MA Weeks 57 & 58 - Finalising the Mabgate abstracts

Reflection on the past few days, 20^th February 2017

I had the equivalent of four days, spread over five, to produce the finalised pieces, which experience told me would be adequate, although in the end it was quite a squeeze.

As I mentioned in this Week 56 blogpost , when I looked at the sketches again, it was immediately clear that they were too complex and fractured to work up into finished pieces. The first job was therefore to simplify them. I'd expected this to take a couple of hours but it took all Wednesday afternoon. I had stretched and gessoed the two sheets of paper, so I was working over two separate boards on two mixed-media paintings that should combine to one piece. I decided to risk putting the simplified design straight onto the gessoed paper but hadn't realised how well the paper would take the graphite - in other words, it was more or less impossible to erase. The shapes I produced in the reworked design were not as pleasing as the originals, but given the time constraints and the graphite issue, I had to go with them. In retrospect I should have drawn the new design onto tracing paper in the exact size I wanted. Sketching onto gessoed paper is not an option! A learning point.

Design drawn onto paper on board

 

In contrast, on Thursday afternoon, the first layer of paint went on well. I was impressed how well the paper took the paint. I worked with the acrylics (both System 3 and Liquitex Basics) straight from the tube. I decided to work the earth and red-based colours from top left to bottom right, from light to dark and back. The blue and green-based colours went from top right to bottom left and from dark to light and back. It was (for me) an ambitious experiment in handling colour and balance. I started at the top left with neutral colours and worked from there.

 

First layer of paint

In essence the colours worked out for themselves where they would go, which was unexpected and welcome. I painted quite a lot of the top panel before attempting the bottom panel. This necessitated quite a bit of walking round both panels in an attempt to get some kind of balance and composition. The idea of looking at a piece in 360 degrees was something I learnt when doing the four pylon pieces last Summer.

 

Masked shapes, experimentations with tiles and letters

On Friday I added some shapes in masking fluid and in white acrylic, with a view to overpainting in the second layer. The idea was to add further shapes over the second layer of paint to go under a third layer. However, when I added the second layer on Saturday, the colour took much more deeply than I'd expected and a third layer simply wasn't going to work. I therefore added further shapes and simply scraped some paint over these areas. In the end I decided to paint the roads white. I did toy with the idea of putting some charcoal and/or grey into the final coat but I got to the point where I felt that I was possibly saying, "oh look, I thought of doing this too!" rather than it adding to the piece.

On Friday I also tested the idea of adding some small squares in a kind of “tile” pattern. The “tiles” are cut from a print of the Mabgate office building (see this week 51 blogpost) and a picture of the City of Mabgate pub photocopied onto acetate. They are therefore all monochrome black and white, but show very different tones, and the acetate and paper show different textures.  This all seemed fine and I expected it to take half a day to stick them on. However, when I came to do it on the Sunday, it took most of the day. The curves of the roads were quite difficult to work round. It also became apparent as I applied the tiles that this part of the painting was probably really a work in its own right, despite me testing it. As I was under time pressure, there was little else I could do but persevere.

 

Gluing the tiles to the painting

On Friday I’d also experimented with placing some of the letters that I’d lasercut the previous week onto the paintings. I found it quite inconclusive as I didn’t know whether the manilla or the grey worked better. I’d tried the letters cut from the acetate photocopy of the Mabgate pub, but they didn’t look right. However, once I’d got some pieces of the same image as part of the “tiles” on the Sunday, they seemed to work best so I used these.

 

The pieces in their final state on Sunday night, ready to be cut off the boards

I’m not really sure whether I like the outcomes or not. There are areas where I really like the colour – there is a kind of luminosity – but the tiles really need to be in a piece of their own. I did learn a lot about colour and paint, though. However, there isn’t enough complexity in the layering. I should have used more shapes and more letters. I’m also unsure about the roads being white. But I achieved what I’d set out to do, which was to produce some work based on the methodology I’d developed through my dissertation, of a size and format commensurate with the journey I would have to make over the Pennines and the area I was going to display them in. The ideas have also come a long way since their original concept. I will submit these pieces as part of my portfolio. They are finalised, although not necessarily “finished” – there is a lot of reflection to do about how to develop the ideas from here.

Monday got quite pressed for time too. I ended up having to cut the mounts for the prints by hand (with a lot of help from Nick). Having learnt how to make them in Illustrator, I'd cut them on the laser at college at lunchtime, but they'd burnt. Having tried it on two different cutters, it was clear that someone had been messing with the settings, but both technicians were teaching so I just had to leave it (and waste about £3 in mountboard - grr).