Claudia Carr sessions

Closing in

There is something almost spiritual about many portrait sitters that comes from a the combination of stillness, a posture that has been deeply relaxed into and the concentration they bring to the act of staying still.  Certainly there is with Sven who morphs to another state when he is sitting. I tried to capture some of this sense in the drawing what I was seeing in front of me as well as the sense of light falling across the face and range of colours vibrating in the darks,.

I contrasted working on creating space for the figure (the last blog entry)  with a large head close up.  Working on the spacial painting in the morning and this head close up in the afternoon.  Interestingly the actual painting of them was not as different as I thought it would be.  They were still about capturing form and colour in each mark.  The main contrast was in setting the composition.

I have been experimenting with multiple colours on each brush stroke, as a way of giving more definition and direction to each brush stroke as well as more vibrancy to the paint.  One of the learning experiences with this painting is to make sure that the tone of the colours is equivalent.  Otherwise there is a streaky effect which should only be used with care and can disturb the tonal structure of the picture.  It also raises the issue of the colours not being near complementary, because of the tonal impact from the inevitable partial mixing.

More Paint!