Expressive Painting with Tim Benson

45 minute oil on panel 

Yesterday was another NEAC painting session at Heatherley's. This time the tutor was Tim Benson.  I missed the opening talk as when I arrived at the train station in Stowmarket, I was surprised to find it was replacement buses.  Then the district line wasn't going to Wimbeldon so I had to walk from Earls Court - I arrived just before 11:00 (10:30 start) and had to set up the six colours Tim wanted us to use: alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, lemon yellow, white, burnt umber and cadmium red medium.  We were to use a big brush (at least 1/2 inch). Tim wanted us to use thick paint and to work expressively to capture a close up of our model.

It was interesting to work with one fat brush and took concentration to keep the colours from getting muddy. Making corrections with thick paint doesn't come naturally to me so I scraped with my palette knife to draw. Tim wanted us to find the natural colours we saw and moving around after the first pose gave me the chance to see the way the light changed the skin colour significantly.  Unfortunately I did not have a bigger canvas for the final painting (there were three paintings over the course of the day) as it would have been impossible with my transport constraints and I could see this scaling up and painting with thick paint changed the challenge significantly.

I found Tim a sympathetic and astute teacher and enjoyed the constraints of the day.

1 1/2 hr oil on canvas

Based on Home

I'm back in the studio after two weeks going down to London almost every day. My computer is dying and I had a grey screen all last week. 

There are  few things I need to make work for, but I also have some ideas I want to test, lots of ideas. There has been so much input recently that I need to explore my own responses to things, and play.  Today and tomorrow I have set aside for monoprints - above is 6 x 8inches and the first stab at going back to my starting place, the combination of landscape/figure, inspired by my most recent studio visit.

Last week I visited Bridget Moore. Bridget was in my original group of people I really, really wanted to visit but it was tough to organise and it is not an understatement to say that it lived up to my expectations and was worth the wait.  You can see a little of her work here: https://www.newenglishartclub.co.uk/artists/bridget-moore-neac-rba-rws?art=101

Bridget was a generous visit, feeding me and then letting me look through her work myself and showing me piece after piece, and explaining the context. I saw her gouache plate, her tubes and some absolutely exquisite paintings and drawings. We talked about using memory, drawings and old photos, something I used to do but have lost the confidence to do, these days. We talked about that and she is a role model for working that way.

What happened when I got home is that the things that I look at daily (or DON'T look at) became visible - I had never noticed how mysterious almost iconic, a semi detatched house can be, until Bridget showed me. She likes silouettes and the light around the edges.  So do I.

revisiting St James' Park

Final version St James' Park, egg tempera on panel, 26x16 cm

Having had a few sessions working with egg tempera lately, I decided to revisit the panel I began with Ruth Stage back in June 2017.  Ruth introduced me to working with egg tempera. Anthony Williams who also works in egg tempera held an NEAC workshop at around the same time, but his was a portrait drawing workshop.  The two artists work is very different ways and with any media it's up to the person working with it to find something to say that the media enhances.

The picture above is the new version of what you see below, which was begun in the Mall Galleries learning centre.  I worked from a drawing I made at lunch time and only had about 2 1/2 hrs to begin to find my feet with a new media and to find something to say about St James' Park. Not having the information in front of me (referring to a drawing instead of working from direct observation is always difficult for me but John Dobbs reckons you need to just fight through all those uncomfortable feelings to find something worthwhile and authentic to say. All I know is, I I have been moving the panel around the studio and wincing every time I caught sight of it, so I knew the process was going to be prickly but was absolutely necessary!

Forst version, St James' Park, egg tempera on panel, 26x16 cm

You can see Ruth's work here: https://www.newenglishartclub.co.uk/artists/ruth-stage-neac
and Anthony Williams' work here:https://www.antony-williams.com

Before I began I looked at a few people to find direction, found my original pastel drawing and printed off a black and white version of the photo I took of the scene after I finished my drawing.

What I looked at for inspiration was images by Wolf Kahn and Thomas Lamb:

Wolf Khan, by Justin Spring, p 143

Thomas Lamb, Browse and Darby catalogue, 2017

I also read this article and bought a cheap pack of cosmetic sponges to exxperiment with 'smoother transitions'. http://www.kooschadler.com/techniques/Transitions-Egg-Tempera.pdf

I worked for most of the day, going in many different directions, sanding, scumbling, glazing, cross hatching and eventually found something to say that felt like me and reminds me of my monotypes. Phew.

Three days of workshops

So I've been in London again for most of the week, taking workshops with NEAC artists in the Mall Galleries learning centre, but we've mostly been outdoors doing things I never do. It's been hard and I like a struggle, even when the results aren't to my liking, but it's been hard. 

Julie Jackson's plein air 'painting the summer light' was set in St James' Park.  Most of the day was overcast but the sun did peek through around lunch time and it was that light that I tried to capture.  People came and went, benches were moved and because I arrived late (someone jumped in front of a train) I didn't have my distance glasses or my reading glasses, I had my 'occupational' lenses which are middle distance.

Julie was brilliant at planting seeds of advice that helped me through my stuck periods.  I liked painting at my smaller plein air easel but found the palette a bit small and I didn't really have the best brushes for the job.  This was my first oil painting outdoors from observation, ever and I think working bigger would be better for me.

 I had about a 1/2 hour to begin something else, the intention was to paint morning and afternoon light on two canvases,  and this was the start of another view from my easel. I enjoyed working looser and the blue ground was probably an easier base for painting. I didn't clean my palette and my turps was pretty grimy, but the scene inspired me more. 

 Neil Pittaway showed us the properties of watercolour in the morning in the learning centre.  We experimented on sheets of paper, blending, mixing, trying new techniques.  In the afternoon we went out to St James' Park.  Neil demonstrated how he works and we went off and found something nearby to paint. I enjoyed looking with a brush but I never got beyond watery nebulousness. Neil's work had so much variety and energy and hopefully I will apply some of his approach in the future.  This day mine was dreamily dull. Above is a detail. 

Yesterday was painting the figure with James Bland. James did a wonderful demo of approximating colour by comparing light, value and saturation.  His painting was full of colour. I found bending behind to mix my colour on a chair with the glare of the lights difficult, and my palette became a muddy mess. Stella was far from me and silouetted by a window behind. I ismply ran out of time to pull it together and looking at it there are many problems.For one, Stella is much, much prettier than this. Although this 16 x 20" painting feels disappointing and I will paint over it at the first opportunity, I feel I learned a lot from James.

Turns out sketching on holiday in Orkney is possible

Down From Old Man of Hoy 7.7.17

Dwarfie Stane 3.7.17

In preparation for our trip to Orkney with our friends the Hawkins, I hurriedly created a new altered sketchbook the afternoon before we travelled. The words on the spine are Histories Book One and it was the title that helped me to choose the book. Of ocurse you can imagine the pattern and the colour appealed to me. I think I may give it a different name eventually.  I have painted over the title for later. Pages are only 13 x 18cm and I glued and gessoed first and then tinted with acrylic and schminke pastel ground, taping around the edges with removable tape. that way I was ready to begin each day.

Near Tomb of the Eagle 4.7.17

Nousty Sand, Rousay 6.7.17

Orkney Museum Garden, Kirkwall 5.7.17

Sketching while others in the group aren't is a little bit challenging in that I am not very good at asserting myself or rocking the boat, and I hate to miss anything the group does… so I only drew when it fit in with the rythmn of the day, while we were eating our sandwiches, waiting for a boat or a car, early in the morning, when someone else wanted to do something different so we were waiting. As a result I didn't so much find my spot as find something in the spot that was interesting. Also there was time pressure, so some of these sketches were made in ten minutes, others half an hour and I spent about an hour on one. My goal was to say something about the place.

Overbigging Orkney, 2.7.17

Path Midhowe Beach 6.7.17

Rackwick Beach 3.7.17

I took my pastels and a few pieces of charcoal in my two vintage tins. I limited my palette. What I did differently was I used the charcoal to think tonally before I began using colour.  I learned that from Melissa Scott-Miller, NEAC by watching how she worked in her plein air painting during the workshop she taught. 

Waulkmill Bay, Beachcombing 8.7.17