Some thoughts on Plant Forms!

WORK IN PROGRESS

I have always drawn on of real plants for inspiration but in the course of putting paint to canvas, changes invariable occur!

Take, for example, this painting which I am currently working on 

It's more or less finished but I am at that dangerous 'tweaking' stage when it is so easy to overpaint your canvas - you probably know what I mean!

Plant Form - Mike Healey

I was walking from my sister's house down a country lane towards Kendal when I spotted a large, thistle-type plant at the edge of a field

I had no sketch pad with me so I had to memorise its distinct form and hastily jot something down when I got home

I usually work fast on canvas. The leaf forms were obtained with just a palette knife, applied with swift hand movements across a white canvas

In all, it took less than twenty minutes

My chosen medium is gouache - the cheap poster paint used by school children. It's fluid, provides intense primary colours and...well, cheap!

The pink highlights were applied with either my finger dipped in gouache of with the point of a thick brush - again working at speed

In close-up you can see how fluid the medium is. From the start I am working on a white canvas so the uniform, deliberately 'flat' blue of the 'sky' is added afterwards

Painting in the blue background is a slow, painstaking process but I can 'edit' the image as I proceed, giving final shape and definition to leaves and foliage 

The 'striped' effect is a chance occurrence that happens when you use different layers of colour and scrape through the top layer to those below with your palette knife

This needs to be done when the latest, top layer of paint is still wet

The 'sun' disk is the last element to be added. Gouache gives a lovely dense (albeit, subtle pink) and appears 'flat' - something I like on a large canvas

In close-up (see below) you can see the texture of the canvas itself - a pleasing effect first used to advantage by early Modernists, such as Manet

After working in black and white for the last few months it was something of a 'holiday' for me to add bright colours to a large (100 x 80 cms,) white canvas

Despite that (and because I was feeling 'brave!) I used a large expanse of matte black at the base of the plant to 'ground' it

One unexpected 'bonus' is that in certain light the picture takes on a 'three-dimensional' appearance, with the dark shapes at the back receding into the blue sky and optically forcing the pink-tinted leaves further into the foreground

That, as they say, is the 'luck of the game'

MIKE HEALEY