Category Archives: Mixed Media

LAYERED LEAVES

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During the last workshop we experimented with a technique that produces interesting results if it doesn’t drive you mad first. The idea is to start with a background wash, draw the shapes of stones, leaves and twigs onto it, then, with a slightly darker tone fill in all the negative spaces. More leaves, twigs etc are then drawn into the darker negative areas and the negative spaces around the new shapes is made slightly darker. This incremental darkening is done 3-4 times then the shapes are modeled, ink and pastel lines are added, colors splashed on and gesso washes are used to simplify areas.

The process is a lot of fun and often triggers interesting ideas. The example below was done as a demo on aluminium composite panel primed with watercolor gesso. The heavy vertical marks were masked up and painted over the top with more watercolor gesso then the tones were adjusted.

These next images give an idea of the build up using negative shapes.

Once you get the hang of it this can be great fun. The subject can be any reasonably defined object – tools, utensils, paint brushes, pencils – anything that can layer one over the other.

STUDIO WORKSHOP

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For the last two weeks I have been busy conducting a workshop looking at selecting, manipulating and extracting the most from a painting subject. It was a lot of fun, but we worked hard – doing a couple of paintings each day and squeezing in a few critique sessions, where we examined everybodys work and discussed various problems and solutions.

Studio Workshop John Lovett Nov 2011

It is always a pleasure meeting new students and catching up with students from previous workshops. One of our new students for the second week was Carol and her assistant, Kim. What an inspiring lady – taking up watercolor a couple of years ago after a severe car accident ended her career as a lawyer and left her a quadriplegic. Forgetting about her disability, the standard of her paintings is excellent, but to see how she has overcome so many physical hurdles to produce the work she does is just amazing. On top of this, she is determined to keep on improving and works hard to that end.

Thumbnail sketches and simple monochrome collages were used to simplify and rearrange our subjects.

The demonstration paintings below illustrate some of the techniques we explored.

Manipulating a large foreground to lead up to a focal point while not causing a distraction.

Creating depth with hard and soft edges

Flat Ultramarine gouache used to squeeze more vibrancy from the warm, transparent watercolor.

Confining detail and using empty space as an element in the painting.

Practicing the random placement of suggestive abstract marks

Blitz Truck Watercolor

 

Sometimes an unusual subject will free you up to try new techniques.

Making a strong focal point in what was a flat uniform facade.

Starting loosly with a big brush and no preliminary drawing, then adding detail as the painting progresses.

Experimenting with techniques to break up a symetrical subject.

AIX WORKSHOP

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After a week in Paris we flew to Marseilles to meet up with the people on our workshop. It was great to catch up with friends from previous workshops and meet up with the new students. A coach took us to our luxury hotel, Le Piggonet, on the outside of the old town of Aix en Provence.

The hotel was a beautiful old building set in magnificent gardens. We could have happily spent a week painting in the gardens, but the town of Aix had a lot to offer so we split our painting time between the hotel and the town.


Le Piggonet


Hotel Gardens


Painting in the Hotel gardens


Dining at Le Piggonet


Flower markets Aix en Provence


Street Markets

We were introduced to some fantastic restaurants in the town. One of our students lived in the country side not far from Aix and had a great knowledge of all the best restaurants. This was one of our favorites – Le Patio, a small family run restaurant with a great atmosphere, good service and fantastic food.

The little town of St. Remy is not far from Aix en Provence. We spent a day there, painting and visiting the Asylum Van Gogh spent time in. We were privileged to paint in the garden of the asylum, where Van Gogh would have often sat and sketched.

Although the asylum surroundings were idealic, life inside must have been horrific. These bath tubs were filled with cold water into which troublesome inmates were immersed and trapped under these wooden boards.

In the town of St. Remy, the main square provided a quiet, spacious area surrounded by ancient stone walls and wooden shutters. We spent an enjoyable afternoon painting there before heading back to our hotel for drinks under the plane trees.

Blue Shutters – St. Remy

Cassis is a small fishing town on the Mediterranean coast not far from Aix. The busy harbour and backdrop of old buildings made a great painting subject. We shared the park across the harbour with the local boules players, cigarette smokers and baguette eaters. Under the shade of a grove of casuarina trees, we painted the changing vista of the harbour.

Cassis Waterfront

Paul Cezanne lived and painted in Aix en Provence. His house and studio have been made into a museum, crammed with his old coats, umbrellas, paint boxes, skulls, bones and still life props that feature in his paintings.

Cezanne had the house built to his design – living area downstairs, large studio upstairs.

The studio ceiling is about 5 metres high and the Northern wall, almost completely glass. The walls are painted a mid tone, neutral gray and there is a 4 meter x .5 meter corner hatch to remove large works from the studio. It’s a fantastic studio, unfortunately no photographs are allowed inside. Below is the front door to the house.

MOMA NEW YORK

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One of the most amazing places in New York is the Museum of Modern Art. It houses an incredible collection of 20th century art, carefully selected and beautifully displayed. These are a few of my favorites.

This painting of Morocco by Henri Matisse is pared down to simple abstracted elements, perfectly balanced and unified by contrasting black marks. The color arrangement is simple and compressed and the repeating circular shapes carry the eye around the painting, echoing the confusion of, what appears to be, mid day Morocco. This confused movement is balanced and directed by the stripes and grids. Notice how the diagonal stripes in the top left lead the eye back into the painting, as does the grid at bottom center. I love the scattered, repeating yellows and the way he has tied the big slab of pink  to the rest of the painting by carrying it through to smaller marks to the left.

Another painting by Matisse, again the subject is reduced to simple abstract marks, beautifully arranged to lead your eye up to the focal point of fishbowl and lemon. Matisse has halted the strong upward movement created by the tapering diagonals with the two white horizontal marks behind the fish bowl. The eye then wanders out to other carefully placed fragments of  repeating warm colors before being drawn back to the focal point. The only curved lines in the painting are also arranged to hold interest around the focal point, circling it  like a cloud or thought bubble, and contrasting with the hard geometric shapes in the rest of the painting.

In this painting called “The Piano Lesson” Matisse depicts his son being watched over by his piano teacher as he practices in front of an open window. The scene is lit by candle light so Matisse has used a number of large grey shadow shapes to separate and intensify the muted colors. The color arrangement again is kept very simple – warm shapes concentrated at the bottom, being led down to by a stripe of pale warm orange. Matisse has placed this stripe of orange alongside it’s complimentary blue. By matching the tonal values of the parallel stripes, Matisse has created a strange shimmering effect that almost hurts to look at. As you follow these stripes down to the head of his son, the sharp dark wedge over one eye seems to confirm the strange optical effect.

The following four images are of small collage paintings by Kurt Schwitters. Beautiful arrangements of colored paper, cardboard and printed matter – they have an aged, weathered look about them but still seem fresh and vibrant.

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Robert Rauschenberg “Bed” At first glance this painting just looks like a heavily textured Abstract expressionist  painting, but after a few seconds the heavily painted support sneaks up and hits you. According to the accompanying notes the bed was Rauschenberg’s. You wonder what wild dreams he had beneath these covers.

BEND WORKSHOP

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As usual the Bend workshop was a lot of fun. It was great to catch up with friends from our previous Oregon workshops, and to finally meet people we had only spoken to via email. Tracy, Jan and Cindy did a fantastic job keeping things running smoothly and Tracy’s husband, Bob, drove up from Depot Bay one day to treat us to a feast of Dungeness crab and fresh fish –  Yum – fantastic! We had students from as far away as Florida, Hawaii, Canada and even Russia

The big studio at the Pheonix Inn is well set up with an overhead camera for demos and large tables for all students

Two color demo using Indigo and a transparent, Burnt Sienna like color mixed from Quinaceradone Gold, Alizarin and a touch of Ultramarine

Making sense of a complicated subject

A simple subject made interesting by shifting the emphasis away from formal symmetry to a more dynamic diagonal thrust.

A workshop in Bend, Oregon wouldn’t be right without a painting of Mirror Pond.

Cheese cloth, rice paper, pastel, ink and gesso were used to build up the interesting textures of this Italian Hilltop Village.

In this painting of Monterey Wharf, Ultramarine Blue gouache was used to give maximum impact to the focal point.

This simple subject is a lot of fun to paint and a great way to work with positive and negative shapes.

We are looking forward to coming back to the US for more workshops in the not too distant future.

NZ CRUISING WORKSHOP

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On Feb. 7, Artists Greg Allan and Amanda Hyatt joined me on board the Sun Princess to take 60 painters on a cruising workshop around New Zealand.

I had never been on a cruise ship before and could not believe the scale and efficiency of this floating giant. With 2000 guests and 900 staff, I imagined long cues for everything , but I’d never seen anything run so smoothly!

We sailed from Sydney to the Bay of Islands then hopped our way down the East Coast of New Zealand, stopping at all the major ports.


Anchored in the Bay of Islands, we were ferried ashore by the ships tenders


Our first day painting ashore was in the small town of Russell in the Bay Of Islands. A sunny day under a shady tree with cafes and bakeries close by – what luxury!


Painting on board was in the large, plastic wrapped disco with panoramic ocean views.


On board demos took students through a number of techniques we would use once ashore.


On board Hawkesbury River demo, showing how to simplify a complex subject.


We found a busy boatyard on Auckland Harbor and spent a day painting there. They say Auckland has more boats per head of population than any other city in the world.


Napier was an interesting town – destroyed by earthquake in 1931 then completely rebuilt in the Art Deco style. It has been proudly maintained in that style ever since

We spent an afternoon painting in the central park, the interesting architecture and tall palms making great subjects

A warm sunny day greeted us in the beautiful city of Christchurch. This is the side door to Christchurch cathedral. It is hard to believe, just a week later the city was hit by a devastating earthquake. The cathedral spire crashing to the ground where we painted.


One of the few bad weather days on the workshop. Dunedin was overcast, cold and windy, but it somehow added to the character of this old tug and the jetty below.

Fiordland on the southern tip of New Zealand was spectacular in the early morning mist. Later in the day we sailed into Milford Sound. The clouds had lifted and the sun was shining. It looked amazing, but I cant help wondering what it would have looked like through mist and rain. Some things need lousy weather to look their best.

Milford Sound

For our final demo Greg, Amanda and I worked simultaneously on this large, three sheet painting. The finished work was auctioned for charity and the winning bidder kindly donated it to be hung on board the Sun Princess.

Life on board a cruise ship is pretty luxurious, good food, amazing service, lots of entertainment, bars and restaurants everywhere. Would I do another cruising workshop? You bet!