The Daily Painting Routine

Analysis of the previous day's work stimulated us to thinking carefully about our successes/ failures of the previous day. By far the most difficult thing for all of us was editing the scene in front of us and taking away enough to provide the basis for studio painting. It followed that we should make a concerted effort to enhance our skill level in observing, editing and making crucial decisions about the approach to any composition.

Martin put up the photograph below as a prompt (scare tactic!) and asked how sense could be made of it in translating it into something simplified that could be built upon.




The following three pictures are how he then stripped this down to its essence in terms of a composition that had a focal point, colour notes and tonal relationships.




M. Kinnear

M. Kinnear

M. Kinnear

To summarise the approach:

1) On a daily basis, take a difficult photograph or go outside. Decide on a focal point and from that decide on a compositional plan;

2) Decide between a tonal or colour approach as the dominant feature for your composition;

3) Unify the elements, creating as few blocks of colour or tone as possible;

4) Block in the shapes then develop them with tones or hues keeping lit areas opaque and shadow areas translucent;

5) Try to minimise the detail to a few important and suggestive - rather than illustrative - marks.

Martin has published the routine on his blog, 'The Studio' at http://oilstudio.blogspot.com/

The next three panels are a selection of the ones that I produced in the ensuing feverish activity.

Light in the forest - 11" x 9" MDF panel

Sea Cave - 11" x 9" MDF panel

Boats laid up for the night - 11" x 9" MDF panel

This procedure along with Notan sketches provide significant source material for paintings and most of all underline, what for many of us, is the most difficult hurdle in developing our painting that being forgetting the ingrained search for photographic type imagery in our work. The essence of good painting being the way we draw the viewer into an interactive approach with the work prompted by the suggestive marks we have created on the canvas.

Tan or Notan

After a couple of days scouting around the North Norfolk coast it was off to the Norfolk Painting School for two days of the most intense thinking and practice that I've ever had. The title of the course was 'On Location' and was to be a mixture of working both outside and in the studio.

As is usual with Martin's courses there was to be a healthy mix of theory, demonstration and practice. We began by looking at a variety of works by masters and asking ourselves how they worked as paintings. Then on to look at ways of recording for the purposes of preparation for studio painting, using sketches by people like Turner and Constable as exemplars. Here we were urged to see the difference between Mass and Line and asking ourselves where and when each technique is appropriate. The end of this session was to grasp the usefulness of the Notan as the basis of ensuring that we had an arrangement of elements that would produce a coherent composition. We all produced a series of notans in response to a picture of a cathedral depicting how we would select a method of presenting the basic elements in light and dark to make a pleasing picture. Below are a set produced by Martin, showing a range of options in terms of lighting and shadow.

Notans - Martin Kinnear

Our next task was to give some thought to rendering scenes by applying paint in a simplified way but using the same underlying principle - outline the way the final image will be presented.

The next two pictures show different approaches to another cathedral picture.

Durham - M. Kinnear

Durham - M. Carney

Martin then demonstrated how the most complex scenes could be reduced to simple working sketches, but more of this later. It was now time to head outdoors. The venue for our afternoon session was Burnham Overy Staithe, a fascinating small village on the coast with typical Norfolk creeks, rapidly changing water levels and lots of boats. A place that would test us in terms of simplifying the scene in front of us. Our object was to produce working studies for future use. The group was small, three students, and we all produced at least four oil sketches that could be used as the basis for further paintings. Interested passers-by stopped regularly to comment on the mounting body of work being produced and laid on the grass at our feet. An intense session with lots to think about and criticise.

The two panels below are indicative of the work that I did. They show a similar view but the second demonstrates a different degree of decision making in terms of how I saw potential in the scene before me. The second will be the source sketch for a studio painting, hopefully started soon. Hopefully there is a greater feeling of light in this interpretation.

Burnham Overy Staithe 1 - Oil on MDF panel 11"x 9"

Burnham Overy Staithe 2 - Oil on MDF panel 11" x 9"