Starting the Final Painting for the Group Portrait

This is the first stage of the final painting. This photo on the left shows the A2 acrylic study painted onto card on the left, with the beginning of the perspex painting the right. I used the large study as an image to be traced onto the perspex by laying the perspex sheet on top of the large study and drawing around the image with oil pastel. I worked on it this way because alterations that needed doing on perspex were much harder do than alterations on paper.

Once the oil pastel had been drawn on I applied the first coats of acrylic paint onto the perspex, using the same kind of brush strokes as Miro in his oil on copper paintings, using a hog's hair brush so that each one of the brush strokes would be visible.

Varnishing the Perspex

There was one more logistical problem with painting onto perspex; the acrylic paint was very easy to scrape off. This was a big problem because of the durability needed for a painting that would be sent through the post for assessment. The only solution that I could think of was to coat the perspex and acrylic paint with a layer of acrylic varnish, but this itself threw up a problem because it resulted in less transparency through the perspex.

This photo on the left shows the small perspex study on the top, with an unpainted sheet of perspex sandwiched up against it underneath. The small study has been varnished, whilst the unpainted sheet has been varnished on only one side - the left hand side. It can be seen that there is a cloudy sheet masking the black paint underneath. I think the varnish on the painted study is slightly more cloudy because the acrylic paint hadn't dried for the full 24 hours before applying the varnish, and so it smudged slightly.


The poor visibility from the acrylic varnish is made even more obvious by the way it distorts light when looking through it into the distance, as in this photo on the left.

However, I've come to the decision that this distorting effect is actually quite appropriate for a painting depicting water in a pond, after all when is pond water ever crystal clear? For the parts of the perspex painting that are left free of acrylic paint, the varnish will act as a thin veil separating the lower levels of paint from the upper levels of paint.

Sample on Perspex

Having never painted onto perspex before, I wanted to be sure that the logistics of it were thought through before starting the full size painting. My plan was to incorporate three layers of paint - the canvas, the front of the perspex and also the back of the perspex - but I wanted to make sure that painting on the back of the perspex would actually contribute something constructive to the image.

This first photo shows one of the portraits roughly painted onto the front layer of perspex. There are strands and splatters of green on the back layer, representing the pond weed, whilst the dark paint underneath is a layer of canvas painted with acrylic, representing the mud. I was satisfied at this stage that these three layers worked well together.

Logistically I had a problem with how to stick the canvas and perspex together to made a solid and sturdy whole. Initially I'd thought to use glue around the edges, but this didn't seem satisfactory as I thought the glue would be visible. Researching further into the work of Brendan Stuart Burns, who also uses perspex in his aquatic paintings, I decided to emulate his technique and completely embed the perspex in paint, thereby using the paint as an adhesive.


This second photo shows the thick layer of paint that was prepared ready to embed the perspex into. I mixed in a lot of PVA glue to make absolutely sure that the two surfaces would bond (Burns also uses wax in his oil and perspex paintings which contributes to the adhesive properties).

This third photo shows the plastering tool, used as Gerhard Richter does, to drag the paint across the canvas - it also served to mix the paint and glue together, creating an even distribution of glue.

The final photo shows the small study embedded in the paint. The effect that I'm most pleased with is that the bottom layer of paint still looks wet and fluid. This is very different to the study shown in the first photo above, where the texture of the canvas can be seen through the transparent perspex. Though the full three dimensional effect isn't noticeable in a photo of the study it is very effective when seen in the flesh. The perspex itself is 5 mm thick, so there is quite a contrast between the front and the back layers, mimicking the effect of looking through water. Seeing the three layers of paint interacting together validated my decision to paint on the back of the perspex, as it would have been impossible to paint the strand and splatters of pond weed onto the wet layer of paint used on the canvas.

Painting on Copper

Joan Miro The Two Philosophers Oil on copper. 1936. Image from the MoMA website.

Painting onto perspex has brough up an issue that needs to be dealt with - should I camouflage the brush strokes or incorporate them into the texture of the painting? In my small perspex study I tried to camouflage the marks by smudging them with a cloth and spraying with water so they would blend together. However seeing this painting by Joan Miro on display in the Tate Modern made me think that incorporating the brush strokes would be worth experimenting with.

The Two Philosophers is painted with oil on a sheet of copper which creates a completely smooth surface for the paint to glide on and prevents the paint from sinking in, therefore each one of the brushstrokes is clearly visible. This smooth non-porous surface is very similar to a sheet of perspex, so it's a technique that I'll be including in my work.

Gerhard Richter

Untitled. Image taken from the Bridgeman Education site.

Gallery Exhibiting work by Gerhard Richter, Hamburg Kunsthall, Hamburg, Germany, c. 1995. Image from the Bridgeman Education Site.

Gerhard Richter S With Child 1995 Oil on canvas, 52 x 56 cm. Image from the Bridgeman Education site.

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/quotes/

This link to the Gerhard Richter website includes a photo at the bottom centre of the page showing Richter dragging one of the large squgeegee tools that he uses to add more paint to the canvas whilst also dislodging and redistributing paint already applied underneath. It's the technique he would have used for image Untitled which I included above. Though no dimension sizes are given on the Bridgeman site it's obviously very large from seeing it in the context of the Hamburg Kunsthall in relation to the other painting.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?venueid=2&roomid=4896

The Tate Modern have a room of his paintings on display at the moment which will be very interesting to view when I go there next week.

At the moment I'm visualising using this technique of applying multiple layers of paint to represent the depths of the water, and on top of this will be applied the layer of perspex with further painting applied on top for the reflections of the figures looking down, and the pond life growing around the edges.

The painting S with Child is particularly interesting for its combination of representational painting and the blurring technique involving the squeegee. This would work very effectively for capturing the ephemeral reflections on the surface of the perspex.

lucien freud and A.N. wilson

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1019795/What-dreadful-painting-tells-art-corrupting-power-money-mans-contempt-female-sex.html

The article that I used for the Critical Review on Lucian Freud. Used it as a counter argument for the "truth telling" in Freud's paintings.

The final image for the Minimalist Seascape project

This photo kind of shows the neon glow that I was referring to in the previous post. I think this has something to do with the fact that there is such a difference between the midnight blue/black on the sides and the shimmering multi hued blue in the centre.

For some reason the posts are showing the photos as verticals instead of horizontals, which they are meant to be, but I have to admit that once I'd finished the painting and was storing it upright to dry I found just as much satisfaction out of viewing the painting vertically was as I did viewing it horizontally. It brings me back to the comments I was making about the work of Barnett Newman and the painting Uriel which has vertical zips but works for me as a valid image of the sea/sky/shore.

When I asked my husband for his interpretation of the painting he said it reminded him of the sea at night, and also the haze of atmosphere above the earth when viewed from space. I like the fact that it can be viewed in these different ways and is open to interpretation.

It also unexpectedly reminds me of the painting Untitled, 1917/1918 by Olga Rosanova, who I also saw in the Abstract Art book by Mel Gooding, and is shown in this link here,

http://radicalart.info/nothing/monochrome/1D/index.html

For a project that could be viewed in quite a limited way I'm pleased with the outcome and the final image.