The start of another picture. I sometimes wonder whether I start too many pictures. I certainly don’t finish enough..
I was reading a book on Flemish painting techniques the other night. They didn’t half layer! Made me feel slightly better about my constant changing of paintings even if my layering and that of the Flemish painters are the result of very different motivations. In their case they fixed the drawing very early and layered on color and shade while in my stuff I always feel like I’m hunting the drawing and effectively stop painting when I’ve found it (or given up)
Anyway I like the names they gave their layers. One’s called the dead layer. I’m currently applying a dead layer to everything I’ve got going in the studio!
I don’t think I can remember making a painting that I didn’t rework fairly drastically after having left it for a while and got to know it a bit better This one is no exception. Still some way to go.
This picture took a turn when I got back to it mid week. The guns went as did remnants of colour. Happy to see the back of both! The guns especially. I know nothing about guns had no real appetite to look at any in order to do them justice. Happily removing them has an interesting, and I think entirely good effect! The scene turns from a simple folk fantasy to something a little more complex and threatening. Happy accidents are often spoken about in relation to painting, usually in reference to random marks or spilt paint, less often in relation to this sort of thing when the ingredients of a painting are shuffled or changed with surprising effect.
I’ve been meaning to make some little paintings of people just standing or walking. This is the first.
