I intend on making a painting from these but wanted to do a few colour studies first, so these are my first attempts. They’re also my first attempts at Neo-Expressionism. I was a huge fan of Neo-Expressionism long before I even knew what the term meant, or before I knew that what I was looking at was Neo-Expressionist.

Neo-Expressionism uses vivid and banal colour harmonies and is painted in a primitivist style. It portrays raw emotion and tension, and is used to create a sense of disturbance to alienate the viewer in some manner.

I hope I have managed to capture that style here. All I know is that it feels good to create again.

Tonight, I will work some more, and I have the day off tomorrow so at least I won’t be humphing bags around, even though I’ll still be working. On a more positive note, my work will be completed a few weeks ahead of schedule.  My course finishes two weeks after I return from holiday, and all of my work will have been done and handed in, so it’s not all bad.  That gives me time to just draw in preparation for my interviews.

I wanted to update you on my Contextual Studies piece.  I didn’t finish it today even though I expected to.  I spent most of the day working on the face, and it was frustrating for quite some time, but I think I have it down now.  I ran out of time and had to stop, but I only have a few bits to sort on it, such as haloing on the left side of the figure and I have to finish the left curtain area.  Like last night, the photo doesn’t do it any justice, but this is where I am:

(Click to enlarge)

I have been finding Creative Textiles a bit of a challenge and very difficult to find inspiration for, but today I created a piece which is one of six, and is part of my final project.  I dripped hot wax over a piece of anaglypta wallpaper and painted it.  I have used the motifs of the all-seeing eye and a weaving pattern.  I ripped up some Georgette fabric and dripped over acrylic inks and then stitched the shredded pieces in a weave pattern on top of the wallpaper.

I took another piece of Georgette fabric and burned holes into it with a soldering iron, revealing some of the work underneath.  I took some more of the shredded pieces and tied it through some of the holes in the main piece so that there are strips hanging down. I stitched this onto the left edge of the wallpaper piece and created a type of book.  This has resulted in a layering of work, which is precisely what I have been trying to achieve with this project – the idea of secrets, the covert and the uncovering of layers of conspiracy.

(Click to enlarge)

I showed you a couple of ideas I had for composition yesterday, and I started out this morning with a fixed idea of what I wanted my painting to look like.  I thought to myself that it probably wouldn’t turn out anything like I expected or wanted.  It so happened that it didn’t turn out quite how I expected. I even told my tutor in detail what I was going for, and she liked the sound of it. I did too.  However, as most of you will know, nothing ever really turns out how you expect it. That’s not to say my day wasn’t productive.  It was.  It was extremely productive and I felt much better today.

I went into class, and started on my work immediately, while people were still coming into the class.  I was desperate to get on with my work.  I laid down my background, and it looked hideous! I then attacked it with my graphite stick – quite frantically, I may add. Then I started adding paint.  I kept my palette really controlled – just using burnt umber, mars black, zinc white, and cadmium yellow.  I was trying to keep it fairly monochromatic.  However, it was feeling rather cool even though I liked how it was going.  So I added alizarin crimson into the mix.  Adding it to the cadmium yellow and burnt umber.  This made a huge difference.

By the time class ended 2 hours later, I didn’t want to stop.  I was in the zone! I was worried that I wouldn’t get my mojo back in the afternoon, after my second class.  However, I was able to get back in the zone. Then I hit ‘the wall’. You know that stage when you know it needs work, but you haven’t a clue what to do about it?  So I got a bit of expert advice from my tutor, and I added a touch of colour in small areas and voila, it was done!  Three and a half hours of bliss, and this was the result.  Click to enlarge.

Acrylic on paper (42 x 60cm)

Now it is actually a bit darker than this in reality, but that’s down to the camera and the light. I think it has changed quite a bit from the original Dali and Picasso images.

Picasso – Seated Bather

Picasso – Dream

Dali – Pierrot Playing The Guitar

Picasso – The Studio

I’m really chuffed to bits with this painting, as you can probably tell.  I have one more painting for this subject, and that’s me finished.  The problem is that I still have almost 5 weeks left to go.  So I’m thinking that I will create some more based  on all of the paintings I selected for study.  That will at least give me more paintings to take in for my interview at uni!

I found it difficult to paint in a relaxing style, because, well, it’s not really me.  The aggressive style suited me far more, because it’s more expressive.  I also found the dark style to be too hypnotic so I don’t feel that the darkness comes across in my painting. Unfortunately, I forgot my first painting, so I can’t show it just now, but I’ve included the others.

This one is painted to Animal Collective, and is supposed to be aggressive. I personally love this one.  The style is completely different for me, and I absolutely loved painting it. I just got lost in the music.

This next one was done to ‘dark’ music – Massive Attack – but as you can see the painting isn’t very dark, and to be honest, it’s not a particularly good painting either. There are so many mistakes in it, but I know what corrections I need to make.

Which brings me back nicely to my painting for Contextual Studies.  As I said, this turned out completely differently from what I expected.  I was heavily influenced by my life drawing today, and sought to bring that into this painting. This is quite dark, but I was painting to different types of music, so there are many styles here.  I’m really pleased with this one also.  Since I am basing this on several paintings by Dali and Picasso, two of which feature the imageries of war, I feel that this expresses those sentiments fairly well. I am becoming much more comfortable with being expressive and trying different styles of painting – coming out of my comfort zone, I suppose.  As usual you can click on all of the paintings to enlarge.

Going back to the idea of music influencing painting style: do you listen to music when you’re painting? If so, what kind of music do you listen to, and what does it do for your style? Perhaps you don’t listen to music. Perhaps you can try, to see how it affects your style. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

First of all I splattered on a heap of yellow ochre acrylic and laid into it with a palette knife (my first time using one).  Then I added some cardboard and string.

I left it to dry so that I would be able to add my red and blue tones over the top of the canvas.  I then drew in my basic shapes with a brush and started putting deep red and cadmium red on the main object.  I didn’t like this look at all, so I started adding some purple and cerulean blue to it, but it was all turning a bit messy.  I left that area for a moment and went over to the objects on the right.

I started to lay in some blue and purples here, which mixed in with some of the yellow paint but I think it worked out well.  I went back to the main object and started to scrape off the paint with my palette knife and scored it in the process, which made it look much better than previously.  I decided to add some more yellow ochre over the top with a brush and then scored it again with the knife.  I liked the messiness of it and decided just to add some purple and deep red to define it.

I then moved over to the left side and pasted on some cardboard.  I painted over it with deep red, cerulean blue and added hints of white.  I then scored it with the palette knife to match the string square on the right.

On to the circle.  Again, just some deep red, purple and a hint of white, then scored it with the knife to bring out the yellow ochre underneath. I had intended leaving the background yellow ochre but it just wasn’t working.  This is the part where I hated it.  So I decided to get some deep red again and brushed over the canvas with it, allowing some of the yellow to come through. I also added cadmium red and orange to bring it out a bit more.  I finished off with brushing on a few hints of yellow ochre.

Ok, onto the next subject.  I warned you it was a long post! Whilst visiting Peggy’s site the other day the topic of ‘idea catching’ was discussed, and the various ways in which people gather their ideas and put them onto paper, canvas or other media.  I mentioned that because I work on various briefs to a given theme – usually based on a word or two – I use mind maps.  I use these because it’s often difficult to translate a word into an idea.  The word may be obvious but conversely, it may be more obscure and you can’t imagine how to put that it into a painting.  This is where mind maps come in.

As you know, I have various briefs just now and one of the themes I chose was ‘Rendezvous’.  I had no idea how to translate this!  So, I started my mind map, and within about 15 mins I came up with heaps of ideas.   Peggy has never used a mind map before, so I suggested she give it a try.  Since she’d never used one, she asked if I could show her an example.  So, here is a very rough mind map, based on the theme ‘Rendezvous’. Again, click to enlarge.

As you will see from this there are many words that popped into my head.  Some of the words lead to a dead-end and I can’t go anywhere with them really.  Well, I could but it would be getting away from the idea of a rendezvous.  However, there are several words that I can translate into a painting.  For instance, there are words such as weave, camouflage, covert, layers, divert, and join.  All of these can be translated.  I got the idea for weave from web of deception and weaving lies.  I can translate this by adding a weave pattern into my image, whether it is painted, textile or collage.  You can add layers of paint or fabric.  You can also divert attention from part of the image to another and so on.  It’s a brilliant way to quickly come up with ideas, and importantly they always stick in your head once you’ve done this.  Why don’t you try it?

And lastly, I was given this little blog award by Leslie for brightening up her day.

It’s the first blog award I’ve been given, and it added some sunshine to my day.  The idea is that I pass this on to others who inspire me and cheer me up.  I will be doing this, as I’ve been meaning to add a post about all the wonderful people and sites I’ve encountered since I started blogging.  Once I get a bit of time to myself I will get to it.  I promise! So keep an eye on your mailbox!