This blog post is about how I am developing ideas in abstract landscape painting It is now three months since I started my landscape project. As an artist who has largely used digital photomontage to explore the world around me, painting is a big departure. It is something that I have wanted to try for a while now. I began a sketchbook project in Lockdown to satisfy my urge to paint and the beginning of my journey can be seen here.
As you can probably tell that after three months of not writing anything, consistency is not my strong point. A mixture of not knowing where to go next and returning to a demanding teaching job have pulled me off track.
In fact the fear of not knowing where to go – all part and parcel of the creative process often stops me communicating at all. However, I have reached a point in my project where I can now see progress where a while ago I din’t feel I was making any.
My last blog ended when I started to explore tonal ranges in the landscape and was daunted by the thought of working with colour.
LIMITED COLOUR PALETTE
Luckily at this point I happened upon the ‘Share your Joy’ course run on Facebook by Artist Louise Fletcher. Here she set a number of exercises designed to be enjoyable, but also to help overcome the fear of painting. The first exercise involved working with a very limited colour palette. I know that limitations are essential to being creative and I like the security of working within them. Therefore this exercise really helped. I realised firstly just how many colours could be mixed from so few. Secondly, I realised that the colours I mixed, would all go together because they were mixed from the same colours. Thirdly I had a limited time to paint, and could work with fewer materials, making that whole exercise less daunting.. Every painting I have worked on since has involved using just three colours, plus black and white.
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I also completed an exercise where I masked off six squares on a sheet and worked in an abstract way across the whole sheet with those colours. I worked quickly and spontaneously, with the idea of landscape in mind. There was something exciting about removing the masking tape to see what individual paintings lie beneath the sprawling marks.
I loved this way of working so much that I continued to use this format to explore painting and colour further.
I realised at this point that I didn’t really understand the structure of landscape. I knew it was layered, but how does one go from the foreground to the background in visual terms? I drew from thumbnails of photographs I had taken to gain a better understanding.
STRUCTURE OF LANDSCAPE
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The next exercise set by Louise worked again with limitations and involved following a set of instructions to make a certain number of marks with different media. I worked from the thumbnails I drew to produce these quick sketches. Each of these drawings contains only about 12 separate marks. I am excited by the looseness and variety of mark making I achieved. I know this is a quality I want to carry forward.
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WORKING BIGGER
I started to mask off bigger squares to paint on. These squares were about 17 -20cm. However, even the slight change in scale affected the impact of the brush marks I was making and I started to work slightly differently.
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MARK MAKING
In the last few painting experiments I had found ways of making marks that I enjoyed. Marks made by scraping into paint, drawing with an oil pastel and painting up to that line or making marks with card board allowed me to add variety. I wanted to take stock and register these marks in my sketchbook as things on their own so I didn’t forget them.
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From this point onwards, I made a conscious effort to be freer in my approach to mark making. It seemed to give the work more energy
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I am getting into a rhythm of painting now and learning that the act of repetition is giving me more confidence. By repeating the process of making, the marks that I like & the colour palette I am learning.
I have started to record and print the process of a painting, as I add more layers. Sketches allow me to visually work through what the painting needs to move forwards.
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DEVELOPING ABSTRACT LANDSCAPE PAINTING
I started working on paper, and have tried a couple of canvas boards and wooden panels. I have noticed that when I try to work from a photograph of landscape, my work becomes tight and forced. At the same time I know I need to observe more of the landscape and how it works. For now I am treading the line between what I think I know about visual appearance of landscape and what I think the painting needs in terms of the way it looks.
By working on many small paintings at once, my work is evolving. I find myself less fearful of making mistakes. By using a limited colour palette, I am becoming more confident in the colours combinations I can achieve. By tracking my work in a sketchbook I can see that even when I feel I am getting nowhere, I can see the progress I am making.
I agree with everything you’ve said here except needing to understand the structure of landscape. I think if your intention is to abstract the landscape the less you think about linear and aerial perspective the better! Like you, I find photographs (and sketches) can be really limiting, on the other hand I get stuck without them! I think your work is going really well- keep it up!
Thanks Colleen. I think you are right, the more I am trying to work from photos with any degree of accuracy. the more ‘stuck’ I am getting. It seems paradoxical! Thinks so much for your encouragement.
Sounds like a useful course. Some really lovely work here. Thanks for sharing your sketchbook
It was really good. The one I took was free but I know she does a much more in-depth one. Thanks for your kind words 🙂
Its interesting that your trying to portray actual places at the same time as being abstract, I don’t see many doing that and find it exciting .
Thank you. I’m just figuring it out at the moment. I think though it is often the sense of a place that we take away from it rather than specifics, at least that is what I am telling myself 🙂
Thanks Claire I was looking for some ideas of how to get started on working in the landscape. I also did the Louise Fletcher course which I found very freeing. I think that I might start with a limited palete then also start looking at different mark making techniques.
It was a really good course wasn’t it and free enough to see our own possibilities.
Nice explanation of how you learned to paint abstract landscapes. I appreciate it and read it with great interest.
Wonderful to follow your process! Exciting work emerging. Thanks for sharing your journey. So useful and inspiring me to start painting again.
Wow! I’ve been feeling very stuck with my landscape painting. This post has invigorated me! I also did Louise Fletcher’s free course. After reading this I used one of my taped off painting squares and one of the landscape thumbnails that I’ve been doing and found a whole new approach. What fun! Thank you for posting this.
Thank you for your forensic enquiry into your process – it is really interesting and useful. And it makes me realise that we are all having similar struggles when we paint, but that you are working smartly to work out what goes right and wrong, and keeping the photographic evidence! These are really useful process notes. (And I collect loads of painting images on my Pinterest account and have just realised how many of them are your paintings – I must be instinctively drawn to them without knowing they originate from the same artist, both photomontage and paintings!). Thank you Claire. Inspiring.
Claire, some years ago I found a painting online that I thaught was beautiful and I wanted to be able to paint like that. So I painted a big copy of it thinking I would learn how to paint landscapes in the same way. Despite many trials I did not get good results. What a surprise finding your painting back here with all the guidelines and the development process so nicely documented. I see you went through a tough learning process so now I am ready to go through the same and you are showing me how. A big thank you!
This is so useful Claire.. I began my art journey in lockdown although I had already tried turning some of my garden photos into sort of paintings in photoshop – my erstwhile clients in the greetings cards industry were mostly unenthusiastic! I did drawing and painting classes and visited more galleries and such than ever and has all been so much fun. But classes come to an end and you are on your own wanting to do more but in need of a road map. However I am very drawn to abstraction and I just feel that you may have just helped me get me back on the road again. Thank you so much
This is a great post and I am taken with your three colours plus black and white approach. These are the same colours that printers use so we should be able to reacreate anything from them.. You ditched sap green I assume?
Thanks Susie, I don’t think I ever used Sap green, but have made the greens by mixing yellow and blue. It is really liberating though to use just three colours. And all the colours you mix will go together because they have been created using the same colours.