Exhibition and a Return to Blogging

This season I have had the pleasure to have my work hanging an exciting art space in Vernon BC called Headbones Gallery. While preparing for the exhibition I was revisiting the blog posts I had been keeping since 2008. (They are all available here if you scroll down.) I stopped adding to the studio blog in 2021 and I realize that the ease of posting studio updates on Instagram has made me lazy about keeping up with a longer form record of my creative life and thoughts. But the value of these online portfolio and journal spaces was very apparent as I was able to look back and gather insights, and reconnect with earlier work and processes. All this to say that I am very happy to be returning to writing here on my online creative journal space. There are new inspirations and projects that I am looking forward to documenting and sharing and I will add more soon.

For the moment, here is the announcement for my current exhibition with some installation shots and I will add more information over the month that the work is up. You can read more here about Headbones Gallery and my work will be there until May 2.

Thank you so much for stopping in,

janine

Storms

Some years ago I began collecting images of storms and riots. I remember at the time I knew that the world was at a turning point and that we were entering an intense decade or two of transformation. My view at the time was informed by dreams and my deepening study of divinatory symbols systems. The images of storms and riots were archetypal expressions of energy that was rising and I wasn't interested in the details of particular events. I was fascinated by how powerfully they embodied the interplay of the elements earth air, fire and water that I was studying in both languages Tarot and Astrology. More on this soon.

The first two paintings with these themes in mind are these. What Lies Beyond the Storms and Path.

What Lies Beyond the Storms 2013 oil on canvas 26 x 42"

Path 2014-19 oil on canvas 24 x 48"

At the time I was fascinated to realize the archetypal world manifest literally in the material world. I had been studying astrology and Tarot for over 5 years at that point, a project I began in order to understand the workings of my own psyche. In the skies was Uranus and Pluto square, a tense dynamic between the rebellious uncontainable impulse for liberation and revolution and the deep impulse for power and transmutation. It was an exciting and troubling time. I first used the storm imagery to speak about the coming challenges, dark and chaotic on the horizon with an understanding that they weren't ever to be vast enough to block out the light completely and that there would always be la way through and light on the other side.

It was a simple starting point. Because I wasn't interested in any particular event it was obvious to me to construct the images so they would be obviously false, more a narrative drama than anything that could be mistaken for an observed moment "in" nature. I had been playing with mirroring images- you can read how I ended up using this idea here- and I can see it began in these two first storm paintings.

This year I picked up the thread of storms I began back then. They are only one part of a larger symbolic landscape theme that is growing in meaning for me.

Before I describe anything more I want to say a bit about the form of my artwork. Since my early years I have focused on drawing and painting. I love the European and western tradition of oil painting and I have never been pulled outside of paper, canvas-now linen- oil paint, drawing pigments. I have just recently began to try linen rather than the canvas I have always used and it will be a permanent change. My technique with paint uses a variety of layers of glazing, scumbling, shallow impasto and staining that is a beautifully satisfying experience on the linen compared with the canvas. The beauty of the process of oil painting, the sensation of the textures and colour, the slow (for me) moving meditation of it is both spiritual practice and compulsion.

My studies in the symbolic languages have done what I meant them to many years ago and that is to make some sense of my inner world and let me understand how I experience the "outer world" and beyond. That is a very large subject but for the purposes of talking about these images one part is important. Both Tarot and Astrology have as an integral part of them the elements- earth, air, fire and water. On one level they are self explanatory as elements of the material world around us, and they have symbolic meaning as well. It is this symbolic meaning that is an important part of the content here.

All through the process of making these my contemplation is on the interplay of elements in their symbolic meaning. Air speaks about mental activity, thoughts, ideas, communication. Fire is the spark behind action and speaks about drive, initiation, passion and forward motion. Water is the emotional experience, depth, sensual and creative. Earth is the material and solid, that which we can feel by its weight and texture. Further air has the characteristics of being hot and wet; fire of being hot and dry; earth of being cold and dry; water of being cold and wet. Dryness, wetness, heat and cold all also have symbolic meaning. The fifth element I use is the fifth of light which is spirit.

In a very simple way of understanding heavy cloud is heavy emotion, mixed with thought-water vapour. Hot and cold mix to create the funnel-power maybe chaos and destruction. The earth is stable underneath, too strong for the water and air to do much damage. Light illuminating space and stillness beyond. When I am painting it is these dynamics I think about, correlate them to my own day, my inner world or larger world events. Although I described here a simple level of prompts it is a rich contemplative experience that I expect shows itself in the artwork- yet another path of discussion I could go down in the future.

Over There 2021 oil on linen 12 x 24"

detail

This Way 2021 oil on linen 12 x 24"

This has been a longer post than I expected and so I will write again soon, there is more to the conversation.

Thank you so much for reading.

-janine

2021

It has been a very long time since I updated this area of the blog showing you what is in progress on the easel. I have had projects, drawings and paintings on there but did not take the time to write about them. Weren't writing years I guess.

For the past while, I have been focused on storm images. I am very attracted to them for reasons I'll be sorting out over the next few weeks and for the moment I'll say they are an expression of freedom and beauty.

Right after the pandemic settled in I was, like many of us, asked to stay home from my day job at the art gallery and had time and space to work on something new in the studio. It was a complicated time emotionally. I was deeply relieved to suddenly have loads of creative time, which in my regular life is not available in loads, but the cause of the time and space was overwhelming. The storm images and ideas I had been collecting for years had the energy of the moment and so were the first thing I turned my attention to and I began to draw...

These are charcoal and contè on rag and small, about 11 x 14".

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In the months since the pandemic I have had to turn my attention to some other projects and return to work at the gallery but this focus on storms is still developing and I have begun some small scale oil paintings on linen. The two shown here are 12 x 24".

Below are some photos of the early stages, drawing with charcoal a simple contour, then the first layer of oil straight from the tube. You can see the grid that helps me organize the composition from my references, which come from old public domain photos from the weather service in the states.

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The next stage will be to begin using glazes and painting into layers of medium once this underpainting is dry in a few days.

Thank you for reading and more next week...

2021

Time is passing so quickly.

Last year flew by without one post from me here. Adapting to the pandemic ate up my focus for most of the year along with the commotion south of the border. But I was working in the studio tying up loose ends and getting ready for changes I am intending to make this year.

I post more often on Instagram than this blog so many of you may keep up with my studio activity there.

I was drawing this year and will post some of what happened in the on the easel page. Here, though, is the portrait drawing I have completed recently. It was done from some photographs I took a couple of years ago at my local area of Fish Creek park. It is 22 x 28" and is done with graphite, charcoal and conte on paper.

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2021 has me dividing my time between working at my brother's art gallery, continuing my study astrological studies (I have begun the formal program at The Faculty of Astrological Studies in the UK) , and my studio practice.

I will be updating this blog more regularly this year as I have many thoughts and work to share so please check back or sign up for an email notice when I publish more.

more soon,

janine

Portrait in Charcoal

I hope you are all enjoying your 2018 so far!

I have been hard at work in my studio working on my portrait skills and updating materials for those interested in commissioning me for their own projects. I now have a brochure that is available to you for the asking that describes my fees and procedures.In my last post I showed you the pet portraits I have been doing over the last year and a bit and now I would like to share a finished charcoal portrait on paper. I have not done these as commissioned work before now so I am very happy to add this to my offerings.This work is 20x16" on paper and you can see the work in progress on my Instagram gallery where I post frequently here.  I enjoy very much a  physical kind of drawing full of varying textures and methods and this work shows that tendency perfectly. I began by rubbing charcoal dust into the paper to get an overall grey tone. The process is physical and intuitive, very messy and very satisfying. I add layers of different weights of charcoal, buffing and rubbing with fabric, brushes and fingers,  drawing with different types of erasers which I cut into shapes for thin, dull or sharp marks. I add and remove the pigment until the form and description of the subject is perfect to my eye.  It creates a lovely texture and life to the portrait.   At the end of the process I fix the drawing with a spray so that it all stays in tact and won't shed dust any more.One of the most exciting things about drawing in this way for me as an artist doing representational work is that I can get a variance of descriptive marks. Hair next to fabric next to flesh are all drawn differently but in the same media-charcoal and white chalk. For instance when my attention was on the flesh I was rubbing in a faint layer of charcoal then shaving off a layer of it with a thinly sliced eraser wrapped around my finger. For the shoulder I added a layer of white chalk rubbed into the charcoal ground underneath.I save the very sharpened charcoal pencil for adding pigment for detail in the facial features but use an equally sharpened hard plastic eraser removing pigment detail in the hair. I'm showing close up details of the work so you can see what I am talking about.I'll be back soon with updates from my current project but until then if you are interested in commission a portrait from me of this or any kind please contact me here or through Jarvis Hall Gallery here.  I am very grateful for any projects as it is a major way to support my studio practice.

Good bye 2017

I'm finding it a little hard to believe it has been so long since I have written! The last two years have been very busy ones although not the kind of busyness that gets much painting done. I have rearranged my schedule and will be devoting regular time to writing and posting here in 2018.Commissioned portraits are a major way I support my studio practice and I have been doing various commissions.  Beginning in 2016 I added pet portraits to my skill set. These examples below show the composition I am using always a 20x20" canvas with a trompe l'oeil mat cut in a circular opening as the setting for the subject.  I enjoy doing these very much and welcome the opportunity to do more.  For these pet portraits I have been using photos provided by my clients. Like photographing babies and toddlers the family often has the best photos that capture the pets at their most relaxed, secure and loving moments.  You can contact me about my fees and procedures here.Thanks for reading and check back in January for more or watch for links on my Facebook page and on my Instagram here.More soon! 

Dream, Breath, Mist

I have just completed the newest of a group of paintings I began over a year ago. You can read about them here, here and here.  With this piece I am continuing the themes of meditation, contemplation, mindfulness and deep awareness and this time I've explored the experience of what the "inner" space feels like to me.When I first conceived the idea behind these works I was considering how one image could morph into another based on the subconscious projection of a viewer the way a Rorschach inkblot is meant to work. I described my interest in the multivalence of an image and of the emergence of meaning that might come from interacting with the paintings that I had not expressly put there.  Specifically it was interesting to me that the image of the portraits facing each other might, more than just "flip" to the image created by the negative space in between them, but combine with it in some kind of third composite image in a viewer's mind.The first ideas behind these works may not matter so much to you at this point, except to notice that the idea of three levels of the image- one element, a second element, and the third element that comes from the combination of the first two-is here in three layers of the painting. There is the "back" layer upon which everything else happens, the layer of the portraits and a third atmospheric and abstract layer on top of the other two; a back, a middle and a front layer.As I said, with this piece I was more conscious of the experience of inner space, which for me is very colourful and full of texture and movement. These rich colours and mistiness is what I might assume others experience in a meditative space as well.  In this painting  I think of the three layers described above as follows... first, the blue in the back being the "field" of inner space, the colour that registers after one's eyes have been closed for some time. The second layer, the portraits, is the subject of one's thought which is has form and description. And the third layer, the mist, is the abstract activity of colour and movement that comes with having one's eyes closed for any length of time. It is this layer on top of the others that symbolizes to me the third composite image that might arise from the combination of the others.By the time I was finished working I was deciding between three titles for the piece.  Dream (being in the blue ground of a dream), Breath (the portraits and the pink breath between them) and Mist(the abstract level of inner mind activity).   In the end I think the most appropriate title given the rhythm of three that is present might be Dream, Breath, Mist.   It is 24x30", oil on canvas and you can see it now at the Jarvis Hall Gallery. Thank you for reading! 

My latest work

The project I am currently working on is a pair of portraits of twins. They are part of a larger portrait project of a sibling group and the previous ones have appeared earlier on this blog. All the works share the same dimensions and scale and they all include meaningful items and settings from the family's home.Today I have the first twin to show and the next and final portrait in the group will be complete and posted here in May.The very beginning stages of work on these two I did simultaneously including the initial drawings on paper.I use photographs to paint my portraits from but I never paint from a single photo.  I design the images from many pictures first composing on the computer and then om paper in the form of a drawing on paper. This stage is always very important and there is a good amount of invention and creativity as I get the structure of the design just right.  In these pieces this stage was especially important as we had decided upon doing a mirror image of the girls. They were photographed on either side of a symmetrical buffet cupboard but I did much work to make"mirror" quality of the setting just right which hadn't appeared so in the photos. The work included tacking string on the wall across the room from my easel to follow the perspective lines.I stayed working on the two as I began the finished pieces. Here you can see I had both on the easel as I transferred the images by grid onto the boards and began the underpainting.Once Once a fair amount of paint was started and I felt confident they would match enough. I decided to give all of my attention to one until it was done.So here then are images of the first one in progress.  It follows my usual working process except that this time I used clear gesso.  I have been enjoying working on coloured grounds recently and so began this way.The initial study on paper...Then details of the drawing transferred to the board.  I do this all by hand with French curves and rulers with graphite on one coat and then another coast of gesso on top.My painting process is one of many layers painted on top of each other with areas of all application of paint from glazed colour through to very opaque scumbled texture. The very first underpainting has some form to it but is quite flat compared to later stages will add form and light.Here the work develops over a few "layers" of paint...Eventually over many weeks of work the image arrives at a point where everything is finished. As any painter knows there are hundreds of details to refine and the last stages can go on for some time.  I know a piece is finished when not another mark I could do will truly make a difference, the likeness is perfect, the surface is rich and satisfying with colour and texture and when, finally, when there is a breath of life enters and inhabits the work.I did go to art school but was not trained to paint portraits or to paint realistically and have learned by looking at other painters, reading books, by trial and error and instinct so there may be faster ways of getting to this end but I haven't found them.And now the finished work...Thank you so much for taking the time to read and I will be back next moth with the next one.    

Peace

Hi everyone.  Welcome to my first post of the year and I hope that you having a great 2016 so far.I have finished the first painting of this year and the second in a group of pieces that I have been developing for some time. Here I described how I came to create these images and some of the ideas behind them. In that post I summarized my intent for the work as "metaphor for meditation and contemplation, for mindfulness and deep awareness and hope that the experience for the viewer will be of the peace and balance that comes from these things."  The title is Peace and it is oil on canvas, 18x24". It has been said that all conflict in the world is, in truth, man's inner conflict that is projected outward. This is the idea I was most thinking about while painting. There are many wise people who speak about the antidote to struggle and strife in the world is the cultivation of peace inside of individuals. As I worked, this painting came to embody the moment when, at long last, one gives up looking outside of themselves for peace and gives in to the realization the only place to achieve it is within themselves.As well, in this piece I moved away from using naturalistic colour.  I want the paintings to speak about inner psychological space and to that end I am experimenting with palettes that have as a priority emotional and dreamlike moods, deliberately unnatural by materialist standards.  Of course, as always, more about these ideas to come in future work and posts.I am very excited for the opening this month of the new Jarvis Hall Gallery. He has moved just south of downtown Calgary and you can find all you need to know about finding it here on his Facebook page.   This painting will be there on display for the next couple of weeks.Congratulations Jarvis Hall Gallery!    

If you look to the light in the centre all else fades to the periphery...

 This work represents themes that have been developing in my private creativity for many years. It is the first finished piece in a group of paintings in development. I first mentioned them here in the blog when I showed you a couple of the drawings which were also seen at Jarvis Hall Fine Art last year. They are related to a thread in my creative vision that runs right back to my earliest days of painting. Being an introvert I have always been very involved with my inner world which is filled with rich visionary experiences and since art school, when I have been able, I have expressed aspects of this inner world in my paintings. This current work is where I have picked up the thread most recently.This interior experience I mention above has fueled exploration in personal spiritual development, spiritual philosophies and depth psychology. As creativity demands, I keep watch for a visual form that will well express treasures found in these explorations. I discovered one and this is how this work began. What follows are the basics of how I understand what I am doing with this work.A core tenet of my spiritual learning has been that all of the world -our reality- is a kind of illusion and our perception of it is really a projection of beliefs that are deep within ourselves.  When we deeply contemplate our experience as such then a completely new reality and vision arises. I look at you;  I become aware that you are really me; us two together, then, is something completely new. The two become one or where two or more are gathered I am in their midst and a new perception of reality is available.One day, during a time when I was becoming familiar with this idea I fell upon the Rorschach test used in psychotherapy and realized it could be a perfect visual metaphor for what I was discovering. I saw that as the abstract inkblot pattern transforms to a representational image based on the viewers perception, conversely a symmetrical representational image could "flip" to an abstract one. This would represent the shift from conscious literal thinking to the unfamiliar indeterminate one that leads to questioning beliefs, revelations and new perceptions.So I began to compose images of faces facing themselves in the spirit of contemplation.  Not wanting to bring into the images any personal stories and to indulge my own spiritualist tendencies, I went completely out of my time to find the subjects.  I went into databases of public domain portrait photography from the last half of the 19^th century for images to work with. I did not collect the names or location of the persons so they could remain anonymous and I could work with them objectively. The only thing I did notice about this subject when I chose it was that it was of a young Christian Nun.I composed the images so that they are as symmetrically as possible so that you could experience the self-facing person as that, but then “flip” to the Rorschach-like abstract image which represents the new consciousness that may come from self contemplation.The final element to talk about is the abstract patterns that appear on the surface of the image. The old images I was working with had damage and dust sprawled throughout. As I was composing my pieces, mirroring one face into two, the "noise" of the damage made beautiful symmetrical abstractions.  This other layer of pattern grew to perfectly symbolize for me another layer of thought or energetic activity that is always present no matter what level of thought you are engaged in.  The interruption of random literal thought, the revelations that drop down in deep contemplation or meditation or some transcendent "rips" in our fabric of reality.So simply this piece is a metaphor for meditation and contemplation, for mindfulness and deep awareness and I hope that the experience for the viewer will be of the peace and balance that comes from these things. I will expand on these ideas as more pieces come to be finished.This painting will be on display at Jarvis Hall Fine Art in his newest exhibition Sought After. It is currently titled The Light of Self Revelation, it is 30x40" and oil on canvas.Thanks so much for reading, it was a lot this post, I know, and I truly appreciate your time and attention,Janine

New work- Sun

Not long ago I finished this portrait of my brother Jarvis. It is 36x36" and oil on canvas. In this work I continued to explore a larger scale than I am used to as I did in the last painting, Red Plaid Jacket.  This scale is quite a bit larger still. The canvas is 36x36" making the head about 3x life size.  I am attracted to working on this scale because of the opportunity to get lost in the deeply fascinating landscape of the human face.There are hundreds of colours and textures there to capture and it is my experience that painting this subject is less about eyes and noses and mouths than arrangements of abstract shapes colours and textures.  This size of composition really let me indulge in this kind of painting experience.  Of course I still have an arrangement of meaningful items in the portrait besides just the face as I usually do and the passages that surround the actual head on the work also benefitted from my being able to stretch out and explore details on a larger scale than I am accustomed to.It is hard to see on the screen of the internet but it is this mix of representation and abstraction and materiality and idea that is so powerful in painting and drawing for me.   And whether it will lead to larger scales or larger compositions with the life scale I'm not sure, I am just really trying to be as honest with and true to what each work inspires in me. There are two or three in progress that I will be able to share in another month and strangely enough currently on my easel is a portrait commission that is a much smaller scale than I am used to with the head being only 3 inches or soSo there is lots of activity in my studio and the blog will busy this next while as many things come to their finish.  And as always I am looking to have more portrait clients this coming year and so if you are interested please ask for more information.I hope you enjoy these pictures of the work and thank you so much for reading.  If you would like to follow the blog, my Facebook page or my Instagram the links are all to the right.

New work

Here is the first work from my studio this year. You can see the preliminary drawing of it here.After some discussion I have titled it Red Plaid Jacket. It is oil on canvas and 20x30” which makes the head about one and a half-life size.I conceived of the work last summer as a piece which would embody some of my developing ideas about painting. Like many artists I think all the time about the purpose of visual art and its role in our culture, and because of my own creativity I think mostly of painting and drawing.    I am particularly interested in the capacity for painting and drawing to evoke states of being that go beyond simple communicating ideas when people spend time with work.  This isn’t any kind of news that visual art works in this way but I am considering what if this is the most important way that it works, the most valuable thing about it- that beyond the representational image, there are things that emanate from a painting that cause a resonance with the viewer or environment around it.So in this work, through colour, composition texture and image I was making a piece that would emanate peace. As for the “picture”, it is an archetypal image of a sacred greeting so that the viewer is being looked at with reverence and is part of a peaceful and sacred moment. While painting I was focused on creating atmosphere of beauty through the materials-colour and texture-and order in the composition.  I was very aware of making a most honest and simple painting that literally offers peace.Many thanks to my daughter Dante who was the perfect model and the work is available through Jarvis Hall Fine Art (link to the right).Here are just a couple of progress shots including the gridded drawing under all of the paint.I really enjoyed the scale of the piece and would really love to explore this aspect on commissioned portraits for those interested.That's all for now and thank you for reading!!

New Studio Work

After a longish period of working at commissions, which take me a very long time, my focus is back on studio work. This piece here is both a finished drawing and a study for an oil painting.  It is a little different for me as it is the first time I have pushed the scale larger than life-sized.  My desire to experiment with this size to put emphasis on the marks that often get lost in my work on the smaller scales. Texture and noise in drawing is very creatively satisfying for me. The whole piece is 20x30", about one and a half times larger than life.Another feature of this work is my interest in expressing archetypal characters that express universal ideas.The working title is Namaste, and it is graphite on paper. It is available for sale through Jarvis Hall Fine Art (link on the right column)In the coming weeks as I work on the painting inspired by this drawing, as well as other work in my studio I will be posting regularly for those who are interested in following the progress.

Portrait complete

After three months of showing you the progress on this portrait it is finished.The technique that I have been using on the last stages of painting is one that I have been evolving for a while. Once the under painting is dry I brush onto a passage a layer of medium, a mixture of Gamblin's cold wax and neomegilp, wipe it down a bit and then into this I work with paint that has no medium added whatsoever. You can see here the medium brushed onto the drying paint and only on the passages where I am painting that moment. The medium needs to be sticky wet to work into.The most satisfying part of this technique is that the new colour layer seems to melt into the paint below yet keeps a thick and buttery consistency. In the very final layers I work with glazes mostly to shadow certain passages. My technique has changed very much over the years and I'm sure it will continue to evolve as I learn from each painting what is most satisfying and how to get the effects I want.So before I show the finished image I have a series of images showing how the painting developed.  I think I've told you before that I am fascinated by the technical aspects of painting and how illusion is created so this explains my interest in sharing  this sort of thing. The experience of doing the work demands a lot of patience, preparation and foresight. It is all a learning process. My vision for my painting is to be able to cut back on all the stages I go through, take all that I've learned from them and have my process be much more direct and efficient... we'll see.Showing these groups of images is a little misleading because it takes me a very long time to get from one to another. It isn't just a single layer between each stage but a process of painting, adjusting, refining and shifting colour. You should be able to see here shifts in values, lights in the shadows, softened edges and refined detail as I was getting the atmosphere right where I wanted it. Looking at representational paintings in photographs and on screens is also misleading as it suggests that paintings and photographs are more similar than they actually are. In my experience paintings have a completely different life to them than photos do because they are, obviously a completely different medium. But for the purposes of sharing work on a blog and on a website these will do.Also with these full figure portraits in an environment, there is a complicated array of elements that all need to be balanced correctly to have a harmonious result.  I'm sure I make it much more complicated than it needs to be  like I said above, for me it is all a learning process. So here is the finished work and thank you so much for following the progress! With this piece done I have no more commissions in the queue.  I am very interested in taking on more with special interest in those that are drawings or smaller than full figure. This work takes less time and will let me dedicate more time towards getting some studio work ready for a small exhibition.  If you would like to know more about having portraits done you can read more here  or contact me with any questions or for more details.  Thanks so much again and I'll be back soon with an update of what is on the easel.Thanks again!  

Progress continued 3

The work of the past two weeks has been developing the depth of the setting, and establishing the finished values of the work. By values I mean the darks and lights of all the hues in the painting. The image has many shades of white but when it comes to paint none of it is painted with just white at all. To help me do this I use a paper value finder and Photoshop's grayscale slider. I sample a spot on the computer image I am working on, see its value and adjust the paint to match the same value on the paper scale. It seems complicated but it is a method I came to because it is impossible to judge the paint on my brush next to the source image when using a computer screen. I think those that paint will understand what I mean. There is further balancing to do because I am not always copying the source image value for value, often I am measuring value ranges instead. If you have any questions I can elaborate in another post.In these pictures you can see how the space has been developed so that there is depth behind the figure going into a back room and window.I have also mixed the final colours for the flesh and clothing and so this is the focus from here on in. Once the figure is done there will be a final few hours glazing shadows, light in shadows and highlights on the furniture and shoes. This all should be done within a week or two from now.Here are a couple of images showing the progress of particular spots.The wall behind was darkened and the shadows and reflections on the floor added.The bannisters and window behind are all complete.These final hours of the painting are the most satisfying because after all of this building up most of the magic of illusion happens with the final touches. Hopefully this will show in the final photos I'll post over the next while.

Portrait Progress Continued #2

So, the note on the last post said I thought I would be finished this next stage in a week-oh my! Three weeks since I posted and the under painting is pretty much complete, all the board is covered in paint and the drawing is no longer visible. I have made some adjustments along the way, changing some of the scale and measurements but it seems perfect now to begin the final layers of paint. It still appears pretty "flat" because there aren't yet any glazed shadows and highlights added. The structure is set and now the illusion will really start to take shape. The transitions and edges between colours and values are still clumsy looking and so this is a major focus from here on in.                In these two above you can see that I am still re-measuring and correcting the drawing as I paint.And here you can see where I have begun to add more colour to the bottom paint layer. For instance, the hands are richer than the knee which is still the first layer with limited colour.   It has been very valuable to show my progress to you as it is making me aware of things I am doing that are habit but not necessary(I think). I'm taking notes and look forward to refining my technique on the next pieces. I'll post a little more frequently through this next stage as the work gets closer to being finished.For now though, enjoy if you are interested!

Progress continued

Over the past few weeks I've been sharing my process of developing a major portrait. I've composed a reference to work from, drawn out a study and finished the preliminary drawing on the board the painting is done on. After all of this work  I finally began to apply the oil paint this week. This stage is always a little different for me. Sometimes I will do washes over the entire image with thin colour to paint into, sometimes I will do an entire rough painting in black, white and greys. I can only say that it depends on my mood and the mood of the painting because each method gives a different feeling to the act of painting. This time I am making a thickly painted and very developed first layer. Because this composition has a very architectural setting I want a gestural method of brushwork and a rich visual texture to the final work.  The challenge will be to keep the freshness of this first paint through subsequent layers of refinement that is needed to develop the portrait.  I began with the architectural details and the space behind the figure so that I can have a physical sense of place and setting established while I am painting on the figure. I enjoy very much the sense of illusion in the work while I paint and use its development as a guide to measure when the piece is finished.I am using only cold wax medium in the paint or sometimes brushed onto the board first as a layer to paint into.By next Friday I should have the entire board covered in this first layer of paint. Thanks for reading and see you next week!  

This week on my easel

Among other things, I finished the drawing on the current portrait. Last week I showed the beginning and a little bit of how I do it. I think every artist has a different way of working and I know for me all of this preliminary work, the drawing and under painting is never seen as it is hidden beneath the finished product. I am very interested in seeing the process of other painters so who knows, maybe it will be of interest to show mine.The drawing is of course on white acrylic gesso on board. Once it is finished I cover it all with another coat of clear acrylic gesso. I don't fix the graphite at all so yes, it does smudge, but I like this stage to be smudgy, and brushy (gesso-wise). The lines all remain but there is an uneven grey stain that gives some life to the work and makes it more interesting to paint on than a clear outline and pristine white spaces. Also the grid and numbers are still clear because I'll be using them quite a bit in painting before they get covered.So here are a few photos of before and after the last gesso coat.Before:and after:Next week I should be able to show the underpainting done.

curves...and Instagram

No work finished this week but I have lots in progress. I've got pictures here of the what is on the easel. These show very well my process of getting work from a preliminary study to a support for painting. I draw my images from both a drawn study and one on computer using a grid. It is a long process but I find that the more engaged and familiar I am with the lines and the shape of an image the easier the painting goes so it is worth the time. I measure everything very carefully and also use curves, angles and straight edges constantly. I have been using these tools for what seems like ages- I can barely trust mind let alone my drawing hand to get things right on their own. The tools also aid me in capturing a flow and design that otherwise I lose working so slow and particularly.In the drawing I do some very rough shading to keep things organized. These initial drawings can get pretty complicated. Once the drawing is done I will brush a coat of clear gesso over it and then it will be ready for the oil paint.Here is one with the first layer of paint...So this week I went onto Instagram for the first time. There is a whole new world of images there- old news I'm sure for most of you but new to me. Easy to take and post the odd studio picture there that won't end up here! Only for my art though...no garden photos-I'll save those for Facebook.http://instagram.com/janinehallartist

new work

Here the winter was very long this year. Not as cold as the east but it was not very pleasant. Thankfully it has begun to warm up and the snow and ice are melting.Since the last post I have been very busy. I have been doing preparatory work for new paintings and a portrait commission. Before I start these new paintings I needed to do a colour study. The source material for these are black and white and so my task is to work out a simplified colour palette for translating that material into coloured work. I chose a simple colour pose that I had in my reference folders to work from. The exercise was successful as far as my task went but I continued beyond what was needed for study and it became a finished painting in its own right. It is oil on canvas and the size is 16x15" Except for a touch of Verditer Blue in the back ground the five colours I used were raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, Van Dyke brown and white. This is very simple compared to my usual palette where I use many more tubed colours. More about the palette when I post images of new work soon.