils. My main concerns have been composition, colour, tone and
more recently colour temperature. I
think now I need to look at light and be aware of this as a compositional
factor and a way of moving the eye around a painting. This may help overcome some of the issues and
the ‘push and pull’ I experienced with this one.
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| 'Kev' 60 x 74cm acrylic on canvas board |
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