Sunday, 20-Mar-16 20:54:29 CET

Eva 20 March 2016

Hi again, it is Sunday 20 of March 2016 and it is time for a new live model painting session at de Stoker in Amsterdam.

Last week I bought an easel mountable daylight fluorescent lamp. The past week I have been looking for solutions for how to bring with me the lamp to and from Amsterdam. Tried to find a bigger bag on wheels, plan A. I could go a get a new such bag no problems but if I got such a bag I would be less mobile. I go by train and metro etc. and perhaps that would not be the best solution so I would not just buy a new bag on wheels. I tried to get a second hand bag but the ones I found were not good enough.

Then I started thinking of plan B. Would it be possible to downsize the rest of my painting bag stuff to give room for my new lamp. Since a really long time I have been experimenting with the reduced palette, but have I stopped bringing all sorts of paint with me? No, I have all the tubes I bought and they have been carried between Almere and Amsterdam back and forth for over a year and I know for sure they have not been used. They are just lying in my paint box and cluttering it. So today I decided to bring my reduced palette only. Why have I not done this before? Usually I am someone who fancy all the tools I have at hand. The more the better. There somewhere is the reason. But today it is different. I have my reduced palette and that’s it.

The brushes also got a cleanup. Removed brushes I had not been using for months. After some nudging I got all things I need into my bag.

It feels slightly scary. Will it work out well? I am almost in Amsterdam. Let’s do this!

Now I am finished and on my way home.

I came on time 20 minutes past 12 to the studio and none was there. So I waited and ate my sandwiches while it started raining. To avoid the rain, I stood in a door opening. I was wondering if I perhaps had missed an email about that today’s session had been cancelled? After 20 minutes a girl came to me asking me if I was not an artist normally painting at de Stoker? It was the model Eva that I painted in December last year! Shortly after Saskia came. Luckily.

I mounted my daylight lamp on the easel for the second time. Nice.

Today we were not so many in the studio: Saskia, Bas and Me. Today’s music was classical music.

The layout of the palette I would try today was like a letter Y. The left top I placed yellow, to the right I placed red. In the middle white. At the bottom blue and below that burnt sienna.

When it comes to art nothing is obvious. There can be opinions about anything. For example, the composition of this painting. Her head is cut off right at her forehead. Can you do that? Bas told me he had a teacher at the art academy he attained that would not approve cropped images. I understand that at an academy the painting surface is insignificant. If you need to paint big then you paint big no matter what constraints, you have around you. Well I go to the studio by bike, bus, train and metro so I have real life constraints. Namely, the size of my bag.

What I do when I cut off the forehead like this is happening all the time with pictures on Internet today. Essentially I play with the format of my wet panel box system. It makes a huge difference in the size of the rest of the painting if that I cut that part of her head. The viewer comes much closer to the subject this way. So I cut the forehead but on the other hand I need to get the proportions right so I chalked that on the easel a little bit. Like so I could better estimate the distance between chin and eyes etc.

The palette layout worked really well. I made one purple connection between red and blue and outside that I made a brown red connection.

The model got the finest silhouette. I am thrilled I can capture that luscious line on the right side of the painting. She was sitting on a red couch so that was given sort of. The wall behind is dark blue. I could decide on other colors as well but these will do. What I really want to emphases on is the warm light from the left and the colder light from the right. She got purple and greenish shadows on her right side with a thin warm little silhouette line nicely tracing her shapes against the background.

When we reached the end time I had both the feeling of disappointment that I had not been able to paint more but on the other hand now I still have plenty of things to do next week.

So, this is to be continued.