A peek into my creative process.

Big Stormy Sky

I have been re-engaging with my painting practice recently. Over the last few years I have predominantly created one of a kind monotypes, which I often work into with other materials. I keep a sketchbook and like to explore different techniques in there, however, I love to work bigger. when I completed my MA in Fine Art and Education I worked on large format canvases, which were well over 1m. I loved the process here and enjoyed working to such scale, but I don't have the ability to store or transport works of this size at the moment.

I have found a happy medium in working at about 50cm square for paintings. Big enough to get my teeth into, but easily storable and easy to ship and transport.

The Estuary

I continue to work on my Seaspace series. My style has changed quite a lot over the years and I try to capture more of the feel of the place than trying to capture a pictorial representation. As such, my paintings often go through several stages. Today I'd like to share the development stages of one of my paintings. This one is called 'The Estuary' and is based on a view I pass regularly on my daily walks, just a couple of miles from my home on the Northumberland coast. It's painted with Acrylic paint on a standard edge canvas. Most of my acrylics at the moment are Daler Rowney System 3.

This is the beginnings of a new painting. I'd just finished working on another piece and decided to use up the paint I'd already dispensed to block in my composition. At this stage, I don't worry about detail, I just apply the colour quickly and try to get the shapes I want and get rid of that blank canvas feel. Then I leave my work and think about it for a while.

Originally, I thought that this might be a quite realistic painting and I began to apply the underpainting in the right sort of colours. I love bright colours and have a tendency to want to use them everywhere - reign it in Claire!!! So here we have the shape more clearly defined - you can see the beach and sea and river quite clearly.

As I progressed with this, I started to add details of the buildings in the background and more detail to the sky. These are the rough shapes and not supposed to be fine details. It was going ok, I took a break and spent some time looking at it. I do this a lot. If I'm unsure about a painting I will often pop in on the easel and have it on display so I can look at it and see how it wants to be developed, sometimes just a few hours, the longest I've left something like this was about 6 months.

I wasn't feeling it, it seemed too still. It was starting to look like the place rather than capturing the emotion of the place. I swapped out the small brushes for the big ones and began to make more gestural marks. I stand up for this, often using my whole body to create the marks needed (I can be quite messy at this stage and often work outside during the summer months). You can start to see the brush strokes and movement of the paint.

It did not quite capture the feeling and movement of the place, so out came the pallette knives, cardboard and the biggest brushes I have. Paint is scraped over the surface or dry brushed, allowing some of the previous layers to show through and create that ellusive personal sense of place that comes through painting. At this stage I slow down - just so I know when enough is enough. It's so easy to overwork and miss something. Just a few minor careful adjustments and I decided that it was where I wanted it to be.

I'm often asked how long it takes me to create a painting. It takes a lifetime. It takes all the training, skills, knowledge, experience, fails and successes to create each one. To construct the physical painting can take anything from a few hours to a few days, but sometimes, months or even years. Sometimes I don't create work for months, but I'm constantly thinking, considering, collecting visual source materials and ideas, which eventually coalesce into an idea which eventually becomes a series of works. This process often takes two years or longer. My current series has been in development for about 18 months and I'm still not done with it yet.

I hope that you enjoyed this glimpse into my creative process. I'd love to hear about your creativity too.

Both of these paintings have been sold, but open edition prints are available on my Saatchi shop and Gifts with these images are available to buy on Redbubble.

Recent Art Adventures

It kind of makes sense that as an Art teacher I enjoy Artmaking. This is true, although I don't often spend as much time creating as I would like. It takes a while to get all my materials out and set up, so I have to plan to spend a whole day making if I'm doing this at home and I take up A. Lot. Of. Space. when I'm working. My sewing, on the other hand, is usually confined to a much smaller area, unless I'm cutting out and therefore is easier to pick up and do a bit at a time. so I always take opportunities to attend workshops when I can.

Last week I have been fortunate to attend some CPD at The Northern School of Art at Hartlepool (formerly known as Cleveland College of Art & Design). It was a bit of a trek from school, but well worth it and it was inspiring to see the degree shows at the same time.

The CPD was focussed on printmaking with found objects. The instructor was Helen from Northern Print and she went over a range of different printing processes and how we could achieve effective results in the classroom, with or without a press.

As often happens I found myself drawn to the monotype processes. I don't know if it more to do with the painterly aspects of this type of printing or the immediacy and unpredictability of the technique that I like. I played with the layering of textures and shapes, using both hand printing and the press to achieve different results.

What was new to me was using a printing medium for using with acrylic paint. I was pleasantly surprised how long the paint stayed open with the medium added. I think I will buy some to use with my Gelli plate at home as I have found the fast acrylic drying time limiting when working with the Gelli plate. When I make monoprints at home I usually use oil-based ink, which I have grown to love but it can take a long time for the inks to dry and then there is the cleaning up!

I am constantly drawn to printmaking and would love to pursue this further, especially textile printing methods.

On Saturday we also had our monthly crafternoon and I decided to start a painting. So I took along some paints and some design ideas I've been working on and began to create the underpainting. I go from excited to bored very quickly and I'm starting to realise that I like my paintings to have textural qualities and at the moment this work is far too flat and the colours and layout are not quite right. Over the coming weeks, I will be adding to this to start to bring it to life. I really do like to work with mixed media and would love to bring some stitch into this work at some point. Watch this space!

It's always amazing to see how my preferences and ways of working change and develop over time. I wonder where this will go next?