Even Bigger Studio Paintings. Using print blocks and some thoughts about painting

yeah so if you've seen the um the video i was doing uh last week i was working on a couple of big paintings these are not actually the same ones or they're kind of going in the same direction these are a canvas a couple of paintings i've had in the studio really for i don't know a couple of months a few months um and they've just been going around in circles a bit and i've been focusing a lot on doing smaller work so you know i don't really feel that they've kind of gone anywhere and i was looking at the uh kind of leafy sort of paintings i was thinking of trying to do and i thought well actually with a little bit of a push in a slightly different direction you know maybe these could end up um you know going in that sort of same sort of way um as well so yeah i just thought i had a little play around and i've actually started putting a little bit on already but um yeah i'll show you what i was doing and uh you know see where they get to okay so this really is um one of the nice things about having several different paintings on the go um and i like to work in the sort of series and uh you know i had these um you know these two paintings and i was working on the other ones as well you know the ones that were like a meter square on board and i was just looking at these and thinking hey you know maybe i can do something with those as well um and i'll talk about different ways about making different types of marks on the surface and i like the idea of the sort of leaves floating around on the on the river like i said i've done a few of those sorts of paintings in the past so um you know it's a really nice um it's quite a nice image but you know i don't want it to be the same as the ones i've done before so you know i'm just having a play at the moment and they do look quite a bit different at the moment so uh obviously i have to see where they get to but um we shall see but i think the ones i was doing last week i was making the marks on the um the sort of leaf marks by using a a mask [Music] uh yeah a mask with a hole in it so and then just sort of putting some spray paint through to make a kind of leafy sort of mark that was quite nice and i might do a bit of that on these as well but um the way i've done it in the past is i've made little print blocks and this is actually a little print block that i made and it was i think it was a leak it was a leaf originally which i stuck onto a piece of cardboard and then i've mounted that onto a little wood block so i made a little um like a little printing block and i've just got some um some white acrylic and i'm kind of using that to print onto the surface now what i've done in the past is i've built up this surface like this and then after it's dried off a little bit the these leaf marks have dried off in a bit more paint um i'm actually using acrylic primer it takes the uh it takes the next level of paint quite nicely um and it's quite a dry paint i tend to find sometimes acrylic paint can be a bit glossy um so it can be nice for some things but i like i like the primer as well you know it's acrylic so it all works together um yes i wouldn't want these these leaf shapes to be just printed on like this and left i never do that i never do things like just put it on and leave it and that's it um i like to uh you know put them on and then work over them and then i might bring some of them back and you know if they get a bit lost and then just go backwards and forwards working over them putting them back eventually what happens is some of them get lost completely and some of them can be seen in the final painting and i quite i quite like that quite that idea of layering putting things on losing them back into the surface layering them again on top [Music] because that's you know that's what happens in the real world isn't it it's like um i know i've said this before it all seems a little bit pretentious but uh yeah it's a little bit like how the actual landscape is made you know uh things get laid down and then they get eroded back and then they come back again and it sounds like a little cycle that goes on so you know it's quite a nice thing this is quite a sort of therapeutic way of working as well yeah maybe it's a little bit blue peter at the moment but uh you know that's okay i don't think they end up looking like that [Music] but i think it's important i might put some more on this one as well actually i think it's important when you're painting to try lots of different ways of making marks on the surface and you know i think you know i don't think this is a shortcut in any way i think it's um i don't think it's any less genuine then you know if i were to try and draw each of these leaves individually i think that would actually be less interesting less convincing as a it's a way of putting this on we're making these shapes you know this is a it's like a it's one to one you know this is the actual size of an actual leaf so you know this painting is it's kind of like it's not zoomed in it's not um you've seen from a distance you know it's as if i was standing this far away from the river looking down into a river and these leaves are here so it's kind of like uh scale the scale of the image is is kind of life-sized it's not a it's not a picture that's been zoomed in and [Music] scaled up or scaled down this is kind of like one-to-one i quite like that you know then um you know when the painting's finished and you know you're looking at it you can imagine yourself actually looking at the real landscape as if you were looking at the real landscape so the painting is a sort of proxy for the real landscape it isn't um and i think this is actually quite an important distinction um it isn't a picture of the landscape it's a painting about the landscape and i think those are quite different things um and that's not not saying that one is better than the other um just really felt like that needed to come out um you know a picture of a landscape is not less uh in any way than a painting about the landscape it's just the way that i like to do it and i think that's all you can do really just do the paintings that um that make you happy make the paintings that you want to see i mean i think that's why anyone would do painting i think that's why anyone would paint is because you know you're trying to make um trying to make something that i would like to see you know if i went into a gallery or in someone's house or some studio i saw a painting you know i want i want to see paintings that you know this look a bit like this you know that's the sort of thing that i like i like um work that's full of texture and layering and energy and interest and it's a little bit ambiguous i think that's i think that's quite an important thing to have ambiguity in your work i don't want to be telling a story or sort of laying everything out and saying this is exactly what's going on yeah i want um you know when it's finished i want someone to be looking at it and sort of wondering a little bit what they're looking at making some sense of it for themselves because then i think it has an enduring quality then um you know i think paintings that are like that paintings that um are a little mysterious and not telling the whole story leaving [Music] you know leaving something for the viewer to decide for themselves i think they have more of an enduring quality um because you see different things in them each day or each time you come to it you see different things you know i hope that doesn't come across as being too pompous but you know it's just uh it's just the sort of things i like to think about while i'm painting well that's probably enough of those leaves so um just for now they'll probably get another layer of them going on they're probably not quite dry enough but i'm just straighten that up a little bit yeah so being on on there this is just some um it's like a dark green paint that i've mixed up into this tub i could probably do with a little bit more uh drying time actually because i'd like to work over the leaves but and so i can knock them back a little bit into the surface so they're not quite so raw or sitting on the sitting on the surface like this but i kind of start working around them a little bit some of this dark kind of more shadowy marks going on letting the paint drip and run a little bit i think sometimes that can be quite nice if the paint starts to do things which is slightly out of control what's on there it's kind of slightly some of this lighter stuff over the there's a bit of spray paint under there we're going to knock it back a little bit again it's a little bit too raw i like the thing to feel a little bit more um subtle knock some of those rips back there's just a little bit of um white acrylic really on this brush on this roller that's kind of starting to some of these uh drips are starting to [Music] feel like they're slightly underneath the surface i can still see them um which is quite nice this blue stuff here is all a bit too too much knock it back a little bit there's many spray handy spray bottle and let some of that white run down knock the blue back a little bit yeah i don't want to keep too many of those drip there's too many drips in a lot of this actually i don't want it to be too drippy but you know this is very much a mid sort of stage i guess um these paintings i mean the the the idea of the kind of dark shadowy water with the leaves kind of floating over the surface and the more lighter more reflective stuff it's lighter part of the water it's kind of idea of the sky reflecting in the in the river again i don't really need them to be taken too literally in any way you know i'm not trying to make a picture of that if you see what i mean it's much more about trying to find those you know get a bit of a sense of those things i'm talking about really [Music] [Music] throw the paint on a bit [Music] yeah again it's really good to have um you know a couple of paintings um you know i mean i'm lucky to have enough space to put two big paintings up like this side by side um but it's really good to have you know work in a kind of series like this um so i can sort of do things on both of them carry the ideas across because funnily enough i think earlier on this one over here was looking a little more resolved than this one and now it's gone and gone back the other way where i'm feeling that this one's kind of more resolved than this one that i quite like this sort of composition that's starting to emerge um on this one this one over this side on the right here just feels a little bit too horizontal this is kind of bit here and a bit here so i need to do something down here that's a little bit more interesting so you know it's good to have i mean it's one of those things it's really good to have these um more than one painting on the go but you know if it's the big ones or little ones it doesn't really matter it's always good to have more than more than one because if you're just uh you know you're just working on one painting then you've got to kind of get everything everything's got to work on that one painting there's a lot of kind of preciousness and uh um you know everything has to happen on this painting and then because i've got two i can sort of just play the ideas across each other and see where they go and you know often they just get resolved in uh different rates so um yeah i'll keep playing around with these i might um i do like this slightly orangey spray paint sorry about that mixed up a little bit this is more of a rusty color i think this one is like that rusty rusty orange which is really nice i just kind of put some little accents of those [Music] colors in i'll probably have to do a bit of this and then step back spray paint settle i don't want to be breathing it in now again all about mark making finding different ways to make marks with different tools it's just another layer still don't know exactly where they're going to go well i have to say you know at the moment in general the composition i'll just step back from it a little bit in general the kind of composition of this one is um starting to work but i might turn it around in a minute and i could do it for you now see what i think that's not necessarily what i'm gonna do but it's always good to turn things around and then you get a different sense of where they're going and how it's all hanging together yeah i'm gonna leave it um up this way for now because i don't want all those drips to go sideways because i think that's just gonna look a bit weird so yeah just another layer um process backwards and forwards um keep it playful keep it energetic and uh not worry about where it's gonna go um because you know my favorite paintings that i've ever done are ones where i had no idea what they were going to look like when i started them i had a direction but i didn't have a big plan for that final image so you know let them resolve themselves over a course of time and then i find that they have a much more natural composition and stronger for it so anyway i hope you found that helpful i'm gonna keep going i'll um try and do another video a little bit like this um next time and i'll see you soon thanks a lot

Channel: Lewis Noble Artist

Views: 7,576

Rating: 4.9197326 out of 5

Keywords: Artist, landscape, paintings, fine art, Lewis Noble, peak district paintings, oil paintings, acrylic paintings, artist talks, art demonstration, plein air painting, art courses, art workshops, art tutor, paint with me, Art courses Cornwall, Art Courses Yorkshire, Art Courses Derbyshire, Northumberland, seascape, SKETCHBOOKS, sketching, landscape sketch, lewis noble artist, acrylic sketching, Charcoal drawing, Compressed Charcoal

Id: SZ-ZzYfAxTM

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020