Countdown to the New English 2018 Exhibition

Today was the hanging of the New English Art Club's annual exhibition, and I was there! It was great fun to see how the show gets hung and to meet a few more of the members. Paul (the other scholar) and I will share a wall and we arranged our work and affixed labels to the back. All the while members were carrying paintings from one place to another to see what worked best. It was amazing to see how fabulous the little wall looked hung and slowly other walls appeared.  I left before our was hung but will be back tomorrow to see it completed!

I picked up a catalogue while there and was obviously delighted to have my work and some words in it!

Three Media, three models

Feven, egg tempera on panel 16 x 23cm

Last week my portrait group came to my house.  Feven, the model, is visiting from Sweden and we swoon about her beautiful red braids. I dressed her in a chocolate velvet top. Each of the egg tempera panels was begun in a three hour session and completed the following day, laboriously. Both were sanded down mid working. I put a wash of colour thinned with egg over each area of colour so that the whole surface is evenly coated and shiny with egg at the end.  Who knows if that's the right way to work?

Feven, egg tempera on panel 16 x 23cm

Esme ink on paper 10 x 15.5 cm

Esme ink on paper 10 x 15.5 cm

Esme ink on paper 10 x 15.5 cm

Esme ink on paper 10 x 15.5 cm

 I took my new bottle of india ink to drawing today and mixed eight tones in a muffin tin using a dropper, ink and water.  I forgot my paper towels and had chosen questionable brushes but sometimes the struggle reaps better rewards…  The same is true with last week's monotypes at The Mall Galleries Learning centre. I didn't have time to roll the ink on the plate.  My travelling easel is warped so the plate doesn't work well unless I go down to the floor to roll. I couldn't find my sock for a while either and it was a thick cotton sock, not ideal for removing ink.  The ink had leaked out everywhere and my hands were inky to start too! We did a series of 5 minute poses and getting something done in 5 minutes with this medium is challenging!

Akua Intaglio on paper 10 x 15 cm,  NEAC life drawing

Akua Intaglio on paper 10 x 15 cm,  NEAC life drawing

Akua Intaglio on paper 10 x 15 cm,  NEAC life drawing

The Resistance of Materials

egg tempera on panel, 16 x 23 cm, Dawn,

I was listening to Start The Week on Monday http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tc4fy as I drove to life drawing.  Tacita Dean used the words, 'material resistance' and it stuck in my mind.  

I could see chemicals developing a black and white print in a photo tray; the viscosity of ink on a brush being laid down on a zinc plate; the colour of pastel on a page in an altered book; plastic, sticking, bubbling, melting and of course paint: colours on a palette or egg in pigment, the way the brush drips and pools the paint… How could I use this resistance to do something more?  Is the way the materials resist at the heart of why I flit around them?  And then, how do we go beyond resemblance to something else using the chosen material? This week has been about that.

Above, the egg tempera began in the 2 1/2 hour session at my portrait group on Wednesday. When looking at it at home I could see a resemblance to Dawn but I wanted more and the media had been used to capture what I could of her without being used in a way that made more of the medium. 

Thursday, in the studio, with the panel, a clean palette, a slightly eggy egg, some fresh pigment and a few photos;  I tried to find a way to use the media to bring Dawn to life.   

Akua Intaglio on zinc printed on Rives Lightweight with spoon

Last night at the NEAC drawing school session, I had my zinc plate and a slightly wider array of Akua intaglio colours than usual. How is this media different to the egg tempera and how could I use it to share my experience of the model in 45 minutes, in time to catch my train back to Suffolk?

A few more from life

 On Monday Barbara brought a big box with her to life drawing.  she'd seen a performance at Dance East using a box and was inspired. Shadows fell in a different way.  The body was brought into relief.  the image below was without the box, with the mirror making the edges. I had decided to work in ink and was trying to let the magic of the ink speak, so made choices differently and had to work slower.  I didn't want these to be line drawings, I wanted to use tone. These small sketches (between A5 and A6) were 5, 10 and 15 minute poses. It's interesting to reflect how they give me as much, though different information than a colour pastel drawing.

 We had Esme the week before and I used my 10 x 15 cm zinc plate. The plate below still has a ghost that I am considering reworking. I realise that when I put release agent on top, I lose the whitest whites so thought I could consider that in the subsequent print. I only worked backwards in one of the prints so was able to print a few prints during the two hour session.  Clearly my brain takes longer to work backwards - something to consider for NEAC drawing school.

 The images below are from my last visit to London and NEAC drawing school with Mick Kirkbride.  I was determined to get more done but we made a series of quick sketches first (which was great)  but we didn't have as long on the pose.  I worked backwards but was determined to get a quick print too. You can see how the release agent darkened the whole image in the middle print. 

New Year, new defiant start - NEAC Drawing School

 I ran into Mick from The NEAC drawing school at the Life Room exhibition at the RA. That bit of serendipity felt like a great beginning to my January in London - such a small town that I run into one of the only people I know! I'd already seen the Drawing Year exhibition at the royal Drawing School so I mooched around dragging my bag of tricks, a new bag of tricks until 5:40, having a tea here and happening upon an exhibit there. 

When I arrived at the Mall Galleries studio space at the back, ready to begin my second six months as a Drawing Scholar I felt puffed up and determined to BE MYSELF and produce work that isn't just jumping through hoops. NO, that's not fair… It has not been jumping through hoops, it has been back to art school and art school is about being open enough to do some things that you don't succeed at so well, trying things and gaining new perspectives and skills, to see where it takes you - to grow.  I've been doing that  and it's been great, but over the break I realised that I also need to apply this learning to 'my practice' so I don't just produce work that doesn't feel like me in the sessions and end up hating what I show at the exhibition in June.

Mick was wonderfully receptive and in the two hour session I made two prints and printed two ghosts. I brought my pastels but was so excited about the journey of the line and the pentimento that direct monotypes bring to life drawing that I never got there.  Perhaps next week!

Christmas Relics

This January once everyone was off to their own homes, I decided to find a selection of objects that evoked this Christmas. Every November I try to say something about the coming of Christmas for my Christmas card.  This year I wanted to punctuate the holiday season by paying tribute to the colours we associate with Christmas while developing my theme of objects in conversation at a moment in time. I used mostly newly acquired Christmas gifts and focused onthe colour RED.

I am trying to synthesise some of my NEAC artist advice.  I keep hearing this voice saying 'What are you trying to say'?  I ask myself, 'is it consistent'?  Is the painting - brush strokes, areas of detail, focus interesting enough but tied together and convincing. Am I using enough paint.  should I glaze or not glaze.  Do Ibegin by drawing or by blocking colours next to each other.  It's a minefield of my own making!  

I nearly quit many times and stopped when I felt I had the balance right on most levels. Red continues to be a difficult colour to use and why do I always make such patterned and complex set ups?

Lillias, Andrew and the NEAC Drawing School

We couldn't have had more different models over the past two sessions and my approach to drawing them was quite different too. Andrew struck a standing pose and we all wondered if he could hold it for the hour.  He was defiant and turned out to manage it with ease.  I only noticed his thumb moving back and forth, which I assume was a coping strategy for what must have needed intense concentration.  I wish I knew anatomy as Andrew was an anatomical study, for sure. 

Andrew's second pose was kneeling but the structure of what I saw and drew of his position was similar without being exactly the same.  I was looking down on him a little bit in the second pose. What was fun about drawing Andrew was that he had so much attitude and it was that I wanted to hone in on.

Lillias couldn't have been more natural. Paul was painting a portrait so she stayed in the pose for the whole 1 hr 45 mins. As I look at it, I think that if I'd had time to really look (which is what I should be doing during the tea break) I would have realised that defining the room probably gets in the way of our interaction with the subject. Lillias had some bright light on her cheek that I failed to carve adequately as well.

I intended to move around and do a series of drawings but it's so easy to get carried away.

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Painting from life with Alex Fowler

Oil on canvas, 25 x 35 cm

Last week I went to Alex Fowler's Tuesday class at Chelsea Wharf.  I was a little late arriving because it is very far from Stowmarket to Chelsea Wharf and there is always a hold-up on one of the trains or the tube.

When I visited Alex in his studio a few weeks before, he talked about not naming parts of my drawings and about his approach to working. We talked a lot about colour. I was intrigued and in the spirit of the NEAC scholarship, signed up. The space is fabulous and Alex has a good group of people on Tuesdays. I slotted in to the third and last session of painting this model, although others painted the view out the window, and set up still lifes to work from too. I was on the darker side of the model and as the day wore on it became darker and darker, so dark that I really couldn't see what colour I was mixing at the end.

As a result, the trajectory of my painting went from excited passages to a struggle between too dark and not dark enough and it changed in colour.  At about 2pm, it was quite muddy but Alex was great at giving me a suggestion and I think I found a way to show the light. I wasn't so successful at adopting Alex' way of working in terms of blocks of colour, though.  At the start I thought I knew what he meant but later when I saw him painting I realised he was talking about much bigger blocks of colour than I had imagined.  He blocks in the big areas of colour and then works to the more specific, finding that sweet spot between too much and not enough information. He feels that correct colour says almost enough about a subject to describe it.  The colour he saw was much brighter and more high key than the colour I saw. Perhaps when we talk about painting the colour we see we are talking about different things?

So my painting has a few places where I like the painting, but mostly just feels boring and descriptive to me.  I don't feel I have got into the emotion of the situation nor created an interplay of light dark  and brushtrokes that is particulalry exciting or original .

A Fan of Colour and Complexity

Fan, Figurine and Flowers, 16.5 x 16.5, pastel on paper

Yesterday was a Wednesday and I wasn't volunteering with the refugees as it's half term so I treated myself to a carboot outing. I bought a few things all for 50p or less.  There are four in this drawing. I used a little lighting as it's another overcast day.  The frame (Mick Kirkbride) helped me to organise the space but in the drawing and redrawing (Peter Clossick) I moved the fan a bit and it took absolute centre stage, which wasn't what I intended when I began. 

What I liked about the still life as I composed it, was the subtle repetition of form and colour and the way the white in the feverfew became the brightest spot in the drawing.

This drawing took me a long time but it was fun as there were many complex patterened spaces that were fun to work through. I chose 14 colours and two whites and didn't need to find any more asfter I'd started.  Because it's a small drawing and I wanted some detail I did need my pastel pencils in places. when it got too fiddly, I got my eraser out and removed the fiddle.

Drawing Practice

5pm Trafalgar Square, pastel on altered book page.

What with birthdays, anniversaries, and family visits, this week has been a case of snatching drawing time where I've been able to. Yesterday was a Monday NEAC drawing day.  I hadn't arranged any studio visits so I left later and had a few hours before drawing began to visit the National Portrait, to find Great Art in a wander around Shoreditch and to do a 40 minute sketch in The London Silent Traveller in London sketchbook, that I hope to fill up before the end of my NEAC term.

Peter Clossick has been the tutor at Life drawing for the past two sessions as Mick is away with his family drawing for a week. Peter helped me to think differently about my process and although the resulting drawings are certainly mine in feeling, while I was doing it,  It felt alien and challenging and the struggle enlived the process.

Life drawing (Sudbury Life drawing) at the Quay, Pete

The Long Pose, Heatherleys and colour studies with Sarah, NEAC Drawing School

Sarah, charcoal on paper 53 x 75 cm

I arrived late at Heatherleys and found a place far back with a slice of the model between two easels. The light was beautiful and Sarah was fun to draw. Antony Williams let me get on with my drawing for the most part, his insights, or even just having him stand next to me, made me see things I needed to change. I could see better than I am able at the Learning Centre, in a light infused space and I never tired.  I stuck to willow charcoal, using my various erasers, measuring distances in my head, looking for shapes, trying to see marks to make, squinting most of the time, I'm sure. All in all, above was probably just under four hours of drawing and looking.

Pose 1 9.10.17, pastel on paper 16.5.x 16.5 cm

The model was on a stool for the first pose and I was very close.  I mostly just put wedges of colour together, having a hard time fitting the part of the model I wanted on the page onto the paper. I did a lot of erasing with my putty rubber.  It was a joy to use colour ater a day of charcoal, though.

I think the top pose is more successful, I had longer.  I was looking down on the model for the second pose and began with an almost  flourescent pink chalk. As I drew I kept thinking about the Buddha I had bought at the car boot sale and drawn recently and that was a little distracting, but made me smile.

Pose 1 9.10.17, pastel on paper 16.5.x 16.5 cm