Just ahead of his solo show at LE Gallery entitled “Entropical Paradise” (previewed with studio visit), AM brings you a glimpse of how Tristram Lansdowne typically puts together one of his pieces. We asked Tristram if he would record some details of his artistic process for us – he did just that, and you can see the stages of one of his paintings coming together along with a some words from the artist after the jump.
I spend a lot of time wandering around taking photos in empty areas of the city, and then work from the photos I take. Sometimes, the buildings I see give me an idea for a painting and sometimes I have to go looking for a subject that fits my idea. In this case, I started with a little thumbnail sketch, just a scribbly train-of-thought drawing.
I drew it out again to get the general idea and the proportions sorted out. Then I went looking for a fence that would work. I found a chain-link fence with construction fabric on it a few blocks from the studio that looked good so I photographed it from a few different angles and times of day and then shuffled the images into a rough sort of collage.
I use rolls of watercolour paper, which I soak and then stretch on drawing boards with brown paper tape and thumbtacks.
Using my photos as reference, I drew out the fence. I then used masking fluid to cover the edges of it and painted a big puffy cloud in the background. I guess I left the masking fluid on too long because the masked area had yellowed when I took the fluid off. Not a serious problem though. From there I painted the fence from left to right, just working my way across.
The graffiti is always tricky, but also a lot of fun. For complicated areas with a lot of white spaces I usually block in the colour with a light wash and then erase the pencil marks. After that its easier to see where I’m going.
Inching along… more graffiti…
Here it is all finished. I leave it on the board for a couple days to make sure it’s completely dry before I cut it off just to make sure the paper doesn’t warp.
Many thanks to Tristram for taking the time to photograph the work and put the words together for us.
