So last year and this year I've been trying to get into this "daily painting" movement, where the aim is to complete small scale paintings on a regular basis, quicker and more free style type works - like small studies - to help improve overall technique and to allow more experimentation. I really like this idea, though have not been able time wise to do this on a daily basis, I am trying to do these small studies as often as I can. I put the better ones up for sale and people seem to be buying them every now and then, which is an extra bonus ! These abstract flowers above and below are loosely based on non specific flower forms and the aim was to try to experiment with some wet on wet watercolour painting techniques, where paint has been applied on top of a previous colour that has not yet fully dried. Here you can see how the paint spreads around to create interesting effects and interesting colour mixes in the damp area. The paint will not spread out beyond the damp area to the dry area, so the outline of the flower will remain clean. The drips in this painting were deliberate to create stem like suggestions. The paper will need to be almost upright to create drip effects, whereas the paper was flat to help the colour spread around the damp area, so in these paintings, I needed to manipulate the position of the paper as I was painting. These quick abstract studies are very useful for exploring techniques and pushing my art out of my comfort zone to learn new things....
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The Autumn weather has arrived in Sydney with the mornings and evenings noticeably cooler in temperature. Roses bloom well into Autumn and the Hybrid Tea Rose is the most popular variety of rose. Hybrid Tea is a classification for a group of garden roses that has been crossbred. It has been the world's most popular type of rose for the past one hundred years. The Hybrid Tea roses typically produce only one blossom at the end of a stem, rather than a cluster, such as with other rose varieties. These flowers have been cultivated in almost every colour except for blue. I can see why the Hybrid Tea rose is the world's most popular variety of rose. They come in such an amazing variety of colour and the way the two hybrid colours blend into each other on the petals is marvellous to observe and try to paint. Below is an Impressionist painting of Three Roses (left) by Renoir and on the right is a modernist painting by Georgia O'Keeffe of "Abstraction of White Rose" (1927). I'm very interested in exploring the abstraction of nature in the flower forms, so the modernist style appeals to me so much more than Impressionist flower styles..
The word "Koi" is used in the west to describe the variety of carp - a freshwater fish - that the Japanese refer to as "Nishikigoi". It is an ornamental type of domestic carp. Japanese Koi art originally took inspiration from Chinese carp art, as the carp is said to physically resemble a dragon - a symbol of strength and endurance in China. Carp are a popular motif in Chinese art. In Japan, the carp represents good luck and good fortune. It is regularly painted swimming either up or downstream and these both have different meanings. It was a very popular motif in a number of famous Ukiyo-e woodblock prints - including the ones below by Hokusai - one of the most famous artists of the Ukiyo-e era. There is a lot of good information on the history of koi art here: http://hubpages.com/hub/koi-fish-art
Painting the koi fish is one of my favourite subjects at the moment. I love the colours of these ornamental fish and love trying to capture their movements in simple style brush strokes such as in the simple, minimalist paintings below.
I've been wanting to paint a new succulent plant artwork for a while now. I'd painted a really interesting "Mexican Snowball" succulent plant in macro style some years ago in a beautiful shade of blue and white. The original sold and unfortunately I later could not find the high definition digital file of the painting, so am unable to offer it for sale as a poster or print ! So this is my attempt to rectify the situation. This succulent is slightly different to the Mexican Snowball. It incorporates more greenish tones. The first step was to draw the shapes of the plant. I usually like to start the painting at the most detailed part of the plant - usually in the middle - and work outwards. The fleshy leaves (not sure of the correct name in succulents..) have used colour combinations, mostly in layering effects , of Art Spectrum lemon yellow, sap green, oxide of chromium, Pthalo Green, Tasman Blue and a Windsor and Newton brand turquoise. In certain sections for highlights I've also used Art Spectrum Flinders Red Violet and Payne's Grey for shadows. Spectrum red was used on the tips of the leaves. The original painting is 29 x 42cm (A3 size) on Arches Medium 300gsm paper. It is for sale at this present time - price is listed under "Original works for sale". It is also available as a high quality print by clicking on the photo below right.
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AuthorSacha Grossel is a practising Visual Artist from Australia. Archive
February 2019
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