Friday 29 July 2016

Painting without drawing

I recently went to a demo by Soraya French and she said the too careful a drawing was very limiting to freedom. She suggested that if you spent ages on a complex drawing, when you came to paint it, you became too afraid to spoil all your efforts, that the process of painting became less spontaneous and hence less free.


I took up this idea and over the last few weeks at AVA I have tried to paint images with no drawing at all. It started with the Bluebell Wood in the previous post and over the next three weeks produced 3 more images with no drawing other than a couple of circles to place the flower heads in the right place. In the poppy painting, I did not even do this.
So all the paintings were straight in with a brush loaded with pigment, to see what I could do.


They are not totally successful, my visual memory is poor and there is very little room for error, but it was liberating, and I will certainly do more.






                                                                           Poppies








                                                                           Hollyhocks


  
                                                                             
                                                                                Alliums




This will be my last post for about 3-4 weeks as I now have two weeks of hard work getting over 90 paintings ready for my annual exhibition in Wells Cathedral and 2 weeks of being there to man it. I cannot be distracted by painting etc, so it will be quiet until the beginning of September.
Hope you like looking at the images.

8 comments:

  1. They are all beautiful and captivating!

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  2. Thank you Linda. What a lovely comment. I am really pleased you enjoyed looking.

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  3. You have just reminded me that I did no drawing at all for one of my favorite paintings. I must try that again soon.

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  4. Yes, do try it again. It can be very liberating as long as one is prepared for some failures. Happy painting

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  5. Beautiful. The alliums especially. If you are comfortable with drawing, then you find you can "draw" somewhat easily as you go along. One way i find useful is to paint a wash first of the "negative" space around my primary focal point. And then paint around focal points in that negative space, etc. It brings forward the focal points so naturally.

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    1. Sounds like a very good idea to try....than you

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  6. I also adore painting and growing flowers. And i admire your paintings.

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