Assignment 3

Part 3 – Expanse

The weather is much cooler now, so I walked the streets of Basel looking for some interesting views that I could photograph that might work for this task. Sitting on location for even a relatively short period was not a viable prospect.

The scene of the Basel Munster, along the river fulfils all the requirements of the Assignment task. It comprises natural and man-made objects, creates an opportunity for linear and aerial perspective and has good depth in it.

This scene, looking straight across the river to the buildings beyond worked in some aspects. The bike and foliage created a foreground, but I was not satisfied with the river being the mid ground and the buildings being pushed into the background.

This next scene of the Munster is taken from a bridge across the Rhine. I feel it is a little flat and does not allow for much aerial perspective in particular other than, like in a previous exercise, where the towers were lightened to push them further into the background.

I wanted something with more depth in the image.

Looking from a more obtuse angle meant that there was much more scope for aerial and linear perspective. This willow charcoal line drawing is an exploration of how that might look. I liked it and seeing that this might be an option, I tried a toned version using a charcoal conte pencil. This allowed for finer mark making and more detail in the sketch. The buildings in the distance seem to disappear in a mist.

This diagonal compostion with the diminishing buildings could work well. The wall and river direct the viewer through the foreground to the background.

However, I did wonder what options I would have to include more of the distance and even the other side of the river. I took several more photos with a view to trying to create a panoramic image comprising 3 or 4 photos that would extend the scene to the bridge that crossed the Rhine and to a hint of the land on the other side. I  tried to take several photos so that I could stitch them together to make a panorama. This would make for a longer, thinner image, but it would create variety from my previous work.

These very quick sketches excited me and I knew the concept would be a challenging one for me: creating a believable painting that showed both linear and aerial perspective, did justice to the many beautiful buildings on the Basel river front and also created variety with the large volume of foliage in the foreground. I knew I wanted to work with monochrome tones inspired by the John Virtue paintings I have looked at in this Part 3, Expanse.

My first thoughts were to try a literal John Virtue style inspired townscape. The scene of Basel along the Rhine looking from one bridge down to the next is uncannily like some of John’s London landscapes looking along the Thames and features some distinctive and recognisable rooflines.

Using an A3 width coloured paper and Indian ink, I worked very quickly. I really love the effect of this and even though the buildings are just hinted at there still is a sense of perspective as you follow the river through the picture and under the bridge. However, in fairness, this preliminary sketch took a matter of minutes and even working it up to a greater scale would mean it would be an artwork that would be created really quickly. I decided that this would not fully challenge me for this Assignment, and would be more appropriate as an Exercise.

Nonetheless, I was still keen to explore the use of black Indian ink further and make this a monochrome exercise. I did consider using acrylics, but felt the ink would also be suitable for this purpose. I did not have any A1 card (but will order some soon) so decided to use two A2 pieces in a landscape format joined together.

I laid a light wash all over, trying to leave white highlights where I saw them. I was happy that the paint ran on the left hand side.

Initially I jumped around painting buildings both in the foreground and the background, dependant upon the tone of ink I had loaded on my brush.

I quickly realised that if I continued in this manner I was likely to have a muddle of tones where the background, middle and foreground met, rather than a sense of progression from lighter in the background to darker in the foreground. The point I recognised this was when I made the dark black tree and realised that it was too dark for the position it was in the painting. As the ink is permanent once it is on the paper and doesn’t lighten once applied it made sense to work from light to dark, ie from the background  to the foreground so I would not make more elementary mistakes like this.

I used some blue coloured wax resist throughout the drawing to try and keep white areas white and continued to work towards the front gradually increasing the tones. After reflection, I did try to ‘push’ some of the further away tones at the rear right, back into the distance by colouring over them with a white pencil.

Once I rubbed off the wax I needed to add more tones in the water, and blend in the stark white paper where necessary. I was also conscious that there needed to be some tone in the sky to give the painting a ‘top’ and create a visual frame and to hopefully highlight the top whiteness of the clouds a little. I was reluctant to use ink in case it dribbled over the buildings. I didn’t want to have to ‘paint around’ any of the buildings either, so I decided to lay a graduated layer of charcoal powder from the top.

As I applied it, I could see that it was picking up some fingerprints I had unconsciously made on the sky area as I had worked on the drawing, especially where the two pieces of paper joined. I decided, in light of this, that less was more, I would keep the tone subtle and that there is enough tone now to create some atmosphere but not so much that the viewer would be distracted by the unplanned and unwanted fingerprints. The white negative space also creates ‘space’ within the picture. Finally, some darker tones were built up in the water, and tones in the foliage were tweaked to help build on the sense of perspective.

What did I learn?

• I have never worked on a full drawing just in black ink and built it up with monochrome tones of ink, and was pleased with the effects. I learned a lot about working with this medium in this.
• I learned that once applied, the ink does not lift off like other mediums might, and so it is important to build up from the lightest to darkest tones.
• The ink dries quickly on a palette, so only put out moderate amounts each time.
• Starting with the background and working to the foreground allowed me to be more aware of building tones and details as the painting developed.
• I liked the panorama effect of this study and the unusual dimensions.
• I wish I had taped the two pieces of paper together before starting painting. The buckling meant that it was challenging to tape them together seamlessly at a later stage.
• This 200g/m weight of thicker paper does not take water based mediums as well as I hoped it would. I have ordered some Hot-Pressed Bockingford watercolour paper to try and address this in future works.
• The smooth paper surface lent itself to this context well.

Reworking Assignment 3

I had never attempted anything like the large panoramic River Rhine scene of Basel, and knew it would be a challenge. However, I was really pleased with it once I had completed it, but equally, I did recognise some of the weaknesses of it.

The first is the join. I did not join the two bits of paper together well enough from the start, and it negatively impacts on the whole image. In hindsight, using these materials, with so much water and washes, I should also really have pre- stretched the paper before beginning to work on it. That in itself would have meant I would have had to reduce the scale of the drawing to one piece of paper.

I was conscious to create aerial perspective through my use of receding tones as I built the drawing, but I acknowledge that the foreground would have benefitted from more definition of tones and outlines.

When reflecting about how to rework this assignment, I did consider dropping washes of colour and outlines over the nearer parts of the left hand sheet of paper, and discarding the ‘extra’ right half. However, a major deficit in this version was my inability to render an atmospheric sky, and I felt that this aspect of the artwork was irredeemable and I would be better to create some new artwork building on my learning from this.

Returning to previous exploratory sketches in my sketchbook, I recognised that I could focus more intently on the first part of this landscape and still have scope to create aerial perspective to represent distance. I would start with a pen outline and then build up some washes of colour.

Returning to previous exploratory sketches in my sketchbook, I recognised that I could focus more intently on the first part of this landscape and still have scope to create aerial perspective to represent distance. I would start with a pen outline and then build up some washes of colour.

What pens would I use? I wanted ones that would be waterproof, a series with different thicknesses to represent distance. I also needed to experiment to see what pens worked and what colour the ‘black’ ink really would be (green, blue or purple tinges?).

After several pages of experiments without feeling particularly inspired by the results, I tried a dip pen and Black Indian Ink which I instantly loved. I have tried ink pen without much success earlier in the unit, but as I was working with my board at only a slightly elevated angle the ink flowed well and made some lovely marks. I managed to find a couple of different thicknesses of pen nibs which would allow me to vary the width of the line to help create distance.

The initial A2 sized drawing was done with Indian ink and two thickness of dip-pens, with the finer one being used to represent buildings and trees in the distance. Layers of watercolours built up the colour and then I used Prismacololour pencils to add extra detail to the foreground and the water, and to push the far away trees further in to the distance by lightening their colour and tones. I tweaked some of the details, like the nearest green trees with some Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils to boost the strength of the colours and tones in the foreground.

On reflection I thought the autumnal golden tree was too dominant in this fourth photo and so I knocked the intensity of the colours back again so it would not draw the viewers attention so much. It is more in balance in this final image.

Reflection

I was much less precious with this drawing and just let mistakes happen. In the initial drawing, unwanted blobs of ink appeared in the near buildings. I was able to cover that with some gouache later in the drawing.

I really enjoyed using the ink pen, and would be keen to use it again. It was preferable to the black drawing pens as it had a wider variety of mark making possibilities, and could even create some very sensitive lines.

I found the watercolour paints only took me so far and I felt I needed to supplement this with other media like the coloured and watercolour pencils. I particularly struggled to mix a range of suitable greens from my yellow and blue paints. The Derwent Inktense pens helped me address some of the ‘green’ challenges.

At first I was not happy with the artwork as it is so unlike anything I would usually do. However, I displayed it for a day or two and reflected on it. With a few tweaks, and a bit of personal perspective on it, I began to like it more and believe it does address the requirements of this assignment.

It includes natural objects, demonstrates my understanding of aerial and linear perspective which in turn creates a sense of depth. Colour and tone are further used to enhance that effect. It feels like a more interesting composition than my previous ‘grey’ panorama. It also captures the atmosphere of the bright, crisp autumnal day.