Use more paint

It took me a long time to get going today.  I didn't have any success in the pastel society this year and when I was thinking about it, I mused that they don't like flowers.  Of course, we don't paint to to be selected, bought or even cheered on, but it did go through my head that maybe I need another muse.  Hey ho, instead of doing something as controversial as that… I decided to take a pearl of wisdom from Louise Balaam and USE MORE PAINT.  In fact not only did I think about Louise's words, I also thought about Julie Jackson and her playfulness with the materiality of paint, Alex Fowler and his blocks of just the right colour as I began and sustained this painting today.

I would still be painting but it was so dark without articfical light at three that I had to abandon it.  Not only is there a very dark shadow on the white vase, I can't see the colours I'm mixing.  annoyingly, I'm not sure when I will be able to return to this.  In London tomorrow, at a Colchester Art Society Lunch Saturday and then the inevitable massive clean-up that precedes a visit from  friends coming all the way from America.  

Green Scrolls

Whoop, Whoop, I finally have had a little time again and my studio and house are pretty clean and tidy.  The annual deadline for the Pastel Society has passed and that means I can turn my attention to the other media that I work in and although I am itching to paint, I wanted to explore an idea that's been buzzing in my head that I thought might be interesting.  There is an open submission coming up that it might work for. 

By titling these I have given you an in into what is in my head.  I didn't tell Patrick anything but showed him the top fused plastic collage and asked him for three words.  He looked worried, but when pressed, his first word was 'Chinese'.  I was so delighted by his first word that he never gave me the other two words. As I worked on the 'Green Scroll' over a few days, I began to feel something Asian in it. I wanted to play with the power of different colours in the arrangement.  I was thinking about my night light drawing. The medallions are landscapes and may tell stories.

Green Scroll II was even more difficult to realize.  I wanted a companion piece and as I worked in a similar way, the plastic melted differently, my shapes shrunk and contorted and when I finished working yesterday it was a mess.  The background colour began as yellow then became whites and finally today I masked the medallions with tape and painted in tones of blue and green acrylic paint to float the focal plastic shapes.

Seasonal Reds

Seasonal Reds, pastel on paper, 16 x 16.5 cm, 

As the garden wanes I've noticed that the remaining flowers tend towards the vibrant reds. So in October I find myself with dramatic arrangements that look forward to December and all that. For me, reds and pinks and fuchsias are colours I love to explore.  One year when I was in school I only wore reds for the whole month of December. Some people think putting all those related colours together creates a clash. As I assembled the objects, including the harlequin stripes, I just felt excited.

The drawing has been stop and start all week and bringing it to a conclusion has proved more difficult than anticipated. Luckily, I concentrated on the flowers in the first instance as the flowers as they are now are rather sorry. 

Sunrise Over Suffolk Poplars

Sunrise over Poplars - monotype: Akua Intaglio  on zinc, printed on Heritage 215gm paper, 10 x 10 cm

When the wheat fields were still growing, not yet dry or harvested, I made a little sketch of how it felt, what I saw.  Today I dug out the drawing and tried to remember the air, the light and the way the pinky orange rose up behind the poplar trees.  It was a Harry Becker morning, but there were no labourers in sight. I'm not sure if this will be the replacement print for the Miniprint exhibition. I'm going now to walk Lyra, look at the fields and find something else to say about Suffolk next time.

Forced Breaks

Fan of Colour, pastel on paper 28 x 28cm

I've had a busy week +.  It takes me days to prepare for journal workshops in schools because I am so out of shape when it comes to that kind of thinking.  As Queen of the over-planners, this time I may have spent five days getting everything just so.  That means I didn't paint or draw, just made pages of my journal, cut copious amounts of paper and cardboard and worried. Once I was teaching I realised, as I always do, that if I'd just kept it simple… Still it was great to spend two days with little people and to be part of their energy. 

I had one day between that and the opening in Aldeburgh of the mini print exhibition which I have work in, and the Friday trip to London for Mick Kirkbride's life drawing in London. Yesterday I just about finished the cover of Pauline Manders' next Utterly book cover so today I could draw! I painted on thrusday and drew on sunday.  All the rest of my time has been a forced break.

Below is the painting I had begun before I went into school mode, initially right after returning from visiting Melissa Scott-Miller. On Thursday I worked until it felt finished. Of course it was like beginning all over again.  I couldn't remember what I had been thinking.  I did a lot of looking first. I promised myself that I REALLY am going to keep a day book with notes to myself. Luckily the colours I was using were still Ok to use form my palette.

The set up stayed up, falling down as the tape gave out and drying up, so that today there were a pile of petals.  I have been inhabiting the colours, though.  I went to the carboot sale on Saturday morning, as a treat, and bought the vase on the left with the zinnia (above).  That was my starting point. I thought this time I would make the set up on the table and keep it flat, that I'd bee looking over and down on it. I liked choosing fabric to create shapes and form, as well as colour - those Kanthas! I gessoed and put a grey blue coloured ground on three sheets of paper, all 29.5 x 29.5 less the tape. I chose the first to dry.

It's so intersting how when I am drawing and use yellow or dark blue I always hit a place in the drawing where I feel like it can't possibly work and I want to give up.  I persisted and I think it has a drama that might just be the result of the recent forced break.

reconfiguring a drawing experience

Zinnias and Fog, oil on canvas 35 x 27cm

 This is a couple hours worth of painting on an idea I have had for a few weeks. The question is, how do you take a drawing and make a painting with it later?

Today was the first day I have really had free to work in the studio since I returned from Maine. Even so I had to get some canvases ready, clear a space to work, water parts of the garden and do some grovery shopping.  In the end I only had a couple of hours to paint.  I would have gone on and I will return to this to see if I can resolve it.

I don't have the same objects here as I had in Maine so rather than work directly from my drawing, I decided to use my drawing to set up something reminiscent but different. I have never done that before. I don't have Bob's painting (behind the bouquet) but I have 'notes' in the drawing and I have looked at it often over the years. 

Sam's Bouquets, pastel on altered book pages (Bouquet Sketchbook)

Last Bouquet

Leicester Bouquet

While in Maine I nearly completed the Bouquet (altered) Sketchbook I've had kicking around for some time.  My garden is full of a hotchpotch of flowers and today I went to the car boot sale and found the man with the Leicester lock-up who was selling incredibly affordable textiles from India. I stuffed a bag with them and after pulling up thousands of stinging nettles and running with Lyra and Patrick I decided I should turn my attention to the final page of Bouquet sketchbook. I gathered an arm full of flowers and set to assembling textiles and studio paraphenalia. 

I intend to start painting tomorrow!

Drawing London with Paul Newland

Just back from a two day workshop with Paul Newland, thanks to the New English Art Club. Paul's  course description intrigued me.  However, it was with some trepidation that I went to London, the day after getting back from Maine, to draw plein air somewhere near the Mall Galleries. 

                                      

This is a 2-day workshop about investigation and exploration, it will take place near or within St James's, with the Mall Galleries Learning Centre as a base. The aim is to record your evolving perceptions of place. The space, changing light, architecture, traffic and human activity may all be seen in numerous ways and in the course of these these two days we want you to explore your own vision of these phenomena. This may be done with numerous studies, or with one large work. You may enrol for one day only if you wish. There will be a plenery session at lunchtime and at the end of each working day.

After speaking to Paul, my goal was to make a series of what I will call 'gestures' to establish a sense of place that I will work from to make a small painting back in my studio.

I stood across from a few dynamic streets so there was a stream of traffic between me and the subject.  I learned quickly about how big the closest buses are and how much they obscure what I am trying to see.  

Paul wanted us to consider 'space' first and although he asked us to use line to begin with, I used pastel. Without even deciding to, I edited much of what I saw.  The goal was to get many done quickly. 

Next I moved onto light and what I noticed was that the sky was the lightest area - a little swathe of blue might appear, but the sky was mainly white with grey punctuation.  The cream coloured stone of the buildings and the column appeared darker than I might expect.  I limited my palette in both cases as the light seemed to require that. I never felt finished and I have included everything I did over the course of the two days here, even the things that don't work!

All of the drawings are contained in an altered sketchbook I'd prepared the day before: A Silent Traveler in London by Chiang Yee. Most measure 12 x 18 cm - with one taking two pages, so 24 x 18cm.

Paul wanted us to capture elements of human activity and traffic as well as the architecture and folliage that characterised the space. He encouraged us to experiment, to gather a range of drawings.  As a countryside dweller and never having drawn plein air in a bustling place, suggesting, let alone pinning down a bus, a car, a person on their way somewhere else was thrilling, exhausting and difficult. I tried tone, I tried line and I tried colour. Much of time I was in full struggle mode trying to juggle all the competing demands.  I wished I knew more about perspective and spent lots of time holding my pastels up to check the acute angles of the roads, realising the scale was all wrong or the distance between things didn't make sense.

All the individuals in the group were drawing in different places and Paul had to find them.  He found me quite easily, I think, and he and I had a series of short talks about different directions I might explore and he helped me to see where something didn't work.

I have to tell you that to make the sight of me even more comical than simply a scruffy middle aged woman with a trolley and a table easel drawing in a book (with lots of people, traffic and delivery carts going by), I was wearing two sets of glasses, one on top of the other in order to see the scene. I believe this version of me is not an intimidating version, as I had many curious onlookers and quite a few conversations.  One young man took a panoramic video of me, my subject and all the chaos.  Another handed me his phone and asked me to type my name in it.

The person I spoke with longest was a man named Skye from Bejing. He designs museums and was in the UK for a month.  He had been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London at least. He showed me some gorgeous photos of museum art, his parents and their acupunture images. We spoke twice, once before he played a game of table tennis with a man who found him on the street and then again after.  I nearly missed my train… 

Skye noticed that my book had Chinese writing in it, which you can see in the drawing below on the top page.  This thrilled him! We'll see what I can make of all of this… I'm not feeling very confident but Paul in standing by to give me input.

I took a slightly later train back.  After dinner I noticed the sun setting over the hedge - of course the light faded fast but it felt good to position my easel right outside the front door and to observe my non-urban view,the sun going down behind the hedge for a short time, pastels in hand, no head torch this time.

A Blaze of Bouquets

Pattern of Three

My mother is generous with her flowers and gives me free reign to pull out objects to draw. Left alone in the house, I wander around imagining what new arrangements could say. This year the colours in Jan's garden are imprinted on my palette and in the last days of being here I wanted to translate them in some way, distanced from their fiery border. My first bouquets were brought over by my friend and our neighbour, Sam King.

Sam's Flowers

I must admit to thinking more consciously about compostion, or at least 'naming' the composition more after the NEAC courses I have taken. Yesterday I approached my drawings in a slightly different way. Mostly it was me trying not to take out all my pastels in order to begin, a time saving way to start. When I liked the results the first time, each time I drew (yesterday) I used the approach.

I began by using my derwent pastel pencils to put down a few of the exact shapes of colour in proportion in the space as I saw them. I did not make a series of marks around the page, honing in as I made sense of the space. I also stuck to my box of sennelier pastels which are unbelievably brilliant but big and clunky, shunning my little paper boxes (aranged by colour) which are a mix of pastels from my life. 

Bob's Complementary Flowers

I guess you might say years of looking at the garden has made me a colourist. Thanks mom. What a summer of inspiration! I must also admit to be being a little excited to get back to my studio to see how there drawings evolve into the next thing, though!

Last Pieces of the Landscape of Holiday

Fish Flower Launch

There are rituals in a place where you've been spending months of the summer for fifty years.  There are objects you see that make time tumble back.  There are new things that quickly become home. 

We sit on the porches at different times of day, watching island life, reading our books, eating our lunch, toasting each other, kibitzing. So when I got to the final pages of Holiday Home, I went to the porch.  But my porch was an amalgamation, a summary, a romanticized view. It could never be the way I composed it, and I did compose it so I saw it that way, stacking footstools on stools to raise the horizon to incorporate the sea, hanging rugs on fences, placing flowers high.

Flowers Kantha China

From Porch to Pier

Towards the end of the book I began to turn to the more complex aspects of my view… Most years Patrick builds something that becomes a feature of the garden.  His structures grow out of the landscape.  

Driftwood Garden and Chair

And as I closed one book I was able to work into another.  Yesterday as we walked around the beach the red flag and the rocks made me pause long enough to get something down. Inspired by words on the page, I drew the porch at night and a few days ago on another windy walk, with wind that wanted to lift my chair into the air, the white caps, clouds scuttling by and white rocks beyond Preble stopped me in my tracks.

Low Tide and Red Flag

Night Paddock

Wind and Whitecaps

Exploring light and colour in the Holiday House

Cocktail Hour

I learned from an artist friend when I was young and impressionable that looking for inspiration in the everyday was a way of being with the world.  The intrigue of shapes and colours side by side would keep my occupied, (confused) and curious enough to last me a lifetime. This project, contained within the space that is familiar, known and drawn often is proving that even when I think I know something or there is nothing left to draw, there is always more. And taking on the night light has enlarged things in a different, enchanting direction. Four pages left…

Artificial Light on Table

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Flowers After Rain

Echinacea and Day Lilies

Lights on with Full Moon

Reading in barn (Toothache)

Night light on Barn and Shed 

While Listening to Rachel

Not Quite Lights Out

The limitless possibilities of the Holiday House

After Dinner Bouquets

With my goal of three pages a day, I am ready to begin p 213 today.  I have made 22 drawings so far; that gives you an idea of how many pages I remove and glue together to make my altered sketchbooks.

My daily schedule has been packed so it has been usual to have one or two drawings to make after dinner. As I am in love with night light, this has been a welcome constraint.  Katy has leant me her head torch and the quality of light changes with this.  I have experimented in low lit places.  Light is thrown on objects differently as above (After Dinner Bouquets) and below, (Molly's Birthday Bouquets).

Before Dinner Structures

Sometimes, sandwiching a drawing between events means the light fades before I have finished…

Buddha and Birdbath

I carry objects to new places to create new worlds that are familiar but which don't actually exist.

Green Garden with Pink

Light Through Tree 8pm

Molly's Birthday Bouquets

Nightlight Over Trees

Petunias on Porch

Sunflower and Shade

Fog and Foam

I have three altered sketchbooks with me in Maine.  Holiday House is what I am focussing on but if I go beyond the curtilage of the barn and the house I get out my Maine Landscape book.  At Preble Beach the fog rolled across the view.  I am itching to complete the last four pages of 'Bouquets' while here in bouquet heaven.

The images in Holiday House are 15 x 10.5 cm while Fog and Foam is 15 x 14.5 and sits on a bigger page.