Schiele landscapes

At The Leopold Museum, Vienna, I also saw 'House With A Shingle Roof', an oil painting of a house in his mother's home town. I had no idea that Schiele had painted such strong landscapes. The tiles on the roof were a multitude of colours, but were unified by the graphic black outlines. Again, I stood there for an age peering at it. Then I started drawing it, working from the left hand side, and I started to realise what a complex composition it was.

The museum shop had a very good postcard, which I bought, but I've been unable to find a good picture on-line to put on the blog, so instead I've posted my study, partly done from the original painting, then using the postcard.

Egon Schiele - negative spaces

I went to Vienna a few weeks ago, and it was the most amazing trip of my life. I'm sure to refer back to it a lot in future, but for the time being I want to talk about my Schiele experience.

The day we were setting off, a book on Viennese Art arrived, so I dove into it, reading about the Succession in relation to the politics of the time. The last artist covered in the book was Schiele. What I knew of him was from postcards I'd seen as a student of line drawings of women with red hair and legs akimbo.

So, while in Vienna, I visited the Leopold Museum, and got my socks knocked off. Nearly a whole floor is dedicated to Schiele, and it holds, amongst other treasures, his 'Seated Male Nude - a self portrait'. It's about 2 metres square, and it grabbed me from the first.

I'm not sure how long I stood in front of it, about 20 minutes or so? I kept discovering different things as walked closer to it, then stood back again over and over; the graphic outlines round the body, the over-painted chalky background, the hairs on the legs like twisted wires, the curious spaces formed by the area between the upraised arm and the head, the belly shape, the three red circles formed by the nipples and the single eye, the way he 'amputated' the limbs...... take a breath! ......the hair, the hip bones, the way he's broken it into composite shapes, and yet still manages to create a solid form, which made me think of Picasso's cubist figures.

I bought a print of it which is now on my living room wall. In fact, when I emerged from the museum and met up with my husband again, I showed him the dozen or so postcards I'd picked up, and asked him if he could guess which one I'd also bought a print of. Amongst them were landscapes, portraits, abstracts, and interiors. He picked the seated male nude straight off, he knows me so well.

A Portrait of a Friend

Actually, he's a friend of my dad, from Eire. But when I first met him, apart from his gentlemanly demeanour, I immediately thought he was a lovely specimen. To paint.

Well, he kindly obliged to be photographed by my dad, and here are some preparatory sketches I've done so far. I also did an ink drawing, but I'd mailed it to my dad before it occurred to me to photograph it for this blog. Because I'm a nincompoop!

It struck me to do some lino prints from the studies. None of the photos have inspired me to do an oil painting. Maybe when I next visit Eire I'll ask him if he'd pose for me in his work van, or in dad's woodwork shop. He strikes me as a great 'Poseidon' maybe.

still here, still making art

My apologies guys.

I'm know in trouble for not updating my blog for yonks.

What have I been doing all this time? Reading about art in Vienna, because I'm visiting there soon. Staring a journal, because of a great book I recently read called 'The Creative Licence, giving yourself permission to be the artist you really are', which is quite a light read, but has extended my concept of what a sketchbook is, what's it's there for. It's also widened what I 'allow' myself to put in mine.

There will be pictures to follow soon, but I just wanted to update my blog today. I'm working in bursts, but I'd like the blog to be a more regular thing I do. So I'm going to extend slightly what I include in it. Instead of just my drawings and paintings, I'm going to include a whole range of creative experiences I have - from books that inspire me, or exhibitions I visit, to ideas I have and what I'd like to do in the future creatively.

over tonked but happy

Here's the lastest stage on my self portrait. I'm very happy with the nose and chin, and the far cheek, but the mouth needs some work and I'd kindly ask you to ignore the eye for the time being. When I was working round the eye and forehead I found I needed to blank out some of the underpainting with the background colour. Whilst doing this I decided to paint in some texture on the background - verticals to the right and some ceiling along the top.

Having just added the image to this post I can see there's still more structural changes to be made. But I felt I was getting to grips with the paint this morning. So much so that, having tonked off some thick paint from the forehead, I found I'd over tonked the chin so that the under painting was showing through more than I'd wanted. That's life, as they say. Or, as the French say 'Une absinthe, garcon!'.

get the structure right

Having taken another look at the under painting I saw that the planes of the face weren't clear, so I brushed on ultramarine blue and lemon yellow, as they go on thinly and dry quickly, to map out the main shadows and highlights. I'm lighting my face with a spotlight mounted on the top of my easel, with a mirror propped next to the canvas, so my head is only about a foot or two away from the canvas I'm working on.

A new painting

I've started on a self portrait in oils today. I found that I was frowned when concentrating furiously, and I liked the wrinkles at gave me. So I stopped painting and did a charcoal study. Then I continued the under painting, tonking* at the end to remove the thickness

I'm excited to see how it will end up, and I hope Bill in Ballaugh will bear with me during these early stages.


* Tonking is laying paper over the painting and rubbing all over with a scrunched up tissue, so that the thickness of paint transfers to the paper, leaving only a thin layer of paint but still most of the detail, on the canvas. This enables the paint to dry relatively quickly to enable you to get on with the next stage, and stops a huge build up of paint in the early states when working fat on lean - which I'll explain another day.

Finished, for the moment at least

Well, here's the finished painting. Thank you to my fantastic hubby who was there to keep me free of distractions while I worked on this.

The last few hours I managed to work on it in my back garden on the lightweight easel I have, so I was in daylight, and not under striplights. Now I want to rip off the roof of the garage and cover it in clear corrigated PVC stuff, to let the light in. In my dreams I think. Actually, in my dreams I'm in an airy attic studio at the back of a hugh victorian terraced house, with the windows open, and the sounds of the kids playing in the garden filtering through a massive cherry tree, the smell of coffee on a hotplate, hubby in the kitchen preparing the fish for dinner....... I have some great dreams.

But don't knock the reality; I have a room of my own, time to paint, money to buy paint, I have my health, so I can paint. Life is good.

I've started so I'll finish......

I didn't want to start another project, with two already on the go, so I'm working again on La Mothe, and it's coming on well.

Today I started work on the hotel facade, to get that cracked, defining the roof, balconies and metal work detail. Then I moved to the pavement and shadows there, and lastly I've gone over the tree branches, as they're key to tie it all in.

Next I'll finish the foliage and highlights to the foreground, and I think I'll be done.

It's started to take on a life of it's own, and I'm finding myself looking more at the painting than the photo I'm working from. I'm also checking it out with my eyes unfocused, to see if I'm achieving a sense of depth.

Now I see it on screen I don't like the roof, and the house on the left is too bright. I also think the sky is too dark, too 'blue' but I don't want to have to over paint it, or it'll fudge the branches. Damn. We live and learn. Maybe I could add a wash to the sky to make it even darker, so the house really stands out!

Any suggestions anyone?

Staring self portraits

I've done my old trick of a Google image search of 'self portraits' and I've found that the vast majority do have intense gazes, and look like they were done while staring into a mirror. I suppose that those of you who know me will pick up on the wide-eyed gaze more than those who don't. Another contributing factor is that the light in the garage studio is very dim, so my pupils are dilated. I want to mess around with mirrors so, like the profile picture, I'm not gazing into my own eyes, but seeing myself from an oblique angle. I also want to place myself in a setting, so that the background is also relevant to the overall picture. Lots of work ahead of me, I know.

Here's some examples of other self portraits I found which appealed to me: