Sunday, 31-Jan-16 17:02:03 CET

Aleksandra 31 January 2016

It is Sunday again and it is time for a life model painting session at studio de Stoker in Amsterdam. I am still excited about the three paintings of Francesca and how my little new year’s resolution is going. Last time when painting Francesca, I was standing there and mixing paint and I had created a little pool of purple and it occurred to me that I had not been mixing purple for a really long time.

It is not so difficult to mix purple, you take blue and red and perhaps white if you like. The issue was I had not been doing it at all. There had been no reason for doing it. Now suddenly there was a reason and it was to go less tonal. Green is the same deal, mix a bit of yellow and blue but I had no reason for mixing it.

Last time while painting Francesca I had decided to force myself to invent more colors so I did and while mixing I was sceptic for what use I would have of the color. So I stood there with my brush with purple and what would I use it for? There came the next aha and that was I had to come up with the purpose. Literally. So I scanned Francesca’s skin, could there be a faint hint of purple on her belly? No, just yellow. On her nipples or perhaps on her chest right above a breast? And there I found it. A really faint spot that perhaps could have something to do with purple. And so I continued to find a purpose for green. That was easier though because part of her face was shadowed and that shadow on her skin showed up as green to me.

As I continued to work these colors it was like a jigsaw puzzle that had fallen into place. There came just more and more possibilities as I continued working on the painting. There came pink and peach. On top of this I worked on smoothing the surfaces so that shapes became more round and they got more volume.

Another part of the New Year’s resolution was to create more contrast. At first I was thinking just in terms of light and dark. Tonal! With this new colorful thinking I took it a step further and started to think about cold and warm. So this new thinking got me loads of subjects to continue explore for a long time ahead.

I write this on the way to Amsterdam in the train. Today it is also Francesca’s exhibition opening. Perhaps I can get there to see it.

When I biked to the train station I collected a great amount of rain. Also I see that the battery of my mobile is almost at 60%. Quickly quit all open applications. Shut down syncing. Dim the screen. Jens is going into survival mode. :)

Ladies and gentlemen, we just stopped in front of a red light. There is not more information that can be given. A while later. Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like the train in front of us is gone so we are moving again. Jolly interesting message from the conductor.

I arrived at Amsterdam and went to de Stoker by tram 13 as I always do.

Today’s model was Aleksandra from Poland. I really tried to emulate the same “success” from painting Francesca. It started very well. I got the drawing really quick. Then I populated my palette with white, yellow, red, burnt sienna and blue as I always do, in that order. This time I created the two “new” mix colors purple and green. I decided for the fields where to put the emphasis on these colors and filled in my drawing. That was done really quickly but please understand that my idea is not to keep it like that! If that was the case I could walk in and do a painting in 30 minutes. That is really too quick for my taste. What I desire is to use the basic colors and have them influence the painting but really I am not going to paint a model purple in the end, a skin can have purple influences but really it is till skin so in the end it has to be some kind of skin color.

I heard some comments from other artists that they were disappointed I worked away the initial color setting and that can be true, it is disappointing. However, it was not my intention to paint with only “strange colors”.

Today Tom, Bas, Saskia, Jochem and Lotte came to paint at studio de Stoker.

After today’s session it was time to go to the opening of Francesca’s exhibition at Bradwolf Projects in Amsterdam.

The Exhibition was held in a very special building in Amsterdam. It was a building that looked like it had been sprinkled out by Louis the 14th of France as a little lost crumble of Versailles.

There was lots of people at the exhibition and the art of Francesca could be seen. She got an interesting angle to the modern world. Francesca is investigating the new world around us the technology and the imaging that we surround us with and what impact it has on our lives.

There were very many people from her network at the exhibition. There was a Brittish man drawing all sorts of monsters! And I also met Henk at the exhibition. A young man of his age, as I hope to be one day. He was also taking part of this art scene with installations. Perhaps not actively like an artist but he clearly had his devotion for the subject, and many other things such as Balkan folk’s music and what not. We went by train and as it happened we could enjoy the train trip all the way to my town, Almere. Henk told me he just bought nine computer screens and that he perhaps one day would create some kind of art installation with them. I am so excited with such art spirit!

This was a really enjoyable Sunday. Next Sunday there is no painting session at de Stoker.