Hello and welcome back to this monthly letter. I hope you are doing well.
The past month I did an acrylic painting on my big sketchbook that I would like to show you. I love that in this painting, all the activity is happening in one side of the painting (in the left side) letting a lot of free space on the right side. It is a daily life scene in my new studio.
This painting is called ‘making coffee’ and I did it in acrylic painting. I recorded the process of this sketchbook painting so here it is a sneak peak of the next youtube video :)
I do really love making videos and this month marks the first year anniversary of my youtube channel. It is very nice that my videos are somehow keeping chronological track of my work. I hope you enjoy them too :) feel free to subscribe!
Check out the last two youtube videos:
These two videos are related as the second one is based on the acrylic painting I show you in the first one, that it was also the subject of the October painting letter.
In this letter I wanted to show you a picture I took in my studio of the result of this underdrawing I just finished. I worked on a 90 x 70 cotton canvas with a pencil, then I drew with a brush using a watersoluble graphite bar that I thinned with water. This way was so much easier for me because of the size of the canvas.
I do not have always a plan when starting a painting (an oil painting) but mostly, it depends on the size of the support I am about to paint on, the circumstances, how much time I have or how much time I want to spend on… or the subject I am working on. Let’s say that if I will be painting some figures in a bigger size, I will be probably doing, at least, an underpainting in acrylics. If I want to go further (and if I want to be sure that all the elements are well placed) I will be doing an underdrawing, an underpainting and, finally a painting.
At this moment of my painting practice, I do not found so much joy in painting in too much layers. Where I feel happier is in a more direct painting approach. So in the last stage of painting, even if the painting is big enough to not have the time to solve in one shot, I can already solve some parts and having this alla prima feeling. Because if I don’t solve my paintings by an specific moment, I will probably be loosing interest on finishing them. As I said before, I think this is related with my painting practice, with what I paint.
This is, of course, evolving with time and practice and it is not an static thing.
So by this time, when starting a painting I have an structure that I follow but, at the same time I can choose to do whatever I want and whatever I feel in that moment: Underdrawing, underpainting, alla prima, by layers… it is up to me. I think that we don’t have to create for ourselves a difficult practical-path while painting and we all can find the way we love to do things. Knowing that painting is already a practice that requires a lot of work, we can do it in a way we like.
WORKSHOPS
Once a month I teach in the countryside, in a beautiful place. There is currently some places available, I teach in french, please feel free to contact me for more details.
Next workshops:
November 04 L’Ateliers. Les Avins (Belgium). Some places available. Oil painting.
November 25 L’Ami Couleur. Liège (Belgium). One place available. Oil painting.
PATREON
If you want to see more in depth process of my work I invite you to join my Patreon page where I create two video process per month. The last video is a mini tutorial about mixing colors for creating contrast by temperature when painting a landscape.
That’s it for this month :) I hope you enjoyed this November letter and subscribe if you want to receive it directly into your inbox each month. See you next month!
Elena.