Dear Subscribers,
Alongside the ongoing Dark Red Roses alla prima workshop, I wanted to give you a sneak peek into a still life I've been working on this past week.
I often find inspiration in the processes of other painters, and recently, I've been diving into the work of Zoey Frank. If you haven't checked her out yet, her website is zoeyfrank.com and here's her Instagram profile Zoey Frank on Instagram.
Zoey has this intriguing focus on exploring painting from the standpoint of pictorial flatness and the illusion of space. This tension between flatness and the illusion of space (which is typical aspect of representational painting) gives her work a graphic quality. Her treatment of edges, which are predominantly hard, especially caught my attention. I associate it with a kind of poster-like appearance where shape and composition stand out prominently in the visual hierarchy.
So, inspired by this, I set myself a rule or challenge for my latest work – no soft brush manipulation allowed! Instead, I had to establish a range of edges through value transitions in direct painting or by scraping back with a knife. Check out the stages of this experiment below. I found that scraping was a particularly good technique for creating the illusion of transparency and mystery of shadows. Scraping also alleviated the sometimes problematic aspect of direct painting approach. Though in this case the process was somewhere between direct /alla prima and indirect painting (where layers allowed to dry before further application).
I was working from life/direct observation but below is a photo of my reference:
I've recorded the entire creation process of my latest work, and I'm considering doing a live broadcast of the recording exclusively for paying subscribers. This way, I can describe my thought process, share insights, and take questions from participants.
Given that it's pre-recorded, I have the flexibility to speed up or slow down as needed. The total painting time is around 15 hours, so this approach makes it more manageable. Typically, during live demos, there isn't enough time to show the entire process. With this format, I can delve into the painting process, answer your questions, all without the added pressure of painting in real-time.
If this sounds like something you'd be interested in attending, let me know, and I'll try to arrange a time slot that works for everyone.
Here is Part 4 of this alla prima painting workshop.
In case you missed it, the first part is free for all subscribers and can be reviewed below:
For subsequent videos, paying subscribers will have exclusive access for a very modest subscription fee.
Paying subscribers also have the opportunity to post questions and comments in a private chat section on my Substack.
If you want to either speed up or slow down playback of the video, you can do that by clicking the three dots in the bottom right corner and adjusting the playback settings.
That’s all for this week!
Alex
