Sketch - Night Sky

watercolour and gouache 14.5x10.5cm

My watercolour and gouache gear was set up at the window already, as I’d spent most of the day sat there dashing off yet more very quick, very small cloud sketches (without particularly good results - the damned things simply will not keep still… the clouds that is). I slapped this out while waiting for the news on the telly.

I have to say that I’m not that hot with gouache; it changes SO much as it dries, and the Permanent White – well… it’s more like Here-today, gone-in-five-minutes White. The underneath stuff always seems to bleed through it, screwing up the tones. I’ll persevere, though; it’s a matter of using it, and finding what works and what doesn’t.

Like pure watercolour - which I do have a handle on – the more opaque gouache is particularly useful for instant work, but without having to think too much about preserving the surface white.

Theoretically…

Cumulus Clouds

watercolour 20x19cm

A very quick sketch of some very puffy cumulus masses in bright sunlight. I liked the contrast between the lower cumulus and the straight bands of background cirrus.

Only one colour used here – Payne’s Grey – which IS actually as blue as it appears on this scan. The paper is heavy-ish A4 copy paper. It’s not absorbent at all, hence the pools and blobs, and had to be flattened later (successful).

You have to work a little bit to read the lower half, but I quite like its overall freshness and spontaneity.

Portrait Re-draw

oil on cellophane

This is a cellophane correction sheet on two different backgrounds. I made it in a final attempt to get a likeness in a troublesome portrait. The clear cellophane was taped over the (dry) painting and the face safely redrawn and painted on it in oil paint, without disturbing what good stuff there was on the original surface. It’s a bit like using Photoshop layers. The cellophane is a huge improvement on using tracing paper for corrections, and for trying out and adding new elements to an established painting.

Once happy with the new likeness, I traced the face in ink lines on a new cell sheet, removed it from the painting, and pricked out the lines with a needle. I taped this pierced ‘cartoon’ (yes, that’s the technical term) back onto the painting, and lightly worked water-based gouache paint through the holes. When the cartoon was removed there was a map of the new, corrected image over the original, inaccurate work. I repainted that with oil, using the dots as guides, with the painted cell propped up nearby as a model. Any anomalous gouache dots were washed away with water. It’s actually quite simple. You can see what a difference this correction made by having a look at the ‘Works in Progress’ link to the right.

This sheet looked so fresh and alive, even though it has alignment marks all over it and was taped to a piece of cardboard, that I may get it properly framed up as a work in itself.

The really tricky bit was making the corrections. I had to make the image unfamiliar so that I wouldn’t be repeating the same old mistakes. The new image was created by studying both the painting/cell and my reference image in a mirror facing the easel, then turning round and applying the paint the right way round.

Now, that actually wasn’t simple…

Study - Anton Walbrook

pencil 20x19cm

I needed a face I could reference for the painting. It had to be a mixture of sophisticated, remote, a bit strange, and also quite powerful. I quite liked the idea of a nineteen thirties/forties smoothie.

Anton Walbrook in Powell and Pressburger’s ‘The Red Shoes’ was perfect. He plays Lermontov, the manipulative impresario. Madam has the DVD, so I played it on the computer, took screenshots, and with a bit of tweaking, got the model I wanted.

The drawing took less than two hours, very fast for me, and I think it’s a good one. It actually looks like the subject, is full of information about form, and the marks are quite deft and confident. This is one of those occasional bits of work where you look at it the next day and think ‘Did I do that?’ (in a good way).

I find doing ‘portraits’ extremely difficult; you have to be very good to do it consistently, and it’s something I should practice more. In reproducing specific faces and expressions the variables are so many, and the tolerances so critical, that a likeness can easily slide into a similar person – in this case, Stewart Grainger or David Farrar.

This phenomenon is quite similar to the way that the theme tune for ‘the High Chaparral’ turns resolutely into ‘Telstar’.

I think this needs serious scientific research.

Studies for Painting

pencil on A4 – photoshop montage

Over the past month I’ve been working exclusively on the current larger project, but doing quite a few more contributory studies. These are some of them. The individual scans haven’t been tweaked in size or contrast, though some have been cropped from A4 to avoid swathes of blank. Click on the picture to get a bigger image you can stick your nose into.

Through ‘Works in Progress’ (in ‘Related Links’ – to the right) you can see the main painting - two figures - and how it has developed so far. The ‘Slideshow’ button on that site is good for that. You may recognize where the studies have been copied, though not all have been used.

At the moment, painting this particular work feels a bit like writing a Large Novel, and quite a lot of problems still need to be solved. It doesn’t really help that I naturally seem to be a bit of a slow worker.

…as I’m sure my former customers and employers already know.

Tree Studies

pencil on A4

I needed some reference material - weird-looking tree parts - for use in a current project. I had taken some photos of likely subjects, but as they never print out how you’d want, I thought I’d draw them from the computer screen.

Though laborious, there are two big advantages to working this way.

Firstly, it is easier to edit the information from the source. A photo of a tree contains so much information you’re never going to use – background, tiny branches etc, which just get in the way. Better to decide what you’re going to use or lose at this stage than later.

Secondly, you are better acquainted with the subject’s form – its mass and shape - when it comes to painting it on the canvas proper, having already examined and described it once before.

Contrast these drawings with the watercolour ‘Street Sketches’ from last month. Those look effective, but you would be hard put to reconstruct the forms from the information given. These drawings above are utilitarian; I have to put in all the information I think I’m going to need for reproduction in a larger painting.

Not that you can’t be creative. The upper drawing is a composite of two different trees (one wasn’t effective enough for purpose) and, to be honest, it would have taken longer to photoshop the two images together and not been as good.

Ah, yes - and Thirdly, it’s very good drawing practice.

Expulsion - Marchmont

oil on canvas 84x69cm

Finally, at long last, it’s done. I’ve been working on this on and off since May 2009, and drip-feeding it into ‘Works in Progress’. At 84x69cm it felt ambitious but it was more than about time I stopped restricting myself to tiny pieces.

The location is recognisably Marchmont, Edinburgh, the chapel transposed from a block away. I think the painting works quite well as a decorative urban landscape, but there is also a strong underlying narrative.

At first glance it’s a slightly fantastical street scene of some trees behind a wall, and three figures. When you have figures in a painting, you can often construct a narrative, maybe even the one that you’re meant to. You just need to ask a few questions, like; where have the couple come from and where are they going? Why is there an armed guard on the gate? The couple could be Adam and Eve, so are there snake or god references anywhere? If we’re correct, they’ve just been thrown out of a pretty free and unrestricted place (by all accounts) into an uncomfortable world of hard edges and rules. Does that fit? If so, what are the characters’ states of mind?

Well, most of the clues are there somewhere: the gated wall, the snake-branched apple tree, a chapel. As the title indicates, this painting shows the expulsion from Eden, but set here and now. It’s a very traditional subject, usually as a good excuse to show nudey bodies, but it’s also one where you can explore big human emotions as well.

I was listening to all sorts of stuff while working on this, but especially ‘The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus’. The track ‘Soldier’ resonated very strongly once the figures were in place.

There’s a lot of chlorophyll represented in this painting, and I’ve always been a bit nervous about greens. Chrome and Viridian are docile but expensive. Terre Verte is lovely but weak. That really only leaves (gulp) - Phthalocyanine. I’ve got its blue cousin house-trained, but those pthalo greens – they’re still out there… feral.

Street Sketches

montage - figures between 5-16cm high

We live in a flat above an office, about fifteen feet up, and an angled window bay looks up the street. I often stand or sit there and draw people as they walk past. A lot of the sketches simply don’t work out, but these are some of the more successful ones. (Best viewed if you click the picture above – you’ll get a much, much bigger version).

I use whatever medium comes to hand. It just so happens that I have the watercolour gear up at the window just now and am trying to improve my technique with oriental brushes. These are great for drawing because you can go from a very fine mark to a great splodge in one stroke. The mass of hair holds a huge amount of paint, and you don’t have to keep replenishing the brush every few seconds.

The observable period of the passers-by is usually about 60 - 45 seconds, during which they will have changed aspect. Then you have a little bit of ‘memory time’ before forgetting things and inventing. I have the full palette of watercolour available, but it’s fastest to paint in monochrome - normally Payne’s Grey or Sepia - and if need be, write colour notes afterwards. The paper is ordinary A4 computer paper, and wrinkles very easily when wet, but it’s very cheap and convenient for these exercises. The paint quality, though, IS important, as lesser paints fade and pale disappointingly when dry, and the denser artist’s stuff always goes so much further.

I don’t know who any of these folk are, except one. I’m glad to say that Madam recognized herself as the figure in the bottom right corner.

(Coat, trousers, shoes – black. Scarf – red)

Ye Pirate Xmas

photoshop

Slight departure from the tangible here.

For the last decade or so, Madam and I have had themed Christmasses (Roman, Horror, Viking, Bollywood amongst others) and it’s my job to produce an e-post for friends and family announcing the theme. So, here’s this year’s Work of Photoshop for the Pirate Xmas we’ve just enjoyed; Madam, myself, and Viv the cat placed in N.C. Wyeth’s cover illustration for Treasure Island.

As far as the painting has been concerned recently, I’ve been catching up on the Big Wood painting in progress, preparing a couple of larger canvasses and a figure composition to do on one of them, and drawing people out the front window (I’ll post some of these soon - they’re quite interesting), till Xmas took over. Back to the grindstone of pigment and binder in the New Year, and wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous One.

Aaaarr

Beech Leaves

oil on canvas 51x41cm

Quite a tough subject, and it took a few days longer than anticipated.

The different shapes and colours of this mass of leaves was a very interesting texture. I wasn’t sure if a pile of leaves on its own would have a strong enough structure, so I put them in a box. And then added the pair of manikins. After a few days, I realised that the leaves and box would have been fine without the figures, but by then it was too late to remove them. I suppose a narrative could be constructed around them, but they are an unnecessary element.

I used focus to describe the complex mass of leaves, and there is a big difference between the paint handling of the front leaves and those towards the rear. At the front they are quite sharply drawn, with thicker paint, and at the back the paint gets thinner and more blurred. If I’ve done it right, you should be able to cover one eye and experience depth and solidity.

It’s the first concentrated piece of work since August and I’m really happy to have done it, even though it was quite a hard slog. But then again, that’s what it’s all about.

Sketch of Three Trees

17x21cm pencil

It’s not a great concentrated study, but the most important thing about this little sketch is the fact that I’ve done it. It’s the first proper work I’ve done since developing a deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism while visiting Madam’s family in USA at the end of August.

This is maybe not the place for the story of the diagnoses and trip back, let’s just say that I’m happy to be home, it’s safe now, and I’ll be taking a daily dose of warfarin for the next few months. When it was painful I had no concentration (I couldn’t get more than a four-letter answer on Countdown), and it is still too uncomfortable to work at an easel, even sitting down. I am meant to walk a mile or so every day, and have been looking about at the autumn changes, though nothing tangible has come from it.

Until last Friday that is, when I saw these trees up the road in Merchiston Park. I photographed them, then got out my trusty sketchbook and actually STOOD for twenty-five minutes to do a quick drawing, waggling my DVT leg and taking most of my weight on my good one. Really pleased that I’d actually done something, however raw.

I think the three separate trees make an interesting group, and I like the flat spiral movement rising around the trunks from the lower left to the top right. The front tree’s cut-off branch opens an abrupt space, and makes an incomplete rhyme with the visible branches of the other two trees, some of which are obscured and cut off by other forms. I like how the trees’ movement is complimented by the road and pavement. This rising and falling curve from left to right, towards the viewer, is reinforced in rectangles by the walls and hedges.

The drawing works reasonably well and I’m quite pleased with the directional pencil strokes differentiating each tree’s foliage. Although the sketch is simple, and very selective, the image has a lot of potential. To make a painting from it I would have to solve some background problems and decide what to do with the crucial right area. But that’s for a little later.

In closing, I would like to point out that ‘Countdown’ is a well-known mid-afternoon TV show broadcast on C4, in which a pair of very, very clever contestants form words from the nine random consonants and vowels picked by one of them.

Sycamore Leaf

oil on card 17x20cm

Putting the old wipes from the last painting out into the bins, I looked down and saw this early dropper on the damp pavement. I really liked its grey-greens and pinks.

I tried out a walnut oil painting medium on this one. Walnut oil is far more mobile than linseed and is very responsive under the brush. Its downside is that it takes a little longer to dry, but this can be improved by mixing it with damar varnish. This medium will dry enough overnight to take a second layer, but retains its working qualities longer than a linseed medium, which gets very tacky surprisingly quickly. Altogether, this small painting took about eight hours – an afternoon to lay in the heavier stuff, and part of the following day to tighten up and modify with thinner layers.

The more I looked at the leaf, and my image of it, the more it appeared to have female aspects, both physically and on another level. I quite like the idea of the leaf having a rush of sensuality as it decomposes and breaks down into fertile elements for the next cycle, and of the ‘fig leaf’ suggesting what it’s meant to hide.

Block Plane

oil on canvas 51x41cm

This is the same block plane as in last month’s ‘Three Watercolours’, but a lot bigger and using oil paint. Finished last Thursday.

The painted image is about three times the actual size of the subject and the set-up presented a few problems. The plane and the canvas were both just over 2ft away - I had to make tape footprints on the floor and stand in them so as to keep my point of view constant. Everything was so close that I was able to dispense with my glasses (multi-focal plus a slight astigmatism) and work without the distortions that they sometimes produce. I quite enjoyed that for a change, but it did mean that my nose was almost on the canvas, and some of my initial drawing went a bit astray. I spent a day and a half rectifying that, which was annoying.

The palette is very limited – all the greys of the plane were made with burnt and raw umbers with ultramarine, and I used a tiny bit of yellow ochre and burnt sienna in the wedge. I used flake white in most of the initial work, and the thicker paint, and slightly boosted it with titanium white in the odd highlight. For the soft translucent washes of the paper towel I used the more transparent zinc white. As an experiment, I painted the acrylic priming with a good quality French Grey satin finish alkyd, which produced a very nice tone and texture to paint on, and should be fine for several or more decades.

As usual I was listening to old comedy on BBC Radio7 while painting, but I had recently come across Michael Nyman’s ‘Fish Beach’ and started each session with it. During the period of painting this, Madam and I were watching the final couple of series of ‘Six Feet Under’ every evening, which was quite intense. Very melancholy stuff.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this one; the size is just about right, the strokes are neither over-fussy nor slapdash, and, I managed to write about it without once alluding to its progress as being Plane Sailing.

Three Watercolours

watercolours 28x20cm

These slightly larger pieces were done over the last three days - the plant first, then the plane, and yesterday the sofa.

In the first one I was investigating the difference between the direct and translucent lights. Not bad, but the composition is a little indecisive on the right. The wee plane is a lovely object. It’s unique. The blade-securing mechanism broke very early on, and I made the wedge replacing it myself. I’ve had it for over thirty years and know it very well. The contrast of surfaces might suit an oil study some time. The red sofa is an ambitious attempt at a more complicated watercolour. I just managed to get it done before Madam returned from work; it’s where she usually sits for Tea and Telly. Some of the painting is a bit inconsistent - the table is dull and unconvincing - but I actually surprised myself with the painting of the cushions.

I think it was Gene Kelly who said that if it looks as though you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough. I wish these were a little more clear and effortless (looking).

Cloud Study

watercolour 20x12.5cm

Back to watercolour studies as a break from the oily paint. This is the sky developing over about fifteen – twenty minutes from our front window. Done last week.

I finally went out and bought a couple of pads of proper watercolour paper. It’s not particularly heavy at 90lbs, but at least it won’t go brown. This is done on a pad made into a block. What you do is compress the pad slightly and (with a water-resistant glue!) stick strips of paper around the edges, leaving one corner free, to make a sort of parcel. As the top sheet is always attached to the rest of the pad, the water crinkling is considerably lessened. Once your sketch is dry, slip a blade into the non-glued corner and slice it from the block. It’s worth doing, as ready-made blocks are twice the price of pads.

Payne’s grey is a gift for northern skies, with a little touch of Burnt umber for the more opaque lower cumulus.