Evolution of a Creation : Final Picture

I have finally completed the Elephant/India style picture I have been creating, so here it is ...

Transferring of Skills

For sometime now, I have thought about teaching others to do what I do - create paintings through Meditation, however, it was an intuitive feeling that this may work and had not been tested to see how this would translate. 

Initially the idea was to have a workshop over a week or 7 set days over 7 weeks. It wasn't till I attended a one day workshop for painting that I realised how limiting and frustrating, as well as needing to commit time and energy into such a workshop, that the idea to offer one day workshops in Meditation painting came about - like a taster session.

 Again, the idea was put on hold, as I had decided that doing a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment would assisst me not only in how to Tutor students but also look at areas I hadn't considered or even if this could be translated into a certified course. In short doing the Cert IV TAA would help define other questions in preparation to setting up the Meditation Art workshops hopefully without loosing its holistic approach.

Fortunately, during the Cert IV TAA I met some wonderful people including someone who was willing to learn about what I do, they were also willing to be the student for my Assessment assignment in Cert IV TAA, which would essentailly be about Teaching and Assessing Meditation Art. This would be my test to see how it would be possible to transfer what I do, teach to someone with little or no knowledge and have them produce a painting in a day. It turned out for the purposes of this exercise that two paintings would be produced.

So along came my willing student to trail this course and ready for her first session in Meditation painting. Tennielle had some background and underlying knowledge of Art from her school days and had worked with ceramics, as well as a healthy curiosity for learning Meditation painting. Tennielle was also looking to find a creative outlook in her very busy life.

Prior to the first one day workshop, I asked Tennielle to collect images of things that inspire her and that would become her focus for the meditation. Tennielle brought me this ...

When I asked Tennielle to explain her inspirational collage, she talked about primary colours, such as Reds, blues, greens, yellows, second life, her personal life, supporter of Collingwood, Black and White, contrats, chunky vintage Jewellry, as a Cardiac nurse - patched up hearts, twiggy, loving to laugh, twighlight and the sea dragons.

Then she followed my guided meditation and saw an image of a V-shaped character, zooming in and out, with wings, her as a marionette with like a blood red background. I then went on to exlain about how to create and build a picture with acrylic paints.

I mentioned about creating the background, the mid-ground and the foreground and then finally adding in the detail. So we set about mixing the colour for the blood red colour Tennielle had seen in the background. Once that had beem mixed and applied we then considered the V-shaped image she had seen and decided to research the internet for some further influences paying particular attention to Tim Burton.

We took our influences from Tim Burton's; "Nightmare before Christmas", "Edward Scissorhand" Concept drawing and "Blue Girl" for the entire painting. The idea was to use these influences to create new images based on the orginals.

We also decided to use Tennielle's idea of colour and contrast to create a unique painting, so in stark contrast to the blood red background black would be applied to the V-shaped character and the marrionette. Before adding the V-shaped character or the marrionette, it was important to create the moon and clouds to add a dimension to the painting.

Tennielle used a natural sponge to create the moon and stencil brush with a swish/swirl movement to create the clouds. Next came time to create the marionette character based on Tim Burton's concept drawing of Edward Scissorhands. I explained to Tennielle some ways of re-creating figures including a proportion grid to assist with creating the image more precisly. This proportional grid has been used by Artists and Architects for many centuries to re-create exact images either in a biiger scale than the original or a smaller scale.

So we divided up the Tim Buton image into 1cm squares and kept the same ratio of 1 cm square grid on the painting ...

Tennielle then altered the image, making the character female ...

Whilst everything was looking a little flat at this point, the idea would be to lift the images with colour at a later stage. next was to create the bones of the V-shaped character ...

Then some more definition to that character ...

Next was to work on creating a marrionette-esque feel or attachment between the v-shapped character and the female character ...

Tennielle felt at this stage the character's were still disconnected but then we added more detail to them and more connections ....

It was then time to add some more detail to help with completion of the painting, a portal, a moon face for the V-shaped character, yellow/green hair for the female character and grass at the bottom ...

This was the final painting and all completed within a day. This was Tennielle's first venture at Meditation painting, the second venture will use more detailed techniques and was based on themes I had given Tennielle to find inspirations for and to Meditate on the next time we met.

The themes I gave to Tennielle were;

• Western Australia
• 50’s
• Vampires
• Music
• Nature
• Christmas
• Childhood Memories

Tennielle decided upon Western Australia as she had lived there, this is her concept/inspiratinal board for painting two ....

 

 

The concepts were; city skyline, beaches, pinnacles, everlasting flowers, Perth Glory, seafood, Mum's dog and the sunsets. Tennielle then mediated on this theme and saw a sunset with foamy waves crashing on the beach.

The background this time would initially start with a very pale yellow and then work on building in the water. When painting water, it is always painted straight the curves are added by other points like the landscape or things dipping in the water, rocks etc. 

 

To create perfect straight edge using masking tape carefully measured  assists in this process as well as painting in long brush strokes. This technique would also be repeated to keep the clean lines for the sunset on the horizon too.

 Whislt most acrylic paint is appllied after each layer is dry merging the paint can be tricky as acrylics can dry very quickly, so using more water assists with blending, this would be vital for creating the sunset. Tennielle first applied straight lines of colour before blending ...

 It was then necessary to use some water to help blend the layers of colour and use a fairly flat sweeping technique.

 

In using the flat sweeping technique it allows for the creation of sunset/cloud sky and using  the masking tape helped with creating a clean horizon edge. Next was to add definition to the water; depth and movement  ...

 The sweeping technique here would help create some movement in the water, though this would not be seen in this form once the next technique was applied. Next was to use a natural sponge to add different splashes of colour ...

 

 

 

 

Once this had been applied the dge for the shoreline needed to be added with the foaming waves, again for the foaming waves the natural sponge would be used ...

 

 

 

A pale sun was applied and more depth to the sea, finally the evrlasting flowers would be added. As this was a triple stretched canvas, the flowers would go round the edges of the painting ...

 

 

 

 

Then the final painting ....

 

 

Teaching someone else to do what I do was not only fun but very satisfying seeing the joy they had in creating two amazing paintings and learning from the process. Imparting my knowledge is what I love to do most and that was one of the reasons for starting my blog ... to share my joy, to explain, to demonstrate ... the blog has also enabled me to connect with others and find out the joy it brings to them.