A Week of Momentum
After dressing fairly light for what was meant to be a warm day, I spent the morning slowly freezing as I completed a couple of gouache pieces in Brockwell Park.
Gouache in Sketchbook
As the autumn colours were beginning to show, I chose to work with a golden colour scheme and lots of smaller brushstrokes inspired by the colourful leaves that were dotted around the park. On the left side, I found the silhouette of the tree against the park cafe really interesting - I feel like this is a shape I might use in a future oil painting.
As for the afternoon, I was told about a sheltered garden area by my classmates over lunch and that’s where I spent the rest of the day.
Despite being much warmer in the afternoon, my palette became much cooler. I think the morning pieces were stronger in both brushwork and colour, but the cut-off garden space was an interesting place to work in.
A Day of Wringing and Dabbing
This week’s class with calligrapher Ewan Clayton was spent learning the movements of “wringing” and “dabbing” in relation to drawing. The slow, rigid curves of wringing was again quite a frustrating way to draw, but “dabbing” was apparently more my thing.
"Wringing" on the Left, "Dabbing" on the Right
Bathing in Ink
The subject we were working with this week in Enduring Images was looking at the history of bathing in art, and questioning how it might fit into a modern context. Despite my long streak of using colour in this class, I actually moved away from colour this week and stuck with ink to work on some larger pieces and think tonally.
As you can see above, I worked a lot with a smaller sketchbook throughout the session too. Sometimes getting down smaller sketches first really helped inform my larger ink pieces later in the day. Throughout class I was thinking about Bonnard’s figures and how he would almost render them unnoticed in his work; abstracting certain elements, colours or textures to blend his figures into the different scenes he worked with.
Some of the ink pieces I produced in class actually informed some paintings once I got home. I had so much momentum at the end of the day that I ended up painting until late once I was home. Below you can see two of the pieces (both work in progress) I recently put together, both being oil paint on paper.
A Friday Gone Wrong
As for my trip to The British Museum this week … I don’t really have much to write or show. After a 45-minute wait in a painfully slow queue, the school holidays meant the museum was absolutely packed and I found it extremely difficult to concentrate and do any drawing. So instead of complaining about that, I’ll show a couple of ink studies I did of an Edvard Munch painting that is currently informing another oil painting I have in mind.
Sketchbook Study in Ink
In a similar manner to Munch, I’m planning to paint a warm embrace under a blanket of stars and on this note, this week I want to end with some poetry by Rumi:
Lose yourself,
Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.
Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.
Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.
Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.
Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King.
When you lose yourself before the King you will become the King.
Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloud
that surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.
Now enter that silence.
This is the surest way
to lose yourself.
What is your life about, anyway?
Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.
See you again in a week,
Tomas
