Paul Hutchinson
oil
|
Another awkward pose to hold and paint from at the same time. One of the frustrating aspects of painting is that no matter how much forward planning I do, the forms have a habit of growing until they wander off the edges. I have never been one who carefully draws in my composition before painting. I tend to roughly sketch in the forms and then dive straight into painting. I know that other artists encounter the same problem and I have seen many famous examples where the canvas simply has another piece sewn on to it! In this painting I had run out of room at the bottom edge and it was important that the shoes and suporting hand that holds my weight, be well grounded. So I took the whole linen canvas off it's stretcher frame and mounted it onto a large sheet of hardboard. I then glued another long strip of linen along the bottom. If you look carefully you can just see the join running under my shoe and across the hand. Another major problem I had with this painting was the background. I often find backgrounds in portraits to be problematic. In this one I originally followed my habit of simply painting what was there, which was the large expanse of my studio with the wooden floorboards rushing away in perspective. However, I couldn't get it to work and it made me look like a giant in some Lilliputian world! In the end, I painted it all out and put a brown curtain there. This improved it but I still dont feel it is satisfactorially resolved. |
| 1974 - 1983 | 1984 - 1993 | 1994 - 2003 | 2004 - 2014 |
email Paul at PJHpainter @ gmail.com (remove the spaces)