Oil sketch on board 2012 (smaller than A4)
I’m not sure why I have painted this image but…
We were given a potted pepper plant and I have loved watching the peppers grow, changing colour from green to red. I took loads of photos of it but decided to see if I could paint it in oils. I have done three versions of the same plant, two on board and one on canvas – the image above is the first sketch.
An oil sketch or oil study is an artwork made using oil paints, abbreviated in handling and looser than a ‘finished painting’. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, to gain approval for the design of a larger commissioned painting. They were also used as designs (working drawings) for specialists in other media, such as printmaking or textiles. The concept of a free-flowing painting became acceptable as an independent (finished) work, with no thought of it needing to be ‘finished’.
Sometimes you just have to get back to basics and do a simple still life – returning back to the basic skills of painting a real subject is an interesting exercise – even if not very rewarding.
Sketching: Other common tools for making marks include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses…
It could be argued that photocopying machines and printers can create sketches.
The photograph above was taken with my Pentax K1000 35mm camera.
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Marek Laczynski was born in Warsaw. He was a partisan in WWII, while still in his teens. He left Poland after the Warsaw uprising in 1944, arriving in England with the Polish forces in 1946. He studied art at Borough Polytechnic and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Marek Laczynski exhibited at the Grabowski Gallery, London, in 1960 and 1964. From 1964-1985 Marek Laczynski was Lecturer in Experimental Printmaking at Exeter College of Art and Design. Besides teaching at the college, Laczynski also published two books with the School of Printing’s private press imprint Bartholomew Books, The Wizard with his Pupil (1972), illustrated with original etchings, and Faces of Fear (1974), his own poems with reproduced etchings reminiscent of Fautrier’s Ôtages. Laczynski exhibited at Market Print Gallery, Exeter, in 1978. In 1981 he was one of ten artists who contributed prints to the Printmakers Council Portfolio, alongside Anthony Gross, 
