Issue 0009

Written By G C
From the Editor

As I should have anticipated but failed to, post-op recovery has taken its toll on me. Fatigue has been kicking my ass along with all the other things that have been going on in life, such as attempting to renew my lease for next year. All that to say, it’s been exceedingly difficult to be able to sit down and properly do some work. Despite this, I am trying my best, which is really all that anybody can do—including you, dear reader.

Aside from the fun of getting over surgery, I’ve been really kicking it up a notch with getting more involved in my local community. The outdoor sketch group has been going pretty well and approaching its 6th month, which is wild. Unfortunately, the weather being what it is, it’ll likely soon turn into an indoor sketch group, but I’m hoping that will only be a small change in location only. On top of that, I’ve finally set up another life drawing session for this month, but this time with a real live model! Though I’m 90.3% sure the first one will be a bit of a flop, I’m not going to let that bring me down. I scheduled it quite quickly and haven’t had a lot of time to market it, so I’ll keep that in mind for the next time.

In other exciting news, I’ll be at a big animation and visual media conference in London this week! I’d only heard about it last week and impulse bought tickets. It’s a stretch for my finances (everything goes up in price and yet income only goes down 🫠) but I’m hoping that this will be a good opportunity for me to meet and network with other artists. Plus there are some panels that I’m extremely excited about (directors of Kpop Demon Hunters, WUT). That said, considering my physical state as of late, I’m a little apprehensive about whether I’ll manage to do two days in a row travelling and then bouncing around huge crowds. I’m gonna make sure to take plenty of breaks and not be too hard on myself if I don’t make it to everything that I plan to.

Art Fundamentals

Not long ago, I attended a paint night event focused on Van Gogh. An art historian gave a brief talk on his life, and then we got a chance to try to emulate one of his paintings. It’s been a while since I’ve used acrylic paints so it took me a while to get the hang of it. On top of that, it actually was quite a challenge to try to emulate not just the post-impressionist style that Van Gogh is known for, but also the effects of oil paint but with acrylics.

The main thing that is obviously different between the two is the fact that acrylic dries super fast. Oils notoriously take a long time to dry, which is part of the reason a lot of oil paintings take ages to complete. This is only one of the reasons I haven’t tried oils before, along with the fact that it’s also potentially unsafe, and it can be costly once you factor in the mediums and turpentine and other supplemental materials. All these reasons, of course, is precisely the reason that these paint nights and other general painting workshops and events use acrylic.

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with acrylic paints. Plenty of amazing paintings are done with acrylics and they have many uses! But I think there’s still quite a learning curve, and funnily enough, I think I came about it from a different way because I started with watercolours.

The trickiest aspect of acrylics for me turned out to be the layering. Watercolours, being reactivated by water, are limited in the number of layers of paint you can add. (Not to mention, how much water the paper can take.) I think I have a relatively good grasp on the concept of how to layer paints, but putting it into practice (like everything) was a bit of a different experience.

I won’t blame the brushes because that’s a bit of a cheat excuse, but it was admittedly difficult being able to add the underpainting layer first, on top of the rough sketch. The underpainting has to be a very, very thin layer to essentially cover up the canvas and have a rough palette to work from. Spreading it around with a tiny brush was quite a challenge, and because we were also limited in the amount of paint we were given, I didn’t pre-mix enough of the right colours and ended up having to remix several times. This actually might have been a good thing though because I was able to block out some of the major areas of the painting — perhaps just not to the level I’d wanted.

Underpainting of Starry Night study

Photo of base layer / underpainting. (Colours adjusted from low light.)

I’m probably too used to the fact that watercolour typically requires way less pigment to usually be able to cover larger areas. There were a lot of areas where there was still a bit of the canvas underneath showing. Not the worst thing because it’s just a matter of adding more paint of course, but still not great.

Once the underpainting was down, putting down the layers on top did get quite a bit easier, once I finally got the hang of it. But near the end, what really got challenging was the fact that acrylics don’t blend the way I expected them to on the canvas. With watercolours, it’s possible to continue mixing and blending colours on the paper, and from what I’ve seen, this is also the case for oils precisely because they take so long to dry.

Obviously I have no way to know exactly how Van Gogh managed to do those signature not-quite-pointillism blotches, but what I tried to do was load a flat brush with different shades on either side and hope for the best. This is actually a technique that I’ve learned from watching our lord and saviour Bob Ross, but it’s also something that I’ve seen done with stunning results by boardwalk artists and face painters. You may have also seen some sponge paintings around the interwebs that use this technique as well.

Didn’t get another in-progress shot because I was really into it after some time, but you might be able to see that this worked only some of the time which was interesting (and a little disappointing). But as I was discussing with my table-mate (a very lovely woman who actually was the only one who went rogue and did a different painting than the two options we had!), this is the whole idea behind doing master studies: trying to emulate the works of the masters, not to make the exact same painting, but in order to experiment with techniques to try to see how they made the paintings, and perhaps even discover new techniques. So it might not have worked out the way I had hoped, but as an experiment, and technically my first traditional master study, I think it turned out pretty okay!

Scan of final painting.

The session was only about 2 hours, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time, and I waffled on whether to do the full details of the village or not (which apparently wasn’t even in the actual scenery — Van Gogh added it in the painting), but I need to stop shirking my art responsibilities and do the hard thing, so I gave it a go. There were also several Bob Ross techniques that I used there, to varying results, but considering I was kind of rushing at this point (and maybe a little tipsy lol), it wasn’t all bad. At least, I think you can tell it looks like a village.

We were given the option of putting our own spin on our paintings of course, and several people at the session did some really creative things, but in the end I’m glad I decided to stick to doing a study. Maybe I will try to do some more acrylics in the future too.

Books and Reads

I actually reached my initial reading goal of 24 books a few weeks ago! Now that I’ve extended it to 32 though, and it’s already October, I’m starting to really try to get through a bunch more that I’ve had sitting around. Plus I think I’ve been just needing a lot more time away from screens, which I think goes for all of us, really. (And yes, I know—the irony of you reading this on a screen!)

Current Reads

📕 It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism - Bernie Sanders

At some point, I started to wonder if this should actually be categorised under Horror or even dystopian sci-fi, because it kind of feels that way. It really emphasises that old adage that life is stranger than fiction, even though this isn’t even fiction either. Honestly, with every passing week and every passing headline I glimpse, it gets harder and harder to continue reading through this because all I can think is that things could have been so much better—but I push on, because what other path do we have? After all, we must choose to have hope.

Recently Finished

📗 Margo’s Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe 4/5

Saw this on a friend’s Goodreads list a while back and noticed that the cover was strikingly similar to that of I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, the second of which I finished not too long ago. So I picked it up when I happened to see it on the front table at the library. Went in with pretty much no expectations and honestly…came out actually quite enjoying it. Some parts absolutely felt relatable to me in a way that I think I’m still processing, but in the end it was a pretty heart-warming read. Apparently they are turning it into an Apple TV series, and it totally makes sense — it absolutely is a book that lends itself perfectly to television.

Also, surprise Fortnite lmfao.

📗 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin 4/5

It took me way too long to get to the halfway mark of this, merely because it was just too damn real, man. But I did it, and then of course the second half just zoomed by. And of course, the absolute sucker-punch—OOF. The way that it was written as well was so masterful and clever, too. Gorgeous writing style, and the characters had such depths to them that it really was hard not to enjoy it, after getting over my gut reactions triggered by all the aspects of software/game development.

…I may still have things to process internally about my past life.

📗 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton 4/5

At some point I think I guessed the right murder suspect, but I sure as hell was not expecting it to end like it did. There was also a huge subplot/side story that I now have even more questions about and I’m hoping the author does a spin-off or something.

Articles, Blogs, & Papers

Total Tangents

For once, I have no podcasts to recommend. Since I’ve been on mandatory rest post-op, I’ve not had any chances to listen to podcasts. More accurately, podcasts are primarily what I listen to during runs/workouts, so they’ve dropped off my list unfortunately. But I have been binge rewatching a bunch of shows on Netflix, which…isn’t really helping the brain rot. But I’ve enjoyed going through The Good Place again, and of course, watching Kpop Demon Hunters a bunch of times. Hopefully by next month, I’ll get back into the podcasts.

Videos

Thank You!

Whether it's been the tiredness or the general stress of [gestures at everything], there have been some moments in the past few weeks that felt like I was about to slip back into a dark headspace. When this happens, I've been trying my best to think about the things I'm grateful for, corny as it sounds. I won't lie — it does sadden me that my art business isn’t doing great. For that matter, I know that a lot of other artists are struggling as well, and it really breaks my heart. In spite of all that, or perhaps as a result of that, I am ever more grateful to all of you for continuing to be a part of this Patreon. We are all trying our best in this absurd reality, but we are trying together. 💖

G C
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Issue 0008