Making of Saturation Costs

In this blog I explain the creation of my recently completed painting Saturation Costs. The abstract paintings I do are mostly spontaneous, I can make up the entire painting on the spot such as the recent Biological Immortality. Many years ago I started to convert my class notes doodles into paintings, the first one I remember doing was a painting called Master of the Margin which I actually sold out of a gallery in London Ontario. As I moved on in my science career I switched to doodling in lab notebooks such as the one depicted in this picture which is a cropped shot of the standard issue 8x10" laboratory note book.

 

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded last year I initially resisted painting the effect of the lockdown (real and psychological) until a landscape painting showing a line up at the grocery store, and an abstract called Ultramarine Sickness. By the end of May I had completed 60 location paintings (socially isolated the whole time!) and wrapped up the pandemic blues series. Meanwhile I made some doodles in my lab book around mid march. The one above shows Pirate Purple Pants with his Pandemic Parrot and Plague Leg, and Captain Immunology with his (or her) vaccine rifle and antibody mask. In the background is the infamous toilette paper wall and village on top of the hill. 

A few pages later is the key passage- the lazy man under a tree kissing the virus, which was inspired by the idea that some people were complacent about the pandemic at the outset. Also the hero doctor rushing in to help, and other elements like oxygen tanks, body bags, a crowd of citizens, more toilette paper rolls (which seemed to be the most precious commodity) and the apples on tree with viral horde. The title "Epic Battle Between Virus and Humanity" was coined here but in the end I had to go with Saturation Costs inspired by MacEvoy's Handprint.com where he taught about colour mixing and how two bright colours can make a dull one. 

For months I set the project aside working on a string of doodleism paintings derived from the same lab book #22 and a large number of location paintings until I was finally ready to tackle the difficult subject of the pandemic. I have a conventional art sketchbook it is 9 x 12 Fabriano which I use to make large sketches and do paint tests. There were about half a dozen attempts until I got to this stage, as you see above it closely resembles the finished painting. I had worked out the right side with the rolling hills and toilette paper castle, and the idea of "Ukiyo-e" clouds, those are the Japanese-inspired rolling tendrils of fog in the central valley. There was still a problem with the tree positioning and the foreground elements. Also, where was Pirate Purple Pants, The Hero Doctor and Captain Immunology supposed to go?  

 

Finally I had enough and got to painting on the 22x30" paper that was stretched on my trusty old wooden rack. I had been staring at the blank paper for quite some time when it suddenly occurred to me that the main character the lazy man kissing the virus, had to be raised up to the third-marker. Third markers are a common way to place a center of interest, you divide a page into thirds and put the object at one of the four cross points. In the schematic above you see the blue third markers and in red the approximate location of the key elements. I didn't mark the actual watercolour paper, instead I used my hand to determine the third location. That decision opened up the foreground for the characters, put the lazy man central to the painting, and solved the tree problem since it could occupy the upper left with the new composition.

Unsure what to do with the tree, I worked through several possibilities in my sketch book and settled on the 'tequila sunrise' version you see in the page shown above. I first established this idea in a small sketch of the tree and a tye-dye sky. Perylene black and other dark colours were used for the texture overlay. I knew the tree had to be fantastic, it had to command enough attention to both compete and complement the rest of the painting. I'll admit the finished tree was even better than I had hoped for. 

A few ideas occurred spontaneously in the painting including the smoke on the horizon, the artist's hand throwing the paintbrush, the creepy hand-branches in the tree, and the reaching hand in the foreground. It took 4 or five sitting to finish the painting, the critical session lasted countless hours into the early morning. 

 

The colour scheme of the painting was essential to the theme of Saturation Costs. I worked that out with a few small colour test painting seen in this link, and this link. The links show the thought process, that is, juxtaposition of earthy unsaturated colours and bright saturated colours. In the crop above from the finished painting, I surrounded the painting title with a saturated chartreuse (PY175 + PG36), which contrasts against the unsaturated green of the Hero Doctor's coat which was done using Stoneground Paint's Victoria Green (PG51). All of the viruses are done using saturated colours, that means intense! The rest of the painting is earth and greyish. The title is a double entendre, since it also refers to the density of people on the planet and an increasingly close proximity to wildlife and agriculture which promotes new viruses. 

It is not often I plan a painting to such an extent, when I have tried it usually ends up looking overworked and over thought. The key for me here was to prepare extensively, listen to my instinct, and trouble shoot where needed. But in the end, about half of the painting was spontaneous, you can see little blue masks and expressions on the viruses, shading on the toilette paper, and colour choices throughout that were made up on the spot. So I found a good balance of methodology. Having said that my next painting will have to be a little less stressful, let's hope it can be called "End of the Pandemic" or something to that effect!