Jane Davies' Workshop – Lesson 4

This week's assignments were very fun, very freeing, although I'm pretty sure burned out a little, I got so into it. Wrapping it up today with some 7" x 7" India ink paintings to add to next week. I'll probably wait to post those with Lesson 5. Here is my work and my posts for Lesson 4.



I really got into this and found it hard to stop. I loved painting large–so wonderfully freeing–but I realized that I was ending up with a lot of grey; not enough B/W contrast; need to work on this. And again realizing that it is difficult for me to keep things simple. For this reason I really liked applying the paint with the credit card. Here are the large originals.

I added some white India ink over the paint here

Then I cropped these and found so many great little compositions. But, as I started to add to them, I found it difficult to start; feeling a little too precious about adding anything. I was also finding that I wasn't liking the pieces when I added color or other elements; didn't quite know what to do. Also, I wasn't sure I even liked the little compositions anymore. Then I watched the Working Large video and was so taken with the way Jane worked with such abandon, such freedom (I particularly liked it when you took the sheet of your palette with the leftover paint and just pressed that onto the painting!) that I was inspired to just go for it. So that's what I did. On many of these you can hardly even tell what was underneath; I just kept adding things until the piece looked like something moderately interesting. I became obsessive about this and finally had to stop ( I still have more cropped pieces but will have to save those for another day). I've arranged these as side-by-sides so you can see the before and after.

Added black, white and a dab of red oil pastels

Again oil pastels

Oil pastels and I scribbled with a pointed skewer on right

A combination of Windsor Newton water based inks and oil pastels

Acrylic paint and some sgraffito

Mostly acrylic paint. I really struggled with this one.
Didn't like the colors I started with so I just started  painting.
The texture at the bottom was the imprint left from the paper
towel after I blotted up the white paint.
There's a lot going on here but it's one of my favorites
with all the layering and texture.

Acrylic paint, black conté crayon and collage. I extended this one
to the edges of the sketchbook just for fun.

Black conté crayon, oil pastels and white acrylic paint.

 

 

Here was Jane's comment; very insightful and motivating:

FABULOUS job, Arlene! Yes, there is a tendency to go gray if you move black and white paint around too much. Trying to keep some pure black and pure white forces you to be economical in your mark-making. GREAT job on the large pieces and on the cropped pieces! You came up with a beautiful variety of ways to amend the original black and white. SO glad the Working Large video was helpful. It so often happens that we start feeling precious and intimidated when working on a piece. It takes real effort and commitment to let go of that and go for it. The real key is to get in the habit of doing a LOT of work, so that you gain: (1) confidence in the idea that there is always more where this came from, i.e. your well will not dry up, you can always produce more are, and (2) practice making art and resolving pieces. I still have to make that effort to let go and not get precious, but it happens most easily when I am working in quantity, working in series, and see each piece as just another experiment, not A Precious Work Of Art. Noticing that resistance and then making the effort to move through it is a HUGE step. You did an awesome job!

Keep on keeping on; keep on experimenting --just the encouragement I need because I started to get a little frustrated again with the layered contour drawing exercise in this lesson... Here's my post:

I don't feel very successful in my results for this activity. Maybe I'm just expecting too much. I also feel like I am struggling with color. I did have fun doing the wet-on-wet self-portrait but then I don't really like the way the contour drawing on the top looks—too heavy. Although my husband said he likes it. Could just be one of those days...

No comments from Jane yet. I'll update when/if I hear from her on these.

UPDATE: Comments from Jane:

"Arlene, that self-portrait is amazing! I think the layered contours show real exploration. You just begin to get some kind of interesting stuff going on with these - the third and fourth show really nice tension between the washy wet contour and the fine line contour. Then, as I said, the self-portrait is fabulous! Excellent dynamic between the washy wet and the crisp line.

Maybe you were expecting too much from the layered contour. Remember the wet-in-wet and line pieces from Lesson 3? You said you were out of your comfort zone on that one, but you pushed through and came up with great combinations of wet work and line. This is just a more directed version of that. Look back at your Lesson 3 work and see if you can find something that excites you about the pieces you made. Not necessarily as PIECES, as compositions, but as examples of how line and wet-in-wet can create exciting conversations together."

God bless her...