A Few Days Drawing in London

The Plinth and the Priest, pastel on book page

Every year the New English Art Club runs a series of classes to coincide with their annual exhibition.  They are run by members and very affordable. I was able to sign up for two this year: one with Daniel Shadbolt http://danielshadbolt.com; the other with Ruth Stage: https://www.newenglishartclub.co.uk/artists/ruth-stage-neac.  

The weather was pretty poor for Daniel's workshop but we were all prepared and I managed to draw in the rain with an umbrella throughout.  True I had to close up my pastels and water pooled on the top of the containers once while I waited for the downpour to subside, but it was fun learning that I can be a guerrilla painter! I had to work with the rain.  My book was damp throughout and the pastels behaved differently. We were in Traflagar Square with Daniel and in St James Park with Ruth.

 For both worksops we brought our own materials and were encouraged to work in our own way. In Traflagar Square the goal was to draw people.  Obviously we would need the surroundings for context but I found it fun to have the figure focus.  Daniel also wanted us to try to create drawings which we would be able to look at and  tell where we had been standing. As I was working small (in my Silent Traveller in London book), I opted to do some cropping to give clues without needing to work in fine detail.

Final drawing St James Park,  pastel on book page

In the park the sun came and went.  Sometimes I wanted to be faithful to the way the 'still life' of plants, sky and architecture were actually arranged (the focus of this workshop was pattern in nature) and in other drawings I moved things around to make the composition and colour work. Some of the drawings took as long as an hour.  A few were completed in under 30 minutes.  Both in the park and in Trafalgar Square I featured in many tourists' photos.  People stopped to ask questions and look carefully at what I was doing and looking at.  

I had some wonderful experiences and Katerina, a young woman from Italy stood for me for a few minutes in front of the lions in Trafalgar Square while Gabrella entertained her parents. Then before and after the rain I met Jonathan, a musician who was next on to busk in front of the National Gallery. He also stood a bit for me.  I loved both workshops and it turns out I like going to the city to draw.

an Old Age,  pastel on book page

Standing by the Canteen, St James park,  pastel on book page

Jonathan on Deck,  pastel on book page

Dinosaur trees about Teatime,  pastel on book page

Katerina and the Lions,  pastel on book page

Green Stripe - No Men,  pastel on book page

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.

Exploring The Surface with Egg Tempera

At the start of the week I finally got around to making some supports for egg tempera.  It required Patrick to cut MDF into even pieces and me to soak and then warm rabbit skin glue and then add whiting to make gesso.  I coated the boards the way Ruth Stage had taught me - about six layers -, sanded them down and planned to take one to my portrait group.  The nine prepared boards were going to be for nine portraits. As it turned out, our portrait group was cancelled so I adjusted  my previous still life to include a few daffodils and began.

I had forgotten that my previous experience of egg tempera was quite frustrating.  It made me even tighter than I can be. That time, I worked from a drawing, which is always hard for me.   I decided to think of this experiment as drawing with a brush rather than painting. I don't have tons of pigment.  Some of it is from limewashing the walls when Earth and Reed were in Needham Market.  Some of it I bought when I was wanting to use lime plaster on wattle and daub as a support, years ago. When I didn't have a colour I needed I took a bit of a broken pastel and crushed it in my mortar and pestle.  I had no cadmium yellow, for example. That seems to work. But I should get a good red and a good yellow for the next panel. I discovered that a Q-tip is good at rubbing back to the support white colour.  I learned that light on top doesn't seem to work, unless it's naples yellow. I used those pieces of glass from the IKEA frames leftover when I changed to UV glass, as palettes.

I worked pretty randomly, not knowing much and wonder if I went from bigger to smaller, which I kind of did, might result in more variety of strokes. That's what Anthony Williams does. Maybe you could focus the eye differently that way.

I began in the morning yesterday and then painted again last night - even though the light was totally different, finishing it off in today's light. Probably because of the colours and the brushstrokes (to me) it evokes Gaugin, or one of the Bloomsbury bunch. It's fascinating the way materials change the way you see, work and express yourself.