These artist’s notes are copyright to Graham Baker and may not be shared or copied without permission. Any enquiries, please email to grahambaker@gmail.com.
Experimenting with Relief techniques. Oil painting on MDF board.
Size: 7 feet x 47 inches. 230cm x 120cm.
This was a painting for the home. Decorative, experimental because one of my other interests is carving. I see similarities between carving and relief paintings that I would like to explore.
Process
I started with a freehand charcoal drawing. Charcoal was best because I could plan with line and shadow before applying any paint. I painted the original in a very quick time for oils and I was quite happy with it until I realized it wouldn’t work where I intended it to be installed.
Each painting has its own viewing distance. I hadn’t thought this through. The style I had used was better suited for paintings that would have a lot of space around them and could be viewed from a distance. Then the viewer could interpret areas left undefined and get more value out of it. I wasn’t going to change the location so I had to consider this work an underpainting and add a lot more detail.
Relief: where sculpted elements remain attached to a solid background. To create sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculptured image has been raised above the background (thanks Google).
Below are photos I took over the next year as I repainted ‘Big’ about ten times. I washed colors over the raised graphics. It was easy and effective but after each layer of colour I wanted to build more depth. Every time you see white areas, that was me doing just that and playing with the colours. Taking advantage of the opportunity to experiment with ‘relief’ applications, techniques, materials and colors.
Well it worked. I learned a lot and liked it a lot, I even had offers for ‘Big’, but decided he could stay where he was. I will try another relief painting one day using the commercial mediums to build up the relief effect.
Experimentation
I would win a while and then it was gone, my little winning streak, battling with techniques. I was faced with defeat. I dropped that train of thought, responded with a desperate and spontaneous reaction and low and behold a masterpiece.Thats the way it happens with happy accidents. My next job is to remember how I did it and explain the process to others. The best way to do that is repeat the exercise.
These artist’s notes are copyright to Graham Baker and may not be shared or copied without permission. Any enquiries, please email to grahambaker@gmail.com.