A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman

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Abraham and Isaac, Armageddon, Art, artist, Bible, christianity, Daniel in the Lions' Den, God, Jesus, Painting, religion, Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, symbolism

Preliminary sketch for self portrait, 2008

When I was younger, pencil was my preferred medium. I liked to sketch. And I wasn’t all that interested in painting. In fact, let me be honest – I abhorred the idea of being a “painter”.

One day during my early years in high school, I decided to stop at the local art shop and make a few inquiries about how to get my work sold there in the future. I left extremely discouraged because the owner basically told me that pencil sketches weren’t really a saleable medium. That most people wanted colour on their walls.

This was quite the predicament. I had painted a few things before, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to sketch. In pencil.

So what’s a 15-year-old girl to do when all of her carefully thought out career plans seemingly evaporate before her eyes?

Armageddon: The Making of an Objet d’Art: Part 3

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Armageddon, Art, artist, Bible, christianity, explanation, God, Hell, Jesus, Painting, portfolio, religion, symbolism

Part 3: Pause, Particulars, Push

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This painting was nearly three years in the making. But that doesn’t mean it is the ONLY painting I created in that period. I always have two or more paintings underway at any given time. I’m not a person who gets bored easily, but working exclusively on the same painting for too long can become monotonous and tedious. Eventually, you want nothing more to do with it.

Working on a painting that you’ve lost interest in will lead to poor quality work and outright mistakes, which could effectively ruin it. The last thing you want is to screw up something you’ve invested hundreds of hours in. So you take a break, and move onto something else. Because of this painting’s size and irregular dimensions, it was very difficult and time-consuming to work on. Needless to say, I took quite a few breaks.

Armageddon: The Making of an Objet d’Art: Part 2

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Armageddon, Art, artist, Bible, christianity, explanation, God, Jesus, Painting, portfolio, religion, symbolism

Part 2: A Work in Progress…

Armageddon, Wendy Brydge, 2012

At over 4 feet long, this is the largest piece I’ve done. The painting measures 20” H x 54.5” W. It weighs about 15 pounds. Not the easiest canvas to maneuver, let me tell you. I actually had to bring another table into my studio to work on this, as it was too big to fit on my desk.

When you are painting, it’s easiest to work from back to front. This means, you paint the objects that are farthest away in the scene first, and paint whatever is in the foreground last. This eliminates the need for excessive re-painting (touching up an area that you’ve already completed, often more than once). So the first thing I painted on this piece was the black background. I knew there would be a significant amount of green for the top of the tree, and that I would need to paint it in layers; a layer of leaves behind the branches, as well as a layer of leaves in front of them. So when I free-handed the tree onto the board, I left the branches bare. Then I painted the black of the background around the branches.

Armageddon: The Making of an Objet d’Art: Part 1

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Armageddon, Art, artist, Bible, christianity, explanation, God, Hell, Jesus, Painting, portfolio, religion, symbolism

Armageddon, Wendy Brydge, 2012

Part 1: Planning, Prep and Polish

Sometimes a picture pops into your head, right out of the blue. Maybe it’s an object, or a scene, or an abstract thought, rather than an actual image. As an artist, this can happen to me multiple times, and on a daily basis. Some ideas rate jotting down, others you just let slip back into the ether.

In the fall of 2009, the image of a big tree, with enormous roots, and lush green leaves suddenly appeared in my head. It had deeply grooved bark, and immediately I thought, “how amazing would a big ol’ tree like that look with a symbol carved in it?” Then one after the other, the ideas came: Tree of Life, alive, green and growing, with roots spreading out to anchor it to the ground and branches that form a canopy over God’s people, and the symbol of the Messiah (Jesus), who is the Tree of Life…and it just continued on from there.

Armageddon: The Making of an Objet d’Art

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Armageddon, Art, artist, Bible, christianity, explanation, God, Hell, Jesus, Painting, portfolio, religion, symbolism

Armageddon, Wendy Brydge, 2012

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting a 4 part examination, studying the making of my painting, “Armageddon”. In Parts 1-3, we will assess my “7 P’s of Painting”, and Part 4 will explore the symbolic representation of the work.

This blog study will be broken down into the following posts: