The Optimism in Lockdown

Spring Forward, 30 x 20 cm, egg tempera on panel, 

Figgy wants to watch optimistic films.  Our box sets tend to be dark. I remember after 9/11 I couldn't watch anything mean or scary. In the face of a pandemic it turns out my first instinct is to paint a harmonious world. 

The Man I Met in the Kerio Valley, egg tempera on panel, 16 x 24 cm.

One good thing about lockdown is people can't get away, so Patrick sat for me.  I had been wanting to paint him in that hat for months.

Odd Sunny Saturday, egg tempera on panel, 30 x 20 cm.

Certainly The Wild Cherry, pastel on book page, Nature Rambles,

And today I began filling a new sketchbook: Nature Rambles. Sketching in lockdown should help me to see the special views around me again.  The cherry tree is in full bloom, so full of hope.

This year's red pastel painting

Hibiscus Tea, pastel on board, 19 x 22

My garden in autumn gets very red.  There is raspberry, tomato, magenta, salmon, fuscia, rosehip, hibiscus…you get the idea.  So when I pick bouquets, inevitably it's difficult to work around red and pink. I arranged this still life a week ago but hadn't had time to draw it until today. Yesterday, hoping I would have time, I re-picked the bouquet. I have been looking at it all week, longingly. 

At the start of drawing ( I spent about six hours on it) it felt impossible to use the colours I saw to describe what I saw.  They were too intense, too overpowering. As I perservered and found the correct value, pattern and form the drawing needed it got more peaceful, that was my objective… to reflect back the joy and elegance of an autumnal corner of a house.

Highs and Lows of early 2019

Since mid Feb I have sold these ten pieces.  I sold at Thorpe Morieux Creation https://www.facebook.com/ThorpeMorieuxCreation/,  the Cocobelle event at Boxted Hall https://www.cocobelleevents.co.uk, a private sale from Instagram, and Suffolk Open Studios 2019 Showcase Exhibition at the Apex, Bury St Edmunds. https://suffolkopenstudios.org That's a high!

Here are some facts:

• all of the exhibitions have been local
• I showed a total of 22 pieces at the exhibitions
• I showed 1 portrait
• I showed 13 stilllifes
• I showed 3 landscapes
• I showed 6 'opened books'
• I showed 3 egg temperas
• I showed 13 pastels on paper or board
• 1 monotype miniprint from the browser was sold.  I think there were about 12 things in the browser.
• prices ranged from £150 - 340, framed.

Meanwhile, although I had a piece preselected for the Royal Portrait, ultimately I was unsuccessful. This was an egg tempera of Figgy. I submitted just below the maximum for the New English Art Club annual open exhibition, and had nothing preselected.  I sold three things as a drawing scholar last year at that event. I continue to submit for shows outside my local area but it's tough to get noticed. It's all 'art tax' but my success rate in early 2019 is certainly a low!

Is it good to struggle? I sure did!

Valentina, ink and pastel A4 30 mins

On Saturday I went down to London for a course with John Dobbs at Heatherley's`: The Reductive Figure .  I was excited but I had a few complications to contend with.  I had a drop off for something I had been preselected for that I had to fit into the day.  There were replacement buses from Witham to Newbury Park and I was meant to bring all the gear to paint with. As I was packing up I made the executive decision that I would not bring oils or even acrylics but would take a smaller kit (gouache and pastels) and paper rather than canvas.  With everything scaled down I felt I would be able to travel down without incident.

John shared a David Park quote from A Painter's life  and wanted us to paint directly, quickly and boldly. I had arrived a little late and was sandwiched in pretty tightly.  I had to keep stepping sideways to see the model which is always a disaster. My contacts and my reading glasses weren't helping me to see very well and I was some distance from the model.  Before I began I was already struggling. The first drawing (above) was the most successful as a whole.  The second pose was a seated pose and I have to admit to throwing it away. After that one, John suggested I work on a part of the figure, the head and the shoulders. The goal was to say something that I WANT TO SAY about Valentina. I always notice her neck and the way her mouth turns down. I blame sidestepping for my lack of ability to see her as carefully as I might have. By this point I was regretting my materials. I had meant to bring charcoal too and thought I had, but for some reason it never made it into my bag. Every time John came by he told me it was good to struggle. I guess it was obvious!

Valentina, ink, gouache and pastel A3 30 mins

In the final pose, which lasted all afternoon, I found myself beginning with washes of colour. Once I'd begun I couldn't stop layering these washes of Gouache over each other as if it was egg tempera. I had no white so used a white pastel to lighten the hues. Cordelia offered me some of her white gouache which I used sparingly. As I am not a watercolour painter and haven't honed my skills with this media I was struggling to make them cooperate and to say something. The something I was saying was not related to the 'assignment' but once I begin something I find I need to keep struggling to find a resolution. I'm not sure this is always the right approach. So while this is unresolved, I am interested in Valentina's skin and the way her face disolved into her chin. 

2+ hours Valentina, gouache & pastel A3

To answer my own question, struggling certainly isn't comfortable and perhaps it's not necessary to persevere all the time.  Maybe it would have been better to begin again but I 'm glad I went to the class, find John an intuitive teacher and being with other painters is always wonderful. 

Zooming, changing the focus, abstracting shapes

charcoal on paper, 16x14 cm

I have a bunch of ideas I want to explore and one of them is about memories of my young family. I began this project by looking through one of many boxes of old photos. From there I drew a memory by choosing elements from a few photos, creating a mood and story that never really existed but feels true, with lots of truths within it.

B & W print of oil pastel, crop

B & W print of oil pastel, crop

I am using lots of different media, including those fat oil pastels that are like using a big paintbrush to get a feeling rather than a detail.  Ultimately I want to paint from these ideas but for the moment I am trying to keep it open so I can figure out what I want to say and how I might say it.

B & W print of oil pastel, crop

B & W print of oil pastel, crop

watercolour and gouache on book page

pencil on paper 16 x 25 cm

oil pastel on paper 17 x 12 cm

Nothing like a bit of pressure

We have had a rather exciting time recently and all the celebrating, visiting, driving and moving stuff has thrown my work routine off kilter. I have found a little time here and there, but yesterday when I finally had most of a day to be in the studio, I felt flabby and not in the least match fit.  I couldn't remember where I'd left off and what I was thinking. I began, but it was uncomfortable.

Ruth Philo told me about Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost and I am reading that, slowly, alongside other things.  I have been looking too, noticing the bands of colour that compose the fields. I can't believe I have never noticed how the ragged robin sprouts above the wheat and barley, to edge the fields in pink, and the washed out lavender of the thistles.  The colours of high summer make a beautiful palette.  The landscape is dry, the skies are moody and what wonderful shapes growing makes.

I have a rather tight deadline to get my work for the Inspired By Becker exhibition made.  I did get the frames and matts made to fit my plate appropriately, so at least I don't need to finish in time for framing…. but I haven't succeeded in making a monotype yet that captures something about the light of Suffolk and evokes Harry Becker on some level.  For the past two days I worked in colour (Akua Intaglio) and value and then used soft pastel on top.  I am hoping for something looser, moodier and more surprising.

Distracted by plastic

My studio is clean and I have lots coming up later this week so the only thing I could fit in (between the usual mail art distraction) was a little plastic fusing. Not long ago I found a deflated balloon on the edge of a field and pocketed it. The worn gold was the starting point for this.  

I have been re-reading a couple of pastel books, looking for words for my workshop on Friday and Wolf Khan's use of 'calligraphy' was playing in my mind as I intuitively worked.

Drawing the Space with Andrew Vass

It has been a long time since I have taken a drawing class.  As I clicked the submit button to register and pay for Andrew Vass' class at Firstsite I was hoping that I would come away from the class with some new ideas, having tried approaches that I didn't know or had not used in a while. I was looking to be shaken up.  Apparently Andrew stopped in a layby and collected the agricultural material he had us draw from in the first session. I liked the chaos and having to make order of objects that didn't make sense.  We had short drawing sessions of 15 minutes or so, materials weren't brilliant, but those obstacles interfere with 'knowing' and I like that feeling of being overwhelmed.

Andrew mentioned that he thought we should be applying some of what we did in the sessions during the week.  I spent about 15 mins working big, A2, with ink in a chaotic part of the studio, no mixing tray, a bucket of water and jar of poor quality ink, from The Works.

This week we were asked to bring in two objects. One was to be something important to us and personal, the other something random, perhaps to juxtapose.  As I had been working on unfurling, I brought along my African matchbox book and the 'foil' object was in fact a rice packet - foil/plastic.

Andrew had us photocopy these in a variety of ways, but the copier made things quite black so we abandoned that. Instead we drew our 'special' object from memory.  Urgh. I guess I need to be told to look intently.  My drawing was really quite non-specific, but the process was interesting and revealing. 

We were asked to scale up our objects on to really big paper (A1).  I had brought some pastels but only used the ones in my charcoal tin, a very limited palette, so tried to get the feel of colour as well as a range of tones.  Before beginning I knew I could never finish in 15 mins, so I just tried to follow the rules, 'work from the inside out'.

Our next task was to again work from the inside out, Andrew came around and poured ink on our paper and we were asked to use the blob and a medium sized brush to draw our second object - the foil packet. My paper was on vertical drawing board so the ink ran down and pooled in the lip.

A2

Like the week before, there was some resistence to Andrew's process driven session.  Most of the people in the class want to emerge better artists. One woman was quite stressed that the ink wasn't working for her. My advice was to banish the idea that she would produce a masterpiece and just have fun with the challenge. What does a 'better artist' look like?

Finally we were given the task of drawing one or more objects using ink again but we could apply it ourselves!  Andrew suggested I use two blobs of two colours and to work outwards.  I placed the photocopies under my objects.

A2

A2

Today I took the black and white ink drawing and added other ink and gouache to it. I decided to use the rice packet, my iron and a piece of fused plastic as motifs. I had never worked pastel over ink, and liked the energy the ink had, so used it as an undercoat. I loved the happy accident of some orange under the blue and kept thinking Whistler as I chose bits of the background to draw out.

a real postcard for the virtual drawing group from Tina

Tina and Christopher wrote to thank us for a dinner we hosted recently.  Tina writes, ' A postcard to join the collection.' I have a few of Tina's postcards but I suspect she is referring to my mail art collection.... Tina calls this beautiful pastel, one of many that she has created at the flat in Aldeburgh, Anemone Blanda.  Many thanks Tina!

After the dinner party

I love when you notice something and have to stop everything and draw it.  That's what happened today. We had some friends over last night so I bought flowers and the tablecloth was still on the table. I collaged a few pieces of pastel paper onto the beige background, thinking of those picaso collages but then behaved as if I didn't have wonderful planes of flat colour and was carried away by the colour and pattern, as ever.

How do I draw?

On Wednesday I will be giving a demonstration for the Bury Art Society. It will be a combination of slideshow, demo and hands on activities for participants. In preparation, I have been trying to consider my own process so that I can say or do something useful. The problem is every time I begin a new drawing, I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing, that I have no process. This week has been about pushing myself in lots of different directions and then just drawing. This is the final result. You can tell that Nancy Delouis is in my head.