Sketch Feb2012

Calling _Triptych

Sketch Jan-Feb 2012

Ideas I'm working on for the series...creating a set of characters from the city. Looking at roles, occupations and inter-dependencies or relationships that interest me. Looking at spaces these characters might occupy.

Boat conductor on a ferry boat to Perumbalam

Ideas from Hunger Games, urban gamekeeper

Conceptual tapioca field. First time for me at Perumbalam village. Quite fascinated by the grey mounds.

Ideas for shelters

Night games

Lady running a sewing shop in Bandra

Ideas I'm working on for the series...creating a set of characters from the city. Looking at roles, occupations and inter-dependencies/relationships that interest me. Looking at spaces these characters might occupy.



 

Jan12 Sketch

Ideas I'm working on for the series...creating a set of characters from the city. Looking at roles, dying occupations and inter-dependencies/relationships. Spaces these characters might occupy.



 

Playing with technique

Stumble upon cool stuff

So playing with technique...how does it happen? Almost by accident actually.  Careless drops of turpentine, unintentional scratches and fiddling with paint that's not yet dry, the last out of impatience mostly.  

ALSO by relooking at abandoned old work, not liking some part of it and taking sandpaper to the surface. Of course, there is also deliberate experimentation with materials. 

Drops of turp

Over the existing semi-dry grey paint I made radiating lines of burgundy and dripped turpentine from the outside to the points of origin of the lines. Having experimented with this technique in the painting of the bridge, it would be wrong to call it 'new.' Still, the result is new every time based on the opacity of the pigment, the quantity of paint on the canvas and the colours used.

I was looking for a way to create a sort of force on the side of the blue landing area, to go with the grey sea. A calm before the storm with a silent, static explosion before the boats can depart... then shapes began to emerge in the explosion on the side of the trapezium...

Using a pointy metal tool, I scraped out the figure of a boy. His arm is raised in the act of doing something, making it ambiguous: is he the creator of the explosion in the water, or is he helping to save the situation?

I worked some more on the triptych too, filling background colour and giving more definition. 

January 2012

Words elude me...

I've put off posting about my painting from the last two weeks, searching for words to describe the work. But to keep my promise to blog frequently, I need to get cracking with this post. Coming to the conclusion that putting visuals into words is actually easier said than done, (especially words that would make you go 'Aha! Yes, I get it!'), I have finally simply uploaded the pictures. I'm sure the words will flow if I keep at it. 

I began painting on canvas I had primed 2 months ago, applying a base coat on some areas. This is a triptych in a vertical (portrait) format, though ultimately I might choose to display them horizontally, in individual frames or without frames, with spaces between them.

Having fun?

I cannot stress the importance of having fun while I work. Three days into the triptych, I started the piece below.

 It will tie-in to the series but it is more my style and more organic.  Working in abstract is enjoyable, especially when the piece talks back to you. In this case I put my seven boats on the canvas, and then saw other connections and possibilities emerge. In my next post you will see some play with technique and how that experimentation dictated the next step.

Painting from 2011

Inception A railway bridge near the canal, this image became the start of the series. The area around the bridge is changing everyday. People rarely used this route, it's a little known short cut. At the time I started the painting, the little construction happening behind the bridge abruptly stopped. They started again in December.

There's a coconut climber who walks the streets around my parents house, his knife  hooked on his back. When he's drunk sometimes, he shouts things like 'I'm the king of the world,' in English. He got me looking at the coconut trees. The thick overnight growth of vines going up the trunk made it look as if it'd been ages since anyone had climbed it.

I made these two sketches after losing patience with several others I'd started and abandoned. Satisfied with the way my pencil captured the abstract quality I was seeing in the wild growth on the tree, I decided that I would combine the two sketches just the way I have positioned them here. 

I was looking for something frail. Frail but untamed and untidy. 

Prepping Canvas

Stretching Canvas: A challenging prospect

When working with oil, I really like to have my canvas taut. It's nice to have feedback from the surface. Almost to simulate painting on a springy board. Acrylic paint on the other hand is already quite voluminous and when dry especially, has such a stretchy plasticity, that it doesn't call for any prep at all.

Having said that, stretching canvas in Cochin is nearly an impossible task. I have tried everything from making the frames and stretching the canvas myself to buying off the shelf, 'company-supplied,' stretched canvas. The latter are already warped from transportation. DIY ready stretcher bars are not available in India, so we would buy used pine palettes, have them sized by carpenters and knocked together. This part of the process somehow accomplished I would struggle to single-handedly achieve a firm stretch . Add to all this our very humid weather and the result is just a canvas nightmare of bendy frames and flappy surfaces.

Setting up my studio again after the masters course, I decided to approach the local art shop. This provided a tiny glimmer of hope. Apparently they import sized bars from Indore!! A canvas could now be stretched easily and quickly. And though I felt it was asking for too much, I went ahead and specified 'deep-edged.' They were surprisingly very obliging considering my small sample quantity.

When the frames arrived I was pleasantly surprised that the 'deep-edge' spec was, in fact, deep edge. But the canvas was still a bit slack. The shop manager was however very sympathetic to my requirements! We examined the frames together and decided that it was not the stretch that needed to be tighter but the chamfered edge needed to be more extreme. And this, coupled with a tighter stretch, would give us the elasticity we were aiming for. He very kindly said they would redo the entire lot in a week.

Applying Ground: Priming the Surface
By the next weekend, I was set. Six taut canvases, ready for the application of ground.

Canvas laid out flat to avoid dripping-ground effect

Ground is made by mixing chalk powder with hide glue that's been soaked in water overnight. If you're interested in the traditional recipe for ground, a good resource is here. This is done in a double boiler, very carefully, to avoid air bubbles. The mixture is then applied, while still warm, to the canvas. I do about 6 coats but this is just a personal preference.

The importance of this step in the process cannot be understated. The layers of ground when allowed to slow-dry provide a surface resembling the skin of a tabla. One coat of ground applied to the back of the canvas also shields it from moisture and fungus, a serious problem in this hot-wet climate.

This is a 2-day old mix that I reheated before application

Chalk powder ground

In my experience, chalk powder gives a grey result so I have substituted it with a white pigment powder. I did like the grey, it produces a lovely texture. I liked it so much that I found myself not wanting to cover much of it with paint, which could potentially be a problem. I decided to save it for a time when the concept calls for this lovely jutey texture.

Left: Primed canvas; Right : Just canvas

Just before I start painting on the primed surface, I sand it down with the finest grade of water paper, careful not to work the surface too much. Dry brushing will suffice to remove the dust from the canvas before it can be painted upon.