Developing the ideas

Developing the drawing 1

Having made many initial sketches and drawings to establish the ideas, development then moves on to using an Apple Macintosh computer. Each character is worked on independently and then scanned on to Adobe Photoshop.

Here the composition can be amended, added to and developed in a very similar way to how Fresco painters in the 15th Century might work on their cartoons prior to beginning painting onto wet plaster.

Many might say that this is 'cheating' or cutting corners. It is neither of these things, but an adaptation, using modern facilities, of an age old process that helps painters realize their vision.

Developing the drawing 2

More is added as the idea takes shape.

In Photoshop, the elements of the composition can be kept on separate layers, making them easier to move and manipulate. It is like having each part of the drawing on a sheet of clear acetate that you can move around.

Here Joseph of Arimathea collects the spilled blood of Christ in the Holy Grail. A soldier stands waiting. Has he just finished hammering in the nails to the hands and feet; or is he poised to smash the legs of the Crucified Jesus to speed him to his death as was normal in executions of this kind?

Developing the drawing 3

Finally I am happy with the composition.

All of the elements that I need to start painting are in place and I am ready to transfer this image to a surface suitable for painting.

I use Arches hot pressed 100% cotton acid free paper in a weight that does not require stretching. The surface is very smooth and I keep the deckle edges for now.

The image is toned down to about 15% of black (made much lighter) and a print is made onto the Arches paper using an Epson large format printer. Draft mode is used to allow the minimum transfer of ink.

The paper is taped to a drawing board and is ready for further work.

Developing the painting 1

The images are painted in gouache and watercolour. Gouache is a water based paint that is much more opaque than watercolour. You can lay very flat colours that are bright and consistent. Unlike watercolour, it does not rely on the luminosity of the paper coming through the painted surface.

Gouache also dries lighter on the painted surface than it appears on the palette, so it takes some experience to judge how a colour might be when it dries. I make tests of colour onto drawings that have not made it completion.

Gouache does not, however, lend itself to overpainting to any great extent. Therefore, a great deal of planning needs to be made as to which characters are going to be which colour, again using the discarded drawings. I mix colours in small cigar tins that can then be kept for later use. This avoids the problem of predicting dry colours for a painting already begun that needs adding to.

Working from the background forward, the initial tints and melds are added.

Developing the painting 2

Textures are worked up using an ammonia and rubber based masking compound, and then overpainted with highly concentrated and pure watercolour.

There is a certain element of risk involved in using this technique, as you never really know how it will turn out in terms of colour concentration and finish. Leaving the final colour to dry for quite a while minimizes the chance that the colours underneath will still be damp from the final coat of watercolour. If it is still damp underneath, as you remove the masking compound, it lifts the gouache with it and the whole process needs to be tried again.

As I have said before, gouache does not like overpainting, so repeating the above process can only be tried once or twice at most. If it fails, you have to scrap the painting and start again!

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Developing the painting 3

Now some of the foreground figures are beginning to be added. As per Illuminated Manuscripts, the most important figures are painted in the most expensive colours. Here Jesus' clothing is painted in Cobalt and Cerulean Blue with his halo in a flat gold. The soldier is painted in less expensive earth colours.

In the days when Artists ground their own pigments and paints, finding reliable sources of good quality colours was not always easy, so Artists tended to keep the expensive and difficult to source colours for the most important parts of the painting on which they were working. It was not uncommon for painters to buy a years worth of a colour from a supplier, and this expenditure could represent a large part of the payments that they received for undertaking commissions.

In spite of modern developments with synthetic pigments, good colours are still expensive and it is best to avoid colours with a lot of extenders to aid coverage and additives to modify the colour.

Developing the painting 4

Now the final figures have been added and textures developed with the aid of the masking compound.

Even with the outlines, you work from the background forward so that as each figure is completed, the bleed or trap from one figure makes sense where it overlaps another figure or element.

I am left handed, so I tend to mask off the parts of the painting that I am not working on using strips of paper and little frames. Gouache tends to smudge, especially when in contact with a sweaty hand, and shines if it is rubbed too much even when dry. Covering up the bits that you are leaning on tends to avoid this.

The colour intensity of durable gouache is very strong and permanent, and I think that this outweighs the time consuming complications of using it.

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Developing the painting 5

As the painting approached completion, the gold border is added. Here I use gold gouache and to achieve a flat gold takes about 4 coats, each added in thin layers. The gold tends to lift in contact with the next coat so enough is mixed up for each session before I begin, and each coat is applied quickly. The gold need to be thoroughly dry before the next application is attempted or you end up with quite prominent brushmarks (which I don't like).

Finally, the eyes are added and these need to be kept very clean. As with most whites, the gouache picks up stray pigments very quickly and tints the colour, so brushes, water, palette and painting need to be pristine before I begin.

On the left you can see where the unstretched paper has wrinkled slightly. This is sorted out by the mount within which the final painting sits.

The final painting

And here is the final version of the painting. You can see that the wrinkle has vanished, and that the words have been added above the arch. The gold sits flat and there is no whiteness of the paper left.

With gouache, I prefer not to use a ground or all over base colour for the reasons of colour contamination and lifting as I explained earlier. Some Artists do use a ground and so are able to leave some parts of the painting relatively untouched with just the ground showing. Going even further, some Illuminators used to work from a gold leaf ground if the importance of the manuscript warranted it, with the less important manuscripts having gold added much later as per my method of working.

With a little tweaking here and there I am satisfied that I have taken this particular painting as far as I can go with it, and I move on to the next.

Developing the ideas

All paintings of this nature are basically developed in the same way, although the technique has become more sophisticated over time.

Having been given the texts, the initial part of any painting on this theme is largely research - reading the texts and others that relate to it; seeing how other Artists throughout the ages have tackled the subject and from this what we can borrow or reject. From this I make very rough drawings in small sketchbooks, working from one sketchbook to another as an idea develops. I work on one painting at a time, choosing each passage as I feel confident enough to begin it. The paintings were not made in sequential order, but more a case of bouncing around ideas as a musician might do with 'riffs' until a firmer idea takes shape.

As a painter, you consciously or otherwise, pull in all your experience of life, all that interests you and that has happened to you, and then sift through to see what is usable and what is not. One of my big interests is computer generated graphics and design, and from this I developed the above way of working based on the Renaissance painters method of developing ideas at full size though the use of 'cartoons'.

I consider the use of a computer - in this case an Apple Macintosh - to be nothing more than a tool that aids the development of an idea. If Apple Macintoshes had been around at the time that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, I am sure that he would have used one, perhaps along with an LCD projector shining his drawings up from the floor, to help him in the development of his work. This is now a technique I am developing for larger paintings in oil and acrylic.

Click on each of the thumbnails to see how the development evolves right up to the final painting.
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