Autumn 03: 25/02/2023

This week was I completed the second piece of the Autumn Trio for Sellisternian. You can catch up on last week's work here, the overall idea for Sellisternian here and my practice for this process here.

As I said last week, I find autumn very inspiring and love the colours I've lined up for these pieces. I wanted this piece to be a literal pulling back of the fabric of the first of the trio, revealing the figure and earth and mushrooms beneath. I was excited for the challenge of creating a sense of unearthing and earth but without becoming dull or muddy (do not pardon the pun).

Usual starting point: Imperial sheet of Fabriano Artistico 300gsm, hot pressed watercolour paper, taped to an A1 canvas board. A graphite transfer of my digital sketch and details added in black Polychromos. Doodlebooking paid off here with the acorn that holds a prominent place in the hand at the top left of the composition, it's stem snaking along the fingers. The head and hands here are actually a fair bit bigger than my own, it's a bit strange to draw yourself so close up!

The leaves and mushrooms were lined much as they were in the previous piece, though these mushrooms are angled to conceal their ruffles. A big feature of this piece is the rolled up, wavy strip where the 'fabric' is being pulled back. It almost chops the image in half and needs to both unite and divide the two main parts. It was tempting to line more detail in here but I wanted the ink to do a lot of the work so I bravely restrained myself. Unusual for me!

The pattern went mainly on the lower half but with a bit in the top left to keep them linked. The 'pulling' hands are also encroached on by the pattern.

Time for the acrylic ink layer and to add more depth, pattern and texture. The top mushroom half of the painting is mostly inked in dioxazine violet and the lower pattern half is mostly the same muted reddish purple from the previous piece but the colours do cross over to help keep them unified. The rolled up middle strip was a lot of fun to ink with the dioxazine, lots of soft felty texture. The reddish purple went on the finger tips and a bit on the flushed areas of the face. Not too much on the face as I want it to lean closer to the mushrooms than the hands.

For the watercolour layer I mixed up the same combo of phthalo blue and a heavily granulating PBr11 as I used on the pattern last week. This went down on the patterned areas and the rolled up midsection, as well as the shading of the face to cool the skin down to the level of the mushrooms.

For the earthy background and hair in the top half I mixed that same PBr11 with Manganese Violet (PV16) which is a granulating pinky purple. It makes a gorgeous violet earth colour and the PBr11 ties it together with the blue mix even though they are very different colours. I had used it for some leaves in the first piece so that it wouldn't come out of nowhere here in the second.

The brown of the acorn is a Venetian red with some quinacridone gold that was also in the leaves first piece. Speaking of leaves, I leaned more on orange and yellow mixes this time as there was already plenty brown in the rest of the composition. For the mushrooms I again dropped teal and yellow in to a pale blueish mix and let them blend on the page. I love this combo against that violet earth mix.

There was a lot to be done in the finishing layer for this one, like the veiny roots climbing along the hands and arms that also creep out in to the earth. I added a bit of shine to the mushrooms and emphasised the stems of the leaves with white gouache and used coloured pencil to detail the face and add stray strands of hair. I added more little roots weaving in and out of the mushroom stalks and they look lovely alongside the earthy mix. I streaked yellow threads in to the rolled up fabric section to bring it forward and that was it finished!

I'm really pleased with this piece, it has a good combination of pretty and creepy. I feel like even though it's split in two the composition still clicks together and creates a bit of mystery. It also feels peaceful to me. It may seem a bit ghoulish to have the pale figure under the earth tangled in mushrooms but it feels secure to me, hidden away but still connected through earth and roots and the changing season. Like mycelium! The final of this trio will be more upright and tree inspired but this feels like a nice earthy middle.

Meanwhile, in landscape land...These two pages from my big sketchbook are sort of a duo. I did the more distant landscape and then zoomed in to paint a close up on the next page. I feel that painting like this will help me focus when looking at the landscape while out on about. I want to be able to look at the view and zero in on possible compositions and identify what it is that appeals to me.

Had some fun in my Doodlebook this week as the snowdrops have arrived and other plants are starting to wake up for the coming spring! I also sketched some possible compositions for landscapes inspired by my wanderings. They're not in the colours or textures that they would be painted in them but very helpful in finding the lie of the land...literally.

At this week's studio club one of our members gave a great talk on the Glasgow Girls, a group of artists and designers practising in Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century. His grandmother was one of the Glasgow Girls so we got a lovely bit of personal insight and examples of pieces still in his family collection.

The painter Victoria Crowe was recently recommended to me and I treated myself to this week book on her portrait work. The examples come with details about the subject and how the portraits came around, as well as a summary of Crowe's art journey so far. A really interesting book and apparently she's now based in the Scottish Borders, very cool!

Just one autumn piece to go and then Sellisternian will be half finished! If that update is already up I'll link it below, otherwise thanks for being here early and have a great week!