BACKGROUND

To improve my understanding of the oil and cold wax media, I started watching an online course by St Ives Painting School to learn techniques of painting with this chosen media. This is Part 4 of the series of material and media exploration. These experimental paintings were made with techniques that I learnt from the course, then adding other materials that I wanted to experiment with as I went along. Below is my favourite out of the work made during this part of the exploration.

METHOD

Experiment 1

Basic composition was drawn out taking ideas from a list of compositions shared on the online course.

Shades of Prussian blue was mixed with cold wax:

Abstraction approach was used for the painting:

A sharp scraping tool used for clay was used to scratch The Horn Bridge image:

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Experiment 2

Experimenting with solvent on the oil and cold wax to loosen the paint then used a paint brush to do Chinese calligraphy so see if this effect would work to incorporate Chinese brush painting into the oil and cold wax medium:

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Another experiment of using even more solvent to loosen the oil and cold wax to test the effect of Chinese brush art:

Using newspaper ‘tonking’ method to lift the excess paint off the canvas which is a process that I have always found to be effective:

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Experiment 3

Applied oil and cold wax, then painted and scraped scenes of Bristol, my home town.

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REFLECTIONS

I enjoyed the experiments. I don’t think the solvent method to loosen the paint for Chinese brush art worked very well, although one could see the Chinese calligraphy characters clearly, it was coarse and I was not satisfied with the result. So this part needs further experimentation.

I was very happy with the Prussian blue Horn Bridge painting – I believe that was the best one out of this batch of work. I liked the simplicity of the colour palette and the confident and defined lines depicting the bridge.

I was not satisfied at all with the last painting in Experiment 3 because there was too much going on and the images were too representational. It lacked the ‘edge’ and refinement of the abstraction as in the Prussian blue Horn Bridge painting.

Overall I enjoyed the exploration and felt that there is plenty to take forward to the next experiment.

LEARNING

– Need to try something different to incorporate the Chinese brush art into the oil based media. Using solvent here didn’t work satisfactorily.

– Abstraction or to be more precise, semi-abstraction with symbols, is a style that I want to explore more of because the abstraction part enables me to be more free in my gestural expression and the symbols help me to tell stories and communicate my narrative.

NEXT STEPS

– Watch the last part of the online session.

– Explore other ways to incorporate Chinese brush art into oil based media such as oil and cold wax which I enjoy working with.

– Continue to experiment with semi-abstraction with symbols.