Dj ease my mind still

In John's workshop we are interrogating the image through varied approaches. I chose a few stills from a video clip "Dj, Ease My Mind" by Niki & The Dove.

I made started making sketches from them in an intuitive way:

Later on I had a chat with Meg about planning for painting. She instructed me how to analize an image in monochrome, in a small scale first; then mix my own colours in order to find colour palettes. Meg encouraged me to have a sketchbook just for colour palettes:

I made first colour arrangement out of the above 2 colour spreads and proceeded to scale it up. I started with quite small figures and then zoomed in:

My reference photo wasn't much detailed and I enjoyed abstracting body shapes and just playing with colour. In first painting I was trying to refer to my chosen colour palette quite precisely. it took me a lot of time to match colours and compare them to my sketch, which didn't feel very enjoyable. Wasn't sure if this is just my lack of practice and therefore slow pace or too much rigidity. When painting the second piece I mixed in my colours first( they dry up so fast though!) and then allowed myself to just paint and come up with more colours if I felt like it. I was trying to works from midtones, through shades to lights.

For my big scale I was going to use the same photo, but then focused on very small colour sketches of other scenes that caught my interest:

At this stage I decided to finally start the biggest scale and chose a new still for it. I only managed to partly map out tones at the moment. Once I'm finished with them I will use acrylics.

in a meantime I kept on playing with mixing colours the way Meg suggested:

It's a lot of hit and miss, but very useful to learn how pigments interact with one another.

As a next step for the big scale I mapped out roughly grey scale in acrylics:

I then proceeded to rethink colour palette again as I couldn't stop thinking about dark grey/navy blue arrangement:

(arms close up)

This was my initial attempt. I wanted to add swirly line encompassing the acrobats to show dynamics and how connected they are, how they work as one unit:

If I was to decide on the palette shown in the 2nd picture up, I would probably make the line yellow.

I kept on playing with colours more, still not sure what to decide on:

This was the last day in the studio. When we return, I will put colours on the large scale painting.

This whole exercise made me think about painting in a very new way. It was more structured and deliberate. I had a lot of small scale explorations to help me figure out how to create the large piece. It required a lot of patience. The colour mixing itself and making palettes took a lot of time, which I couldn't help but regret, feeling really behind with progress. I did enjoy every single step, it was just my internal pressure of rushing it and having it done way faster. In the process though I discovered how much I enjoy mixing colours and taking my time. I am still learning to allow myself to be slow with it and do it at my own pace. Hopefully with practice I will be faster and more efficient.

I also felt very pleased with some the colourful small pieces and would like to create more. They were a real fun to make. I like how flat and simplistic they are, yet so colouful.