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Painting 3: Your Own Portfolio

Written by Ian Simpson

Contents

Introduction: art and art education

The distance-learning student
The course

You and your course

The painting course books
The paints for the course
Other items required
Keeping sketchbooks
Working with photographs
Notebooks and logbooks
Visiting museums and art galleries
Annotating
Theoretical studies
Reading and books for the course
Keeping your logbook
Amateurish and professional painting

Aims and structure of the course

You and your tutor
The aims of this course
The projects

Project and tutorial plan

Notes for students tutored by post
Assignments and tutorial reports
A working pattern
Student profile
Sending work to your tutor
1: The continuing importance of drawing
What you will need
Project 1: painters’ drawings
Allocation of time and a special note
What have you achieved?
Starting your logbook

2: Major modern influences

Cubism
Surrealism
Expressionism
Further study

3: Planning a series of paintings

Some themes and ideas for the extended project (projects 5 to 9)

4: Some colour projects

Introduction
What you will need
Project 2: colour control
Project 3: grey with a touch of colour
Allocation of time
What have you achieved?

5: Paintings with figures

What you will need
Project 4: an informal portrait
Project 5: a dramatic incident
Allocation of time
What have you achieved?
6: Pictorial composition
What you will need
Project 6: ideas from other paintings
Project 7: scattered features

7: A sense of scale
Project 8: breaking perspective rules
Project 9: A view of the Eiffel Tower
Allocation of time
What have you achieved?

8: Handling paint, and the major project

After Painting 3: Your Own Exhibition

If you plan to submit your work for formal assessment

Theoretical studies and the logbook
The logbook
Written work
The assessment portfolio
Allocation of marks
3 Planning a series of paintings

The major project in this course is a series of at least six paintings developing
a theme or idea. These paintings will be carried out later but I want you, if
possible, to decide now what you intend to do, so that you can present the
major project as a proposal to your tutor for his or her approval. You may
wish to develop an abstract theme but if your paintings are to be painted
directly or indirectly from life you may be able to make use of the drawings in
Project 1: painter’s drawings as a starting point. You don’t have to do this but it
will put to the test how well these drawings can be developed into paintings -
which was the point of the project.

Another starting point for your major project might be the extended project
from Painting 2: Finding Your Way. You may, for example, be inspired by
Leonard Rosoman’s portrait paintings in ‘The Royal West of England
Academy’ painting (Chapter 5) and be keen to try another version of the
‘conversation piece’ you painted in the last Painting course.

There may also be a theme or idea from the list provided in Painting 2: Finding
Your Way on which you can base your extended project in this course. I am
reminding you of that list (with a few extra ideas added) at the end.

Your major project might consist of six paintings of the same subject - each
version setting out to capture a particular mood or effect of light - like
Monet’s series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, for example. The project
might be to paint six quite different views of the same subject - perhaps views
of a city from a high viewpoint - like the views of Cambridge from the tower
of Great St Mary’s church in the Painting 2: Relating to Other Artists course
book. You could decide to make six paintings, all quite different, but on a
related theme, for example, of seaside amusements, a circus, or a fairground.
You may decide to paint views from your home or views within your house
and garden just as Bonnard did in and around his house at Le Cannet in the
South of France.
You could try an ambitious panoramic view of a city or a landscape, with the
six paintings joining together to make one wide view.

You may have worked out an idea concerning the geometric division of the
picture surface and be ready to try it out in a series of six paintings.
Providing your tutor approves your idea, anything is possible for this project.
If nothing springs to mind discuss this project with your tutor and once you
reach the point on the course where you should start the major project, begin
with a painting on a subject which interests you at that point in time and see
where it leads - planning your six paintings one by one.

Ideally, however, you should take to your second tutorial, or if you are
tutored by post, send with your first assignment, a written proposal,
extending say to one side of an A4 sheet, which states what you intend to do
and shows clearly what you plan to present at each tutorial or send for each
assignment. You will need to refer to the Project and Tutorial plan earlier in
the course book.

Some themes and ideas for the extended

project (projects 5 to 9)
Some possible subjects for a series of paintings are grouped below under
three headings - still-life, figure and landscape.

Still life
• Flower painting
• The mantelpiece
• Interior with mirrors
(these paintings might include figures)
• The greenhouse
• The conservatory
• After the party
• The sink
• French restaurant
• Mother’s Day

Figure
• The homecoming
• Moving house
• The wedding
• The funeral
• Musicians
• The raising of Lazarus
• Artist and model
• My family
• Portrait of the artist in six styles

Landscape
• The park
• Across the viaduct
• Childhood memories (paintings might include figures)
• The coastline at first light
• The sky at night
• The deserted city
• A cathedral in six moods
• The airport
• Harvesting (these paintings might include figures and machines)

Themes and ideas from Painting 2: Finding Your Way

• Drama
• Humour
• Pathos
• Gesture
• Heroes and villains
• Modern life
• The nineteen eighties
• The inner city
• Conservation
• Composition with red, yellow and blue
• Childhood
• The city rises
• Solution and separation
• Winter sun
• Expectations
• The dance
• The battle

Many of the above suggestions could have an abstract interpretation but here
are three further possible abstract themes:

• Composition in black, white and a single colour

• Straight lines and circles
• Space, colour and rhythm.