Graded Unit - Evaluation and Bibliography

                                                           Evaluation of the Graded Unit


Development of the piece

Although we were essentially given free rein for this piece of artwork, in reality we were constrained by boundaries. The boundaries I experienced were the physical restrictions put on us by the lockdown – I couldn’t do a landscape en plein air which probably would have been my first choice, I can get very moved by scenery! I was also restricted by my choice of medium as I was unsure where I would be working on my piece – if I was at my parents’ house I wouldn’t have had access to my full range of materials and tools. This led me to decide to do a painting. Originally I planned an acrylic painting as this is a portable medium however due to it turning out I was at home for the actual painting, I changed that to oil paints as I felt I could get the oil paints to do more what I wanted them to do.

However I wasn’t disappointed by these restrictions. I was giving myself the opportunity to explore the artists I am most drawn to – the impressionists and the post impressionists (and the Scottish Colourists) – and to consider their use of colour and brushstrokes. I also could explore the idea of self, something that I had been doing over the year in the form of portraits.

Although the lockdown was constraining me I also felt it was freeing me up to try something new – something I wouldn’t have tackled if there hadn’t been a lockdown.

The five areas I intended to research within this unit were light and dark, feelings, through the window, self and painting styles and colour.

It was the “through the window” idea that came first and that was inspired by Pierre Bonnard’s The Window. His compositions are both narrative and autobiographical and through his window I could see heat and holidays. Many artists I looked at just used the window surround as the frame for the picture what was outside the window, however I felt Bonnard connected his inside and outside space to tell more of a story. Bonnard’s colours and values were similar both inside and out whereas other artists went for the stronger contrast – light outside and dark inside. That didn’t seem to me to emphasise a story and a connection between both the worlds. It was a quick sketch I did of my view from my desk at my parents’ house of the light reflecting on the carpet which gave me the idea of bringing the outside light into the dark inside.

Vilhelm Hammershoi “Interior” used a very limited and muted palette to emphasise his darks and lights which made me begin to think about contrasts of values, saturation and complementary colours – so not using a broad colour range or a broad range of values, however using fairly extreme values.

I wanted the outdoor scene to be light and frothy and I examined the work of the divisionists and the colour choices of the post impressionists. The leaves of the trees have been done in a pointillist way as has the other greenery using a small brush mark. The brush work for the sky is slightly larger and larger yet is the brushwork of the sun on the floor. The whole outdoor scene is very light in value as is the floor. I was basing this on Itten’s view that adding white to colour represents the brighter and better aspects of life. I didn’t do the converse as I didn’t add black to colours to represent all the darker, sad and negative forces.

The figure is very much inspired by Picasso and his Blue Period and Matisse and his Fauvism portraits. The exercises I did on portraits managed to get me away from more realistic colours (which I have never liked) onto less traditional flesh colours. Picasso used the colour blue to depict fairly miserable scenes or portraits, and Matisse used green because he could! They have made me realise that I set the rules for my own work. I elected to do the skin in Prussian blue and turquoise and it felt great!

I am not sure I am convinced by Itten’s idea that specific colours depict certain emotions, this appears to me to be very simplistic. I think the emotion of a painting comes from how the colours are used, their saturation, their values, the warmth of the colour – and of course the subject. I also think the texture of a painting depicts a mood, be that the nature of the brushstrokes or e.g how paint has been thrown at the canvas.

The underlying principle of chiaroscuro is that the solidity of form is best achieved by light falling against it. Having my figure sitting in the sun would give the figure solidity and visibility as opposed to e.g. Andrew Cranston hiding a face in the shadow where some viewers would miss it. As my painting is a self portrait I felt it not appropriate to hide myself in the shadow, I wanted light to touch me as that is how I felt. However the overall problem with doing a chiaroscuro look is that there is too much dark in the picture and in general, that is not me. I had the additional problem of there being very little detail within the dark.

 I think the key to planning well is not restricting yourself too much at the start i.e. your vision of your final piece not being too fixed. If it is too fixed there is no point doing research as you will not allow your thoughts to be influenced and changed over the process. I had an idea however I hadn’t anticipated my final result!


The Brief

The theme for this piece was Paradigm and I chose to focus on the idea of a paradigm shift as the whole lockdown way of living is a paradigm shift with life completely changed from its norm. However, to make this a more personal piece, I have combined my experiences of lockdown with my experiences of my mum dying which happened during the lockdown period. That has changed life completely for me as well. However I also wanted to refer back to the origin of the word paradigm which is “show side by side”. I wanted to show that normal life has not gone away – Spring is still happening outside the window.

Over the HNC year I have clearly realised that if I have a reason to be personally connected to my artwork I am more motivated and my feelings are more engaged. I think that comes out in any final piece. I have been trying to show feelings and expressions in my submissions over the year – for The Kiss I was going for the serenely romantic look, for my etchings I was going for humour and togetherness, even for my illustrations I was trying to show an energy and movement. For My Lockdown I was trying to convey an atmosphere or existence which went on for weeks however I have shown as a moment. Specifically in my brief I wanted to convey the feelings of waiting, being trapped and sorrow contrasting with the presence of hope and joy.

Over the year I have also explored lights and darks particularly in my etchings and monoprints (including those on fabric) and The Kiss painting. I have enjoyed seeing how stark contrasts in values can increase the energy and wow factor of a piece. It seemed logical to further explore this in this painting.

I think I have met the context of the brief, both the theme given and the brief I set myself.

 I will always remember a phrase one of my tutors said to me last year – less is more. And I think that applies here too. There was so much I wanted to do! I researched into lots of areas however it was impossible to incorporate all the things I wanted to into my final painting, and because I haven’t managed that, I have been left a bit disappointed.

I came with my preconceptions e.g. I always think I want lots of colour. I was taken by surprise that my piece for my painting module was so muted but the painting just went that way. There is more artificial colour in My Lockdown however the range and the anticipated colourfulness are limited.

I think my stripy T-shirt is genius! It increases the interest in a dark area of the painting.


My Decision Making

There is a lot of purple in this painting! I started by painting the view from the window which was inspired by Turner’s lemons and blues of Norham Castle – a very tranquil look. As I had been looking at Itten’s contrasts, the complement of yellow is purple. Also purple is considered an emotional and spiritual colour which I thought very relevant for my subject. Another significant reason is that I couldn’t bring myself to make the darks black or grey based. My exercise exploring ways of doing darks in my sketch book had eliminated Payne’s Grey as an option (I wouldn’t use black from a tube anyway) and I realised I could make a very dark value by using dark colours. Black is a very funereal colour and I wasn’t feeling negative enough to be without colour in my life.

The composition was an issue that was always on my mind. I didn’t want the figure to block the view out of the window as actually being able to see the view was key to my plan. However having the view and the figure on opposite quarters left a lot of dark areas without detail which were harder to paint.

I did consider different brushstrokes e.g the little dabs in the view to convey lightness. The dark areas were a challenge and I wanted to make them sufficiently similar yet sufficiently different. The palette for the walls and the floor are the same however the brush strokes on the walls are criss-crossed to try to give the impression of being trapped, whereas on the floor the brush strokes are sweeping towards the window to encourage the eye to travel from one to the other. Although I had looked at pointillism, I realised that that approach would drive me nuts so I could never do much of it. I also realised that I am not a person who likes getting told what to do so following the colour theory rules of pointillism was not going to happen.

The view out the window was to represent hope and Spring so I wanted it to convey a feeling rather than the viewer getting distracted by what the actual view was. So I simplified the view and narrowed the colour scheme and values.

Regarding the patch of light on the carpet, I had been inspired by Gaughin’s whites which have lots of colours in them if you look closely. I also wanted to bring the outdoors indoors so by using the same palette as outdoors I created a lemon coloured patch (which is not all lemon if you look closely).

I had been undecided as to whether I should be in the composition or not, I had been considering representing me more by symbolic means. However I quickly realised during my research that a figure helps the narrative of a painting. Also, I was keen to have another try at a figure and their hands as well as the face. I represented my mum more symbolically within the painting with the pendant, the ring and the picture of the tulips on the wall – but this is a personal painting and only people in the know would know that.

The pose was another area I had to spend time on to work it out. I thought van Gogh’s slumped woman in “Sorrow” said it all, however she was naked and that was never my plan! However I wanted to capture the face which meant the figure had to be angled towards the viewer, but I wanted the face to capture the light from the window which meant the figure had to be angled towards the window. I didn’t want the figure to be obscuring the window so they had to be lower – sitting on the floor, sitting on the chair was too high. Finding a pose that looked natural and believable for me wasn’t that easy. The pose I ended up with had the complication of all its limbs jumbled up and two hands on show which I thought would look good if I got it right. I used a grid drawing to help me here.


My learning

I have learned a lot from this project, both the research and the actual painting. The whole process has helped me identify further what sort of artist I want to be. I used the paintbrush for the whole painting! This is unusual for me, I can paint a whole painting without using a brush once – I use a variety of mark making tools. I like texture and I found it harder to get the depth and variety of texture using a brush – I might have been more successful using a palette knife however it was a large canvas to slap oil paint onto! Also my practise oil painting of the wave and coastline done by the palette knife had made me doubt how much I liked the effect of a knife.

Another thing I have confirmed about myself is that whereas I really enjoy looking at paintings that are over simplified and partly abstracted, I don’t think that is my painting personality. I always want to define things a bit more clearly, although I don’t do detail to any great extent.

My worse habit when it comes to painting with oil paints is my brush “hygiene”. I don’t clean the brush often and well enough so this impacts the colours that are put on the painting. Looking closely at van Gogh’s self portraits you can see the strokes of colours clearly differentiated, although the values can be similar – with me things would just get more smeared. I do mix a variety of shades on the palette in advance to allow me to paint more quickly but I don’t anticipate the whole range I need. These things will hopefully improve with gaining more experience in the medium.

I had a bit of trouble with the face and getting it to look believable and like me. I was working off a photo, both the original which was so dark I couldn’t see features and a lightened one to help me position things. These two photos made it difficult to paint in the correct lights and darks to make it believable. And of course, the more you fiddle with an area, the greater the risk of damaging what you have got right, or so I think! I think I did improve the direction my eyes are looking at, a mixture of into space as the focus on the pendant had gone.

This is not a comfortable painting for me to look at and I wont be putting it on the wall. Purple and yellow is not a combination I would normally use. But then the subject is not a comfortable subject. In some senses it has been an exercise in self examination and the resulting painting has turned out more positive than it could have done. If I had done a more palatable painting to me it would have been more like Pierre Bonnard’s The Window with lots of lovely colours of lighter values and I would have had it on my wall for the next forty years. However I was recording history, and not positive history. I would rather forget it.



Julie Flannery

HNC Art and Design




Bibliography  (NB as a consequence of lockdown there was no access to an actual library)


Books

Mastering Composition – Ian Roberts – North Light Books 2008

The Impressionists by Themselves – Edited by Michael Howard 1991 BCA



Websites

Artpaintingartist.org

www.ashmolean.org

www.claude-monet.com

the colourjournal.wordpress.com

www.color-meanings.com

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Drawpaintacademy.com

www.edgar-degas.net

www.edvardmunch.org

www.inglebygallery.com

nationalgalleries.org

owlcation.com/humanities/introduction-to-pointillism

www.sothebys.com

www.tate.org.uk

Wikipedia

Worqx.com/color/itten.htm