Colour Derived from Notan

Watercolour - Notan Exercise

I've been spending a lot of time studying a PDF version of Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow. I found the book through a link posted by Katherine Tyrrell at Making a Mark. Katherine has been posting some wonderful instruction and references on Composition and Colour over the past few weeks.

The tulip exercise (above) came from the Dow book. As Dow points out Japanese ink painters enhance their harmonies of tone-composition by mingling slight quantities of hue with ink. This exercise involved mixing a set of three grey washes and painting the same design a number of times, gradually increasing the amount of hue mixed with the grey. I find the results quite elegant and it has been a great lesson from that point of view.

I've had a lot of distractions this week because all the art references I have bought on line finally turned up on the same day! I'd been waiting over two months for my 10 minute DVD art lessons with John Lovett. Below are a couple of quick efforts based on John's exercises and reference photos.

The most fascinating aspect of these DVDs is the opportunity to watch Lovett push and pull the the pigment on the paper and the lovely calligraphic marks he makes with pen or liner brush.

After John Lovett - exercise in Cobalt Blue & Light Red

This was a failure if you've seen the original, so I tested adding some brown ink and spritzing it. Disaster but fun. I learnt a lot.

After John Lovett - Outback palette

This was fun because the colours are so warm and it reminds me of home. I certainly didn't do John justice in this one. It's only a detail from his bigger painting. I will try another of these with my own outback photos.

Also in the mail came The Simple Secret to Better Painting by Greg Albert and Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. Can you see why I've been distracted?

Composition Exercise Evolves in Acrylic

Acrylic on Oil Sketch Paper 13.5 x 25cm

I'm really happy with this one! As far as composition goes, I just went for what felt right.

The reason I'm happy with it is because I just sat down and painted it, no pencil or charcoal lines, just straight in with the brush. I know there's nothing new about that approach but it's a first for me. The result was some less than real proportions but it's more painterly, isn't it?

I really enjoyed this limited palette. First the entire paper was covered with Yellow Ochre and then over-painted with Titanium White, Payne's Grey and Mars Black.

Exploring Composition in Pastel

Pastel on tinted paper 13.5 x 27.5cm

I'm closely following Katherine Tyrrell's study of Composition on Making a Mark.

Katherine posted a treasure of a link which gave me access to a pdf version of Arthur Wesley Dow's book Composition. It's a wonderful read.

Inspired by all this study I went back to my last oil painting, photographed it and imported it into Photoshop where I turned it into a greyscale image. I then looked for a more interesting crop within the painting.

This study is on a sand coloured ground, and I limited myself to a grey, black & white pastel pencil. I'm considering giving my pastels away, as I seem to be incapable of making clean, elegant marks with them.

I went back to my original photograph for this sketch and I think that was a mistake because I preferred the proportions of the cropped painting where I eliminated that corner of another building on the left. Photos always seduce me with detail.

Anyway, I think I will now try this composition in watercolour and then maybe later in acrylic on a coloured ground inspired by David Hockney's The Bradford Exchange (also found on the official Hockney website kindly posted by Katherine.)