REVELATIONS FROM THE RENAISSANCE - DAY THREE

Four cars and two walkers on our cottage road this morning. Road repairs on Lower Oak Leaf caused minor slow down. Delighted to see 'my sheep' were out in the pasture again this year. This was my first sighting. Arrived few minutes later this morning and met Ursula in the parking lot. John brought in his Jackson-Pollock-like painting to show me his style this morning. I love it. No question it is like Pollock's work.

In plenary with Andrea, we had a brief discussion of our experience at the Gallery yesterday then talked about painting in the Renaissance era.

- Canvas toned with a warm mid-tone colour, ideally transparent, such as burnt sienna, raw sienna, yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw umber or a grey mix.
- Drawings on paper toned blue, greenish, pink, dark chalk, highlight white.
Master of Tonal Values and Contrast: Hi Contrast brings forward, Low contrast moves back.
- Oil painting started in Northern Europe, done on wood panel, planed, smooth, sanded, gessoed [not like today's], hard surface and sanding meant a reflecting surface. Paint was thinly applied with lots of oil. Today we can use prepared gesso, wood veneer panels, masonite or hardboard.
- Canvas for bigger paintings, light in weight, taken off stretcher and rolled, painting side out, to be delivered to person who commission the work, restretched at destination.
- Glue Size: rabbit skin glue size - soak in water, turns to gel, makes fibres impermeable to paint [linseed oil acidic and would eat fibres.
-Oil on copper = smooth, luminous

Cherish your Ground: whatever done to the ground equals different effects, personality, message of painting.


Learning Process of Painting in Renaissance
- Drawing loosely and lightly
- Underpainting = map out light and dark pattern. Systematic way of painting. Looking for shadow areas, thinly apply dark transparent paint.
- Work Dark to Light on mid value canvas. Colours are transparent by nature, already dark. Applied thinly will be dark enough.
- Add lot of oil medium to make flow, no brush strokes.

We transferred our sketch to our canvas. I had a private lesson with Andrea about oil paint and oil medium, colours, clean up, etc. and was surprised and pleased to learn how simple painting in oil has become. I have very old tubes of oil paint, maybe from my teens, certainly not more than twelve years later. I could not get burnt sienna at the school's book store so will have to attempt to mix something close.

Renaissance Workshop: Our model, Melanie, set up a pose, sitting in the position that I wanted for my painting, so I grabbed a chair, located myself where the pose suited my painting and began sketching. Another classmate brought a chair beside me and sketched as well. A few others were sketching from other locations. Her pose was great. When I was done, I returned to my seat. Melanie changed her clothes and her pose for variety, sometimes at the request of an individual artist. In one area of the room, Melanie and one artist were trying to get the pose correct and had some difficulty getting the placement. Later an artist called her to model her hand and later in the day, I needed her to model her foot in the way it was held in the earlier pose that I had sketched. Varied posing. She also went around to the various artists and to see if she was needed. This was in the manner of the Renaissance workshop. I was fascinated and had not brought my camera to record the activity. My artist neighbour loaned me hers and will email the photos I took when she returns home to Napanee and will appear in a later blog.
As I looked around the room and pointed the camera, I noted the model and artist setting up a specific pose. Others were ready to begin sketching as well. Some were at their easels transferring their sketches to their canvases. At the front of the room there was a discussion and slides of some Renaissance paintings on a screen. Notes were scribed on the chalk board. Lots of interaction. Lots of learning. Lots of work.

It was a slow start for me in the morning. At noon hour, I went to the dollar store and got baby oil, soap, cloths, screw top bottles (actually 2 different coloured baby bottles) to be used for cleaning brushes. My lunch was eaten in the car, in the sunshine, and I returned to our classroom, refreshed and ready to paint. When driving through the front parking lot at the college, I saw a rather large groundhog standing under the bumper of one of the parked cars. My presence sent him out of sight under the car.

I used burnt umber to get my earlier sketch and today's drawing onto the canvas. There were some adjustments to be made since I had placed the figure on the canvas in a different location. Balance was regained by adding two more male figures in the background. I needed my figure to be pregnant and Melanie found something to stuff under her clothes that gave that impression. The three smoke spewing stacks are in place as is the 'Christmas' tree. Tomorrow's task will be to add the darks and begin moving the paint around.

We closed the afternoon with a demo by Andrea.

• A toned canvas=unified field
• Emily Carr quote "Movement in Space"
• Create Space - complete whole painting in values, foreground, background, mid-ground
• Push paint around, no medium used, spread thin layer
• Create depth: underpaint dark [sink it first] then apply light

Some notes/thoughts/questions:
- What makes great artist's work great?
- How were all the pieces of the alter piece found?
- If something not right in a painting, is there something else the artist wishes to say. The artist knows what is right.
- Renaissance paintings - sex and violence.
- Angels with White wings appear in Victorian times.
- Artists use imagination, people, themes to say what they want to say.

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