17 March 2019
Week Seven
This week met with great struggle. I felt blocked which hasn’t happened often for me but when it happens I usually know what action to take. Drastic action! I took all of my work off the walls and turned all canvases away from my destructively judgemental eyes. I was to take a week long break from painting, I was going to force myself not to work. This didn’t work out… by the third day I’d already broken my promise. I’d grabbed one of my largest canvases and made gestural lines on it with my eyes closed.
It was an experiment on my painting ability, to visualise the canvas while feeling it, but more importantly, it was going to free me up. I built up compositional lines in my head and conducted them repeatedly, encouraging the fact that they they might not follow the previous mark exactly. This idea was taken from a portrait painting class on eye-trust. Looking at the model and painting without looking at the canvas.
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