One week since my last post I have been adding to the butterfly picture every day. I now understand the reason why oil painters have so many pictures on the go at the same time. Oil painting is a process of addition and sometimes subtraction, but all in all it is the process of building up a picture. Those layers take time to dry. Rush it and it turns to mud, but that’s where the beauty lies. It’s a slow and contemplative process, of looking and painting, looking again and repainting, looking and reflecting.
I decided the background had become too dark so I added layers of grey to get the values correct. I have moved onto the wings and the bright greens and yellow that form the highs.
Fat over lean Understood!
I’m particularly enjoying the blending of the dark areas, and especially the way the lightened areas of the dark look. It was a mistake making those areas so dark in the first place but the quality, the kind of multi-faceted dark, is quite reflective of the original. I’ve eased off the turps a bit now because it was starting to look a bit flat and matte, so the fat over lean principle is definitely in place and I understand the technique.
There’s a sense of movement already to the image, both of the wings of the butterfly and the areas around. This has a lot to do with my brushstroke I think. Not applying the paint in large strokes, but small, almost elliptical marks. It reminds me of the artist Y.Z. Kami that I mentioned in my previous post. It can be read here https://lynseyfeilden.com/the-ebay-purchased-painting-and-its-copy/
His Domes series has a sense of movement, very delicate and ethereal. This is his Domes series on the link here;
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2025/yz-kami-the-domes
Painting as meditation
The quite strange thing I have noticed so far when I have my daily moments of painting is that everything else goes quiet. My head, the noise outside. It is quite meditative and the sense of doing a little bit every day of something I love is quite humbling.
I would say about fifty percent there with Butterfly No.1. I say number one as I think this could become a series, or a body of work. Many people look at butterflies for their beauty. I do too, but I like the idea of a butterfly more. The fleeting moment that I keep coming back to. The delicacy and mysteriousness of them. I know Damien Hirst did a series of butterfly art, but it wasn’t for me. To me it looked like trophy hunting. A wall of butterflies, almost like a wall of stag heads. I wonder if there is a meaning behind his series?
This feels like the start of a body of work rather than a single painting. Butterfly no.1, with no.2 already waiting behind it.