Landscape Drawing Week With Mike Knowles

Parys-Mountain-

These paintings are the result of attending the Island Art Group landscape workshop at Llaneilian in the north of Anglesey. Mike Knowles provided tuition and guidance, as well as useful constructive criticism.

I chose to focus on Mynydd Parys (Parys Mountain), which, according to Wikipedia, “dominated the world’s copper market during the 1780s, when the mine was the largest in Europe.”

I used oils and a palette knife for a change, whilst continuing to investigate the use of flat planes to try and portray the sense of space in the main quarry itself, as well as the staggering array of colours to be seen in the waste materials.

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Finished Painting – The Sculpture Garden II

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The Sculpture Garden (Acrylic on canvas 41cm x 41cm). It’s developed from a small sketch made during a life drawing class.

It’s part of a continuing series in which I’m exploring the use of abstracted flat coloured shapes to create the sense of form in space, in order to play with the contradictions of representing the 3D world on a 2D surface.

In this particular piece, I was especially focussed on trying to ‘break’ or ‘buckle’ the picture plane using the teachings of Josef Albers in his book ‘Interaction of Color’, as well as by ongoing fascination with Cubism, Picasso, Matisse and Hockney.

I kept thinking of Matisse’s cutouts made during his later years, when he ‘drew with colour’ using nothing but a pair of scissors and coloured paper.

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On My Easel

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I’ve gone a bit ‘off piste’ with the latest development of this painting. I’m trying to increase the intensity of the colours in order to accentuate the feeling of the summer sun, whilst also using the interaction of those colours to ‘break’ the picture plane. What do you think? I’d love to hear which version you prefer (or dislike the most!) and why (Acrylic on canvas 41cm x 41cm)

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