Getting tired of sunny daytime landscapes, I’ve gone the other way inside, or in my garden or at night time to work on abstracts, portraits and night pieces. Light to dark, I feel the landscapes weren’t saying what I needed to say. Too cheery and light for these times. Here is ‘Experiment In Blues’ which is exactly what it says on the tin, an experiment with my mostly new blue pigments, the White Nights Cobalt Azure Blue, Ken Bromley and Lukas Ultramarine and Lukas Cobalt.
This piece and the first night garden one proved to me that the White Nights pigments fade and dry a lot lighter and are too chalky. That’s fine if you are using mostly white paper or glazes, but not good for the work I do. Ditto the Ken Bromley pigments – nice but they are student grade. Lukas pigments, although the Ultramarine can suffer from the same chalkiness mentioned before when used alone, and dry a little lighter, they are actually quite strong and work great in mixes.
Anyway, the piece itself also reminded me how hard it is to work with the Khadi paper – forcing myself to use it, but it’s a struggle, it spreads so much – hence the lack of white spaces here! Thematically it takes me back to the cubist works I started with on my A-level. It looked amazing when wet – then dull when dry – partly those pigments as I confirmed on the better Fabriano paper – but also the paper. It does this, just pulls the life out of your work.
Still I managed to get a depth of colour and like the darkness in this abstract – just wish there was more contrasting tonality in this abstract landscape.
When I was in the strangely still open B&Q (I guess people still need their bathroom accessories, right?) wearing a mask and trying to avoid people to get my turps – I got some Dulux Paint Testers in black and white. So I did this quick action painting in the garden, dedicated to a friend of mine who died recently. Good to get some sweat up and anger, I kept rotating it and attacking it with the rollers. As a result it was hard to decide on a ‘way up’ but actually this way or 90 degrees clockwise felt the right ones. Hard to explain why, it’s balance and rhythm and just feels ‘right’.
(BTW turps, clean spirit and gesso are selling out like no tomorrow, was in B&Q cos Wilko had their painting department stripped! Either a lot of people are turning to art in the lockdown or there are some other uses I am not aware of, or the source materials are needed for COVID-19 related uses.
I have seen price gouging on gesso already – £50 for a 500ml of Pebeo black gesso (price in October: £5.50) and the Daler Graduate gesso I bought going for £30 or more on Amazon. First time I’ve seen price gouging in art materials. Reported them both to Google or Which? (Amazon doesn’t seem to care it’s Marketplace sellers are gouging, no way to report them, unlike eBay).)
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