After copying a Picasso last week, I started seeing so many things differently! Palette, shapes, composition…my copy of his painting in among my own paintings made my work pale in comparison. 🙁
OK, well, no surprise there.
I tried to return to what I had been doing before the Picasso copy and started using colors from his palette to attack this work that was already in progress. Picasso kept interfering as I struggled with thoughts of the strength of his work.
A few days and many changes later, I finally got back into the rhythm of my own vision and ended up here. FWIW.
This is kind of a goofy little painting that I was really just noodling around on. It went through several changes over about a week of occasional noodling, and this is where it ended up. I gave it that title because it reminds me of the little donkeys I saw in Morocco being led across the desert or in the medinas, stacked practically to the sky with all sorts of household goods, water, cans, people, rugs, etc. Mighty little fellows!
On Google+, a very vibrant community of artists has been growing all summer and fall. A challenge was proposed to do a study after Picasso or an interpretation of one or more of his works. While most of the other artists did an interpretation, I chose to copy this delightful painting of Picasso’s. Perhaps I am trying to make up for two copies I never completed in art school.
When I first found this work online, I thought it looked like a cartoon version of a Picasso painting, or what Picasso would paint if he were painting a cartoon version of his own work. It is such a fun image, I couldn’t resist!
I couldn’t find this painting in any of my books on Picasso. Online, there are many copies of this painting, but they are all different in how the colors are displayed. I finally found what I can only guess to be a fairly accurate version, which I found at this website, at the far end of row 7: Picasso paintings. This image seems less manipulated to me than many of the others online (for instance, you can see the cracks in the paint very clearly) and the colors strike me as being more representative of what colors would have been available to Picasso at that time. However, I’m no expert, so don’t take what I say as definitive.
Even though this painting displays practically the whole spectrum of the color palette, I think Picasso used only 8 or 9 colors to mix that whole spectrum. These are the colors I decided to use to attempt to replicate this Picasso work:
flake white
ivory black
cadmium yellow lemon
cadmium yellow medium
cadmium red medium
alizarin crimson
ultramarine blue
cobalt blue
I also used a smidge of cadmium green to green up the shape in the lower right-hand corner, though now I think he may have gotten that brighter green mix with cerulean blue instead.
The 8 colors I think Picasso used in Nude and Still Life, c. 1931
I did try to mix my colors to match his exactly, and now that I am able to view a photo of my painting next to the work I was using for reference, I see some differences; but overall, I think it’s pretty close.
I also tried to match the way he applied paint, though as I painted this whole thing in two days, and my paint was wet throughout the whole process, I wasn’t really able to replicate what I think he did. For example, I think he may have begun with the black lines and then painted the colored areas afterward, as you can see quite a few areas where the colors are painted over the black lines, leaving just a tiny bit of black peeking out from under the edges. I painted the colored areas in first, as I knew it would cause a terrible mess if the colored paint ran into the still wet black lines.
There are areas, though, where he very clearly painted white lines to cover black lines. I think he probably did this for the purposes of the design of this canvas, as once the white lines are applied, it really changes how the whole image reads, plus they help pull your eye around the canvas, from the head down what I think is an arm, around the–are they breasts?–then a hop to the white lines through the blue areas down to the bottom left and center of the canvas.
Picasso’s “Nude and Still Life, c. 1931″My copy After Picasso’s “Nude and Still Life, c. 1931″
Has copying this Picasso helped me understand him? I don’t know; I do feel like I understood his process of painting this painting, though I still cannot figure out what all the parts of this painting are and what they belong to. Wall, floor, chair rail and baseboard, pitcher, head and eyes, I get; the rest is a mystery to me. If anyone knows more about what Picasso did in this work, what he meant, or how to read his image, I would be delighted to hear.
If you’d like to see all the other artists’ interpretations of Picasso, you can find them here on Google+.
“Quest for Magic” Oil on canvas 12″ x 12″ 2011 Marilyn Fenn
The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.
– Alberti
The title of this painting could embody a state of grace that many people seek throughout their lives. It could symbolize the wishes that most artists aspire to obtain through their creations. Or it could represent my recent series of abstract paintings. In this case, it represents another painting in the series through which I am beginning to achieve a long sought after enchantment with my process and pleasure in the final result.
Every painting, and perhaps especially abstract paintings, start out as a journey with the destination unknown. The thrill of exploration is a great part of the goal. What can I make my colors and brushstrokes do? How do I push the paint around in interesting ways? How can I make an intriguing composition out of nothing but colored oil paint and a few shapes?
These first few works in the series are small and slow, and I’m still finding my footing, but I’m really looking forward to more and larger and more confident works. I’m thrilled to have reached this part of my journey, and excited about the rest of the trip. I hope it is a long one!
This is one of my favorite paintings from my latest series of abstracts; this one is from last weekend. These new works are very process-oriented, though of course, I do aim for a final happy outcome. This series is primarily about paint: pushing it over, around, through, beside, until I’m satisfied with the composition, shapes, colors, brushstrokes, and amount of paint. I do love the soft palette I achieved in this painting!
Of all the paintings I’ve done, this may be my favorite painting so far. I love the colors, the nice thick paint, and the general happiness of this painting. It evolved from the work I did on the last five abstract paintings. I’m really enjoying pushing thicker and slicker paint into, over, around, and through previous brushstrokes, and the wonderful color mixing that happens on the canvas. Working this way is going to be fun!
I have a few paintings from a couple years ago that never really worked, so I painted over one of them a couple months ago, but never got it to a finishing point. Last week, I reworked the painting one more time. It’s a bit rough and looks slightly different and much better from a distance, so I may either re-work it (again) or paint what I like from it in a larger more intentional work. However, some of my friends like it just like it is, so I have decided to live with it for a bit first.
I love how the visual ideas one entertains in the course of being an artist may lay dormant for a time, and then return as a nice surprise. 🙂
Last Wednesday night, with a head full of visual ideas, I entered the studio and started trying to get those ideas out on canvas. This is the first of 3 paintings I did in less than 24 hours. While this is not exactly what I envisioned I would be creating, so far, I’m very happy with the direction.
Painting abstractly, or non-objectively, is a much more intuitive process for me than the planned paintings from life. I start with some loose ideas for shapes, colors, and composition, begin adding some patches of paint, and then follow the brushes to see where they lead. In this case, they led back to some similar imagery I was exploring 2 years ago (see “Alien Kitchen” and “Twenty-Sixth Day Plus 100″ from the Hot Hot Summer series of Works on Paper).
I don’t think these paintings would have taken shape the way they did were it not also for my 2-month excursion back into representational paintings. I learned a lot from seriously concentrating on making brushstrokes (and I still have a lot left to learn), but I was champing at the bit to get back to abstraction. In just over 4 days, I’ve now created seven new small abstract paintings and started a couple of others. I’ll be posting one a day unless something (like work, illness or social life) causes me to take a break.
I intend to continue painting my new abstracts alla prima, or “all at once,” as I did with most of my recent still life paintings. What this means is the painting is started and finished in one painting session, while the paint is still wet. It lends a freshness to the work, in that my visual ideas of that day are transmitted to the painting in that session, but more importantly—at least when working in oil—the paints and paint strokes flow very well into, over, around, and through all the other paint strokes on the canvas. The other main option is to work in layers (“indirect painting”), where new paint is laid down over dry paint from a previous session, rather than becoming physically integrated with the earlier applications of paint. Plenty of artists work by painting in layers, and it’s an equally valid way of working, but alla prima is my preference.
