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.

Journal 15/11/2010

Some of you have done some lovely picture journals, which have inspired me to have a go. Here is my first attempt, though not my intended first entry, that may come later - just to confuse things! :)

I hope I've done this right!

Look no pencil!

At art class this week, our tutor gave us the task of painting a still life. Pretty straight forward, or so we all thought, untill we discovered that we were not allowed to use pencil to get an accurate image down on paper first, and the only medium allowed was watercolour. In addition, we were only allowed to use was a no.6 brush and in one colour only. There was also the fact that we had to paint it twice in our two hour lesson.


Well of course, this presented more of a challenge. In our tutor's words, these were to be "working drawings", where all our mistakes could not be erased and to be seen there in the finished artwork. There were a few gasps, but nevertheless, we set to using our paintbrushes in pencil fashion at first, then adding shading later.

In the first painting, I chose cobalt blue and quickly outlined the pots very roughly, correcting with shading as I went along. It seemed quite alien to paint this way, but turned out to be a highly intuative way to get the image down on paper. Apart from the initial linework, the shading was key to getting form and shape to the pots.

In the second painting, I used burnt umber and decided on a different tactic rather than do more of the same. This time I did no initial lines at all. I started with the handle of the tall vase and painted the shapes of the shadows. Then working my way round all the other pots in the same way - no outline, just shapes and depth of shadows. The highlight on the upturned bowl on the right was made visible by adding a lightly shaded background to make the white shape stand out. For me, this was a marvelous way to paint this still life, not by painting lines but merely painting shapes to form the picture.

The paper used for the first painting was heavy watercolour paper, but as I only had one sheet with me left, the brown version was done on ordinary cartridge paper, which had a lovely smooth finish, but buckled terribly, and of course the scanner recorded this as dark patches. The original is also more colourful than shown here.

I have to stress that these are quite rough sketches intended as practice for doing the 'real thing', but they are so useful for seeing what works well and to include in the final version etc. For instance the upturned bowl on the right of the second work looks really good when used with the negative shape created by the background.

In all, this has turned out to be a highly informative lesson and I am so glad that our tutor has took a firmer stand in giving us these projects, which teaches us not to get stuck in a rut with one style of painting doing our own projects in the same way each week.

An open letter to all of You.

My dear fellow artists,
as many of you know, I started this blog earlier in the year to reflect my return to watercolour painting after a long break of 12 years. In the short space of time blogging away here, I think I have caught up with the standard I reached before putting my paint brushes down so long ago. While I have painted and painted, a lot of the techniques I had previously mastered, slowly came back to me, along with some new ones. I know I am not yet a good artist, but I know I can improve if time and fate are kind to me.


Thank you all for sharing your blogs with me, I have learnt so much by looking at your own work and reading your written thoughts no matter what your expertise in this lovely hobby. Blogging away like we do, we all help each other and I think advance our work en mass to a higher level. Thank you so much for all your comments, which have spurred me on to try to achieve a better and better standard of work.


The purpose of this blog was to take anyone interested along with me in my endeavour to pick up watercolour painting again and advance it to my former state. That being the case, I am now starting to add to my interest, other forms of artwork and media. You may of noticed the odd sketch and acrylic creep into these blogs. Now I introduce pastel, or to be precise, conté crayons to my growing list of medium.


With this in mind, I have decided to change the name of this blog slightly to reflect this additional content to "Frank's Watercolour and Art Revival". The link will remain the same so as not to lose all the work so far.


Thank you all once again, for reading, commenting and helping me in this artistic crusade!
My kindest regards,
Frank Bingley.

Martin
Conté Crayon, Charcoal and chalk
on 160gsm pastel paper.

MARTIN.

Since my last blog, I have joined my local art club, which meets once a month for ten months of the year. On my first attendance, we had a speaker who showed us his technique of charcoal artwork. His use of charcoal and a little pastel and chalk amazed us as he did superb portraits of two of us in less than a couple of hours. Spurred on by his work, I have purchased some similar media and had a go myself, and I have to say that it is  a fantastic and quick medium to work with. This sketch took me 70 minuets, and while considerably smaller than the speaker's, is 12x8 inches in size.

Though I got Martin's head slightly too tall, I think it is a reasonable likeness, and I got such a buzz out of doing it. Yes, this new addition to my mediums is a hit with me, and I can't wait to do some more!

Source photo here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfordshire_church_photos/3145141060/