The Storm Before the Calm
Attempting to sketch with coloured pencils while holding onto an umbrella in stormy winds was my Monday this week. The weather certainly wasn’t on our side, and our morning in Serpentine Park was partly spent avoiding downpours and getting our sketchbooks wet. After a rather unsuccessful morning, I decided to visit Serpentine Gallery and discovered a series of paintings currently being shown by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag.
Study from the Serpentine Gallery
Break out, Break out!
Midweek we had a flexible day exploring different approaches to our own personal work lead by Julian Bell. Working from an initial combination of drawing from memory and references we brought along, we ended up using those first drawings to then create new works from. I of course surrendered to my gouache in the afternoon, but was advised by Julian that even though I can find success in my smaller gouache paintings, I need to break out and be happy making “bad” work.
Imaginative Gouache Paintings in Sketchbook
Forgetting my Being
For the final section of this blog post I actually wanted to speak a little bit about some oil paintings I’m currently working on. The vast amount of drawing I’ve done on The Drawing Year so far has resulted in my mind constantly swirling with countless combinations of imagery and things I want to try. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or resources to materialize all of my ideas, so one thing I find difficult sometimes is choosing what to paint.
Looking at the works of Vincent Van Gogh, Edouard Vuillard, Matthew Wong and Caspar David Friedrich, they all address subjects in a kind of painting language that I’ve been interested in since I first began to paint in oils. The lone figure engulfed by the immense reality of the natural world, searching, finding, lost and pondering on existence is what I want to somehow get right with my brush.
Imaginative Ink Drawing and Pencil Drawing
In my pencil and ink sketches, I’ve been trying to work out what exactly builds the foundation for an effective oil painting. I find that at the moment, starting with a blank canvas and simply going in purely from instinct is something I’m incapable of doing so I always have to start with drawing. The drawing above informed the painting “Forgetting My Being” below.
Forgetting my Being, Oil on Canvas (40cm x 50cm), 2022
The temptation to scale up so that the natural scenes I’m depicting become sizable objects in front of the viewer is hard to resist, but I know that the patterns and brushwork I’m trying to navigate my spaces with still have a long way to go and I think making smaller works will help me work that out quicker.
Above is another oil painting (see the painting on the right) I’m working on that is currently in progress. Initially, I had based the composition and figurative element on the story of Narcissus, but as it has emerged I do not see the figure as someone obsessed with the sight of their own reflection, but rather a journey of someone looking to find themselves.
To keep up to date with more of my work and what I’m up to, you can visit my Instagram and Youtube channel.
See you next week,
Tomas
