English

STEP 1

Live creative process

I have just finished the last painting of a series of three elaborated projects four months ago.
I give myself a few days without touching a brush … Having been immersed in my own mental world, I slowly resurface, tasting in advance the pleasure of the blank page, of total freedom to imagine the other horizons, to plunge still into these universes magma of interactive thoughts which connect us so secretly that inextricably.
First of all, I let my desires express themself. What says to me my felt, my intuition? What landscape do I want to investigate? Do I need big spaces, internal vision? The outside atmosphere suggests me answers … I look through my sketchbooks in search of a forgotten sketch which the general atmosphere as well as my mental and spiritual progress would have returned of current events.

Find an idea and a layout which are worth going up to the end at all costs … Because if the work of creation is exalting it is also long and sometimes boring; it leads several times until the discouragement when the expected result seems to escape us. It is then that perpetual questionings mean tapping me. Am I am only a creator of images? What is the office of the artist? What is art?
It is easy, after so many years of practice, to produce images " to make attractive " but to find the one which touches without visible reason, which sends back the human soul to itself to make it again vibrate if only one moment, to make re-appear in you the essential questioning, call back you the quest of the Sense of the Life … Of the sense of our lives.
But it is not inevitably the office of the artist; a philosopher, a man of religion, a psychiatrist, an archaeologist, a physicist and the others else express it and explain it to us more clearly than I may not make it. The art got free for a long time of the restraint of the subject to try to move with other artifices … Once more time I make again the art history. Is this way of expression at this beginning of twenty-first century still established?...

Then I think again about all these people who thanked me for having known how to move them and to those whom the figuration still shocked by its strength of suggestion. Attraction and aversion prove me that it is even necessary time to deliver battle in this sense, whatever are the fashions, the humanist paint is very alive …
So having discussed with myself, I anticipate some forms in this creative fog. I scrawl some features on a paper, note some layouts, see again my notebooks … A sketch, then an other one … What to do? Do I want to deepen this one and then that one ?… I 'm progressing in slalom, passing of a drawing in a scrawl, a scrawl in a sketch. I begin to glimpse several compositions. To limit the number of drawings, I separate the elements which I wish to integrat into these potential paintings : a scenery, a woman, a kind of "flower"... So I can scan them and set up them on computer by modifying their sizes without having to reproduce of numerous times drawings.

Always by computer, I give them a sepia color and print them to retouch them again with coloured pencil and pastel, add details which suggest me again the other ideas which I save and which will serve me perhaps in a few hours or some years. It lasts a few days : it becomes clearer and two sketches suit me well, the other one tempts me to go farther but I do not succeed in putting in phase the layout and the drawing. No matter, I now need a model living for three different breaks. The complexity of some of the movements will require moreover several photos which will serve me to create composite characters to give an impression of movement in the space.

STEP 2


After a first series of photos with my model to finalize the pose of the first project, I have now tools to work on the shadows and on the movement of the character.
I take again my pencils to draw some studies; at this level, I have no possibility of using the computer, this work will ask me a day to have finally in hand enough material to make a choice. Three poses interest me : one which express the restraint and the surprise, the other one very dynamic and the last one more in force …

Although out of context, I prefer the second drawing, it seems to me evident that the third becomes integrated better into the scenery which I had imagined: more in touch with the almost overwhelming architecture of this kind of industrial cathedral whose materials spread out in the space. I use again the computer to realize the effect returned by the assembling…

I scan the various characters and place them in front of the thorough image, I zoom on the character by straightening its size. I wish by this angle of sight that this woman, representative of humanity to become there, is in the measure of the universe which surrounds it : infinite, always unstable consciousness and however merging with the Totality, humanity finally freed from its fears and from its frenzies …
I have now a good idea of the final drawing that here is :

I have to choose the size of the painting which will depend on the other current project and which I have to finalize.
To be continued...

STEP 3

Several days to turn around a sketch... although the idea tempts me, I do not succeed in creating a coherent universe for this project. I scan a sketch : kind of landscape suggested by some shadows, inhabited by this character who haunts me for some time and which seems to try to extract of this world while belonging to him intimately, just as much receptacle than source of energy; reflection of this humanity at the same time creative and creation... I intensify strongly the contrasts, I print, heighten the whites with painting, draw with black pencil the outlines which appear by these successive manipulations. Little by little the set takes shape... I can start from this element to make a fast more precise pencil and charcoal drawing

To balance this picture I must use a square format. This format does not allow the eye to penetrate into the space. Thanks to the computer I quickly lengthen the image to realize the effect. The character stretches, takes its ease and its place in this landscape in movement. The forms become clearer. A last black pencil and charcoal drawing allows me to fix the setting. I still need a model to elaborate the definitive study of this picture and, in the same time, finalize the third...

Drawing, scans, correction of tint... I gather elements.... Here are three ready compositions.

I can begin to paint.