Working on a painting series – part 6

This is the sixth of a series of small contemporary forests I am working on.

Vers le haut / Moving upwards
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

The previous painting of the series can be viewed here.

As I am tackling numbers 7 to 12, I am hoping to look at the subject with new eyes and find new ways to design my contemporary forests. Some things I could explore are putting more emphasis on shapes or changing the color relationships. I find myself thinking about values and intensity of hues and playing with this.

I also want to explore how I could apply the Notan principle in the next paintings. I could also play with the value contrasts. The key is often to just forget the subject and play with the shapes.

I’ve also thought about adding patterns in the background or adding calligraphy. The possibilities are endless when you think of it, all you need is to jump in and commit.

Perseverance is the answer. Working on a series is a great exercise for any artist wanting to move to a more personal level in his or her painting. I realize, even as I am resisting the exercise at this point, that it is neither a waste of time nor useless to continue down that path.

Working on a series often becomes a requirement in order to progress in our art, the whole purpose being to tap into our feelings and imagination. It goes without saying that since working on a series is all about discovering our own creativity, we should do so without any outside influence, either from another artist or from a teacher.

Let me know if you have tackled a series and if so, how you found it improved your art practice.

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Working on a painting series – part 5

This is the fifth of a series of small contemporary forests I am working on.

Le pic
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

The previous painting of the series can be viewed here.

As mentioned in my previous post, after these paintings, it seems like I’ve run out of ideas to depict my contemporary forests in primary colors. Despite wanting to, I won’t give in and change either my subject or the colors I decided to use (how tempting).

On the contrary, now is the time to keep going and explore the “old” idea and see if a new original way comes to mind. So this is where I am today with this series as I am starting numbers 7 to 12 of the variations.

Surprisingly, as I aim to simplify the subject, I find myself adding more and more details with each painting and increasingly defining the trees, thinking of some of the abstractions not as colors and shapes but as clouds and background grasses. I see figures popping up in most of the completed paintings and I find myself wanting to emphasize these and characterize a story.

For some reason, my wanting to take a more abstract approach to painting seems difficult for me. It’s hard to take the realism out of me!

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Working on a painting series – part 4

This is the fourth of a series of small contemporary forests I am working on.

Lumineux / Luminous
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

The previous painting of the series can be viewed here.

So how did I start this series and how can you start a series? It all sounds quite simple: all you have to do is pick an idea or subject and paint it repeatedly in as many ways as you can or choose a set amount like I did. Put your imagination to work and don’t let anything stop you from starting another painting and then another until you feel you have exhausted the possibilities or you’ve reached the amount you set for yourself.

At first it will seem like there are hundreds of possibilities and combinations and these are indeed endless, but at some point you find yourself getting bored and feel you’ve run out of ideas.

I must admit after six paintings, I have already hit “The Wall” and would be very tempted to quit if it wasn’t for the commitment I’ve taken about the series. I could easily switch to a new and fresher subject but I won’t. Like everything else in life, when it becomes harder, you can’t quit for this is often when a breakthrough is around the corner. So I won’t quit and continue, I will…

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Working on a painting series – part 3

 

This is the third of a series of small contemporary forests I am working on.

Faisceau bienfaisant / Beneficial beam
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

The previous painting of the series can be viewed here.

Like the two previous ones, I took inspiration from a previous painting for this one but reworked the composition by turning it around. I find this one quite exciting and love the way the background turned out.

 

After working on realistic and hyper-realistic paintings for years, the new venture of painting more abstractly is turning out to be interesting to say the least. By limiting the pigments, I thought I had the elements to easily create this series into a more personal style.

 

What I found out was that is was not as easy as I thought, where I believed I was moving towards simplicity and abstraction, I found that each painting demanded more details and I could not get away from spending hours playing a little more with each of them. Where I thought it would be easy to develop different compositions, I found myself struggling to find ideas and relied more than anticipated on some of my previous work.

 

Where I thought of using different approaches for the backgrounds, I found I moved more and more towards one type of background I favoured.

 

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Working on a painting series – part 2

This is the second painting of the series of contemporary forests painted on 10 X 10 canvases.

Indomptable II / Indomitable 2
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

The previous painting of the series can be viewed here.

 

As a painter of realistic still lives and other subjects, I found the exercise of painting these contemporary forests very inspiring at first. What interested me most in doing these was to create something visually harmonious as well as exciting, pushing the boundaries of realism into abstract art.

 

While a series of paintings is often elaborated through different treatments of a same simple subject, I decided to vary the rendition of the subject while keeping basically the same treatment, i.e. same colors, same technique and same materials.

 

This, to me, added a certain level of difficulty since I was limiting how I could change or improve the paintings.

 

Next week I will post the third one of this series.

 

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Working on a painting series – part 1

I have been working on a series for a special exhibit that will take place in November. I need to paint 12 profile canvases sized 10 X 10.

Instead of painting different subjects, I decided to paint all of them of the same subject and with the same primary colors, in effect creating a series.

I am painting contemporary forests. I started a larger series of these in January and I am still fascinated by the effects and the look of each different painting. Starting with a loose background of warm colors, I play with the paint until I am satisfied with the result. I let this dry and put the canvas aside until I start to see things surfacing.

In some cases, it is almost right away, sometimes, it takes weeks and the canvas sits waiting.

This is good for a medium to large canvas, but I have found working on smaller canvases to be a challenge. The surface is too small for the paint to move the way I like it, it reached the edges too rapidly and the subtlety in color and value is often lost and needs to be rebuilt.

Over the next few weeks, I will present the first six completed paintings of the series. I must say in tackling numbers 7 to 12, I find myself getting bored with the subject and already running out of design ideas.

To start the first six paintings, I observed the designs of some larger paintings I created over the last months and looked at how I could improve on these concepts.

So this is the first painting that was completed:

Veille dorée II / Golden Watch 2
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylic and Inks on canvas 10 X 10 in

Over the next few weeks I will post the other paintings along with my thoughts about painting a series.

 

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Last week at the Studio and Paintings of the week

Probably because the sun and heat have stayed away from us during the month of May, I spent last week continuing my series of forests in warm yellow and orange tones, finishing two paintings started in early April.

Soleil de mai / May sun
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylique et encre sur toile, 30 X 30 po

 

Congrégation/ Congregation
©2017 Suzanne Bélair
Acrylique sur toile 30 X 30 po

 

As many already know, I like to work on five to ten canvases at a time for several reasons. It could be that sometimes I start a canvas and inspiration deserts me or I don’t like the direction it’s taking, or, especially if I’m working with oils, I need to let the painting dry before moving ahead.

 
I put it aside and let my right brain work quietly on it while I am doing something else, undertake a new painting or work on another. It sometimes takes months before I go back to it, there are things you can’t rush and you have to feel the painting.

 

This week I also had the visit of my good friends Tony and Sandy who came for cocktails and see my space.

 

I also found out I was accepted in the Art Symposium Estiv’Art that will take place in Magog in August 2017. To find out more about this : Estiv’Art

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