LESSON PLANS WINTER TERM 2023 (1st half) Lesson 3, translating the drawing into a painting.
Part of the objective of this project was to find the shapes within a landscape that describe distance, and, as well as thinking about a more abstract final landscape, to somehow retain the notion of foreground and distance through those shapes. In this lesson I'm asking my students to use their working drawings made in the last lesson and translate them into a finished painting.
Above you can see the early stages of a painting I'm working on (and some close-ups) - I'm looking for precision with my shapes but experimenting freely with the paint itself.
Winter Term 1st half 2023 – lesson 3: Creating an abstract painting from last lesson’s working drawing.
· You can work in the medium of your choice although you need to have access to white paint in order to be able to re-negotiate parts of your painting. Oils, acrylics and gouache are all good, or watercolour with white gouache or emulsion paint (I have emulsion paint with me).
· You can start by painting your canvas/paper an all over colour or you can leave it white.
· I want you to be able to work freely – which doesn’t mean imprecisely. Using your working drawing, mark out all the main shapes with painted line. If using oils or acrylics, this the paint at this stage (white spirit or water).
· Work into these main shapes with different colours so that you can see clearly what the shapes are. Make sure they sit in the right place within the borders of your canvas/page i.e. larger shapes tend to be in the foreground and smaller shapes tend to be in the distance. This helps to affirm the feeling of distance in your painting.
· Within each of these greater shapes are smaller shapes. These will be clear due to the varying tones within each shape (or you wouldn’t see them!).
· If working in oils or acrylics, play within the greater shapes. Use thick paint, scrape it back, makes dots and dashes. Now is the time to experiment because very little of this layer will show ion the final surface. This is mostly a ‘finding your way’ underlayer.
· If using watercolour, work wet-into-wet within the greater shapes, you might want to introduce your white paint at this stage, it makes a lovely effect wet-into-wet and creates softer light areas.
· If using oils which takes time to dry, you’ll want to move your paint around rather than layer it. It’ll need a day to a week to be dry enough to paint over.
· Gradually introduce details of light, dark and textures.
Next lesson: Options, you can work on the painting begun today OR for those who’ve finished, I’ll have a watercolour exercise for you ‘People in context’. Bring the medium you’re working with today, or watercolours for the exercise.
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