On the Easel - out of my comfort zone

Welcome to my blog! Here I will be sharing some of my techniques and approaches to my painting.

For my first blog I'd like to share with you a method for starting an oil painting, in the hope of exploring with you the various ways in which an artist can do this. To give you a bit of background to my artistic experience I think I should start by telling you that I first used oils to paint with when still at school. It was introduced to me by my then art teacher and I have never really stopped painting with this medium. That was over 30 years ago now! I've always loved this medium because I feel it to be versatile and there are many ways to work with it: appealing to impressionist painters, those inspired by the old masters and artists who like a bit of texture! That is just to name a few ways to use oils, I think there is much scope for any artist to explore this medium and decide for themselves what they like the most about oil paints.

Over the years as an oil painter I have explored various ways to apply it and to start a painting. For most of those years I was in the habit of drawing out my subject matter onto my canvas using either graphite or charcoal, up to about 2014/15. Whilst trying out new methods for teaching my student groups I decided to try out sketching out the outline of my subject matter directly onto my canvas using the oil paint. This felt (at the time) alien to me! I knew it was a way to start an oil painting but I had become accustomed to using graphite or charcoal and relying on the fact that these two drawing tools are easy to erase, which can feel like a sort of safety net. Painting directly onto the canvas can be a scary business! However there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

Fast forward to more recent times and starting my paintings with just the paint is what I am used to. The main advantages for me are the fact that I can sketch out and block in a first opaque layer in one. I can also rectify any compositional errors as I am doing this and a line of oil direct onto a canvas can just be washed back with solvent if it happens to be in the wrong place. So why am I telling you all of this you may ask! Well, I recently decided to challenge myself with the start of my current work in progress, to see if I could achieve a more satisfying result with my composition and painting quality. I have therefore started a piece using a pencil, boy this was a challenge!

Here is an example of my normal way of working

Here's how I start, sometimes using a coloured ground so that my light colours show up

Sketching and blocking the first layer of paint as I go

Still on the first layer of paint, I don't add detail until I have finished blocking in the first layer for the whole painting

The finished piece with glazing and detail

I do use photographic reference however I make up a lot of my composition as I am going along! This is an integral part of my artistic process as it allows for freedom which I feel to be important in my work. My painting style doesn't really show that this is the case and appears quite tight, however there is more creativity involved in my work! I tend not to work from edge to edge of a reference image to copy it exactly and can often start in the middle of a flower and just allow it to “grow” out onto the canvas. I also allow the painting to dictate what needs doing next.

This is the cropped photo I will be using for my current work in progress

For another piece I decided to work very differently to what I am used to. I wanted to adhere to my reference photo as much as possible and yet I still ended up improvising! (reference photo)

I'm sure that there is much discussion regarding the use of projectors and drawing aids for starting paintings. I myself have never used anything like that. However, frankly I find it would be impossible for an artist to create a very large scale piece without using such an aid. To scale up and achieve accuracy I decided then to use a grid!

The first day of drawing.....!

This is the full drawing on 24" x 24" canvas completed over two days

When I was at school this was a method we covered in a lesson and I struggled so much that I ended up re-doing the piece free hand and it was better than the one I used a grid for. This told me that it just didn't suit me and I often tell my students that some people work really well using the grid method and some people don't! We're just all different. Why I decided to use a grid then ought to tell you just how much I wanted to challenge myself. I found it to be incredibly challenging! I've managed to achieve it but in the time it took me to draw the whole thing out I would have usually sketched out and blocked in a first layer of paint using my now usual method.

My next post will show you progress of this painting and how I feel it to be going....