Jude Braid

Creating Visual Experiences

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Viewing an amazing painting is a full body and mind Experience that defies explanation. 

 

What I can talk about is making paintings. My whole life I have created art in a variety of mediums. A few years ago I discovered watercolour and I have been consumed by it ever since. Watercolor is the most beautiful, most challenging and most fun medium for me.

 

My approach is pretty simple. It begins with seeing something beautiful and feeling inspired. Inspiration comes effortlessly, and I don’t overthink it. But I make a record of it – it could be a sketch, a photo, or even just an image stored in my memory.  I then begin the process of planning, drawing and then painting. I start to plan how I will translate the inspiration into watercolour, taking into account my particular artistic strengths and weakness (more about that later.)

 

There are seven elements in a painting: colour, value/tone, line, shape, space, size and texture. I concentrate on four of them. To develop the representational aspects of my paintings I focus on shape and value. Colour and texture are the tools I use for advancing the abstract qualities of the painting. I focus on these while I’m planning and executing a painting.

 

The real work starts at the drawing stage. Looking at what I have recorded of my inspiration I decide first where I want to focus the viewer’s interest and also what elements I need to keep recognizable. In these areas I concentrate on getting the shapes and values right. I can be more flexible with colour and texture. I start by drawing the main shapes on watercolour paper, and since I’m eager to start painting I usually do this as quickly as possible.

 

From there I move on to painting. I begin with the lighter values and build the painting up in several layers - three, four, or five - working in the darker values as I go. But I’m also aware that too much layering can kill the freshness of my painting. Another part of this process is that I spread the work out over several sessions. I used to finish paintings in one sitting, but I have come to recognize the benefit of taking breaks. I have discovered that coming back with a fresh eye allows me to more readily spot problem areas and figure out creative ways to fix them.

 

Value is one of my top four considerations, but I’m starting to realize that I might be a colourist more than a tonalist. This is tough road for me since I am colour blind, which means I have to invent my own colour aesthetic. My colour vision deficiency manifests as a lack of ability to distinguish and identify colours correctly, along with colours appearing more muted compared to someone with full colour vision. Colour blindness makes it both intimidating and liberating to work with colour. I use it as license for unconventional colour usage.

 

Over time I have developed my own strategy for working with colour. I’ve read a fair amount of colour theory but I have found it to be of limited value given my unique color vision. I don’t feel compelled to copy the colours of what I am painting but rather choose my colours based on personal preferences. I have thirty or forty colours at my disposal but gravitate towards only a handful. I favor several blues and oranges along with a green, a red and a yellow. I stick to blues and oranges because they are the only complementary colours that appear complementary to me and are useful for depicting what I want. They are also fairly easy to mix into neutral colours. Trying to make neutrals out of red and green is a nightmare for me.

 

These are the building blocks I use to make art. Value, colour, shape and texture. Simple, bright and fresh. Blue and orange. Technical excellence over momentary inspiration. Once I have a vision, it’s just work. But like I said, there’s nothing adequate to say about viewing art. 

 

I hope you’ll stay, look for a while and have an Experience.