Art Class - week #7

Well, after two weeks with no  art class, it was good to get back into the swing of things. I had saved the elaborate drawing of Cotton Manor coffee shop for painting at class, not touching it at home. Like I said in my last blog, I wanted to get some advice from our tutor before attempting to paint this tricky scene. Although you can only see a small section of the picture here, there are a great many people to paint and although this doesn't worry me, there are some background details I needed a little help on how to go about it. For instance, there is no sky in this one, just a mingling of trees, shrubs and buildings and roofs. There is also much shading under the eaves of one large building (not shown in this clip). I mean, to get the darker shading, is it best to use a darker colour from the onset, or would it be better to lay the wash for the whole brick wall and then go over with a darker layer later?

Anyway, I have managed to get some paint on the scene and although it doesn't look like much has been happening, I decided to paint every brick in the background building on the right, which turned out to be very time consuming. Most of time I usually work quickly and suggest this sort of detail, but I am working to new rules on this one. Hopefully I will get round to painting some of the characters next week.

Summing up, I am fairy happy with things so far, but again I am making mistakes, some silly ones too. Not paying enough attention to the stone building, I ended up painting the shadows in the recesses round the windows on the wrong side! I also managed to paint the first wash on the large roof of the left building (out of sight here) too dark, and according to 'Miss', the wrong shade of slate! Again I forgot the rules that she showed me a few weeks back - fold the photo and match it against a sample of the colour you have mixed to check the shade - doh! I also got told off for using Pain's grey, rather than mixing a grey form other colours to get a softer tone - you can just see it near the centre at the bottom of the hedge. Also I think I have made the mortar between some of the bricks too thick considering how far away the building is.

There is still so much for me to learn and it is niggling that I make some of the same mistakes again. I mean, haven't I learned anything? I will just have to put these things down to 'senior moments', of which I seem to have all too frequently these days!

Art Class - Half Term

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!

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!

Looking Back

Looking back on some of my work of a decade or so ago, is making me think about where my artwork is going and if I am getting it right. Sometimes I think I am getting better and better, but when I come across paintings like the one of this French café, I begin to wonder. I know I am a lot more careful than I used to be and worry about getting my painting right. But looking at my style in this particular work (and one or two others in similar vein), I think maybe I am getting a little too careful, worrying too much about how my work is going to turn out, and worst of all, tightening up and getting stuck in a rut!

This painting was done at my last sessions at art school back in the late nineties. It’s my interpretation of a photo from a glossy French magazine. Here I’ve used cartridge paper, 135gsm and A3 in size (had to scan two halves). I started with a light pencil sketch, followed by watercolour, then picked out some of the detail with pen.  Looking at the minimal layering of the watercolour and the loose and casual way I’ve done the pen work, makes me think that maybe I’m trying too hard these days, and should just let myself go a little at times.

Yes, I’m going to have another go at something in this style, just to see if the old magic is still there!

Art Class - Week #5

A work in progress

I have become more ambitious. Our tutor wants me to spend more time over my work, and it looks like I have no choice in the matter considering my current project. Gone is the three hour time limit on my work, for this time I am embarking on a more elaborate piece of work.

When we visited Cotton Manor the other week, I took an interesting photo of the coffee shop, well, the outside part of it anyway, looking across all the tables where everyone sat in the coolish spring sunshine. Back home, looking at the photo on the computer I could see close up all the different groups of people at each table. At one, there was even a panda holding a baby panda, obviously a cuddly toy of some sort, but it made another interesting little spot in the busy picture.

Then I had the brainwave of wondering whether or not I could summon up enough skill to paint the scene. A lot of work would be involved its true, but what a challenge eh? Eventually I made the decision to do it. I printed the photo out A4 size and as I would be painting on an A3 size of paper, realised that I would have to do some squaring up. The squares on the printout would be 1 inch square and on the painting, they would be 1.25 inches square. One thing puzzled me a little here, me not being a mathematician, then why would the large size work out at over one-and-a-half times in size when I was only making the squares a quarter of an inch larger? 1.5625 times larger to be precise.  Well it soon dawned on me that if I had made the larger size squares two inches wide each way, the larger image would actually turn out to be four times the size, not two! Ok, I'll move on ...

In preparation for the art class, I had the paper stretched on the board and the squares laid out very faintly on the paper. When I got there, some people were gasping at the complexity of the photo I was going to try to paint! Immediately I started and got the first parasol drawn, then realised I had done it in the wrong blooming square. It was then that the tutor advised me to number the squares horizontally and vertically – doh, why didn’t I think of that?

I knew the drawing would take a long time, but by the end of the session, less than a third of the drawing was done, and I ended up taking it home and working on the rest there. The truth is, it took more than five hours to complete the drawing – a marathon for me!

I’ve just shown you a snippet of the drawing, and a small photo of what I am painting. I am not going to rush this one, but I hope the painting part doesn’t take as long as the drawing .

Wish me luck!

Two more for the Portrait Party

As soon as I saw this pose from Marga Perez, I knew I had to paint it. Isn't it funny how when you are in to painting, you can be doing something very ordinary at work, around the house or in the garden and you see something interesting or beautiful, and the thought comes into your mind "I could paint that". It seems this is happening more and more these days.

The original photo of Marga is in black and white, and very contrasty, so not only did I have to guess some of the colours, but I also had to guess a few of the details as well. If you look at the original, I guess it's a fair likeness, but what I wanted to bring across in this painting, was a youthful smooth skinned woman with a hint of elegance and mystery. Hopefully I've achieved this by making sure that any colour changes were subtle and there were no hard edges to the face. I think I failed a little with the nose, as the layers of paint dried before I could smooth the edges out. I also wish I hadn't used the pen line on the bright side of her face, rather letting the deep yellow wash find the outline.

See photo here

With Cecca (Franny B), I got a fairly accurate likeness and she was fun to do. I maybe got the eyes too large, but I'm happy with the finished work.

Both these paintings took me around one and a half hours from start to finish. This is how I like to work, slow with the sketch and fast with the paint. At the moment I think my big failing is adding too many layers and loosing some of the looseness the medium is best suited to. But no doubt, as I get more experienced, this should come more easily, well, lets hope so anyway!

Art Class - Week #4

I was the first to arrive at art class this week, owing to the fact that I was dropped off by my wife who needed the car. It seemed strange looking at the darkened empty room, which I have been so used to seing full of students working on their masterpieces. Immediately I switched on the lights and set to work putting out the tables and chairs and then sat waiting for the others to arrive.

Our tutor arrived almost last this week - very unusual for her, and looked somewhat surprised that we were all ready for her. Last weekend my wife and I visited Cotton Manor - just in time to see the bluebell wood in all it's spring glory, and I took quite a lot of photos, some of which I had printed out on A4 as possible subject matter. In the end I chose a photo of ducks, which we'd met along the way.

I'd just drawn the first outline of the main duck when Miss came along to inspect my work. She noticed some proportions weren't correct and pointed out my mistakes. But hang on a minute, these were my initial lines and I knew some were not right at this stage! She looked at me and made sure she had my attention before explaining how to get things in the right place by say, how many times the head would fit downwards into the body and how long the beak was in the photo compared to the head. You see, it's all a case of how large one part of the subject is in relation to another, and how some features line up vertically and horizontally. Then I got told to "Sharpen" my pencil. I felt put in my place, but didn't mind at all because our tutor knows how much I like doing potraits, and how her instruction will help me get a good likeness when I need it.

It took a long time for me to get the main duck right, and I had to result to squaring up in parts around the head. The smaller ducks in the background were there in the photo, only higher and I thought they would look good included in the painting. As I worked on the drawing, Miss walked by some distance away but glanced in my direction and booming across the room came the words "Sharpen your pencil Frank"! That was so funny!

By the time the sketch was finished there wasn't a lot of time for paint, and I only got some shadows on the feathers and the orange beak done. Back at home the next day, I worked some more on the painting, finishing the main duck, then working on the others in the picture. It looked OK at this stage, but when I added the background, the main duck merged into it and it was clear that I added a little too much shading to the duck and made the background too similar a colour. To rectify this, I used ink to bring detail to the duck and a lot of the foreground, which gave more form to the bird. In the original photo, the gravel he is standing on is very dark and makes him stand out really well. This makes me think that if I applied a lot darker wash using another colour, he may stand out better than he does at present. But then the whole thing is likely to look overworked, and I am already past my comfortable time limit on this painting, so have decided to leave it for now.