Project Four : The Place Of Painting

This project was to do with landscapes. So on the first day after our briefing, I headed to the library in the search of landscape artists. I came away with three very different ones.
The first I chose was for her use of texture - I liked her use of thick paint and thought that I would like to have lots of texture in my final painting.

Joan Eardley - some of her paintings and information can be seen on the web links below.
Winter Landscapes
Pastel Drawings
Various Works

There is also a few biography books that you can buy on Amazon.
Books

James Morrison, I like his use of colour and detail. You can almost see the brush strokes that make up each painting.
Some of his paintings and information can be seen on the web links below.
Old Montrose Winter
Various Works

Ken Bushe. I picked this artist for the softness of his paintings and the use of colour.
Further information and his works can be seen on the web link below.
Official Website

After seeing all these artists I set out to find a landscape of my own. Some weekends I travel back to fife to visit family.
On one visit, we ventured down to the coast of Crail and while my mother worked in one of her clients gardens I took some photos of the view from the bottom of the garden.

You can't really see at the bottom, where all the grass ends but there is a fence and after it - a coastal path that leads to the harbour. Sometimes you can see little heads bobbing past and voices carrying off into the distance but today it was quiet. We nipped out of the garden and down to the waterfront to get more photo's as the sun was beginning to set.

It is amazing the colours that the clouds and sun can produce when it's setting.

Looking through past photo's I had taken - I noticed some lovely ones when I was visiting a relative in Bonar Bridge.

I took this photo and like others, for the colour contrast and the reflection of the clouds in the water.

I then moved onto development in my sketchbook - playing around with different mediums I produced different paintings that helped me to come to the conclusion of my final paintings.

Below is acrylic paint and fine liner on torn pieces of masking tape. I liked how the paint would seep into the layers giving this painting a choppy look.

Below is a painting of crail. I used acrylic on top on a coarse medium. It took a lot of paint to get it to soak in making a blurry image but I liked the tonal effect on the rocks.

I then used a combination over two pages. One the left is masking tape - I wanted to see if it would be a good medium for the waves. I liked the look it gave. On the right side is some more coarse medium, I think it was very effective in masking the rocks stand out from the water. I decided from there that I was going to use these materials and the photo to produce my final piece of work.

Below is a rough outline drawing of Crail and some course medium (that I lavishly smothered on). Once dry I painted acrylic on top and then moved on to the next stage.

In the next stage, it's hardly visible but I had put down plenty of masking tape and started to paint the sea. I also painted in the grass and the fence too.

Once that was dry, I used a sponge and did the sky and background landscape,

I only got in finished in the nick of time as it was the last day of the project. Luckily it dried quickly and then it was hung up in the studio for everyone else to see. Again the studio was packed with the other students work. None alike and all so interesting.

I think over Christmas I'll sit down and tweak the painting as I think I need to do more with the grass.