Art Class 2: Pointless

Watercolour: Pig's Puzzle

It's been a while since I blogged about the art class projects. There have already been four meetings, I missed one because of a family mini drama, and the other three have been taken up on one project. In this first assignment, we were simply told to cut images from magazines and stick them on an A3 piece of paper to form a collage. Then, using a 4x6 inch frame, move it around the collage to find the best segment, then square up the framed section onto A3 size watercolour paper, effectively enlarging the image by around five times.

My initial reaction was why bother? I know I have said in the past that it was good to see the tutor give us all the same project, because it gave us all the advantage of seeing how everyone else goes about the same task, and see their different interpretations of the same subject. But this time I think our tutor has lost the plot. Firstly, it was extremely long winded to find enough cuttings to fill an A3 piece of paper. In fact I gave up after covering about two thirds of it, in any case I just could not see the point. Why not just cover the 4x6 then enlarge it and save ourselves all that trouble?

Collage of magazine clips

Anyway, I have gone along with the project to give it a chance to grow on me, even though I thought the whole thing was pointless. On the collage photo you can see the red rectangle, which although there were numerous permutations that I could have chosen, was the section I decided to paint. Our tutor did say that we could do endless paintings from the one collage, simply by moving the rectangle around, but just doing this one had me pretty fed up by the end, so there was no chance of me ever doing another!

The finished painting looks like something, well not exactly abstract, more like something of a riddle for the viewer I guess. The pig was everybodies favourite - he does have a nice smiling face, and I like the sundial and probably the gargoyle, but to me, this whole thing is a bit of mish-mash. I haven't really enjoyed the project, but I suppose I've gained a little more knowledge in the art of watercolour painting in doing it. Maybe you the reader will see something in this that escapes my way of thinking, but  if something comes up like this next time though, I think I'll give it a miss!

A Trip Back in Time

1960's Panda car: watercolour

Last September whilst holdaying in Gloucestershire, we visited Littledean Jail. This is no longer in use as a jail, but now harbours the most extensive collection of memorabillia I have ever seen, especially stage and screen items. Among the many things on display that caught my eye, was a lifesize Spiderman, Darth Vader and a rather sexy looking Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. The walls were almost totally obscured by photographs and trivia of 20th Century celebrities many of whom are now departed.

My encounter with Spiderman!

One of the the things that really turned me off however, was a real stuffed calf with two heads! There were many other gruesome exhibits on display, which by time we had finished looking round, got to be a little bit much of a muchness, and it was with much relief that on stepping outside into the back yard we noticed the Quadraphenia Collection housed in one of the outbuildings. Having spent my teenage years in the 1960's era, this was right up my street! The whole collection was based around the film about mods. The place was filled with lambretta scooters, covered in spotlights and mirrors, parkas, badges and lots of photos from the film. I could associate myself with all this, being a mod myself at that time, having a Lambretta, the latest fashions etc., but I never actually possesed a parka.

Quadraphenia Display

In the yard outside stood a marvelous classic car - a police Panda car from the same era. A Morris Minor, fitted with what was then a high tech police radio, but now looked very antiquated! In fact, everthing about this car looked antiquated, but very nostalgic.

The painting was done rather quickly - I just wanted to get a feel for this lovely old car. Nevertheless, my attempt is fairly accurate I think and was quite a pleasure to do. The windscreen was a bit of a challenge, I have never painted one of these before, the different amounts of reflected light made it tricky to make out the interior. I just tried to paint what I could actually see.

Quadraphenia Display at Littledean Jail.

Zooming Out



Jannis

I've done a lot of head and shoulder portrait work recently, so I thought for a change that I would zoom out a bit. Here I've tried to capture Jannis' beautiful holiday photo, which had marvelous sunlight and strong shadows to it. My wife thinks it's a little pale and she is probably right, but a lot of watercolour work does seem to turn out that way. Here I just wanted to catch the light. I also needed to work on the female figure a little too - I've done my best to capture her lovely shape.

Source photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17968702@N06/4742267791/

After the Break

Back in the 1960's, when I passed my driving test, my licence duly arrived through the post. On inspection, I noticed that the expiry date was 2012. "Two thousand and twelve" I exclaimed, "that's a lifetime away!". Well I suppose it was, with me being only 19 at the time. But time has a nasty habit of passing you by or catching you out or playing tricks with your mind.

Now it's 2011 and that licence is about to expire. But where has all that time gone? I know that since being 19, I have got married, had kids, had grandchildren, spent so much time working, had two allotments, spent countless hours doing DIY on two houses, took thousands of photographs etc. The only thing I haven't done enough of is painting, but by 'eck, I intend to continue my quest to change that!

After a lengthy break from painting due to Christmas and New Year activities, as well as struggling to fight off three very bad colds in succession, I've done my first painting for 2011. Oh, happy New Year to all of you by the way! This was a portrait, but I'll post that another time, as just before Christmas I managed to find time to do a painting of two lovely young girls who belong to Debbie and Simon, who very kindly invited us over for Christmas. The painting was a present for our hosts, who saved us from a very plain stop-at-home Yuletide, and also for enabling us not to miss seeing our grandchildren, as they and their mum and dad had also been invited over some time earlier.

The pictures below show the painting at two earlier stages, but alas, time has played tricks on my mind as I have aged over the years, resulting in me completely forgetting to photograph the finished work, which is now many miles away in East Anglia! Oh well, you will just have to judge my work from what you see here.

I now find it easier to work with a photograph on my laptop in front of me these days. This has the added bonus that I can listen to music and even half watch a DVD at the same time! (Kylie Minogue in this instance) I don't however, have Facebook open at the same time now, as friends start distracting me with IM's. It's bad enough when the phone rings during painting, when often all I feel like saying to the person on the other end is, "You're stopping me from painting" LOL!

I wonder what all of you do, if anything while you are painting?

Journal 6/12/2010 - Trip To Leicester

Taking the Arriva bus to Leicester

I guess none of us likes hospital appointments, but as mine was for 9:00am this morning, I decided that not having to go to work today, I would combine mine with a walk round the shops and market afterwards in Leicester, which is 16 miles away. To save the planet, petrol and the headache of morning rush hour in the city, and also the fact that I have a senior citizens bus pass, that I would take the bus.

Following a ten minute walk to the bus stop, and a five minute wait in freezing cold temperatures, the bus duly arrived and I took my seat, upstairs as this was a double-decker. It was so cold that the windows were frozen over, and that was on the inside! They never thawed out until we reached the outskirts of the city of Leicester over an hour later. The traffic was so bad that after I got off the bus, it only left me 12 minutes to walk the half mile or so down to the hospital to keep my appointment. It was quite a dash!

I won’t talk about the appointment, apart from the fact that two very large needles were stuck in me, while I watched it on the monitor at the same time. Ouch!

Around 10:30 I walked out of the hospital expecting the sun to have warmed things up a little, but nothing of the sort, as freezing fog set in and everywhere was getting whiter and whiter. To walk around Leicester market is a marvellous experience though, especially the fruit and veg section, where the most colourful displays, even in winter, of produce is piled high on the tables, with bowls of everything marked up at one pound a bowl, and the stall holders shouting out their wares, often in jovial fashion and very much in competition with their stallholder neighbours. You can fill your bag up with lots of fresh food for a few pounds.




The Seamstress outside The City Rooms Leicester



After buying only a few apples, I left to walk round some of the shopping malls, but this isn’t really my cup-of-tea, so ended up looking round some of the side streets, taking in some of the architecture, which interests me greatly. I just had to take a picture of the City Rooms and the statue of a seamstress outside, which although I’ve seen many times before, is gorgeous and I love to touch the bronze (I think) form, so smooth and cold in my hand.

The weather got really strange at that point, as although the sun began to shine, there was a strange showering of ice crystals swirling about glistening in the brightness of it all, and still very cold.


By afternoon I had had enough and it was time to catch the bus back home. The ride back was much less stressful, and with the rapidly clearing fog, produced the most amazing sight out of the bus window. The freezing fog had covered everything – trees, fields, even sheep with a thick frosty coating that was now gloriously sparkling in the sunshine, all against the deepest blue sky.


After a half mile walk back home, I sat down with a lovely cup of real coffee and reflected on the day. Then looking at my little pedometer that I attached to myself earlier that morning, I saw it read 9,894 steps! This translates to 5.62 miles – wow! But then looking at the next setting, guess how many calories I had burned? Well, would you believe it, just 400! I reckon that I ate more than that for breakfast, and now I was about to tuck into a couple of crumpets, chocolate biscuit, oh, and one of those lovely apples I bought earlier!

To see the City Rooms in 'streetview', click here:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&q=city+rooms+leicester&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=city+rooms&hnear=Leicester&cid=0,0,13276293075708664441&ei=eFb_TPKeFsKYhQfQ-NC6Cw&oi=local_result&ved=0CCsQnwIwAQ&ll=52.633441,-1.134188&spn=0,0.018497&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.633822,-1.134525&panoid=VcGX5DzrIEp3sncJlmP-bg&cbp=12,109.13,,0,-8.57

After the Storm (unfinished)

Drybrook
Watercolour A3

I was fortunate to get a week’s holiday in mid-September this year, and we spent a few pleasant days away in my son’s mobile home. The weather was good to us while we stayed at a campsite in Drybrook, Gloustershire, where we were able to explore some of the beautiful countryside further inland around the river Severn.


The views all around the site were pleasant, but one late afternoon there was a short shower followed by clearing blue skies. As the dark rain clouds receded into the distant landscape, the sun lit-up the fields in the foreground, adding the most breath-taking and colourful effect on the view before us. I immediately snapped this picture up for later reference, when it may or may not turn out to be a good subject for a painting.

The picture here is the (unfinished) result that I worked on at a couple of night school sessions. I say “unfinished”, because it still needs some more detail work on some of the foreground. However, I am unlikely to finish it because I spoilt what was a good sky by darkening the blue too much at the second session. Don’t tell me that I can lighten it, because my attention span has been surpassed, and I feel that the work as a whole is never going to turn out to be a good painting. I am simply including it here as a sort of ‘also ran’.

The things I like, and think I did get right are the foreground house and buildings, along with the gates and stone wall, and maybe some of the fencing on the right.

Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to pull this work to pieces and tell me what you think works and what is not so good. Will I ever make a landscape artist or should I concentrate more on buildings, or maybe stick to portraiture? My future work is in your hands!

Journal 14/11/2010 Visit the Grandchildren

One of the best things about a family get together for me is meal times. I mean a proper meal where everyone sits at the table together and we chat, laugh sing or whatever as well as eat! No one is sitting with a plate in front of the TV, nor computer nor upstairs in their room; just enjoying family moments together over a nice meal.

This was the scenario last Sunday when we visited our two grandchildren, and after we’d played ourselves out with all the toys and books and things beforehand. We sat down to a lovely roast chicken with baked vegetables and gravy. Of course, we had the usual things with kids like getting excited and standing on the chair or trying to get them to eat what we think they should eat and not actually what the child wants to eat, but that is all part of bringing up a family.

Now the fun part for me was when it came to dessert. We had a little bowl of chocolates each (well mostly Maltesers), and a selection of fruit. I decided to have a little fun with William and made out I was going to pinch his bowl of Maltesers. Knowing full well my intentions, he pulled the dish well away from me chuckling “No, No” and “mine!” with a cheeky little smile and glint in his eye, and me trying to keep a straight face! So then I turned my attentions to Thomas, but he too pulled his dish away and pushed my hand back saying “These are not yours granddad, you’ve got your own!” while giggling at the same time.

Now a short time later, Thomas had to be excused to visit the loo, and while he was gone, I stole his dish and placed it right next to mine. On his return, he looked at the blank space and said “Where are my chocolates?”, and then with much exclamation, “Granddad!” which very definitely meant that I had to give them back followed by much laughter between us.

By the end of dinner, and some more playing, granddad began to get quite tired and ended up sitting slouched on the settee. Thomas seeing me like this, also decided that a rest was in order and he snuggled up under my arm and there we both were, stretched out on the settee, the best of playmates.

In that moment, Daddy popped round the corner, camera in hand, instructing us to say “cheese”. So, with a big long “cheeeeeeeeeese”, there was a flash, and another beautiful moment was captured for the family album. A moment which at some future point in time will be looked back on by some with fondness, maybe stumbled upon in a time of nostalgia with a feeling of love for those in the picture and, eventually, no longer with them.