MONOCHROME PAINTING

Above is the drawing I have selected to take forward as a painting.  It was the first of the series of charcoal drawings.  It is not the most successful drawing, but I think the simple shapes and composition will make it a good subject to paint.  We shall see.

Monochrome drawing  First attempt

 Here is the first attempt (above).  I was not sure what I was supposed to be doing, which were the positive and which the negative shapes.  Coming back after a couple of days, I decided that I would choose the objects as the positive shapes, and paint the drapery and other components as fully as I could tonally and spatially given the three colours.

Photo of the subject

Greyscale of the photo

Painting 2

It seemed a bit pointless working like this, since I was supposed to thinking in terms of tone except for the objects, which were to be painted in overall flat monochrome.  I did not work very carefully on the surrounding negative shapes in terms of tone and texture, but in the end it was an interesting exercise.
I would quite like to go on and do an abstract painting from this.  May do so while I revise the colour theory section, which comes next.

Willam Scott  Venice Biennale 1958

William Scott Winter Still Life 1956

Painting by William Scott

Next day - I was looking at the paintings of abstract still life painter William Scott (above ) and wondered if I could do a monochrome abstract in a similar way!  I did try, and found that the shapes were more familiar and easier to draw, but that trying to paint in this was very complex - of course, as Scott will have arrived at this approach after many years of experimentation and effort.  I decided to scrub the painting and try again another day, but what resulted from the deletion was the image below.  I like it!  It has a feeling of light and space. Scott often uses a very limited palette.

Tone painting