Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Having completed my small water colour rough and having in mind how I wanted the image to look I forged ahead with an oil painting.  In the first image you can see the under-painting where I have laid out the composition and tones.  After that had dried and I found the time to paint (seemingly the most difficult thing lately) I began to paint more directly.  The next stage will be to make a few corrections and to do some transparent passages over the water.  After that I intend to add some small details to strengthen the sense of scale.

There is an enormous tailing pond at the Highland Valley Copper  mine  and I want to try to create an image that gives a sense of the scale.  At this point I’m just exploring the relationship of the elements: the sky, mountains, water and the tailings.  I did a small watercolour sketch to start but I think I will need to work some more and decide if it would work better as a print or a painting.  The sketch itself doesn’t really convey the scale or clearly define the tailings but that is the point of working through these issues before embarking on a larger piece.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Bradner flower show this year, but I did start this painting yesterday from reference photos I took previously.  While a large field of daffodils is attractive, I think that when there are different varieties being cultivated it is all the more beautiful.

As a break from what I have been primarily working on and as an excercise I painted this today.

I was reminded of that remark one of my college painting instructors made when I found myself scrubbing a brush nearly devoid of paint across a canvas.  I really should have thanked him at the time.  My dutiful response then was to make my next painting look like it was sculped from butter.  Now I don’t care so much, but I do love thick creamy paint, more placed on the canvas than painted, mmmm butter.

Despite the effort to find time and the struggle to know when to stop I have managed to complete the first painting from my latest series.  I originally came up with the idea in November of 2009 so at this rate it would take awhile.  Fortunately now that I have the basic look and feel set out future paintings, in theory, should “develop” faster.

This painting has been sitting unfinished for a very long time, so today I took it off the a shelf and worked on it.  I suppose that I will do this one more time after it dries.  I realize that I won’t ever be happy about it so I might as well just finish it and be done.

I sometimes like to use vine charcoal to make preliminary drawings for paintings or to make corrections of my under-paintings, but one of the benefits of the soft charcoal is also it’s drawback.  It leaves allot of charcoal dust behind that mixes with the paint.  One solution is to use fixative which can have some nasty solvents in them.  I have a better solution that is non toxic (well at least to the end user), use a microfiber cleaning cloth.  If you use the cloth delicately you can remove most of the loose dust while leaving behind a nice charcoal drawing that won’t mix heavily with the next layer.  It works so well in fact that you need to be careful to not overdo it as you can almost completely erase with this method.  I’m also not certain just what effect fixative will have on a painting long term so simply removing excess charcoal seems to be a better solution to me.

Here is the charcoal right after making a correction

Just press lightly against the dust and the cloth picks it up without smudging

And the result

One further benefit is that the cloth can be rinsed with water, dried and reused over and over.

I think there comes a time for every painter when they inadvertently forget to wash their brushes properly after using them.  I am not that artist, I am the one who forgets repeatedly.  So having a few brushes that required some care, I bought some brush cleaner.  I’ve obscured the label for the benefit of my imaginary sponsors.

I’m always somewhat skeptical when it comes to claims of non toxicity and efficacy.  It elicits the same response as a late night ad for knives that cut through steel and  they can still cut a tomato “this thin”.  In my slightly industrialized world if it doesn’t require a respirator how could it possibly work.  Well it does,  in a matter of minutes dried oil paints were dissolved and brushes were “restored”.

I was amazed, so amazed in fact that I had to know just how it worked.  So like Toto I pulled back the curtain, actually I downloaded the MSDS sheet for it.  And behold I had been sucked in as assuredly as  if I had ordered those knives in three easy installments.  Ethanol 1000 ppm,  What?  It’s alcohol and it’s only 0.175 proof, no wonder it’s non toxic and the label doesn’t say what the active ingredient is.  Oh well it worked and that’s all that matters but if I ever run out of this stuff I might try a martini.

Wow that makes it sound so important!  I painted this picture when I was in college and it at least amused me.  I believe it was destroyed during a cleanup at a business.  It should have been a painting of a pretty mountain, it might have survived.  At least I found this Polaroid shot of it, it can now amuse me again.