Halfway There- Painting Classes and the Importance of Rest

Dearest reader, I know it has been a little longer than usual between posts, but hear me out- I´m still on exchange and this host uni loves to give out workload like nothing else exists. No complaints though! I love the work (at least from my painting class… but you´ll have to wait another 7 weeks for the full bean spill on that).

Desaturating colours into chromatic greys (it’s even less fun than it sounds)

As I´ve said in a previous post, which you can read here, I have no classes at UAL (the university I attend in London). Education there focuses more on individual learning and investigation of our own interests, so I´m still getting used to being told what to do and how it has to be done (I´m definitely not a fan of that so far…).

Out of all my classes I have to say painting is my favourite . The windows in the studio are huge, which if you know anything about me, I need direct sunlight at all times to properly function- like a cactus, but less green and equally as prickly. The professor is a nice lady, and the assignments…. well aside from the tears they´ve caused, they have definitely helped. The focus at my host uni is on technical skills and graphic levels. They often expect realism and an ability to copy anyone´s style due at 23:59 every Saturday, which is why most assignments focus on exercises to train you up from values and shapes, to then full colour studies and large scale realist paintings.

Lots of natural light from both sides and funky setups.

One of my first assignments consisted in thinking in “plains”. I had to flatten out the still life composition in front of me and carve out general shapes using only 5 tones- with pure white as the lightest tone, and pure black as the darkest. I was asked to do this with completely uniform paint and no visible brush-strokes or tone variations in each segment. Being a painter who loves tone variations and visible brush strokes, this went down about as well as you can expect. You can have a look at this disaster in the picture below. As I´ve said before, you have to laugh at yourself sometimes (and I´ve definitely had to do a lot of that in the last 2 months….).

5 tone acrylic exercise, yes I did cry submitting it.

Next up was an exercise I did surprisingly enjoy, (aside from doing it wrong and having to start again the day before the deadline…). This assignment involved thin washes of white acrylic over a black background (I used opaque grey paint instead , which is why I had to re-start). Now, the paint´s texture was incredibly hard to get used to for me, and it is an exercise which requires a lot of sensitivity and patience, but I absolutely recommend this to anyone wanting to up their lighting game. You carve out the light from the dark layer by layer, and the result can be incredibly detailed and sophisticated. As you can see below, mine did result too dark, which was a direct effect of not having enough time to continue to add light. But even unfinished I do enjoy how this exercise looks, and if you are a painter or looking to get into painting, I would highly recommend this for trying out lighting and different paint textures.

White acrylic washes on black background- unfinished.

Currently, I am working on a third exercise involving the desaturation of colours into chromatic greys (but more on that one next week), with this latest exercise, much like the two before, I found myself focusing on the work and nothing else, not taking breaks for 6 hours at a time, forgetting to eat, etc. This is very common in artists, but I want to finish this week´s blog by saying that rest is just as productive as work. It´s important to take breaks every couple of hours, and idleness is when ideas flow in. Give your body and mind time to rest, in a current society where we´re expected to be constantly creating, making, and being “productive”, rest in itself is an act of rebellion which we all need to take part in more often.

See you all next week (I promise this time!)