'Project - the final frontier' Sketchbook video, Artist Book scrolls and final painting FINISHED!!

I have been looking for a way to congruently present my sketches/works on loose canvas.

After much deliberation I have made (asked my mum nicely to make) crocheted scroll holders so the canvasses can be rolled and held by these. Admittedly she had to make them in the car (or we weren't going to take her to the pictures)

 They looked like this, I contemplated tying them all together but figured they would be easier to get out to look at this way. These are the wools in the other photos that I have used as source for the paintings.

 My final painting 

I have to conclude that the simpler these paintings the better I like them, the more dynamically realistic they appear (to me). I have begun to really appreciate the limited colour pallet and how much can be portrayed with only three (or so) colours. 

My sketchbook video, with my mums hands turning the pages.

Here's the link

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111785338513567442167/posts

This project has been success for me, I have gained a lot of learning from this body of work, I feel as if I have kept on and on at it, pushed my observation skills and found significant competency with my subject. My work has been through quite a process over the last few months and I feel it has evolved beyond what I could have expected. I have always believed I could make work in the past but never pushed myself to focus on it and move towards work that is resolved in some way.

I feel there are many ways in which I could expand this body of work and evolve it further but for the resolution of this project I am pleased I have kept it quite small and manageable as I am aware that I often try to move a project along too fast without fully exploring the nature of the subject.

At the beginning I wrote a project proposal, a part of it said

"I aim to represent their skill or the essence of their mastery through abstract and/or lyrical visual language. To capture colour and movement, intent and enthusiasm in the moment, both theirs and mine together.

I will inform this project by using a phenomenological approach to self-expression and learning 

to use the optimum materials in response to stimuli, to create spontaneous/immediate unique 

work."

I believe that I have fulfilled the greater part of this proposal and I'm really pleased with the results, not only in my work but in a change in attitude to my work and work practice!

Where does it end? Yet more unfinished hands!!

Some simple continuous line drawings on canvas on wet gesso, all free hand , the top one with watercolour background. I think I prefer the unpainted ones. I appreciate the simplicity and the flow that I'm struggling with with paintings.

I know from a time point of view this is not the time for experimenting and playing with new things but the project deadline is only an arbitrary  time line and these periods of playing keep my imminent work happening when it feels like all is lost and will always come handy for future works.

This last one will have oil paint added maybe just to the background.

In my painting I am finding myself tightening up and struggling to make the fresh marks that some of my earlier paintings had.

A couple more works in progress

Next stage on from earlier photo

New painting

I will have to rethink this as it has lost definition in the second hand that there is only a small portion of, I don't like that it has fallen off the board. It feels like the whole had on this one has potential and feels/looks like a hand holding wool.

This is not the time for discovering new things and trying to incorporate them into a project. More oil paintings!!

I know I shouldn't but I found some work the other day in the Artists' Handbook that I fell in love with.

I'll check later, but I believe the name was Jan Vanriet. I love the pared down nature, simplicity and containedness all at once. The implication of skin tone as the complementary to the green.

So I had a go, firstly at a straight copy and the compositions of my own.

Maybe too illustration for my purpose but I think they work.

The disaster painting, I think I went too big with this one, lost and sign of subtle and might have to file it under B. I. N.

Looks better on here than it does in the flesh, maybe I won't trash it yet, maybe I'm a better photographer than painter?

Getting there 'Underpainting and Subtlety' Oils on Board

The next stages.

My work is getting more subtle, delicate and controlled. I have never spent so much much time considering the methods, materials, composition. I now spend more time thinking than painting, yet I feel I am still getting some good marks and looseness but in a more refined way. Don't know if that's true but it feel a lot more like painting and being a proper artist.

 

I have also been looking at colours, mixes, combinations and complementaries to create a palette that works for these paintings. I love the bright but earth colours, combining my love of bright and primary colours with the subtlety required to show the process of knitting (of doing with the hands) as an earthy, mundane but skilled process.

 

These paintings are as yet unfinished, further updates to follow.

 

Final pieces - A tryptic of knitting hands - Oil on board

A run up to the finish now, just a few weeks left.

I made all my own boards this time without any help, hand cut mitres for the frame, cut the board and it nearly fits!

I now have four boards measuring 105cms long  by 45cms wide, the same as the two original boards. I'm hopeful I can get three good paintings out of six, it would be amazing to get all six.

I've taken loads of photos, this is just a few, I love the more dynamic dexterous looking pictures 

"showing or having skill, especially with the hands."

synonyms:

deft, adept, adroit, agile, nimble, neat, nimble-fingered, handy, able, capable, talented, skilful, skilled, proficient, accomplished, expert, experienced, practised, polished, efficient, effortless, slick, professional, masterful, masterly, impressive, finely judged, delicate;

I have started the drawing for these paintings plus some more sketches (to come later)

This is the close up and the full board

Close up work in progress and the full board

I've been tempted just to leave these as pencil drawings but I'm so keen to paint that the pencil drawings will have to be on record and in my sketchbook.

I have just bought the 'Artists' Handbook' which is an amazing book by Ludion,

George Wittenborns's Guestbook.

Michael Borremans

Denmark

Works in progress 'Hands Knitting' Oil on board and paper

Oil on board, first wash

Marked and measured, oil on board (looking at the work of Euan Uglow), first oil wash

Sketchbook piece oil on paper

Nearly finished, oil on board

Underpainting and painting from moving video

We did a group crit as interim project feedback the other day and I was advised to continue painting these under painting type pieces. I feel that these are improving my observational skills and making me look more at composition rather than just making studies. I like the way in which these paintings are just two hands hanging in space, not attached to anything but still making, in this case crocheting.

Much as I love the bright and frenetic paintings in primary colours, these under paintings feel much more considered (maybe much more grown up). Really starting to consider the mechanics, measurements and tonal variance just in two hands.

I am working on two more larger pieces, the drawings are on, but I'm not sure how well they will show up on here. I have been looking at the work of Uglow, beautiful measured, almost mathematical structures and would like to combine some of this way of working into my drawings and paintings.

Hands knitting, so far pencil on gesso board.

Video of hands knitting to work from movement rather than still photos.