The Process Behind 'The Seven Gates: Abstract No. 2'

Here's the next in my abstract series and it's the companion piece to 'Welcome':

I planned the painting first on paper using the theme of self destruction and voluntary isolation as my starting point. Once I'd got a rough idea I headed into Photoshop to further develop it. This takes a long time as I tried numerous possibilities, seeing the difference made to the feeling of the painting by changing a line or a colour. Here are some of the images from the later stages I went through:

As you can see I toyed with the idea of adding in my construction lines but in the end I preferred to keep the inner workings hidden in the final painting. You will also notice that I tried flipping and rotating the painting to get the best result. This was really interesting because I'd turn it one way and say to myself that that's not it. Then when I turned it to its final position it hit me that this was precisely what I was looking for. It's surprising the difference turning or flipping a painting can make.

When it came to the painting stages I added many layers of paint that later would be revealed when I scratched off certain areas. I'll let the time lapse video show this better:

 

Thanks a lot for reading and next week I'm going to write a post about genres. See you then.

Website Redesign

Just a short post this week because it's been a busy week. I've redesigned my website (amongst other things) and it's one of those tasks that has come as a surprise to a fledgling professional artist. Being an artist for me is not just painting: it's blogging, social mediarising, (I think that's a real word, if not it should be) accounting, record keeping, film making and web designing. 

The website design is something that I could hand over to a specialist company to do for me but as an artist, if there's anything that involves art and design, then I want to be there, in with the nitty gritty. For me, it's a lot quicker to do it myself rather than tell someone else what I would like to have done. I've made mistakes along the way and it's still not perfect but I'm quite happy with the new design.

This is where you come in: rather than reading loads more of me rattling on in a blog post, I would really appreciate it if you could head on over to my website and have a look (see link at the bottom of the post). Then I'd appreciate it even more if you could give me any feedback.

•  Is the website user-friendly?
•  Is everything easy to find?
•  What do you think to the colour scheme/design?
•  Is it conducive to buying prints? (Sadly I can't just be arty, I have to pay bills too.)
•  Any other thoughts? 

I posted a similar request on the social media sites and I've had some really constructive comments that have led to me refining my initial design, so I do actually act on what people have said to me. Any feedback would be very welcome.

So I'll thank you in advance and I'll see you again next week where I'll fill you in on my latest abstract work.

www.daviddentonart.com

 
 
 

The Seven Gates - Abstract Series

You may have noticed on my website that I've recently taken a slight departure from my usual detailed paintings and gone for something more minimalist. I've been forced into this by the fact that my hand can't cope with day after day of fine detail work and - prepare yourself for a technical medical term - has decided to get all hurty. The word 'forced' makes it sound like a bad thing, but while I love painting details, I've really enjoyed doing something different.

I decided to base seven abstract paintings on the paintings in my main 'The Seven Gates' series. You could think of my detailed work as intricately programmed techno and the new abstracts as my minimalist ambient works, if you're into that type of thing. This first one is the companion to 'Descent From Möbius Wood' (see above). It is based on the same idea of the inescapable nature of depression and how it is always lurking in the background ready to pounce when guards are lowered.
 
I started just messing around with shapes and lines in Photoshop to get across the feeling of being alone, lost and drawn towards something not in the least bit pleasant. These are some of the stages I went through:

I've found lots of things about this new series exciting: the difference that moving a line slightly makes to the feel of a painting, the ability to be looser with the paint, the chance to complete a piece of work in one week and being able to develop new techniques. I've already tried three new methods that I can use in my main series so there will be a certain amount of cross pollination.

Technique #1: Adding washes and then sprinkling on salt. It leaves a really interesting texture.

Technique #2: Putting paint on thickly in lines and letting it dry for five minutes, then wiping away any paint that hasn't dried with a wet brush. This leaves very fine lines where the paint has dried.

Technique #3: Painting many layers of thick paint and after drying, scratching away areas with a craft knife to reveal the layers below. Again, this gives a great texture. I noticed this technique while making this painting but there isn't evidence of it in the finished piece. Fear not it will make an appearance in future works. I've got some other ideas up my sleeve too as each painting will get looser and more fragmented. 

In the planning and painting stages I listened to music to help me get the right feeling in the brush strokes. I has a playlist of tracks that fit the emotion I was trying to get across. The main track I used was 'Endorphin' by Burial.

 
When I'd finished, I tried some different crops and it came down to a choice between the painting at the top of the post and this one:

I possibly liked this one more on an aesthetic level but it felt too forceful, the top diagonal pushing the viewer down too quickly, whereas the one I went for has a greater feeling of space and drifting towards the inevitable conclusion.

So despite being forced into it, painting abstracts is something that I'm going to keep doing. (I'm really looking forward to doing the next one which will allow me to actually use colour! I'm so used to painting greys this will be a real treat.) I may alternate between detailed and minimalist to give my hand a break, even when it's better. If you're an artist too then trying something different may also excite you and feed into the work that you are more familiar with. Give it a go. 

If you've any comments about this painting or about branching out and trying something different then please leave a comment below, I'd love to know your thoughts.

To return to my website where you can see a larger version of this painting, click here.

The Process Behind 'Descent From Möbius Wood' #2

People often comment on or ask me about the depth in this painting and how I created it. With difficulty is the short answer. But let's have a look in more detail. (Sadly I haven't got any work in progress photos for this painting so I will illustrate the text with details from the painting itself.)

I started painting the background first and I used a watercolour style to create the lightness and blur, two things that help it to appear further away. I used thin washes of paint and worked wet into wet, that is wetting the board first before adding the wash, allowing the paint to blur and blend. The effect achieved is shown here in this thin strip:

The next stage was to add in the layers of trees furthest away from the viewer. These needed to be slightly darker and slightly more detailed. But I still kept these trees very loose. The lack of detail and paleness is what makes these trees recede in the final painting. Plus I added a thin blue wash to accentuate the effect.

This all adds up to what is aerial perspective and here is a fine example:

Notice how the mountains in the background become paler and bluer the further back they go. This is the technique I was applying to the trees.

The next layer of trees were painted in a more traditional acrylic style with thicker layers of paint. This helped me to make them crisper. Again you can see this layer becoming darker.

This process continued through the remaining layers, each one darker and more detailed than the one before. The struggle was in judging the darkness of each layer so that the final layers would be almost black, but still contain detail. Let's look at a tree from each subsequent layer to illustrate:

In my posts on how I made 'The Insidious Whisper', I wrote about how difficult it is to paint within a very narrow band of tones. It was exactly the same in this painting; the darkest trees were a complete nightmare. Getting them to look cylindrical before I added any details took me many attempts. Then keeping the details dark enough but different enough to be visible was another headache. It was a process of trial and error: paint a bit, dry it, then modify the paint and repeat until the desired tone was reached.

Put all of these trees together and the final image is (hopefully) one that you feel able to walk into.

To return to my website where you can see a larger version of this painting, click here.