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.

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.

This is my homage to Kodachrome, which has been discontinued after 74 years.  My dad made thousands of beautiful slides with his Pentax H2 and a hand held light meter.  Kodachrome was his film of choice and today 50 years later these images still retain wonderful accurate colours.  Slides have an undeserved reputation perhaps developed from forced viewings of poorly made images.  On the other hand I have very fond memories of sitting as a family watching our lives displayed in giant images while the projectors fan hummed away broken by the distinctive sound of the next slide and the outburst of us children clamoring to be the first to identify the time and place.  I too made thousands of Kodachrome slides throughout my teens and twenties only reducing my usage when processing was no longer included in Canada.  Now we view our digital pictures and scanned slides on an HD TV and get that same social family interaction.  I do miss the hum of the projector though.

The painting is of a roll of K-11 process film with an ASA of 12.  The box is stamped process before DEC 1959 X and the cloth bag was provided for mailing back to Kodak for processing.  It sits in a deserved place of honour with my camera collection.

I’m not sure that I ever consider a painting complete, but I have decided to stop working on the Dancer painting.  It has been difficult to find the time to paint lately and these long interruptions have meant that I have to remix colours to match what is already there.  You can see evidence of my painting  method in the detail shots, there is a small amount of glazing but I primarily paint directly.

I have been very busy doing everything except creating new art, I haven’t even finished this painting which is very near completion.  I hope to be able to work on this series of paintings from found photographs as well as the new set of prints I am planning.