The great struggle to finish.

I've painted and drawn all my life, and I've long realised that sometimes no matter how well you plan, however many rough sketches you do - things start to go wrong.  And I also know that sometimes you can produce pretty good work with little preparation, almost as if by magic.  And it's difficult to know what happened in either case.

Sometimes you can exhaust your commitment to a project by working and re-working the design over too many times.  For instance if I design a picture with a number of figures and other elements in the background, I sometimes find myself redrawing each figure over and over so that when I come to paint the finished image I can get it right quickly.  I suppose it's like an actor rehearsing a role over and over so as to be as good as possible on the night.  But I often get to the stage where I've done the drawing so many times it starts to feel stale not sharp, and I get so sick of it that my enthusiasm wanes.

But I keep doing it because experience and common sense tells me that the finished result should be better if I've 'rehearsed' the thing.  If you don't put in that extra work the whole thing is liable to go awry.  But that extra work can also be the thing that bores you to a standstill.  It might, I suppose be something to do with my bad technique which has been largely self taught, and therefore lacking in system.

The Shrimp Girl by William Hogarth. (1697 - 1764)  This fine work was once lauded as an impressionist painting before the fact, but its free handling is really all due to its being unfinished.  Why is it unfinished?  Only Hogarth knew the answer to that.  Wikipedia Commons.

Uncertainty must also play its part in this, because if you know your drawing is sound because your training is good then maybe you don't feel constrained to re-draw it so many times.  However the scores of great drawing studies by famous artists show they always did the groundwork, and made superb studies that are works of art in themselves.

  But there are still a lot of unfinished paintings out there.  Like books and musical compositions often they're not finished because of that old excuse - death, however there are a lot of paintings that were left unfinished for various reasons ranging from the artist falling out with the sitter of a portrait or the patron who had commissioned a work suddenly changing their mind about the cost half way through the work.

Jacques Louis David (1748 - 1825)  Madame Récamier.  I think this seems finished enough for a Neo Classic painting.  They're meant to be spartan.  Jean Auguste Dominic Ingres (1780 - 1867) painted the lamp stand.  Wikipedia Commons.

J. L. David is supposed to have left his portrait of Madame Récamier unfinished because he felt insulted that she had invited another artist, Gerard to paint her, because David was taking so long.  It was reported that she liked Gerard's painting better.  David wrote her a letter stating that just as ladies had their whims, so did artists, and that he would leave the painting unfinished.  But is it really unfinished?  It has the sharp emptiness that the Neo Classic artists valued, its simple and elegant.  Even that scumbling that you see in the background, usually a sign that the artist has only just placed in the undercoat doesn't mean much with David who often used that approach for his backgrounds.

Gustav Klimt (1864 - 1918)  The Bride.  One of a number of uncompleted paintings found in his studio at his death.  Wikipedia Commons.

Death prevented Klimt from completing a number of works.  He had a stroke which put him in hospital partly paralysed and according to the account by Alessandra Comini while he was in hospital burglars broke into his studio and were confronted by these large paintings still on their easels and in various stages of completion.  He had painted the naked figures and had begun to paint patterned clothing over them.  Comini imagined the burglars in the darkness of the studio, bemused by these strange visions as they came to light before their torches.  

This was 1918, the year the First World War ended, but also the year the terrible influenza epidemic began, killing almost as many across the world as the war itself had done.  And Klimt in his weakened state did not escape it.

The one unsettling note is that these artists only left work unfinished with a good reason, whereas I seem to find it harder to finish paintings now I'm older than I did when young.  I tell myself that its because the better I am the more exacting I have become and that it all takes longer.  Nothing to do with laziness then.

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Under the influence.

When I was seventeen I saw a copy of Alessandra Comini's Book on Gustav Klimt.  It was the first time he had come to my attention and that magical effect that I was talking about the week before last took hold of me again, where you are swept along by an artists work and just can't get enough.

I think most people aren't all that interested in art, so they experience the same effect through popular music, and the following of a particular band or singer but it is essentially the same thing.  You become a super fan.  A young artist might follow bands as well, but a really interesting artist will grab their attention in a very special way.

Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918)  photographed by Josef Anton Trĉka.  Wikipedia commons.

Klimt was one of the artists I copied, and learned huge amounts from the study of his work.  He's usually known for his 'gold paintings' but I was as aware of his drawings and poster designs as the paintings.  I particularly liked the Comini book because it was an economically produced colour book - that actually had gold effect printing so that the images of the paintings could really be appreciated, which I suppose for 1977, was pretty adventurous for a publisher.  It seems to have been a success because Klimt's present popularity seems to stem from this books publication.

Comini compared Klimt's Pallas Athena (left) favourably with a similar painting by a contemporary Franz Stuck (1863 - 1928).  Klimt's is great and more inventive, but I still Like Stuck's.  Both Images - Wikipedia commons.

For about five years I drew and painted Klimt inspired work until I finally got him out of my system.  It's quite possible that I paint less well now, I won't dispute it and I still think he's great but an influence like that is like having artistic measles.  Its effect is quite obvious.

I mentioned in that last blog how strong the influence of H. R. Giger (1940 - 2014) has been on young artists after 1979, and the introduction of his work to a wider audience through his production designs for the film 'Alien'.  Again I caught the bug, but this time I had a stronger immunity.  Still, it didn't stop me buying the book on the production of the film, a second book 'Giger's Alien' and his book of posters and other designs, 'Necronimicon'.

H. R. Giger.  Biomechanical Landscape (Detail).  One of my favourite works by this artist, and I think one of his most successful.  Here's someone's generic photograph of it.  It's not from a poster site!  Click on it to see Giger's own website.

  But the influence on my own work didn't last anywhere near as long.  I'm not suggesting he's not a worthy artist, but his work is so dark and dank, after a prolonged exposure to it you feel like you're sitting in someones rubbish filled cellar watching water run down the walls.  Having said that, Giger's work can certainly shake you up when you see it for the first time, and make you realise new possibilities.

I suppose that being aware of the strength of influence that some artist may have on your art is essential, but is also challenging because to improve and grow you have to be aware of and be exposed to different approaches and styles.

On the face of it I think they are two strangely different artists to have developed a liking for in the space of a few years, Klimt with his ethereal lovelies and ornate decoration, and Giger with his brutal industrialised images of biomechanical hell.  But then - that's the teenage years for you.  All those hormones make you jittery.  So that's what I was under the influence of all along.

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