An Expressionist Dunstaffnage Castle

For my second painting in the Expressionist style, I looked at the artist Gabriele Münter, and noticed how many of her paintings are of houses on hills, and the like. I thought of a picture I took maybe half an hour before the photo reference I used in the last picture, one of Dunstaffnage Castle itself. It was autumn when I visited the place with my friend, but as it turned out, that didn't have a strong enough impression on me when I chose to paint it, and so, it doesn't look much like any season at all. Maybe like early autumn.
An important point about Expressionist painting is that it's not a painting of the artists impression, but one of their own expression. Their inner feelings and emotions about the scene before them, rather than their impression of it.
I always liked castles and ruins, and their diversity fascinate me. I am also an archaeologist, and I had my reasons for wanting to become that. Castles and ruins give different impressions - some are sad, mournful, even desperate and I'd like nothing more than to restore them to their original glory. Some seem not to give the slightest bit of care to the fact that they are crumbling, and stand proud and intimidating still.

Dunstaffnage struck me as a bit of both, but mostly as a very impressive castle built well and with good defensive strategy. I painted this on a fairly large canvas, F8 in size, with acrylics. It took a few sittings and several hours. I had the fortune of having good natural light as well as a lamp, though after painting in the evening, I went back and re-did the grass because it looked too garishly yellow-green. The sky had bit of a touch-up as well. The odd yellow blob to the right side was a tree with autumn leaves. Oddly enough, without meaning to, it gives something of a depth to the painting.
There was also something mystical about the castle, about its strong walls and odd angles, and what with everything we found around it, and how magical the entire journey was, I couldn't resist painting something in that picture that's usually relegated firmly to outside the fine art galleries. The clue is in the name of the painting, "Clouds over Dunstaffnage Castle".

This was the first painting since the course began that I gave away. Feels odd not to have it at home, but it was a late birthday gift for the friend with whom I shared the trip.

An attempt at Expressionism

I have, when let loose, a tendency to draw and paint with lots of tiny details and small areas of paint. This course has been a real good thing for me as it forces me to paint differently. During five weeks (or somesuch) our assignment is to write about and paint in the Expressionist style. This is rather tricky - it's a very much-encompassing title, but in short it is about expressing feelings. Subjective feelings rather than objectively painting reality, and moving away from exact, naturalistic portrayal of things in favour of emotions and the artist's own expression.
Part of this particular assignment was to paint on a 50x60 (or F12) size canvas. When I saw in reality the size of it, I realised, wide-eyed, that this would really be something else for me. It was, I must admit, a complete and utter joy to paint! I chose, after a long thought, a photograph taken on my journey around Scotland last autumn, north of Oban, by Dunstaffnage Castle, looking out across to Isle of Mull, I think. There was something about how I felt when the photo was taken, and how I feel looking at it, that I tried to get across. I also bought a very large paintbrush - possibly size 24 or somesuch - to help with the really large areas. I looked long and hard at a few Expressionist paintings, such as those of Gabriele Münter, and then set to work.
I used acrylics, and it took at least four hours. I didn't time it. The first picture is the finished painting, the second is what it looked like after I painted the outlines with black paint, and then started colouring some of the larger areas. I tend to go for large areas first, something I picked up while painting miniatures. This time, I really wish I could show the painting to you in real life, because the photo doesn't do it justice - size wise, colour wise and so on.
In conclusion, I am very, very proud of my achievement this time. If it pleases you, feel welcome to comment, and also about the feeling it evokes inside you, if you wish!

Two more free assignments

Free in the sense that we were given a week to paint one or preferably two pictures, after our own design, ideas and style, as well as medium. I would have dearly loved to be able to sit every day and have another wonderful go at using oils, but alas, there was no time.
Here then, we have the two pictures I chose to make. One which, admittedly, I started on a bit earlier, after an idea came together in my head. The character is one of my own design; an eccentric noblewoman by the name of sir Vincent Ravenscroft (let's keep the gender-, sex- and so on, discussions, somewhere else, shall we - it is a female, she's happy about being a female, and she prefers to be called "her" and "sir" and dress in men's clothes), who is a hopeless romantic, a charming charmer and socialite, artistic, intellectual dandy. Here, we see a daring escape by a small airship - from the lady? From the man? After kissing the lady, thus upsetting her fiancé - or perhaps, after kissing the man, upsetting a lady romantically interested in him? In whichever case, there's of course a marvellous tale behind it all...
Well, you get the idea.
I worked in acrylics, on an F4 paper block again, starting out with a sketch and then painting from big areas and going into details later. The sky was originally going to be a darkening blue, but it didn't look quite right once I'd painted it, and painting it all in evening colours would have been weeks and weeks of work, if I had been able to pull it off at all. So it had to be by daylight, though I dare say one day I will paint another one, somewhat similar, to it, "by night" so to speak. I had the most trouble with the far background - the pink house and the forest, or park, or whatever it is. I chose to make sir Vincent herself the most detailed part of the painting, as she is the main subject. Overall, I'm not entirely happy with the picture. There is something about it that nags me to sit down and spend some more time on it. But some things I think I did well, even just keeping them very simple. A lot is killed off in transferring it to photo and screen, though not as much as with the next picture. In the end, I also had to revert to a few ready-blended colours from my dear Games Workshop box. They're acrylics of a sort, too, and they had just the shade I needed. I need some more paints for my acrylics collection, I lack a few shades that are simply necessary for painting properly - some kind of better blue, amongst others.
This one is a lot less complicated. It was a real relief painting it. I chose a theme of the season - cherry blossoms, or, as it is in Japanese, sakura さくら　桜. (In English and Swedish, the words are "cherry/körsbär" and "cherry blossoms/körsbärsblommor", implying that the fruit is the main association. In Japanese, however, it is the other way around - sakura, versus sakuranbo "cherries"). It was an easy thing finding a few pictures for inspiration and briefest reference, before the delightful act of blending a simple pink of just the right shade, and an almost-black. The branch I painted first, then, the sakura, and last the pale blue. It's a great pity, really, how much is lost in the photo. It was a simple painting, took very little time compared to the other one (not a hard thing to do, admittedly) and was a delight to throw together. Also, it was interesting to have a lot of unpainted white.