Figure and backdrop

Thomasin Dewhurst · 09-28-2007, 07:35 PM

A new one. I thought I would leave it on the side of being unfinished to avoid the usual killing of the thing. I might perhaps do a little more here and there if anything seems glaring whilst looking at it on the computer screen.

It is 30" x 40", oil on canvas.

Here 's a link to the full painting on my website. It doesn't come out all that clearly on the forum as it is in landscape format.

(Last I heard I sold a drawing at the Blackheath Gallery show! Yay!)

Allan Rahbek · 09-29-2007, 03:57 AM

Thomasin,
it's wonderful, I like the coherence and energy of it.

Congratulations with the Blackheath sale, Yayay !

Thomasin Dewhurst · 10-01-2007, 11:24 AM

Thank-you very much, Bill. I am honoured you posted a response to my work, and even more honoured you like it! With regards to the technical process, I find it is more a matter of attitude or mindset than deliberate technique. Obviously there is a particular way I put down paint which does constitute technique, but it is not something that I know at the beginning of a painting. It is something I end up with after a long and frustrating process of trying to make the painting work.

With this one I had Klimt in mind because of a post of Sharon's where she mentioned green being the shadow. I have been working with a yellow artificial light and skylight above, which gives a blue hue, and those colours have been so thrilling to paint it has made me much more profoundly aware of the emotional impact of colour in a painting (hence the new appreciation of Van Gogh). I have also had Egon Schiele at the back of my mind for ages as I love those strong deliberate graphic lines. But to start painting like someone else however much you are attracted to their work is impossible (or has been so far) - impossible in that the essence of the artist you are imitating is lost.

So the process I underwent with this painting involved a great deal of getting rid of dissatisfying areas of paint. I would scrape off the fore figure so that it would become more in tune with the back figure, and then do the same with the back figure. This constant redoing had the effect of training my eye and hand to simplify things and the get to the core of what it was about the figure and light I was honestly responding to. Eventually my original intention to paint like Klimt was displaced by trying to paint the sense of solid, strong, taut flesh, and beautiful bone structure so that the lines and modelling (although the modelling is also a lot about line) were as expressive of the figure and action as the stance of the figure itself. I mentioned to Sharon that "my inner Klimt was coming through" and what I meant was that I was now painting my own paint marks that had a similar feeling to Klimt's but were arrived at through my own invention rather than merely imitating what I thought was happening in a work of Klimt.

So the technique is developed with painting the painting. I did find, though, that drawing and sketching, which I have been doing a lot of lately (outside, drawing trees) has helped tremendously. Drawing within a restricted time-frame and having the idea of doing a "sketch" really helps free your hand. I started, as I have not really done anything landscapy for over a decade, trying hard and neatly to get a feeling of space and depth as all good landscapes artists must (here , for example), but after some weeks I tended to want to draw just trees, and not the whole landscape (something to do with my need to paint single central figures in my figurative work), and then, even more simply, I just wanted to draw the movement of the tree and the line of the trunk and the solidity of the leaves as a whole (here , for example).

With regards to how I put paint down and what I put down. I tend to sculpt the contours of the figure. I sort of rub the sides that recede with foreshortening (the side of the cheeks or under the chin) with the side of the paintbrush, and scumble on the areas that are looked at head-on (the front of the cheek, for example). A sort of actual physical sculpting with the brush.

With the colour, I just play until it works. I am so practiced at scraping-off that a little risk-taking doesn't bother me too much any more.

Addendum: Just a short note - I think my approach is one where I paint, for example, a convincing schematic three-dimensional tube and the reshape it to look like an arm. In other words make the subject - the figure - look like the painting rather than vice-versa. I taught some students of 17 / 18 years old who were so much lacking in concentration and so bored with what they were doing (which was a rather dead still-life). They were bored because to accurately render that still-life was so far removed from being what they could do. It was just a waste of time telling them to look at the shadows, highlights etc. It wasn't that they couldn't see these things. It was rather that they had no idea how to put them down on paper.

So, instead, I got them to simply make gradations from black to white, then to make these gradations into shapes, and then to make up their own fantastical shapes and pictures with their new knowledge of how to make flat marks look three-dimensional. The class was silent with concentration and enjoyment, and worked beyond the end of the class bell. And the were so pleased with what they had done!

I am tending to do my paintings this way. Using these exercises as starting point for my work rather than studies you might do before making a painting. By doing this, I am working within what I know I can make paint do, rather than being a slave to the figure or model. I think boredom and painters block comes from working outside what you know you can do, and the unpleasant and arduous task of trying to make things work and then ending unsatisfied really saps all your creative energy, and you have no time or energy left to really create what you want to.

Thomasin Dewhurst · 10-01-2007, 11:37 AM

Dear Sharon

Thank-you, as always, for your support and enthusiasm. Your paintings, ideas and energy inspire and excite me, and can't WAIT either to see what you are going to paint when you are commission-free!

Sharon Knettell · 10-02-2007, 08:37 AM

Thomasin,

I have seen so many color theories out there, Munsell, Reilly etc. These interminably boring approaches to color miss the point. Color IS emotional. You cannot tell if a color works unless it is in front of you. It is part of the play and fun of painting. It literally has to sing. It can be bold or subdued but the exquisite interplay of color felt is beyond all theorizing.

You understand that.

Carlos Ygoa · 09-29-2007, 10:03 AM

Thomasin,

Aha! So here it is , finally...
This is a very interesting piece--so much to look at. I like the way the harmonies in the background work, the yellows and the purple polarizing each other at opposing corners, and in between there is a sort of chorus going on among the other colours. And the modelling of the figures is again up to your usual level of excellence. I can imagine you would be quite happy with this one.

And congratulations on the Blackheath sale!...I

Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco · 09-29-2007, 12:20 PM

Thomasin, another of your beautiful works, so higly emotional and quite enigmatic at the same time. What an intensity !
Ilaria

Thomasin Dewhurst · 09-29-2007, 12:25 PM

Thanks Allan. You know, you're right! I was wondering why the foreground figure was not coming forward enough at the shoulder and kept on trying to redraw the shoulder to make that happen; when all the time it was the background figure's arm. A case of being too much in love with a certain virtuoso patch of paint.

Hello Carlos. Thanks for your kind comments. I am glad you noticed the yellow/purple polarities. That was something that started off accidentally ( I had some yellow pansies around), but I quite liked the effect of it lengthening the painting across the diagonal. (It's something I did with my small garden at home too. I made the focal point cut right across to the farthest corner, with the line of view being in the diagonal. It makes a rather cramped rectangle open out into something much more elegant and inviting to walk through.) I must admit I am rather happy with this one, and I have learned to appreciate Van Gogh more than ten-fold with doing it.

(I got my first Van Gogh book too - a birthday present. It's my birthday today.)

Thanks very much, Ilaria, too - just saw your comment now. I do appreciate your input. (I hope the preparation for your show is going smoothly)

Carlos Ygoa · 09-29-2007, 02:32 PM

Well, well then...HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
It

William Whitaker · 09-30-2007, 02:27 PM

That's a wonderful painting Thomasin. You've handled it with great integrity, skill and that extra something that constitutes art. Your handling of form in flat lighting, and doing it so wonderfully well, is extremely hard. I hope you would share more of your technical knowledge here. Handling light on form is what painting is all about and your refreshing viewpoint is a great asset here.

Bill