Vantage Point redux
Greetings shipbreakers!
The age old question, ‘how do you know when a painting is finished?’
Vantage Point . 52in x 20in . Oil on Linen
If you were to ask Scott Christensen, the famed American landscape painter, he might tell you 8 or 15 years. Some are finished at the business end of a shotgun he says, but many simmer away withholding the key until one day a quick glimpse reveals that painting’s solution to a problem that had remained elusive.
We don’t always know what isn’t working. We sometimes think a painting is finished and would swear on a stack of bibles to that effect. The honeymoon phase when the painting looks great. Then two weeks, two months or two years later..
BAM! Oh geez… I think I need to revisit that one.
Intention however is the key, what words do I use as a anchor point for the work? Am I being true to those words? Has my intention changed or wasn’t I paying enough attention to the original inspiration?
Paintings appear to have intentions of their own. You either force your way through, like blasting rock or go with the flow. At the end of the day, there is always sandpaper and some elbow grease to reset who is boss!
That is what I will be doing with Vantage Point.
I intend to document the entire process here and where possible, on video, from the first new sketches through to the finished painting. You will get to see how an artist can move from apparent success to partial failure and, hopefully, back again.
I say partial because if it was a total failure it would already be in the bin. It certainly would never have made it to a large sheet of canvas in the first place if it were that bad!
For the most part Vantage Point is it’s own statement but I might revisit the idea with a completely different painting. The biased composition to the right side was experimental and it would make a great composition for a wrap around book cover, however the vast openness was something I wanted to evoke, the height above the desert floor, the mono-wheel vehicles racing into the distance below us and our singular character watching from up high with her cat Gingy.
Gingy was our cat who passed while I was working on the painting. I wanted to immortalise him in the painting.
I have ideas as to where I might go with it and that will start with some pencil sketches, maybe a gouache study or two, if I’m lazy, a colour study in Procreate and then back onto the existing canvas. It will need some sanding down in places to remove paint then I can get onto the process of finishing this one.
The goal:
• Simplify the wreck, make it a little less fussy.
• Create a more dramatic sky
• Add a balancing element toward the central/left side
• Increase the size of the mono-wheel’s below, bringing our viewpoint slightly closer to the ground.
So stay tuned as I transform this one into something extra special!
In the meantime, here is a view of the coalface.
The Studio aka ‘The Mine’
That is Wadi Akra sitting on the easel for scale. It is also 52in x 20in.
The easel is called ‘le Conqueror’ and was made by a good friend, it rests up against the wall. Same with the palette sitting on top of an IKEA trolly. The dark timber thing with a lid was my old, smaller palette. Lighting is two Goddox LED light panels set at 6300k colour temp.
And to all of my new subscribers, thanks for joining us!
Wayne
