Prabal and Brighton

Busy Brighton

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.

At lunchtime, we decided to eat inside! It was at this little beachside café that we had the most gorgeous line-caught cod with chips that I have ever tasted in my life. Fish so fresh, and batter so light; mouth-watering.

There were rows of scooters on the sea front

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 #2 The lighthouse.

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!

The Tree

A couple of years ago we visited Bradgate Park near Leicester for a day trip. It couldn't have been a nicer day weatherwise, as it was warm and sunny with lovely blue sky and a smattering of light fluffy clouds and those impressive, high stratus clouds which look as if they have been lightly dragged across the sky by some giant comb. The park is very open, scattered with trees and lots of bracken through which were wide grassy walkways. It was along one of these walkways that a certain tree took my eye. A very knobbly tree with a huge squat trunk and twisted branches. It was just magnificent to see it standing there on its own, sweltering in the heat of the sun and casting a huge shadow across the grassy heath.


I took a photo, which I have loosely tried to paint here. It's no great painting, but at least it's taken me away from portraiture for a spell and reminded me that I do have to put a lot more practice in when it comes to landscapes! The sky is OK and so is the tree trunk though I'm not so sure about the foliage. Oh, and will someone please tell me how to paint more realistic looking grass?


Oh well, a masterpiece will have to wait for another day I guess.

Art Class - Week #6

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!

Back into the groove

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.