Covehithe cliffs 02
Paintings
Japan
Acrylic on paper canvas, 41 x 29.7cm
In May and June of 2018 I returned to Murayama to stay on the rice farm where Yasmin and I had previously visited when cycling through Japan. This time I came to paint for 10 days in the surrounding hills and rice fields.
From the view above I’d made two previous quick watercolours when we’d cycled through which were:
To return after such an elapse of time and was wonderful. This acrylic painting was the first of many I worked on during my stay and lead to my experimenting with other ways of working with paint to capture the springtime colours and light of northern Japan.
Space between
Our RDS class this week investigated the narrative of space between two models. To prepare we started by looking at paintings and drawings by Edward Hopper, Walter Sickert and Alex Katz. The latter I’d not seen before.
All the artists communicated the sometimes strange relationships of figures within their pictures. Cherry pointed out how the spaces where the figures were located were critical to the narratives between them. Without the room, the space of a bed or the falling light upon a wall, the figures would have been lost and without meaning. Somehow the depicted space amplified the disjuncture between the figures. The Hopper paintings appeared completely ‘new’ after having been looked at this way.
Trying to capture a narrative between the two models was difficult especially as we were drawing quick poses, typically no longer than 20 minutes. Another excellent if hard class.
Fast line
Suspension
Movement
Juggler poses
This piece didn’t go down well in the RDS class. To be honest I didn’t like it either because it failed to do what I was attempting which was not to fall back on to old drawing and painting habits. Orlando described it correctly and dismissively as ‘a water colour’. I knew what he meant. He was striving for us all to investigate our drawing processes more vigorously and in that, here, I entirely failed.
Others in the class seem to be breaking free and I will try to follow them. It is really hard to ‘become untethered’, as Orlando describes, but I’ve a life drawing class at Tottenham Art Classes this evening and will have another go with a different model and setting.
Big drawings
This week’s class with Orlando at RDS was again very challenging. Our model was a circus juggler who we attempted to draw whilst performing.
Orlando’s commentaries and engagement with our work was fantastic. He is endlessly quotable and makes references to artists, paintings and schools of art all the time. My favourite from this week, to describe how a flagging drawing might be revived in the last minutes of a pose, was:
‘to gather all our drawing attempts into one big arpeggio, a final gesture to mark and rework the page’.
This is actually really helpful. Loved it!
Art from a Bicycle 