Italian Cyclists

Italian Cyclists - acrylic 30x40 cms

Isn't it funny how you read all these articles in art magazines by competent artists who give you step-by-step instructions on how to create a masterpiece like theirs in several easy steps, then when you try it, it turns out to be utter rubbish that goes straight in the bin!

after 2 hours

Well for once, I followed one such artist's advice and tried a method of painting that was mostly alien to the normal way I do things, and I was actually quite surprised at the results. "Italian Cyclists" was definitely NOT the way I usually do things and scared the pants off me as it was mostly done at a painting club I belong to, and under much scrutiny from fellow artists.

Working from memory using a stretched canvas and acrylics, the first instruction I followed was to give the canvas an under-painting of red. Not sure what to do after that, I sketched the scene from a photo loosely with a small brush using burnt umber. Normally I would have meticulously sketched the scene in pencil first, though come to think of it, the last portrait I did was done initially in a similar way with a fine brush. The rest of the painting was done mainly using larger brushes, applying the paint in a fairly dry manner so that small areas of the under-painting showed through. I had much difficulty in stopping myself from going into more detail as I knew that I had to keep this one down to an impression.

after 4 hours

The painting took around three 2-hour sessions.

In conclusion, the resultant work that had a continuity about it and a feeling of a warm sunny day. This has set me off on a new course in the wonderful world of painting.

Great Bowden Village Boxing Day Meet

Great Bowden Boxing Day Meet

It is a tradition that goes back many years to hold the Fernie Hunt opening Meet on the village green in Great Bowden, Leicestershire. I try to attend this yearly event whenever I can, mainly to see my favourites, which are the hounds. This must be one of the few days in the year that the hounds are treated like pets with all the patting and stroking from the onlookers and especially the children and the animals just seem to lap up all the attention!

I've used acrylic paint on 16x20 inch stretched canvas for this one, which took two months from start to finish. The video below shows how the work came to fruition with each stage of the work.

London Tourists - the finished painting

This has been the longest ever time that I've taken over a painting. It has also been on and off the shelf since its conception. I've been both tremendously excited and absolutely fed-up with it at times - a real roller-coaster of a work that well, I'm really glad but in a strange way sad that it's finished. All of the young people in this painting are strangers to me, but having painstakingly painted each of their faces, jackets and jumpers, crinkly jeans and assortment of footwear, I almost feel that I know each and every one of them in a strange way like a friend.

Lino Printing - Simple, or is it?

Done Sledging

It's been almost a year since I posted anything on here despite so much that has happened in that time. 2013 has been a good year for me, sold a number of paintings and greetings cards, the proceeds of which have disappeared down that empty hole of investment in painting kit and material costs. That said, I am under no illusion of making it as a half decent artist, but those sales have given me confidence and a little support in the last chance attempt in making a go at a painting career in my twilight years!


My work in acrylics has been dominant in the last half of last year and I've been moving towards bigger and more detailed, though not necessarily better work! I'm always keen to try out new things, and this has resulted in a new medium for me - linocut prints. Did you used to do that at school? I know I did, must have been in junior school in the 1950's - crickey, that seems an awful long time ago!

The first two goes that I had at lino printing were abysmal. Chunky, stark looking images with little detail made me give up in disgust for a couple of months. Then I came across one or two linocut images on the internet which looked amazing. What was I doing wrong then? Like the proverbial poor workman who blames his tools, I put it down to cheap shoddy tools and incorrect ink. So I bought a selection of acrylic printing inks, synthetic lino and a set of better quality tools and with the help of a marvellous book that I put on my Christmas list (never expecting to actually get it), I set about the task with renewed enthusiasm.

The new kit worked!

I decided to go the whole hog and do a three colour 'reduction' or 'suicide' print - well if you are going to do something, might as well think big, or that's what I thought.



fig.2 second print run

For those who aren't familiar with reduction techniques, this means first cutting away anything that is white or the paper colour, then running off as many prints as you need in your underlying colour, then working through this technique for each subsequent colour, cutting away at the lino as you go, though in practice, it isn't quite as simple as that.

The picture above has sort of given me a crash course in lino cutting! For a start, the new lino that came turned out to be dark grey. This meant that after carefully drawing the image on paper, transferring it to the lino by tracing became impracticable - couldn't see my lines, and carbon paper didn't leave a mark on it. I ended up chalking the back of the paper, then tracing it that way, which was extremely messy but gave me enough of an image to use a white acrylic pen to draw over the fast smudging lines!

The next problem was that I didn't have a light enough blue for my needs, so ended up adding some normal titanium white acrylic paint to my blue ink and mixing it in - bad decision, as this altered the viscosity of the ink which was difficult to roll out smoothly and dried very quick, but I didn't want to wait another week for more ink to come through the post or the expense of it, so ploughed on.

fig.1 lino after 2nd cut

With six sheets of the first colour printed, I set about cutting away areas where I wanted the second colour. It's not easy trying to work it all out, but interesting non the less. When it came to printing the second colour with normal blue ink (fig2), the resultant image started to look much more like a picture, but at this point it became clear that the first paler blue was really a bit too dark; also in my eagerness I managed to cut away the boy's right glove ! Couldn't do anything about that now, on with cutting again to leave just the parts I wanted black. After this printing, the image was almost complete, just left the man's cuffs and sled to add by brush in yellow and red.

My first real foray into lino printing produced a few mistakes but was in the main enjoyable and really interesting. Registering the colours during each stage of the printing was no where near as hard as I thought it was going to be, thanks to the book. There are endless possibilities and techniques to explore for future works, so this is going to be an interesting little project between paintings. So a promising start to 2014 it is!

A Change of Direction?

After the Storm Over Rape Field. 305 x 210 mm watercolour and pen.

A Change of Direction?
This is my first foray into cubism. I've never really liked Picasso’s cubism works or cubism in general, until I came across Barry Coombs. It is his watercolour works that inspired me to paint this landscape, which is something of a departure for me.

This painting may look familiar, as I've done this scene before as a normal watercolour (see picture below), but this time I wanted to keep it very simple and colourful and have tried to introduce some cubism element to the work. I think you’ll agree this version is a complete transformation.

I've used three primary colours (French ultramarine blue, cadmium red and cadmium yellow) with a little cerulean blue added, mixing large amounts of each and adding as much pigment as possible. Just seeing those three gorgeous colours in my palette dish in all their bright splendour was a real turn on and it felt so exciting to lay them down and drop them into each other on the paper!

I'm already hooked on this style of painting, and I think I may have to change the name of this blog from Frank’s Watercolour Revival to Frank’s Watercolour Discovery, as I seem to be finding out new ways of doing things all the time!

My original version

30 Tourists Part 2

Work on my current acrylic project is slow, and going to be a lot harder than I first thought. The faces are turning out to be more time consuming than I really wanted, and for some reason, skin tones are proving unusually difficult. Never mind, I will work it out!

This time I gave the whole canvas a light wash of  burnt sienna, taking care not to hide the pencil work too much and to stop those annoying white bits showing through my work. This also makes it easier when adding whitish highlights. The way I like to work is to treat each small area of the work one piece at a time, then move on, gradually building up to the finished painting. The layering that a lot of artists do, I'll leave for my watercolour work.

30 Tourists - Part 2. Acrylic on stretched canvas.

What Happens When I Die?

30 Tourists - Part one

30 Tourists. Drawing on Canvas for Acrylic Paint (20x50cm).

This week at the South Leicestershire Art Group (SLAGs), I started a new project. After doing three lengthy architectural works, I decided a change of subject would give me more of a challenge and stop me from getting into a rut doing the same old thing, and boy what a challenge this one is turning out to be.

After picking up this long canvas for a bargain price at Dunelm Mill, I wondered a little about what to do with it. I had one or two photos in mind and ended up choosing a cropped photo of a crowd scene outside the gates into Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall, London. It was eventually a toss-up between this and a thin wide view of the buildings from the parade ground. All of these young tourists were busy taking photos of the  guards in their bright red coats guarding the venue. It must have seemed quite strange therefore to them that I was only interested in taking a photo of them. But you see, being an artist, I have constant subconscious thoughts of what would be a good subject for my next painting project!

Well, getting back to SLAGs, the reaction from fellow members on seeing my photo and blank canvas was to laugh, and quips like "You've got your work cut out there" and "You are a gluten for punishment"! Well maybe I have and I am, but one thing's for sure, I'm going to have a great time working it all out and getting to know all the little quirkiness of the characters on the canvas as I paint them.

As well as painting, our weekly meetings consist of a fair amount of chatter, and as most of us are getting on a bit, it wasn't surprising that the subject of death came up and what we thought about it! It mostly centred around what happens to us when we die and where our ashes are to be scattered. It was most amusing when one lady said that she kept changing her mind, and her son who was a farmer said to her "Oh don't worry, when you're gone, I'll put your ashes in the muck-spreader and spread you onto the fields"!

The preliminary sketch above, may seem rather detailed for an acrylic painting, but it gives me precise details to work to, which has come in handy for my recent architectural studies. Here I've used the 'squaring-up' method to enlarge the photo to the scale of the canvas, (the corresponding squares on the photo obviously  being much smaller). I usually leave unwanted features out or move them around slightly, but this one remains pretty true to the source photo. This sketch still remained tricky, taking me around four hours to complete.

Now for the paint!

Old Grammar School, Market Harborough

I've lived in the busy town of Market Harborough for many years now and spent a lot of my working hours pounding the streets delivering milk, not just in the town, but surrounding villages as well. Despite this familiarity with my environment, I never cease to be amazed at the diversity and detail of the architecture of our older buildings. The one I've photographed and painted here is the Old Grammar School, which was founded by Robert Smyth in 1614. It has the unusual feature of standing on huge oak legs, the ground floor section was apparently the home of a butter market in years gone by. It has seen a few cosmetic changes over recent years, but except for the addition of a brick staircase in 1868, the building remains a quaint and beautiful focus for the town centre.

Painting it has raised a few challenges for me and taken quite some time to complete. The size of the painting (40x30cm) is a fair bit larger than my source photo and has been painted with acrylics. It remains true to detail other than a tree in the foreground which spoilt the composition so I left it out! Also, the sky in my photograph was very grey after the rain shower that got me wet before I took it. This I changed using an earlier photo of a more blusterous sky taken at another location last year. I find it helps to take photographs wherever I go, whenever I can, as this gives me a constant supply of things I can use in subsequent paintings even though I may only use small parts of the image. The picture below shows the work at it's varying stages.

Last Autumn I joined the South Leicestershire Art Group (SLAGs), which is a small, informal group that meets every Tuesday morning to have a chat and paint together for a couple of hours in a church centre. Having this small point in time each week set aside for painting  has been a fantastic boost to my work, both in terms of quantity and quality, and is something I constantly look forward to. Long live SLAGs!

This shows the work at various stages.