Secrets of A Modern Painter: Memory
Secrets of A Modern Painter: Memory
Showing posts with label Memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memory. Show all posts

The Organized Mind - Painting from Memory Part 4

4 Trees, 2003

Learn to collect and organize memories in your mind so you can recall specifics when necessary.

Lately, I have been painting rainy cityscapes with reflections of buildings and lights in the wet streets.

More and more, I want to only suggest structures and elements and focus on light, air, and movement. The end result is more representational than abstract; however, I am avoiding too many hard lines or descriptive elements.

Yesterday, as I drove my daughter to school, we had a steady early spring rain and light fog, so the reflections of the headlights behind me were perfect to study while we made our way. I had to be careful not to lose myself in the scene and focus on the road ahead, so I quickly called to mind the particular elements in the paintings I have been working on that have been the most challenging, and took mental snapshots of those elements, as well as trying to feel the energy of the effect.

When painting from memory and trying to suggest things instead of describe, what is most important is the feelings implied by the strokes and colors, not how accurately they represent the object; however, a few choice accurate notes will propel the work to another level of intensity.

In the case of this new series I am working on, whether it be an accurate suggestion of something general like linear or aerial perspective, or specific, like the difference between the headlights' reflection closest to the car and the varying ways it radiates forward, a subtle note of specific rendering will be enough to infuse the painting with a sense of real life.

Aim to distil your ideas and emotions into those few key colors and strokes, and modulate the rest of the work from them. You don't need to become absorbed in the details, just suggest and exploit the most telling variations that will expand the space of your work and trigger the memories of your viewer.

To paint well from memory, you don't need to remember everything, just what is important and necessary for you to create your work. Often, after working in the studio, you can go out into the world with the painting in your mind - and the questions it has stimulated - and seek out the answers: the angle of a shadow, the perspective of a climbing road, the twist of a branch - focus on organizing a small group of memories at first, until you build a workable catalog of reference images in your mind.

Of course, you could use your camera, but I strongly recommend you don't.
Working from photographs is completely different than working from memory; relying on only your mind and soul to call forth the vision will add more breath and life to your work than any increased facility with rendering that photographs may offer could ever come close to. Photographs are great for stimulating ideas, and useful for studying and memory of course, but try to keep them separate from the direct painting experience - they will only get between your mind and your memory.

The Organized Mind is Part 4 of the Series 'Painting From Memory.'
The Series began with Painting from Memory
and includes:




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4 Steps to The Still-Life, Memory Part 3

 

Every moment you spend developing your memory is worth hours of painting. 

  

Memory is the key to filling your paintings with emotion and air. 
 
These are not exercises to rush through. With this first 5 minute exercise, you are not going to try to do anything, don't try to memorize the subject, just look at it with no distractions.

1. Take a single object, maybe a flower, a teacup, or an old book and just look at it for a minute, move around it, seeing it at varying heights and angles. Pick it up, hold it, feel its weight and texture, see it in different light.

Now close your eyes and just feel it, moving it around in your hands , lift it up and down -looking at it with closed eyes- as you did before with your eyes open. Now, every hour or every other hour throughout the day, no matter where you are or what you are doing, close your eyes for a minute and re-imagine the object, feel it, see it as clearly as you can in your mind.

2. Begin to place the object on a table in your mind surrounded by other things - let objects come and go, move them around, not to try to design a still life, only to play with your memories. 

Meditative exercises like this will allow you deeper access to your imagination and free you from the imposed boundaries you have created.

3. Close your eyes again in a moment and try to envision something you see every day - your kitchen table, the counter, a coffee table, your nightstand - try to see it clearly in your mind. Books, keys, receipts, shopping lists, pens and notes, rings, coins; try to see changes as the days have passed, like someone made a time lapse movie of the surface.

4. Now, I want you to imagine a table you might use for a still life painting and in your mind the table is empty.  Next, place on the table 3 pears, a book, a pair of eye glasses and a vase of flowers. I guarantee two people reading this will not see the same thing - your vision is your own. Now, it is dark, the table is still there with the objects, but they remain hidden. I want you to imagine the first light of day - to reveal the objects slowly and remain with this vision as the light slowly envelops them and changes - as the day passes through to dusk and back into darkness.

Once you feel comfortable with this, begin to see the table again in the best chosen light to express your intention and feelings and rearrange the objects, removing some and adding others or coming up with an entirely different set-up.

Now to apply the memory exercise to painting.

First, create a still-life in your mind and paint the memory without the objects set up, 
only referring to them in another room 
when you need to.

Second, set the still-life up as you had imagined and paint it while looking at it.


 
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Remembering Your Life - Painting from Memory Part 2

 
When I talk about painting from memory, it is not only about remembering the subject, it is about remembering
your entire life.

Your mind is much more powerful than the sum of your knowledge and your techniques.

One of the problems with pursuing a discipline as specific as painting is the tendency to become myopic in our struggle to master our materials and become fluent with technique. Try to trust that you know enough for the moment and paint fast; let your mind drift where it may through your own life, memory, and present state - like meditation, 
don't focus on any one thought, 
just recognize the thought - and let it go. 

If you were a writer, would you think about how to write when writing? Your mind would be scanning for possibilities to bring memories to the present; your current reality and dreams would merge with memory 
to invent a plausible narrative
in which to hinge your ideas. 

Connecting with people means taking chances. 
Don't mistake refinement for quality.

You will not only call the subject from memory; you will call the memory of your whole life. It is not only one face or one field, one flower or one room; it is every voice you can remember, every path you have walked, all the flowers you have held and all the people you have known.

Strive to be yourself. This is the hardest thing to do. Whatever specific techniques or methods you have learned, don't think about them while you are painting.  

You must find your way back by drawing water from your own well, reliving your memories and feeling yourself experience the passing of time.

Once in touch with the flood of emotion, paint.

Remembering Your Life is Part 2 of the Series Painting From Memory.
The Series began with Painting from Memory
and continues with
4 Steps to The Still-Life, Painting from Memory Pt. 3 

Learn to develop your unique and authentic voice...
Read more about
Secrets of Powerful Painting, Book I





 
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Painting From Memory

As a painter, memory is by far your most powerful tool.

In order to quickly gain confidence and develop your own painting style you should primarily paint from memory.

You should learn to create a vision in your mind and play with the ideas - move things around, change the light - without having to sketch it out.

When you paint from memory alone, the images are more fully processed through your self.

Practice bringing to clarity a powerful memory from different depths of your past. Study your subject, memorize it, then paint it apart from the available image.

3 Ways to Memorize A Subject For Painting
  • Snap you eyes like a camera's shutter and let the image remain undisturbed in your thoughts.
  • Squint and quickly pinpoint the main ideas, shapes, and path of light.
  • Study the details you'll need to remember to be faithful to your vision and language - depending on how abstract, representational or real your painting will be.
This will be difficult if you haven't tried it before; you may not get at exactly what you wanted,
but don't correct it right away, see the questions you've asked and set it aside.

Then go back into nature, or back to your subject and seek your answers.

Continue to Painting From Memory, Part 2
 
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Oil Painting: 3 Keys to Formulating An Idea

When you are approaching a subject, or deciding to paint experimentally, based purely on feeling, it is often helpful to ground the work in an idea. Most of my paintings have been done from memory, so always the dreamlike quality of memory is one of the subjects of my paintings.
Here are 3 Key Concepts to guide you toward a more powerful and cohesive work of art.
  1. Base the work on one set of emotions, but challenge it with opposing emotions.
  2. Keep a philosophy in mind.
  3. If working from life, remember your subject is only a representation of reality, and in the end will be a symbol.
Take the above painting, "Red Light" as an example. My goal was to paint the idea of walking through a city alone, sometime outside of a normal time of day, a time of tension, like 2 a.m. or something, but my interest was not in painting a 'night' scene, rather I wanted to conjure the idea of reflecting light from all around and create a feeling of 'timelessness.'
The emotions - I'll call them that- I had in mind were a blend of individuality and strength; but challenging those feelings, were loneliness and desperation. I was thinking of all the cities I've walked alone in at night throughout the world just trying to make sense of life. The philosophy I had in mind was that we are all in a sense struggling on our own.
It being a cityscape, another main psychological component of the painting is the tension between man and the city of course - I wanted a sense of power and chaos challenging any feelings of beauty.
Now, if I had painted this scene from a photograph or from life I would have arrived at something completely different, and I often paint that way if I am inclined or studying, but ultimately the feeling of memory and transcendence that is evident in this cityscape is was makes it feel 'real' and alive.
 
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