Mother and Child painting Dec 2010-2013

Mother and Child Picture 100x120cm Oil on canvas

I thought it would interesting to show you how I got to the final product of this picture. Firstly I spent more than 9 months in the 7 Cascades, doing small oil sketches, charcoal sketches and generally just being there to absorb the spirit of the place.  Here are the pictures in sequel that build up to the final picture:

Graphite sketch on paper 60x 30cm. done on-site Dec 10.

I took the right hand side of this sketch and made a few colour plays on small plywood 5x7", below:

colour sketch 1. 5x7" oil on plywood

 

colour sketch 2.  5x7" oil on plywood.

colour sketch 3. 5x7" oil on plywood

colour sketch 4. 5x7" oil on plywood.

I then took the one I liked the best, number 1 and made a big picture, 100 x 120cm. It stayed like this for a long time, I didn't know how to finish it.

 About a year later, I started playing with the colours, I made the water pink and one mountain side red.

                                                   I carried on playing with the colours.

                                     I did a few on the computer to try and get the colours to sing

                             When I was happy with the sketch I transferred it onto the canvas

                  This is a small one 30 x 40cm which I did some time ago. I decided to enlargen it.

It turned out like this: 36" x 48" oil on canvas.

After doing the red one above, I was inspired to do a similar one with my purple/yellow one and the painting came together at last.  This must have taken 3years all in all from the beginning to the end.  Paintings take a long time to 'mature' and for the inspiration to come, this is what takes the time, not the actual painting.  They often come together as a group or with the help of another painting, which is why it is important to keep the collection together whilst working on them.  The painting is all about woman hood and maternity.  It reflects my inner self. I see myself reflected in the landscape.  The pools and the mountains look like parts of the female/male body.  This is what  painting is about -  abstract art.  Taking the landscape and expressing oneself  through the sub-conscious mind. I never know what is going to come out, it just comes. December 2013. Happy Christmas!

Art course, Tuscany with Barry Raybould. Sept 2013

I did another Art Course with Barry at his home in Licciana Nardi, North Tuscany.  We worked on how to do a project from beginning to end. There was a horse show going on over the weekend in the village so we went with our sketch books and camera and spent the day and evening there making notes. This is the picture I did, using my sketch and a photo.

I also played around with the picture above, looking at the negative spaces, I liked the squares in the negative spaces, and the right angles made by the riders and the horses necks.  In Bernard Dunstan's Composition book 'Composing your Painting'  which I am reading he mentions these right angles which add to a very interesting
composition.

Workshop with Barry John Raybould in Knysna, South Africa

We studied Notan sketches, value, thumbnail sketches, 3 value exercises and painted on site by the sea. The course was very fast and we worked till 6/7 every night! It was a wonderful experience.

Barry writes courses for his Internet Visual Arts Academy. We had lots of course notes from his Academy to help us to follow his lesson every day. He taught us to make a very small, simple, 2 value design of the landscape first. Then, we had to do an outline study and number our values. We had to do an oil painting of this using just 3/4 values, keeping to just black, white and grey.  The idea is to keep everything very simple and clear at first. From this grey picture we had to transfer the values using colour! Not easy!!!

6x8" oil on paper

The Finale of the 4th Pool, 7 Cascades

I wanted to explore a new path I hadn't taken before which links the 4th pool to the 3rd Pool. I hadn't taken it because the guides told me there were killer bees there and it was dangerous, but I had heard recently that it was alright to go there now as there were no more bees. So, I stopped at the bus terminus to ask one of the guides and he confirmed it was okay.

I set off with a friend to show her the 4th and 3rd pool. We climbed carefully down to the 4th Cascades, had our lunch and relaxed on the rocks then made our way over and up to the 3rd waterfall. I hadn't been back to the 4th pool for a year now, I had wanted to go, but the climb down is very tricky  and I kept putting it off.  The next few days after the walk I kept thinking about the 4th pool. I had made a big painting of the pool but wasn't happy with it, it had changed twice, here it is:

Oil on canvas 35x42" First attempt A

Oil on canvas 35x42" painted over the one above. 2nd Attempt, same picture as above.B

5x7" oil on board done on fist visit in July 2011.

I took my small 5 x7" study above which I had done a 15 months ago and decided to rework the large red, blue and yellow painting above using this as my inspiration. I worked several days on it and then did a second one - a smaller version at the same time:

Painting 1. oil on canvas 42 x 35" Third attempt.C

Painting 2. oil on canvas 76cm x 62cm Different picture.

I now realise that these two paintings are the finale of the whole episode. I was called to go back to the spot and 'feel the atmosphere' and see the place once again, and  then to make these two pictures. It has been 15 months since I very first went there and made the small oil sketch above. I've finished working at the 7 Cascades now. I've stopped painting for the moment. I feel quite tired from all the hard work and energy spent during the year on these paintings! It's taken me a long time to get these two paintings out. But that's the way it works: you get inspired, keep listening to how you FEEL you should work, keep going back to make studies and then the work that is germinating, gestating inside of you, one day is delivered and you feel exhausted.

I always know when the work is finished because I no longer FEEL like going to paint there. It's a simple as that. You must listen to your feelings. If you feel like working on a picture, it's not finished. If you feel like making another study or sample you do so. The only difficult thing is that you never know where it's going. Sometimes, often, it stops, and you start painting somewhere else, or put a picture down and not know what to do next. But, if it is meant to go on, the feeling will come back and you will pick it up again and work some more on it or go back to the spot and start work again!! I do feel the work quickening when it's coming to a climax. But it can surprise me, like this one above, and lie dormant for 11 months only to be born in a double version, twins, like myself (I am a twin!). In fact my sister and I are not identical twins, I am the youngest by 15 minutes and am bigger than her. Like the pictures above, one is larger than the other!!  Maybe I should call the paintings: Georgie and Kate !!

The End.

14 October 2013.

I decided to go back to the pools with my large painting above, painting 1, above, as I found it was too stylised.
I took it off the stretcher, rolled it up, packed up the stretcher bars and my tools and headed down to the waterfall.  Once there, I stretched it back onto the stretcher bars and started work.  This is the outcome. I worked quickly. After painting I put kitchen roll over the painted surface, rolled it back up together with the stretcher bars and carried it home.

Painting D

The oil painting above measures 42 x 35" and is similar to one of the pastel sketches I did down there, below. For the moment, I'll leave it like that. It is the emotional response to the place that I have expressed, nothing else. No fancy picture, no decorative statement.

Friday 25 October 2013. I still didn't feel that it was finished so I reworked it once more taking the small oil sketch  below as inspiration. I used transparent paints from Gamblin, USA, cadmium orange, magenta. The yellow is ochre light. I think it's finished now... there are 4 paintings underneath it, see above: A, B, C and D

45"x32" final painting. Painting E, the fifth painting!

small oil sketch done on site 8x10" used as inspiration for the painting above.

I worked some more on the above large paintings, we are now March 2015, all this started in July 2011...just to show you how long a painting takes from the very beginning to the very end: I concentrated on the tones pushing the red back into the distance so that the yellow lady lying down would come to the foreground.  Barry pointed out to me that when one mixes hot and cool colours next to each other whilst keeping the same value it works very well, this is what I'm doing in the background with the terre verte and the orange, likewise with the alizarin and grey.  The lady can be seen in various positions, either lying on her back with her breast, knee and face looking up, or on the side with her face, elbow and legs looking to the bottom right hand corner.

Third Pool, 7 Cascades

I went back to the pool all week, Tues 9, Wed 10, Thurs 11, Friday 12 and Saturday 13. This is what I did:

I started to the right of the waterfall, looking down. I liked the shapes and the diagonals of the background
slopes, which were mirrored in the foreground. I used a mixture of greys concentrating on tone.

Painting 1. 8x10" oil on board Step 1.

Painting 1. 8x10" oil on board Step 2, the following day.

Painting 2. 6x8" oil on board. I left this one like this.

Painting 3. I moved round to the right. I liked the diagonal in the foreground repeated in the edge of the pool Stage 1.

Painting 3. Stage 2. 6x8"

Painting 4. From the middle. Stage 1. 8x6"oil on board.

Painting 4. Stage 2. 6x8"oil on board.

Painting 5. I moved down to a lower level. Stage 1. 10x8" oil on board

Painting 5. I moved back up and changed the foreground Stage 2. 10x8"

Painting 5. Stage 3. 10x8"  At home, 2 days later, I took out the orange trees in the foreground on the left, they were disturbing me.

The Round Pool

I changed place and went to the next waterfall up, number 2. I remember when walking there taking a photograph of a pool with hills in the distance. It was a lovely walk with the dogs. I used my view finder to create the composition and worked for 2 1/2 hours. I also used a smaller brush than I normally do and tried to keep the oil as dry as possible i.e. not adding any liquin or turps to thin the paint. That way the paint sticks more to the board.

8x10" oil on MDF

3rd waterfall rock wrapping around

I did some sketches to try and get that feeling of the rock wrapping around me. The other night I was looking for my black zip up fleece and when I found it and put it on I had a strange feeling. I immediately thought of the rock at the 7 Cascades wrapping around me like the fleece.  In fact, this is the feeling I get when I'm there. I feel safe, protected, cocooned, so this is the feeling I must try and express in my paintings. I did some charcoal sketches on site:

46 x 61cm charcoal on Arches 300 gr fin

46 x 61 charcoal on Arches 300gr, fin

8x 10" oil on board MDF

8x10" oil on MDF