Daily painting project continues

... with just the one painting at the moment - and that singularity is a good thing (for now). I'm still channelling Bridget Riley* ... and through the ever-changing juxtaposition of colours, information about interactions is trickling into my subconscious. 

The painting process with the ever-changing stripes is about making bad choices and then being courageous and being patient, and redeeming the picture through adding unexpected colours and carrying on with more till it looks better - and it's about repeating that circular process with the next bad choice ("fail again, fail better").

Using a picture of a print by Gillian Ayres as source for choosing colours

Using the "colour dictionary" as a source for choosing today's colour

"Joke blue" and "ledger magenta" have been added, as have some more narrow stripes

However this fascination means I'm not following one of my rules - to try different things. Here are some possibilities for different things to try -

Wild strokes and zingy colours - but where, how to start?
(By Jesse Willenbring, via)

Sparse shapes, clean edges, patterning; different formats
(Pink Plant With Shadow #1 by Jonas Wood, via)

Painterly marks and brushstrokes
(Artist and title not given; via)

Denser, varied patterning; contrast of shape; letting the background show through
(Veilles maisons sur le bassin de Honfleur by Raoul Dufy, 1906; via)

What's needed is another kind of subject matter for a new evolving painting ... or a theme for a series - this is meant to go on for a year, after all. 

My hurried attempt with unfurling peonies from a bouquet of buds fizzled out when I missed some of the stages of their unfolding -

but it got me looking at "pink" more carefully, and using brushes in different ways. 

*Bridget Riley has a show in London (till 25 July) - on three floors of a gracious old building, it includes some of her "working drawings" as well as large paintings spanning her career. 

Experiencing the large paintings face-to-face is very different from seeing them in books or on screen - at different distances, the colours have strange effects. All of which has been carefully worked out via the drawings, and then painted by studio assistants. 

In a 2009 essay on her work and process in "The Eye's Mind" she says: "Although careful never to presume 'to know' what the pictorial elements would do in a particular situation, I began to feel that experience was fuelling my enquiry and that, whether I felt prepared to make some advance - or not - I had no choice but to do so." and "You cannot deal with thought directly outside practice as a painter: 'doing' is essential in order to find out what form your thought takes."

Previous incarnations of the stripey painting were shown on 10 May,  31 May, and 21 June.