Creating the Room to Create. .........HUES Magazine No. .... 2007
In the beginning there was nothing but a desire to paint. There was no form
to my workspace.
On the first day I needed light so I gravitated to places where there was good
light to see by. I painted on washing machines and on kitchen benches or TV
trays, I needed the light but the areas were not mine.
On the second day (some 25 years ago) I realized that I needed to separate
my workspace from the family. At first it was a corner of the sunroom. When
my toddler came along I realized that I had to divide the safe space from non
and created a type of fenced off play pen – not for Kristina but for me. I
felt safe in my own little heaven.
By the third day I was able to venture into the world and enjoyed painting
on the beach, or in the National parks around Sydney.
On the fourth day I thought the sun moon and stars had just been created because
I had won my first little art prize judged by Pro Hart. ( still didn’t have
a studio).
On the fifth and sixth days I was still painting with the birds in the sky,
painting alongside the oceans and at home dodging the animals and my man. I
was doing quite a lot of painting and teaching and it was time to have some
peace and a place to think.
My chance to create it came 20 years ago when we were adding a garage to the
house in Mt Eliza. We added a further six metres in width, closed it off with
double sliding doors, windows to the south, east and west and a large skylight.
I wasn’t going for style, more comfort and purpose. I put cheap carpet on the
cement floor to make it less stressful when standing for hours and pastels
bounced more easily. I hang work ready for shipping out to galleries on the
northern wall. The media corner has TV, DVD and VHS, laptop, phone and tape
storage. There are book shelves for ever growing interest and reference, filing
cabinets for photographic references catalogued into places or subject matter,
drawers for a myriad of things that can’t go on shelves and a roll out office
desk that fits under the bench and holds my working pastels. There are a stack
of colour sorted spare pastel trays that hold spares also under the bench.
Another sturdy table holds my oil equipment so I am able to leave both media
in different areas. When Eric Shepherd was reorganizing his studio he offered
me a large drafting work board that I find very useful, even if it takes up
a little too much space. Under the southern windows there is more storage for
images, paint boxes, paper and frame storage. There is a stack of small fold
up tables and storage for my limited editions and lesson notes. Over 20 years
I seem to have collected much that I might find useful or wish to remember.
I have three favourite easels depending on what I am painting but the rest
of them are in the garage. I have also acquired a large mirror to check my
work in reverse.
When I come into the studio each day I open the sliding doors, step inside
and savour the peace and the smell of paint. If there is work in progress I
have it facing the door for that first viewing. It is in that moment that we
see with fresh eyes and can often see if it has the concept I wanted or has
something wrong.
It would be very easy for me to just keep painting and accumulating but I have
a very valuable check each week. My studio must get a good clean out and tidy
up before students arrive. I don’t have much pastel dust on the carpet as I
collect it in a folded V strip of paper under my painting but I do need to
put everything back in its place to create room for the eclectic burst of creative
energy that comes with them. They refresh me and my studio and I hope I give
them some help in return.
I’m not sure if I have reached the seventh day of creation as I don’t seem
to be resting much but I guess it’s now up to me to see what I can do in the
area I’ve created.
Article published in the Pastel Artist International Volume 14 -2002
- Master Pastel Artists of the World Australian Showcase,- Australia
What’s the point
of spending hours on a painting if it doesn’t relate what you wanted to
express?
I have been painting for 25 years. Surely perfect paintings should just flow
onto the canvas by now. Yet I have shared a similar feeling with many artists.
Why do we often feel disappointed the day after we have finished a painting
we thought we had done well?
Is it because it doesn’t live up to what we thought we had achieved?
Somehow after all of our very best efforts a painting still lacks that special impact we were aiming for.
This is the time to take your courage and be prepared to push your point and emphasize in artistic language the point you were trying to make.
It is hard to risk ‘destroying’ a reasonable painting that has taken much effort to achieve. This then becomes the artist’s choice. Will ordinary do or am I prepared to trial the ‘emphasis tools’ that artists have at their disposal? Often it is this experimenting and being prepared to take a risk that allows us to grow in confidence and become more in charge of the painting result. When we see the results of a successful trial we should then plan that success into our next painting. The more we plan for success the better chance we have of achieving it.
If I am going to consider a change I start at the first review of the painting. If the real subject does not grab my attention I feel let down and immediately want to DO something about it. It is too easy to let the painting process become all important and loose sight of the painting’s real subject.
Was one planned one or was this just a general scene with no real focus? Obviously
the variations of scenario are limitless but here are some of the most useful.
• We need to make one area stand out to give the painting a focus.
• Ideally this focus will be somewhere just off centre.
• there must be something about the focus that is different to the general
painting.
• If the painting is full of detail is there a clear, peaceful spot.
• If all is peaceful is there a place for movement or an object to focus on
. Animate objects draw more attention than inanimate so the positioning of
people, birds or animals will help attract attention to a spot. If you don’t
want them to take over make sure the focus is more dramatic.
• Is it a place where the brightest light stands against the strongest dark?
Often the best way to make something appear brighter is to darken the surroundings
so that the light becomes more obvious. This is referred to as tonal contrast.
• This area can be made more dramatic if there is colour contrast. If the main
colour of the painting is blue the contrast would contain the complementary
colour i.e.orange. -remembering that brown is a dark orange. A yellow painting
could have purple as contrast, or a green painting could have red. Too much
of the pure contrast colour causes an uncomfortable discord but if a little
is mixed into the shadows or background it gives a sense of completion to the
colour scheme.
• As well as tonal or colour contrast consider its temperature change. A small
area of cold stands out against warm colours and the reverse is also true.
Consider a yellow flower standing against a purple-blue shadow.
• This temperature change can also add interest to a single colour or hue.
and this is a wonderful thing to play with. Each colour can have a bias to
warmer or cooler eg. cadmium yellow (hotter), lemon yellow (cooler), olive
green(warmer) blue green (cooler), Consider a cadmium red shirt (hot red) with
a little alizarin or blue red (cool red) within its shadows. If the same tone
is mixed in the both the cool and warm version of a colour and placed side
by side in a painting it tends to optically vibrate and add a glow to light
colour or interest within deep colour.
• Line is another wonderful variable. It can suggest direction. It can itself
be suggested by lining up objects or broken marks. Consider where any lines
are leading or can lead within the painting. Line direction can make a painting
busy or quiet. The boldness of line or soft tracery both suggest different
impact. But never make it all the same. Allow the variety to create the variation
that was first planned to keep the focus of painting more dramatic or at least
different to the majority of the painting.
•
There are many more painter’s tools to employ but one that is often the most
underused by the amateur and successfully used by the accomplished artist is
the variation given to edges. Hard edges and soft edges enhance or diminish.
Soft edges can be blurred or simply fade into the surrounding painting or be
camouflaged with similar colour or tone. Hard edges are sharp and clear and
frequently show many of the features mentioned so far. They can be sharp, tonally
opposite, contrasting in colour or temperature and be used to depict the suggestion
of strength or movement. They can be likened to the strengthening and softening
of impact as their sharpness or impact increases or decreases. A little like
the crescendo and fading of a beautiful melody.
There is an endless variation to the possibilities of just these artistic tools. Why paint just an ordinary painting when we can try using these to focus on the real object within our painting.
Lyn Mellady
possible paintings:-
Brotherly, Sisterly!
Sun & Sail
Chinaman’s Creek
Summer, 90 mile beach
Collecting Memories
Blue Door, Golden Grass
Jepson’s Pond (oil)
The Old Jetty
Caroles Rd
Wild Apple Lane (oil)
Beaches Curl around The Cliff Face
DEMONSTRATION
‘Summer Storm Coming’
This painting was done several years ago but I still remember the grandeur of the incoming storm and the tiny figures as witness.
I chose a darkish warm toned surface to accentuate the shadow base and dramatise the light.
Step 1.- Give the storm the space it needs to be powerful- high and large. Position the people in the !/3 L area which is an excellent focal area that allows a counter balance of interest
Step 2 &3 Using the broadest strokes I lay in the
main areas of under colour Here I can put different colours directly onto
the board and when I
rub them in they will mix like any pallet mix to give me the base colours I
need. I don’t rub hard. If the pastel doesn’t move there isn’t enough of it..
I always consider the surface I am using. Pastel needs to sit with grip. A
surface must not be smoothed out by pressure or the tooth completely filled
with pastel so that new applications have nothing left to grip.
Step 4 I continue adding colour layers of warmth to the sunlit cloud including
the sand colour . The arc of shadow will counterbalance the figures and it
has a mixture of cooler ,deeper colour.
Both the stroke and the GENTLE blending are worked with the form Whenever the
pigment is rubbed it looses its translucency and intensity.
Step 5 Once I am happy with the depth of colour on the painting I then discard
all blending strokes and use clean strokes. This allows a different clarity
of colour. I drag wisps of rain diagonally to suggest wind. Waves have varying
pressure and the area behind the figures becomes both simpler and lighter.
This allows the sharper dark forms to be seen. All lines lead to the little
figures and the tiny sunlit birds help, by their contrast in size and stroke,
to give dimension to the clouds above.
Lyn Mellady
Lyn Mellady has been painting full time since 1981. She is the current president of The Australian Guild of Realist Artists. She judges art shows and has been a teacher and demonstrator for art societies. Lyn appears in three Australian Art Reference books and her works hang in five government collections, and many corporate and private collections on at least 4 continents. She has many awards and commendations and was recently a landscape finalist in the Pastel International Magazine’s World Wide Excellence Awards. Lyn is delighted with a judges acknowledgement for a painting well done, and believes it acts as an encouragement to keep going, but does not believe competition should be the paintings ‘raison d’etre’. Rather it should be the artist’s presentation of their own personal response to something wonderful. She is constantly competitive but it need not be with other artists - she is constantly looking for her own ‘ personal best’.
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Lyn Mellady
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