Monday 7 June 2010

Challenge Gillian - with a twist

This month I have been trying out some new thing with my art. With the brighter weather came an overwhelming desire for colour and something different. So I bought myself some books on the art of van Gogh and researched Matisse, the Fauvists and the Expressionists. Lots of fun. Armed with a little extra knowledge (and my book on Franz Marc) I tried to paint a little differently - with wild abandon using pastels, oil pastels, acrylic, watercolour, graphite and coloured pencil. These paintings are the result of my experiments.

First of all, I have the one piece of detailed work that I worked on this month. At about 16 hours of work it certainly took a lot longer than most of the other pieces. For those of you who have followed my blog for a while you will recognise him as Stanley, my sister's Rottweiler. The following brightly coloured pieces would certainly be seen on a dark night. I thought they might make nice greetings cards. The horse is heavily influenced by Franz Marc's work but the badger is all my own.



I also bought a book called Painting Abstracts by Rolina van Vliet. It gives lots of exercises for becoming an abstract painter and I have included a few of those exercises that I produced myself. I know, not the most ... what can I say? ...The most attractive, especially if you have no interest in abstract. But some of the colours are pretty. Ultimately I would like to combine the abstract background with a detailed painting to make my art a little unusual. A bold background to a painting might make a decent alternative to no background at all. Backgrounds have always given me trouble. I have never known where to place my animals when I am painting them. With a drawing you can get away with that. But paintings often need something more. This is my attempt to find an alternative.




This blue, red and yellow one reminded me of being on the coast, with sea spray battering off the rocks. Wish I could say it was deliberate but it was just a happy accident.



So there is certainly lots of colour this month. I hope you enjoy them.

6 comments:

Lori said...

Wow, you are really so very talented! The drawing of the dog is just superb, the new paintings are spectacular as well, although I don't know much about the painting techniques you are using, or the artists. Well, I've heard of Van Gogh, lol. I tend to lean towards more realistic paintings when it comes to that, but I really like your use of color, and the badger is great!

Tracy Hall said...

Wonderful work! I especially like your badger. Stanley is stunning.

Anonymous said...

OH MY GOODNESS
I'm just catching up had to bring my computer in for a badly need checkup
GILL!! these are incredible!!!!!
So over the top fantastic! I love this type of art, not sure I will ever get to such a place, but you are able to reach impossible levels. I bet your feeling very rejuvenated now......I'm going back to view and absorb. so lovely Gillian

Gillian McMurray said...

Thank you everyone for your kind comments. It was certainly fun doing this kind of thing for a change. They say you can only try the the way out stuff and do it well when you have a good grounding in the basics. It has taken me over 20 years to get to the point where I felt I could (or wanted to try) something like these ;o)

Robert Chaplin said...

Gill,
'Stanley' is awesome and your color stuff is vibrant, since we both like bad chess I'll check back.

Seth said...

Hey Gillian. What a great post. These images really showcase the depth of your talent. I have to say that I love them all.