Illustrative Painting Parts I, II, & III

Whilst in progress, a curious butterfly lands on one of the daisies featured in
Quantum Leapfrog!
Now that's realism for you!
Oil On Canvas 24 x 24
(c) Copyright Kate Lomax 2011 All Rights Reserved

One of the most testing  dilemmas an artist has to deal with on a fairly regular basis is answering the seemingly circular question, "Is the painting finished?"

When you have gazed for at least a week in quiet contemplation of your 'finished' piece, and have resisted the urge to just do this or that, it can indeed be declared finished, duly named and presented to the world!

Try not to name your artwork when it is in progress, you will immediately give yourself parameters by default of the working title.   You can christen  the piece with no name to whatever you choose no name to evolve to.  However, 'Placid Lake In Woodland Setting' can hardly evolve to a hunting scene, or a surreal monster of the deep kinda work, although a painting could evolve to represent almost anything - where it begins is rarely where the piece ends.  Keep your title smart, snappy and memorable. Indeed, a commission should never be named prior to completion. Work around a loose brief, and let the painting speak to you on completion. The right title should be apparent.  If the piece is a portrait, it should be simply named after the subject.

Painting Illustrative Work Part I


I have three new pieces to share with you, 'Antoinette' being the first of the three.  The next two to follow over the next few days.  They have all been declared finished pieces at one stage or another, only to find their way back to the easel for slight amendments here and there - Oh the joy of being fickle!! 

The most challenging of my most recent work was, without a doubt, 'Antoinette'.  If you have read Wide Sargasso Sea, (Jean Rhys) then you will immediately recognise certain elements of the painting.  The book is the prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and narrates the story of Antoinette Cosway, aka Bertha Mason (Rochester's first wife) who resided in the attic at the Rochester family home, occasionally emerging to dabble in a little domestic fire-raising. 

The story of Antoinette is so sad - truly - I just had to immortalise my reading experience.

The central character of Wide Sargasso Sea,  Antoinette Cosway  is a white Creole  raised in a white household in the Jamaican community of Coulibri around the time of the emancipation of black slaves.  A social outcast, Antoinette carries a wooden stake as protection after her mother's horse was poisoned. In the painting this forms the fence behind which Antoinette features, unable to express or verbalise her suffering.  The large house is set fire to by rebelling black servants, and the family leave the house, her parrot Coco engulfed by the flames, unable to fly away, since his wings had been clipped, a practice common where parrots are kept as free roaming pets. Antoinette's brother Pierre also dies as a result of the fire. You must read the book to find out more!

The horse in the foreground is a piebald, so chosen as I wanted to depict the racist issues, the harsh black & white of it all.  The rest of the illustration has been digitally converted to sepia to reflect the status of Creole.  Not black or white. A beautiful warm mid way tone between the two.  I also felt that the monotone look would add to the drama of the visualisation.

However, my technical issues were complex.  If I had used umber hues to achieve the sepia I could have strayed into yellow tones or darker browns, so I decided to complete the look using a little technology.

So, to achieve the shading and dramatic tones, I needed to pay attention to the colours I mixed for  the final top rendering in oil keeping in the forefront of my mind the effect I wished  to create for the final visual, whilst staying true to the story, as in green parrot, golden skin tones the reds and oranges of the flames.  It was all quite intense, since I was looking to achieve a one click transformation.  I loathe sitting in front of a computer!  Converting on screen the underlayers I became aware of the potential pit falls.  Too much red would take me further into browny black hues than I wished to venture.  I also had to be careful with my yellows.  Cad gave me the look I was after, whereas a lemon yellow or naples could have given the sepia version far too much highlight, in areas I didn't want. In fact, if you compare the yellow area above right of the parrot's right wing tip, you can clearly see on the sepia edit where I have used lemon yellow. Eventually I mixed my yellow using a tiny element of cad deep to mute it in the digital process.  I used Liquin to give me the transparency I needed in the light areas. The only true black, which would remain black should be the colouring of the piebald.  However, the horse remained brown and headless for some time! While I decided on the design of his top coat, and facial features and direction of gaze. I finally settled to introduce a more nonsensical and surreal dynamic in the work using the horse's coat almost as an individual canvas, reserving the intensity of the subject matter of the overall visualisation for his concerned stare.

Antoinette
Original Oil On Canvas  24 x 24
(c) Copyright Kate Lomax 2010 All Rights Reserved

Beginning the project in late 2010, after many months of experimentation, indecision & toil, I am  joyous  to present  'Antoinette'.

Illustrative Painting Part II

Penelope
Oil On Canvas Board
10 x 12 inches
(c) Copyright Kate Lomax 2010 All Rights Reserved

The life of an Illustrator is indeed  an interesting one. Illustrators come in many genres.  Today I want to focus on artistic illustration. You may be asked to illustrate a short story or perhaps a book cover, poetry or even a cook book.  The first job in hand then is to know your subject.  Read the book, the poetry, the short story.  Try a recipe or two.  Know the beast, then it will become your friend.

The secret of a good illustration is one that evokes a curiosity without giving too much of the plot away.  Go to your library, browse the illustrative book covers.  They should read like a teaser line.  Tut tut merrily at the covers of well known tales that give away the climax of the plot on the cover.   Look at the date of publication.  A century or two ago, the only possible way of warning a potential reader of the suitability of the  content in relation to their own religious or moral code was indeed with a graphic illustration.  Today it is different.  Today, we have reviews online, in almost every magazine and newspaper, and of course reader reviews on sites such as Amazon.  An illustration therefore should tease the reader into the pages of the story as it unfolds.  We also have censorship across mass media,  therefore there is a much smaller chance of making an epic gaff when selecting a book for your ageing Aunt's birthday.

You may not be interested in illustration at all.  However, it is exceptionally good practice to try a few simply to train yourself to look at your own paintings and drawings to analyse what story you are telling your audience in your finished piece.

While you are at the library, find yourself a good book on  semiotics.  The painters code, which after many, many centuries, still holds good today.   Studying semiotics will also help you to understand the complexities of centuries old work, then when analysed invariable tell the back story of the event the work is depicting.

The above illustration, 'Penelope' is an illustration depicting the tale of Penelope of Odyssey notoriety, as  depicted by Margaret Atwood in The Penelopiad, (2005) as  one of the Canongate Myths.  Almost a saintly character in The Odyssey, busying herself with her tapestry during the twenty four years her husband was AWOL, Atwood reinvented Penelope as a lady, perhaps not behaving as a lady should, who is make the best of the situation she finds herself in. However, this is all set in a time period when wall to wall handmaidens were a necessary part of any household and as we all know walls have ears and eyes! I chose to paint her without a mouth as her lips were tightly sealed to the truth throughout her plight

So, in the illustration above, you will note that Penelope has downcast eyes, not wanting to show herself to whoever views in.  In the shadowy area on the left of the painting see her husband, Odysseus, although he is not painted as a solid form. The eyes of the handmaidens look around and look out at the viewer, one appears to be an eye belonging to Odysseus himself.  This tells us that he has a greater insight into the situation than Penelope imagines.  Between the half image of each character, we can merge them to be a whole, the two halves fused together in gold,  - their joint love of wealth and power.  My indication here is that they are fused together, jointly responsible for the grisly climax of the tale, and equally accountable.

The colouring is intentionally strong.  The tale is a strong, punchy story, with unfolding twists such as deceit, cunning, materialism, slavery, and of course adultery.  These elements dictated my palette. I needed various levels of transparency for the layers.  If you look closely, there are indications of other elements throughout the work, weaved into the background and found within other shapes and forms. For example, the eye of Cyclops can be found around the bridge of the nose of Odysseus.  Have fun finding the rest! Oh! and do read the book if you get chance!

Illustrative Painting Part III

My newest surreal piece 'Quantum Leapfrog'  was inspired by listening to a meditation.  Meditation allows our imagination to roam freely between the conscious and subconscious and is a marvelllous practice for artists wishing to illustrate intuitively.  It has been great fun to paint, a thoroughly enjoyable piece.  Some of my early followers of 20 years or more standing may remember my seemingly ordinary landscapes and seascapes with subtexts illustrated within the clouds waves and figurative shapes.  Well, let me tell you that you will find many many beasts and shapes, birds and fish within this work.  You just have to look!!  A bit like looking at the clouds or into a 3D poster the secondary items will eventually leap out at you, and once you have spotted them there is absolutely no getting shot of them........ I have attached just two crops, but there are quite a few more.  In producing this work, I wanted  to induce the viewer into an alpha state by distraction, as in searching for the hidden images and eventually 'losing' the chaos of the 'now' surrounding them.

Quantum Leapfrog (Crop 1) (c) Kate Lomax 2011 All Rights Reserved
The most obvious addition is that of the bear chatting to the sea lion. To the bottom right
of the sea lion there is an snowy owl in profile, find his yellow eye looking skyward first...

Quantum Leapfrog (Crop 2) (c) Kate Lomax 2011 All Rights Reserved
On the left of the painting, beneath the daisy is a mouth singing with a mic in front of the mouth, to the left of this is an elephant, a goat and a bird singing along also.

When painting in the abstract or surreal, we have to rely heavily on the picture in our minds eye, or the mental imprint we have to direct our work from within

Some artists are able to do this, some are not.  Essentially, this still falls under the umbrella of illustrative painting. 

Normally, a surreal work does eventually spawn a narrative or backstory, conception bouncing from an initial idea, that will have a root somewhere in the artist's universe.  The paint did not just fall out of the sky and arrange itself on the canvas, thus, it must have a starting point. For example, the artist may be wishing to  capture on canvas a feeling or an energy they have experienced in another person or an institution and may wish to do this as visual satire, or maybe placing the recognisable elements in an absurd situation.

Falling out of the sky via an artist's brush, a true Abstract however, ideally has no such root, meaning or backstory, and may be regarded as a delightfully interesting discussion piece.  Jackson Pollock was a remarkable Abstract Expressionist. Known best for his paint drip paintings you can have a go yourself. Here is one I did in about 10 seconds at the Jackson Pollock Organisation website. You simply go to a blank screen and hit any key to start, click to change colour.  Great fun and totally abstract!

Click here to paint a Jackson Pollockalike online

Apiece that is based on experience, imprints or any real thread is regarded as an Abstraction.  Surrealism on the other hand, is normally based in the figurative, with identifiable elements knitted together in a dream like reality, and of course in dreams anything can happen! Surrealism is probably the most popular and most acceptable form of abstraction.

When composing such a work, it always good firstly to write notes about your thoughts and your vision, and secondly, to produce rough sketches with any notation about colour style and the overall ambience of your piece.  The background is also important, and I shall be talking about backgrounds in depth in my next blog.

Many would be surrealists fear ridicule and rejection from their arty peer groups and often do not emerge as competent surrealists until later in life, when perhaps they are a little more confidence in who they are artistically. If this sounds like you, then it is time to come out of the closet.  The great thing about now in the evolution of art, is that almost absolutely anything is acceptable. 

A good exercise is just to grab whatever medium you prefer, and scribble with paint or any mark maker, in any colour you fancy without any subject matter in mind.  Just paint or draw mindlessly. Create a true abstract.  But is it....  often when you return to the painting, you can see all sorts of Freudian additions, if this is so you have just created an piece of Abstract Expressionism.  Well Done!! If it is just a collection of  meaningless shapes and  marks, I am sure it is beautiful, and will evoke all manner of discussions as different viewers see or imagine they see different forms within the work.  How wonderfully exciting!

Art is, simply because it is, and all art is stunningly beautiful because it represents a tiny piece of a person. An inner snapshot.  Gosh.  When we understand this, we can begin to understand what Impressionism is all about.  Creating that snapshot quickly and in the moment and painting what we see, be it in reality or the mind's eye.  We can then also see the links between Surrealism, Abstract and Abstraction, and Impressionism.  All Genre's relate to visual truth.  The artist's truth.  

So, if you feel you are painting what your public expect to see and not what YOU want to see, stop it, right now.  Pick up a paintbrush, pencil or pastel, and paint yourself at one with yourself!