Slow Paintings

Phases

©2009 Caroline Roberts

This week was one of the most productive studio weeks I have had in a long time. Phases, pictured left, has taken nearly 8 months, but it is finally complete. You've heard of slow food and slow homes? Well, now I must announce: slow painting. Slow more due to insufficient planning. I learnt a lot from this painting - how I have to plan very thoroughly if I am to free-paint such hard edges. Having to repaint the grey lines (they were once blue) and two of the three curve colors didn't help things along. Anyhow, 'tis done and I am really pleased with it.

Wind Chimes (work in progress)

©2009 Caroline Roberts

Also on the go this week has been Wind Chimes, shown below. This piece was planned in a lot more detail and is taped which has sped things along. I can't wait to see it finished - removing the tape each time unveils a little more of what it will be. The tape helps the painting guard its secrets for longer and even I only get glimpses.

Today I spent some time tidying the office. I love Marianne's idea of a time-lapsed transformation so I shall post a photo of the beginnings in the next day or so. Right now the floor is the staging area for my daughter's party tomorrow.

Geometric Abstraction - part 2

Shards

Some time ago I posted about a large (22" by 48") geometric abstraction I had been working on. By calling that blog entry "part 1" I pretty much promised you a peek at the finished results and here they are. This painting took hours of painstaking work with taping then layer after layer of paint to get a beautifully smooth, opaque color. It is finished with a matte varnish to give the paint a chalky look which I love in these very opaque tints.

To summarize the process, in case you're interested in doing something similar and giving yourself a headache:

1. designed painting in Illustrator, working from an initial photo and color studies
   
2. painted colored ground
   
3. measured and taped outside of shapes (where 2 overlapped - minimizing measuring and taping)
   
4. used matte medium to seal the tape edges (2 coats)
   
5. used gesso on inside of shapes for a nice, white ground
   
6. added tape to define individual shapes, using matte medium to seal new edges
   
7. painted each shape (with fluid acrylics) multiple times to achieve an opaque, smooth surface
   
8. changed tape location and repeated above 2 steps as necessary
   
9. pulled off tape and touched up edges
   
10. matte varnish
    

Shards (in progress)

Here it is in progress with the tape still on. As you can see it was very hard to judge how the final piece would look and I did have to repaint some areas to balance the colors and composition after I took some of the tape off. Taking all the tape off was indeed a magical moment as the painting appeared. Despite my careful taping and sealing using matte medium I still had to touch up some areas where paint or gesso had leaked under the tape. Saying that though, I really enjoyed working on this painting - I learnt a lot about how difficult seemingly simple things can be. It also felt meditative to work on such a carefully planned piece. I will probably work like this again, although perhaps not so large or so complex. If I did I would only complete around four a year - that would be four VERY expensive paintings a year. And would be a nightmare to live with.

I love this painting and something about working this way appealed to me - I just have to find out exactly what. Every class I have taken at Glassell has pushed me to try something I would not otherwise have done - a technique, a genre, a subject - sorting out the personal wheat from the chaff is my ongoing homework.

Geometric Abstraction - part 1

Geometric Abstraction started in the early 20th century with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich. It is an art based on simple geometric forms - an art of pure form with no emotional content from the artist.

My Take
In my course on abstract art at Glassell, one of my assignments is a geometric abstraction. The piece I'm working on was inspired by the light patterns coming through my front door one morning. I was about to rush out the door so I grabbed my camera and took this photo.

I used Illustrator to trace some of the shapes using the pen tool. It reminded me strongly of light streaming in through a stained glass window so I went with that feeling but with a dark purple ground in place of black. Using that purple as my starting point I played around with the light colors. After a few hours of happy color mixing and recording I came up with a diaz. purple, nickel azo gold, pthalo green (blue shade) combination that gave me these fabulously complex colors I used in this color test piece.

The next step was to paint the final canvas with the purple ground. It took me a couple of sessions and several glazes to be happy with the color. This had to be it because there is no going back once the taping starts!

Oh yes. Taping. I hate taping. But at least these are straight lines. My previous taping experience was with curves and did not work out so well. In this painting though I think perfect straight lines are called for. I tried hand painting in the color trials and I could spend as much time tidying up edges as I might spend applying tape.

In fact, the taping turned out to be bigger and scarier in my mind than it was in reality. It took me a total of 7 hours to measure, rule and tape the entire 24" by 48" canvas. Thank goodness for the measure tool in Illustrator is all I can say. About 3 hours in I realized what Arielle really meant by a "kick-ass" painting! Here it is after the taping. Once that mammoth task was done I was excited to get moving again. I have sealed the tape in with two coats of matte medium (in the hope that this will stop paint from seeping under the tape) and applied two coats of gesso so my light colors will glow. If I had not used tape painting 2 coats of gesso and then color would have finished off my tiny supply of patience.