Giant Bulrushes

Blenheim 05. Giant bulrushes…Have been playing around with perspective again, flattening the architecture while letting ‘nature’ run wild. Am also building up a number of different ways of applying the masking fluid which are starting to give nice flowing lines (not that easy with masking fluid…) All in all, I’m very pleased with the way these are going…

I got lots of sketches for paintings done while invigilating during Artweeks, this being the first of those…Am increasingly enjoying changing the views to make a better picture, rather than being a slave to the accuracy of the scene…which I’ve been doing for FAR to long :)

Can't think of a title, but here's a picture :)

Painting days are a bit all over the place this week, but here’s today’s effort. This is the barn on the right hand side of the road as you drive towards Burford. It looks like builders are about to move in and turn it into a house, so I thought I’d have a go at it before it changed or got hidden from view.

Am really pleased with the way the watercolours are going at the moment, the uniqueness of the style is getting stronger and I’m increasingly pushing the painting further away from the source material…well that’s the aim anyway :)

Sheep...

Blenheim 04...now with added Sheep!...

Straight(ish) edges

Blenheim 03…playing around with some square shapes and straight edges in this one…trying to balance the presence of the building in the background.

It's a Miracle...

Miracles will never cease…I actually did some painting today! NOTHING done in April…will hang my head in shame. Still, today is the 1^st of May and here is a new Blenheim watercolour, number 2….lets see how much inspiration strikes this month :)

Where is Morph I hear you ask...

Trying something new today…I’ve videoed this painting as its developed…Hopefully you’ll be able to play it back (not sure about you Mac people…let me know ;)) anyway, this is about 3 hours work compressed into 3 minutes…surprising how little of that time the brush is actually on the paper, lots of drying time, a bit of drawing and masking time…then general tea drinking and dancing around the place…luckily you can’t see that :)

I think this works MUCH better than the live TV concept, which was…

a: DULL.

b: didn’t work very well.

c: Distracting from my point of view

So I’ll try and improve the framing, lighting, general quality and keep doing things in this format from now on :)

As for the picture itself, I thought I’d do a small series of Blenheim Palace watercolours. Took a few photos there yesterday as the weather was so nice…though strangely I ended up doing this painting with a very grey sky…am enjoying being MUCH less ridged with my photographic source material, not something I’ve naturally done in the passed, but a lot of fun once you get into it…Anyway, I think I’ll put this into the Oxford Art Society exhibition at Woodstock Museum, hopefully it’ll be selected :)

And finally…One of the Lake District paintings is on show as part of Oxfringe next week, see their website for further details. :)

Well that’s it for today…nearly beer time :)

Fennel part 3

Doing some more work on the Fennel still life today, starting to add in more detail…needs to dry a little now before I start putting the main shading on the bulbs themselves. Am reasonably pleased with it so far. Hopefully the next phase will really start to bring it to life…

Today I’ve mostly been listening to Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello, while being annoyed by the lack of framerate on the webcam and enjoying the snow falling outside the window…Hope you’ve all managed to find a couple of nice moments in your day too :)

In My Head

Did this today. Pastels, charcoal and watercolour. An attempt at a portrait of the inside and outside of my head…clearly it’s very messy in there/here…

First pass work in progress...

Well the live video appears to work, some you’ll be able to see just how SLOWLY I work…;) This is the painting I’m working on, I took this with the webcam, it not a great image, I’ll take one with a proper camera soon. Anyway things are progressing; I’ve got the first pass of the stone in and am starting to block in the fennel bulbs. I’m trying to keep the tones fairly muted at this stage, to keep the painting as calm and subtle as possible…once this first painting pass is done I’ll work into the highlights and shadows and hopefully that’ll leave me with a nice looking still life that’s not quite as ‘in your face’ as some of the ones I’ve done in the past :)

VIDEO killed the radio star

Am experimenting with broadcasting live video while I paint today!!!...If I’m online you should be able to click the box on the right and see what I’m upto…If it doesn’t make my machine crash I’ll keep it :)

Frida on Fennel

I’m trying my hand at a new still life this week, three fennel bulbs on a stone shelf.

I’ve been looking at the work of Henk Helmantel and Andrew Hemingway, who are both masters of the genre and I fancied seeing if I could get anywhere close to what they can achieve…clearly I’m feeling overly cocky today :)…

I’ve been pushing the watercolours in an abstract direction, so fancied trying something ultra realistic for a change of pace and also wanted to play around with the oils again before getting back to the Jack in the Bath portrait…and I can’t help noticing that realistic still life work is… a: popular in galleries and b: fetches pretty good prices…So worth some further experiments I think…

Anyway we’ll see how it progresses…as you can see I have Frida watching over me in the studio…what an inspiring woman, I’m hoping some of her drive and determination will rub off on me…and it gives me someone to talk to while I’m painting :)

Christ Church

Well I don’t think I’m going to get much experimenting done today as it’s 3 in the afternoon and I still have a hangover…I really must stop drinking out of wet glasses…have managed to take the masking fluid off this one, so here’s the final thing…overall it’s okay… I played around with the perspective as I was drawing it and I don’t think that’s worked out very well…the perspective just looks wrong in places rather than interesting and dynamic, which was what I was aiming for. And while some of the masking fluid lines on the buildings work, generally I think the buildings are too ‘normal’. I need to experiment with more abstraction…still, I think it’s more successful than previous building paintings, so a step in the right direction:)…well that’s enough from me, time to go lie down again :)

experiments...

I can’t believe it’s 2.30 already…where is the day going, seems to be rushing by today…Anyway, as someone appears to have stolen my toast idea…you know who you are…;) I’m trying a couple of experiments with the watercolours today and over the weekend. I want to see if I can get buildings and people into them while holding onto the swirling line effect…not something I’ve managed before, as I lose so much accuracy with the swirls that anything recognisable, like a building or person, ends up looking rubbish…so ending up with something not rubbish is the aim :)

First I’m having a go at a building…Christ Church from the Memorial Garden in fact…here’s my sketch, masking fluid is drying as we speak, will post a few more stages as I go…

Today weather is fine, but cold and we’re mostly listening to Nick Cave…don’t know why I’m typing this…still waiting for masking fluid to dry…

Part 2...

Got a bit of colour on, trying to feel my way through…bitty and not really flowing...but we’ll see where it goes…weather got nice for a while, sun setting now, had a little Talking Heads on, now Radiohead…waiting for bits to dry again :)

Part 3...

Pretty much done now…needs to dry and then I’ll take the masking fluid off and see if it needs any glazing or extra marks here and there…

What are the swirling lines for you ask Sue…good question…I’m not sure is the answer, they’ve just come into being as things have gone alone…perhaps they’ve become the ‘Rice stamp’…which is good, because I wanted something along those lines to make my pictures different from everyone elses…originally I wanted to highlight the flow of the land…I wanted something, more expressive…I wanted to get away from painting realistically, to get something more emotional and atmospheric…hopefully they’re getting me some of the way there…I find my eye is naturally drawn to lines within a picture too, so hopefully, with so many lines in these pictures your eye can keep move through them…finding a rhythm, keeping you coming back for more…so to speak…anyway that’s enough gibberish on my part, it’s Friday night, time I got a beer :)

Toast !

Spent a little time tonight, thinking about what I might do for the RA Summer Exhibition. This years theme is ‘Man Made’. There isn’t a great deal of time before this needs to be done, so oil is out and it can’t be anything as complex as the ‘Empty’ idea from my last post…

I got a copy of the complete works of Leonardo Da Vinci for Christmas…thank you Santa :) and in there are some drapery studies that look absolutely stunning, as soon as I saw them I thought I’d have to try and have a go at something similar…so I’ve started from there…some artistic looking drapes…Thinking about how I might weave the man made element into this, I though of ‘displaying’ a man made item on the drapes…something you might not expect to see centre stage…my initial thought was to use a laptop…perhaps with a Leonardo painting on the screen…

I was thinking that a contrast between a fairly realistically painted man made item in the centre and very loosely painted ‘arty’ drapery background could be interesting…the looseness highlighting the man made nature of the painting itself…

Then I started wondering about what other man made items I could use instead of the laptop…a pile of bricks…some mechanical device…a toaster!....I should point out I was thinking about this while stood in the kitchen, blankly staring at the toaster…as you do…a toaster…with some bread in the top…the toaster is modern, chrome, reflective, a good contrast for the drapery…and the bread…a VERY old man made item…old and new, man made…and not usually placed on a pedestal in such a way…

So there you go, the ultimate man made item…toast…!

A brilliant idea…or completely barking??? I need to sleep on it…what do you think ?

:)

sketches for something new...

Inspired by Lornas pocket sketchbook I have purchased one myself…I had a sketch book that I kept in my bag, but me being me, I never had my bag on me when struck with inspiration (i.e. in the pub…)…men and bags have never gone well together…so, now I have one of these funky little ‘Moleskine’ pads (couldn’t find a cheaper one that worked as well, so I forked out half my weeks beer money for this…and very nice it is too).

Anyway I’ve started scribbling down some ideas today for a new…’big’ painting….one of the complex, allegorical ones…this is an idea I’ve had floating around for a few months now….Perhaps the beginning of a darker, more personal series? I think it’s what I’m going to move onto next…I COULD try and do it in time for the RA Summer exhibition…IF I do it in acrylic and work…REALLY hard on it…am in two minds about that…one, I’m lazy… and two, guess I’m a bit snobby about the kudos of oil on ‘ big significant art!’…sometimes, my head is SO far up my own arse…I certainly won’t get it done for the RA if I try it in Oil, I MIGHT get it done if I work in Acrylic (Well, technically it might be possible)…I guess I’m a bit torn because I think it could be a really good painting and I want to do it as well as I can…and I think my oil work is better than my acrylic…

So, these are my scribbles done throughout the day…I’m not sure how clear they are to anyone other than me and you’ll have to excuse my spelling…(I suspect I’m actually dyslexic rather than simply stupid, but we never looked for such things when I was at school…). But this is the way I work on these things, several ideas, some thumbnail sketches, some notes in text. From that I’ll pull together some source material, sketches, photographs etc and then I’ll start building up a ‘cartoon’…I’m always amazed those old master sketches are called cartoons…it never seems right…

Well that’s where this idea is currently at, 4 months of drunken thinking, a few sketches done…now it needs some work on the source material and then a proper drawing…then it’ll be ready for painting…so, a push for a finished acrylic…or a measured oil…what do you think??? Come on you lurkers, post an opinion…:)