You are receiving this email because the email address [email address suppressed] was subscribed to our email list. Having trouble reading this email? View it on our website.

Courting disaster.

The most elusive, and, to me, the most delightful aspect of painting, is loose paint handling.

It is something I love, and yet, it only happens once in every ten or twenty paintings. It is so easy to fall in love with your picture, and to lick it and caress it, and essentially to make it all tame and feeble.

One way to achieve looseness, is to use a clumsy instrument and broad handling. Use big brushes and a great palette knife. Imagine carving a wood sculpture using only a machete.

The bigger the canvas, the more difficult it is to achieve, but we must find ways. The idea is not to avoid disaster, nor even just to flirt with disaster, but actively to court it, to woo it, to pursue it into the abyss...

When you make a mark, leave it alone! Never mess with a brushstroke.

Sketches and studies.

The reason why all the great masters drew is not to practise their skills; they did their as studies for their paintings.

Painting from a drawing is a unique experience. The drawing is not, as some would imagine, an "aide-memoire", it is a new reality, as real as the trees and the skies, and the dancers at Mavericks.

In painting the artist remains true to his direct vision. His inspiration now is the play of line and tone and scribbled notes on paper in itself, complete as nature.

A transformation takes place. As nature is transformed into the language of line and tone, so the drawing is transformed into the language of colour and texture.

It matters nought whether the drawing was executed from observation or from imagination, once it is on paper, it is what it is, inspiration for the artist.

I imagine doing "Variations on a theme by Gustav Klimt", as valid and beautiful as Brahms' "Variations on a theme by Paganini".

Join us

I am sending this newsletter to a small group of good friends, with apologies for not getting their permission in advance. If you would like to join us, just send an email, to ryno@artistvision.org, and I shall include you in my list.

Pass it on

If you know someone who may be interested in receiving this newsletter, you can easily forward up to five copies at once.

Does proportion matter?

When proportion is wrong, it is not the artist who looks bad, it is the model, the subject, the person. It is they who look sick or swollen or brutish. The artist escapes. This is why it is only the artist of sensitivity and integrity who cares about proportion.