Inspiration
I spent October and November of 2020 pushing my boundaries by following an eight week course in abstraction and storytelling by the encouraging Tracy Verdugo.
Previous shorter courses of hers had already helped me to free up my approach to painting and introduced me to new media, particularly newer and brighter versions of acrylic paints.
Finding art teachers in the internet is much more inspiring than my frustrating single year of Open College of the Arts, or Anglia Ruskin University. I had learned more from being a member of the local Ouse Life group. This was through regular drawing practice and the inspiration of fellow artists.
Choice of theme
This painting was the third piece I produced for the Storytelling course. The prompt for the painting was a mermaid sculpture, or any similar personal icon. We were to paint on watercolour paper with ordinary acrylics in a restricted palette (isn’t that so often freeing?) and with a background wash or a contrasting acrylic ink.
A previous lesson had me rifling through my plan chest. The search was for ancient paintings which could be used as torn-up parts of inspiration bundles. In doing so, I came across a 20 year old painting of me as a bathing beauty.
Back then I stopped what began as a relatively realistic painting. It was clear that I loved the otherworldy effect of letting some of the contrast underpainting show through. It is a personal favourite of mine and also made me think a bit about mermaids. Enough so that I abandoned, for now, the idea of using an icon such as Boudicca for a mythical image.
Painting process
The original reference photo was retrieved and straightened up in Paintshop Pro. I then traced this image onto A4 primed watercolour paper. I rather like tracing things, it seems more gestural and less weird than using a grid. I didn’t want to faff about getting the proportions wrong.
So, what remained was to follow Tracy’s advice about using decorative napkin pieces as collaged background detail, plus a reference to a personal object from the previous lesson (a green plant, which I later turned into a pink lotus-like flower).
I had Millais’ painting of Ophelia in mind, with the lady floating down the river. Mine, however, is washing her hair, thoroughly at home and not in any kind of suicidal mood. Or freezing, like Maillais’ unfortunate model, Effie. To enforce the point of her relaxed mood, in a mythical landscape, I made her green and the background pink.
For another green mythical figure, refer to my post on the Green Man.
I have included some of the progress as I painted.
After fiddling about a bit with some sharpening of detail, I adore this picture. Neverthless, it does not seem typical of my style at all. Perhaps that is the entire point of taking a class.