42 Artists Magazine January/February 2020
BEFORE THE PAINT
“While I enjoy painting en plein
air, virtually all of my urban land-
scapes are painted in the studio from
photos I’ve taken on my travels,”
says Laguë. “More recently, as I’m
doing more aerial views, I sometimes
find drone photography references
from photo-sharing sites like Flickr.
I eventually plan to start doing my
own drone photography, but the laws
for flying them in Canada are very
restrictive for the time being.” The
artist points out that his approach
to painting is highly interpretive
and that photography provides only
a kicking-off point.
Having chosen an image to work
with, Laguë sometimes begins by
making black-and-white sketches to
plan the value pattern and balance
in the composition. At other times
he’s happy to simply launch into
the painting. “I don’t like to do too
much with sketches,” he says. “I don’t
want to lose the looseness and the
joy of painting by working out all the
decisions beforehand. I’d feel I was
simply following a recipe. Sometimes
while painting, I make last-seconddecisions, so I don’t like to contain
myself too much.”
If Laguë is embarking on a very
large painting, he works on an
unstretched canvas that’s tacked to his
studio wall. “My studio has a low ceil-
ing, and if I paint a 6x8-foot canvas,
I simply can’t get the stretcher through
the door,” he explains. The artist places
a large video screen to his left to dis-
play his photo reference. He applies
a digital grid to the image and then
marks out the same grid, scaled up,
on his canvas. “With a large painting,
the grid is useful to keep everything
in place,” he says. “I wouldn’t use one
with a small picture.”GRAY BLOCK-IN
Painting begins in a very loose man-
ner with a wash sketch underpainting
in gray mixtures of ultramarine blue
and transparent earth red. “I don’t
use black,” says Laguë. Thinning the
mixture with mineral spirits, the
artist washes in the main tonal areas,
limning the salient features of the
composition. The drawing is highly
flexible and adventurous, incorporat-
ing drips, spatters and fluid edges,along with plenty of gaps to leave
room for adjustments. “When I’m
working on architecture, my goal is
not to let it look too geometric or
clinical and cold,” says the artist.
“I loosen it up to make it feel more
organic.” At this stage, any hints of
small particulars are merely sug-
gestive. “There’s no point to adding
detail,” says Laguë. “In this block-in
phase I’m really just trying to squint
and get the major shapes. I’m not
thinking of them as windows or
metopes or anything like that.”
With a smaller painting, he usually
doesn’t feel the need for a tonal wash
underpainting. “I’ll often start with
a mid color, what Frank Webb used
to call the ‘mother’ color, and wash it
across the whole panel,” he says. “Then
I’ll block in the darkest values and wipe
out the lightest values, using a shaper.
On a wooden panel the shaper is very
effective, taking off most of the paintTIP FOR BEGINNERS
“Do a lot of beginnings. Students
tend to want to do a masterpiece
every time. There’s so much more
to be gained by starting a lot of
paintings and experimenting.”
—MARK LAGUË