Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

I don’t know why I am obsessed with the old drawbridge counterweight, but I am. I’d like to say my obsession was producing great paintings, but it isn’t. I’d like to say that there was some symbolism in the counterweight, that justifies all this futile painting, but there isn’t. I don’t see it as a symbol of impending doom hanging over the bridge or man’s ability to lift great burdens or anything else. I just like it.

But I can’t paint it. Here are the efforts of yesterday and the day before. Neither is necessarily finished. Neither is without potential. But I think it’s time to do something else for a while.

Suday's Counterweight

This is almost entirely wet into wet. Only the details are wet on dry. I used Hansa yellow, rose madder quinacridone, cobalt blue, and Prussian blue for the bridge. All of the colors layered or dropped in. I didn’t do any mixing on the palette. The sky is cobalt blue and burnt sienna partly mixed on the palette and applied wet on wet.

The movement in the sky seems to distract from the bridge and there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge and the sky.

Monday's Counterweight

This time I masked the bridge first and poured the sky in a single pour cobalt blue and cerulean blue. I used the same pigments as Sunday for the bridge itself and the same application method.

This one seems garish to me. The counterweight to too bright. Again there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge tower and the sky.

Of the two, I think Sunday’s effort has the most potential and I may get back to it later. Darker sky perhaps?

Counter Weight II (10 x 14) $100

This is an extreme view of one of the counterweights in the West Salem Bridge towers. The bridge is no longer a working drawbridge, but the massive counterweights remain in the towers, hanging over the pedestrian way.

I painted the tower entirely in combinations of Prussian blue and burnt sienna mixed on the paper. The sky is indanthrene blue wet into wet.

Highway Cathedral I (9 x 11) $50

I doubt it’s original of me, but I’ve always loved the shapes of bridges from below. From above the bridge connecting connecting Salem and West Salem is a dull and even ugly highway from which you can see only tantalizing glimpses of the Willamette River below. But from underneath it’s all about arches, windows, and water.

To get the feel of the concrete, I used mostly naturally granulating pigments: cerulean blue, French ultra marine blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre. The only pigments without natural granulation I used were cobalt blue and phthalo blue which I used to the darken the shadows on the underside of the highway.

For the foreground I mixed burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue with granulation medium to accentuate the textural effect. Next time I may add ox gall to the water pigments to smooth them out for contrast.

This was a fun little painting. I’ll do a few more under the bridge paintings over the next few weeks.

After the last of the viable mask has been removed, I wet the paper generously to remove the last remnants of the of the mask. This is a necessary step because unless the masked area has been washed, it will take paint unevenly or not at all.

Then I laid in the sky. This time I went for blue (cerulean blue, and French Ultramarine).

With Sky

From here on out it’s all detail. I used a mixture of French ultramarine and Windsor red for all of the brush work. I varied the temperature of the mixture to match the surrounding pour image and to cool shadowed areas. I mostly left the poured passages alone.

The Counter-Weight (11 x 14) ($75)

What would I do differently? Well, the current composition is unobjectionable but it lacks excitement. The early painting had movement and especially depth that this one lacks. I may go back to the bridge with sketchbook and camera in hand, but not today.

Here are some other examples of paintings I have made using the multiple mask and pour method:

Pouring is one of my favorite techniques. It literally means to pour paint across the paper. It can either be the atmospheric beginning to a painting or a major part of the painting process. Some people use it to create abstract shapes to suggest the painting subject. But however much pouring is used, it provides transparent color passages that can be gotten in almost no other way.

The method I use most frequently was popularized by Jean Grastorf in her book Pouring Light: Layering Transparent Watercolor. Her technique uses multiple masks in much the same way batik uses multiple wax resists.

When I first began painting I used her pouring and masking method as an aide to help me paint with contrast, because it forced me to divide my picture into five distinct tonal values or less. It also helped me loosen up about color. These days I pour only when I think the subject of the picture will be enhanced by pouring.

Sunday I photographed just such a picture, one of the counter weights to a local railway drawbridge recently converted to a pedestrian bridge. The silhouetted subject is perfect for pouring.

Working Photo

After one false start detailed in the previous two posts I had a drawing of the bridge I liked. I began the painting by transferring it to a block of Arches 140 cold-pressed paper. (Because removing mask is hard on paper I always use the more durable 140 weight cold-pressed paper when pouring.) My photo of the bridge has loads of minute detail. In my cartoon I simplified. I want the silhouette of the bridge tower and counterweight to predominate. Too much detail would take away from the graphic nature of the image.

After making the cartoon I taped off the edges of the painting and began masking the sky plus everything I’d like to remain white. The trick to masking is to use nylon brushes and to soap the brushes frequently. This keeps the mask from gumming up the brushes and saves your quality brushes from rack and ruin.

Once the mask was dry, I mixed three cups of very thin paint: cadmium yellow, phthalo blue, and Windsor red. I deliberately choose staining colors, because mask lifts pigments. Then I wet the paper (an important step as otherwise the paint tends to run off the paper without staining) and poured the yellow straight across the top of the tower. I tilted the paper right to let the paint run off and wiped up the excess. Then I poured the red just below the yellow, tipped the paper, and cleaned the excess again. Some of the red bled into the yellow making orange. Then I poured the blue the same way across the counter-weight adding a dull purple where the paint crossed the red paint I had just poured.

After the First Pour

When the paint had dried completely, I masked all of my lightest values and poured slightly thicker paint over the paper in roughly the same places. After the paint dried I masked the medium values and repeated the process with milk-thick paint. When the final pour had dried, I pulled the mask off, revealing a bold but rough painting in vivid color.

After the Mask Came Off

It’s all brush work from here.

The Disaster

There were a number of problems with my first attempt at the “Counter Weight” painting. All most all of them had to do with composition. Three major compositional problems. First the support panel half way up the draw bridge tower brings the eye to a full stop. Second, the girders connecting to the tower lead the eye out the the picture. Third, the dark girder on the left hand side want to be the center of interest.

In addition to the my composition problems, I used French Ultramarine in my final pour. It covered everything underneath causing dead patches in the painting.

Playing with the values did not help. I went from bad to worse. Where I attempted to removed the French Ultramarine I got mud. Darkening the background only made it look dirty.

So, I began again at the very beginning, with a value sketch. This time I moved in above the support panel, centering interest on the counter-weight. I eliminated the girders from my drawing. I’m sure the bridge would fall down without them, but my painting won’t. And I won’t lose the feeling of looking up into that great big counter-weight hanging over your head.

Then I began again. In a few minutes I will post Counter-Weight IA: A Pouring Demonstration. Since I have finished the painting to my satisfaction, I know there will be Counter Weight II: A Pouring Demonstration.