Until 2010, I had done no painting since I took a watercolour course or two at our local school in the late 1990's. In 2009, I made a New year's resolution that I would settle down and do some painting, but it never materialized. So early this year when I said to my wife that I was going to pick up my paint brushes again, she just laughed!
Well, I meant it this time, hence this blog. It's a revival of my inner most desire to paint, in fact, it's my art revival!
Members of our art club were fortunate enough to have a coach trip down to London to visit the National Portrait gallery yesterday. The BP 2014 Portrait Exhibition was the star of the show and work exhibited was just incredible to see!
I later got the chance to sit in Trafalgar Square for a while and sketch some of the people sitting amongst the fountains just soaking up the sunshine or having a packed lunch and stuff. I was a bit nervous at first with so many people around me, but I soon got lost in my work, occasionally chatting to interested people, especially two American ladies who seemed delighted to look at this and former sketches in my book.
A couple of weeks back, my wife and I went on a coach trip to Brighton on the south coast of England. The journey would normally have taken us around three hours, allowing for a break on the way, but the sun decided to do its best for us and it turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day – perfect. Maybe not so perfect though, as it was a Sunday, and anyone in England will tell you that if it is a warm, sunny day on a Sunday, chances are that half of London will decide to descend on Brighton, and this day they certainly did! This meant that the traffic jams while trying to enter the town added another hour to our journey. Never mind though, we still had around four hours to explore this seaside town.
I had never been to Brighton before, and I was little bit worried that it might turn out to be one of those tacky coastal towns with shops full of cheap, oriental tat aimed at the mass tourist fraternity, and a beach washed up with muddy looking seawater. Well, I have to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. OK, there was a fair amount of tat about, and the beach was mostly pebbles making walking difficult, but the sea was at least clean and the atmosphere was fantastic. The pier, disputed to be the longest in the world, was full of interest, with shops and little seafood places along its length, and a fun fair at the end.
Sketch
The seafood looked so inviting that we purchased a tray of freshly caught prawns, and boy did they taste good! I did however have a bit of a shock while eating them. We had little cocktail sticks to eat them with, and as I was lifting one into my mouth, a huge common gull appeared from nowhere, and grabbed the prawn as quick as a flash before the prawn even touched my lips! I’ve seen these birds do this before on TV, but you don’t realise how big they are, and how strong and agile too. There were hundreds of them, all soaring, weaving in and out of people, looking for some poor unsuspecting soul to grab food from.
Brighton, on Bank holidays in the 1960’s was a favourite target for mods and rockers. Rockers would wear leather gear and ride motorcycles, while the mods wore fashionable clothing and parkas, riding scooters adorned with lots of mirrors and spotlights. I must confess, that I fell into the latter, but never made it to Brighton, and just as well, as whenever the two sides met, fighting and chasing would inevitably break out between the two rival factors, causing headlines in the papers and riotous scenes on the TV next day.
Brighton Pavillion
The thing about Brighton is that it’s not just about the sea front. For those who would venture more into the town, there are some lovely parks, and the jewel in the crown is that famous pavilion. We caught a glimpse of it on the way in, but you have to be up close to appreciate the scale of this building, with its oriental architecture. My only regret is that we just didn’t have enough time to see inside – that will be an excuse to visit this lovely town again sometime.
Well, it’s about time I talked about the painting. Here I’ve done a sketch of a little part of the town that caught my eye. This is a pre-painting. It was Prabal who convinced me that a pre-painting was a good idea to practice before doing a painting for real. I have never thought of doing this, but it looks like a good idea, because now I know what works in this painting and what is not so good. The abnormality in this work is the fact that a pre-painting is normally smaller than the proper painting will be. This is the largest painting I have ever done, being A2, and is done on smooth, white cartridge paper. The work proper will be A3 simply because I don’t possess any watercolour paper in size A2! Being cartridge paper, it doesn’t hold the paint as well as knot 300gsm, and of course, the paper buckles.
Brighton Beach (before the crowds descended!)
It was my intention to keep the background buildings light so that the foreground figures will stand out well, and I think it’s worked pretty well here, and I like this part of the painting best of all. The sky isn’t at all correct though. It should be darker above and much lighter down towards the horizon. I’ve used French ultramarine here, blending in yellow ochre lower down, but too strongly. The figures are a little out of scale, as a couple of their heads on the right are too large. I love the guy in yellow in the centre though, and the lady on the left. I think that I will need to do some squaring up when I do the painting for real, and improve the perspective a bit on the road.
This is also the first time I’ve used a ruler to guide me with those tall lamps and building columns. If you look at the sketch, you can see that I have not put too much detail in the buildings either, especially the windows. I’ve read that putting the detail in with the brush speeds up the drawing stage, and keeps the work looking loose. The time taken to do this work is 90 minutes sketching, followed by two more 90 minutes sessions adding the paint. So overall, around five hours, which for a painting this large and this detailed is pretty good.
Southwold Lighthouse
watercolour on 350gsm 140lb paper
In this painting I continue the view of Southwold - two paintings from one photograph, that's a first for me. If you look at the photograph below, you can see that this scene is contained in the vertical red rectangle. The stone house on right here is the edge of the stone house on the left in painting one (see previous blog). These unfortunately, are not a pair as the viewpoint in the first painting is much closer. The girl on right is the same girl as in the first painting, but I moved her further into the scene to aid composition,
Originally I started this painting at art class, but only managed to do the drawing and first washes in the sky and the lighthouse. The first blue sky wash turned out to be too pale, so (horror of horrors) I had to add another blue wash, which gave me great difficulty in blending in with existing clouds, but I think I managed to pull it off fairly seamlessly. Another thing that I have found difficulty with are window panes. In the past I would just do grey or dark washes, but when you study them, with windows you can often see curtains and nets behind them. In others you can see reflections - especially of the sky. Here I think I have gone some way to make them look like they have curtains, but the scale is too small for reflections.
Two paintings from one photo
I have never painted cars before either so this is another first. The lady on the right appears in the first painting, but here she is facing the right way this time, where last time I had to turn her round. The lighthouse required much more shading than I first thought, even though it is white. I had to go really dark to make it stand out against the cloudy sky.
I have learnt so much in this work about washes, shading, perspective, windows and now cars. But that doesn't mean that I am going to get it right next time though! I know it isn't perfect - the scale goes a little wrong in one place and my overall work needs a little more saturation with colour and I also need to work more on my figure work, but this is I feel (though typical of my style of painting) is up to a new level for me. But having said this, I know the next painting could knock me right back down again. Such is the life of an aspiring artist!
Both my wife and my daughter-in-law will be celebrating a birthday this Sunday, and of course the same old question crops up "What on earth shall I buy for a present"! Well I managed to come up with something for my wife - eventually, and it came through the post this morning with just two days to go. As for my daughter-in-law, I'd been thinking for some time before I thought "Why don't I do her a painting?". I mean, I've been doing quite a lot these past few months and my style and technique has improved a lot (I think?), so what shall I paint? A portrait of the two grandchildren would be nice, but I've got to get a reasonably good likeness, otherwise my offering would likely be tossed in the bin the moment my back is turned!
With only a few days to go, I set about the work. A couple of hours saw the drawings finished, and two or three more saw the paintings done. I was reasonably pleased with the likeness for Thomas, who's eyes I turned downwards a little as he was looking up in the photo, but William's proved more tricky. The lips, nose and eyes just didn't look right, so my best (and most honest) critic - my wife - helped me pinpoint the errors somewhat. While not being able to draw herself, she has a keen eye for detail and a remarkable knack of seeing where the lines are going wrong. Just for good measure, I took the painting along to art class for my tutor to look at too, and she came up with much the same advice as my wife.
With a little bit of 'lifting off' and trimming and shading here and there, the likeness improved somewhat, though some things still niggle me a little.
So that's it then, framed and all wrapped ready to go on Sunday. I just hopes she likes it, and it doesn't get consigned to the back of the cupboard or top shelf gathering dust!
Well, not the art classes, as I have already signed up to the autumn course, but this painting. I have spent three weeks at class and quite a number of hours at home on this one, as there is so much going on and so much detail, I find myself mixing paint for tiny little areas and messing about with small brushes. It's not that I don't find the painting interesting, it's just that I am so bored doing the same painting for so long.
There are students at the course who have been working on the same painting for the whole course or almost. I just don't know how they can do it! Admittedly, some have done some good work and one lady in particular has done lovely work on the same painting all these weeks, but using the tiniest of brushes to add minute specks of different colour to a painting is quite frankly beyond me. I have seen the odd painting that's been worked on for several weeks and it looks so overworked I want to scream!
Give me large brushes and a good sized piece of paper and let me finish the painting in a few hours please. Spending so much time on one painting is not good for my mind, heart or soul - I have so many ideas going around in my head that are just bursting to get out and onto the paper to mess around that much!
Our tutor tells me that she would rather I did one good painting over the ten weeks, than several mediocre ones done quickly. Well, the quick ones don't have to be mediocre, and can be good testing grounds for a masterpiece to come. I may come back to this painting in the future (if I'm desperate), but for now I have had it up-to-here and want to bury it behind all my wife's pairs of shoes at the back of the wardrobe!
So, summing up, it's been an experience - some bits are OK, others not, but case now closed, I'm off to regain my sanity!
There was no art class last week because of the school's half term, so I thought I would show you all a WIP (work in progress). We visited the lovely old English town of Shrewsbury while on holiday in Shropshire, where there were so many ancient buildings, narrow streets and beautiful places to sit and have coffee. I took one or two photos with a view to painting at a later date, this being one of them, showing a typical street view.
With only a little paint on the work so far, I am already displeased with it! The sky is too dark and I am sure I don't know if I can cope with so much tiny detail in the beam work of the centre building, being not too good with the smaller brushes. This is one time when loose brushwork is not my aim!
This week at art class, I will be back working on the outdoor cafe scene in week five. Before applying any paint, I think I am going to have a long chat with my tutor after the many hours work on the drawing!
image: watercolour on 135gsm cartridge paper and pigment liner pen.
I missed week #6 at art class because my wife and I spent a few days in Shropshire. I borrowed my son's mobile home and we stayed in a lovely place in the country called Warf Tavern. However, a tiny sketch pad, a few brushes and my paint box came along for the ride! One quiet evening I sat at the window of the van and did this quick sketch of the tavern across the road. I didn't quite get the perspective right, and didn't have a small enough brush with me for the detail, but well, here it is for all it's faults!
Well the evening of my first art class in more than a decade arrived. For those of you who have just latched onto this blog, I must say at once that I am not the tutor, I am the student! After arriving early because a) I wasn't sure about the parking and b) didn't know where the classroom would be, I entered the front door of the buildings and immediately bumped into a young lady who turned out to be non other than the tutor herself. She led me through a door with a tiny piece of paper attached which said "Art Class" in very pale letters. Had I been on my own, I would never have read that!
The first job to do was to set up all the tables that had been neatly stacked away in the corner. By now, other members were arriving, and I with a terrible memory, was already struggling to remember their names, in fact even now I can only remember the names of two, but that is not to say that I will still have remembered them by next week! We all give our names to "Miss", and she starts by taking us through the basics about equipment and a few watercolour techniques. There is already an hour of the two hour lesson gone by now, so by the time I finish the initial sketch, there isn't a lot of time left for actual painting. But never mind, I did at least have time to lay in the first washes, the thrill of beautiful watercolours bringing the drawing to vibrant life in front of my eyes. It was no surprise that I was going to have to finish this one at home.
The subject I chose to paint was a photograph of a german shepherd dog. Portraits to me are the hardest things to paint, whether it's people or animals. This is probably because you have to get the proportions right if the finished work is going to look anything like your subject. I mean, if you are painting something like a tree, it doesn't matter if you get a branch slightly in the wrong place, but if it is something like someone's eye, it can be fatal!
I made sure my subject more than filled the paper as that would rule out having to think about the background. Most of the dog's coat was a subtle sand colour with almost black or dark brown areas. I struggled to get the sand colour, but this is where the tutor came to my rescue. She could see that I had a test piece of paper to try the colours out before commiting them to the finished work, which she approved of. "Miss" knew exactly the colours I needed to get the right shade, and gave me a useful tip to fold the test piece at the desired colour and place it up against the photo to check. She was spot on with the tone.
Back at home a couple of nights later, I added more detail to the work, starting with the eyes, which is something I knew I had to get right if anything else was going to work - I think it's the first thing you look at in a portrait. Fortunately the photo was very detailed and allowed me to reproduce them quite accurately. As for the dog's coat, I shuddered at the thought of painting every hair, which the tutor said she would do! As I am very much a fan of impressionism, this is what I opted for, and rather suggested hair strokes by adding just a few here and there. After another hour or so, I knew I had stop before the whole thing looked overdone and ruined.
In conclusion, I'm fairly happy with the work in general - especially the eyes, though I think I went a little wild with the coat by flicking the small brush a bit too much in places. The coat in the photo being really rather smooth.
So that's it, lesson number one complete. If you leave a comment, please be honest and don't pull any punches, as I am quite hard to offend these days!
When I was a little boy, I remember having these water painting books where the pages were full of pictures that were just the outline of simple everyday objects, but the white pages were impregnated with little dots. These dots, when you applied water to them with a brush, erupted into flowing paint. When I had painted everything with water, the pictures were really colourful.
Then when I got to move up to the higher class of the junior school, my new teacher took us out on a nature trip and we all had to pick a flower to draw, paint, crayon or whatever when we got back to the classroom. It must have been around this time of year, as I chose a bluebell. I also chose to draw the flower with pastels and colour it in. The thrill of recreating that little flower on paper with the lovely pastel colours, paying great attention to detail and feeling really proud of the finished work, has remained with me all these years. The teacher must have thought the work was good, as she pinned it up on the gallery wall, and only the special pictures got to go up on there! The thing is though; this was the very start of my fascination with all forms of art, and drawing and painting in particular.
My love of watercolour painting didn’t start until many years later, when in the mid 1990’s; I took up watercolour painting evening classes. It was here that my tutor Mary Rogers taught me much about how to use the medium and I am so grateful to her for that. My work got quite prolific for a couple of years or so until computers came along and gradually my painting dwithered to a halt as more technical hobbies took my interest. But by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, I have had much yearning to get back to watercolour painting. A year or so ago I actually painted a bunch of daffodils – it wasn’t great, but got me back into the yearning to paint a little more. Then earlier this year, I saw a great photo of London, taken by one of my online friends and I decided to paint a version of it
This week I have signed up for a ten week course of evening classes, and I am so excited about it. It feels so nice as the paint flows under my brush on the canvass. The way the bright, vibrant colours run down the work, sometimes mingling with other colours and shades. The way more layers add depth to the shadows, bringing the highlights forward in the picture is so satisfying.
Yes, I am now in full colour water painting mode, and it is fantastic!
images: (top) West country barrow; painted 1996 (below) London street scene; painted 2010
The top painting of the barrow is one of my earlier works, shortly before moving on to other hobbies. The London street scene was the direct result of my yearning to get back into watercolour painting, and inspired me to join an evening class, which may be a little basic for me, but it will force me to get out my paints at least once a week and actually create something rather than putting it off for yet another day.
