Holiday House

Pillows and Box Garden

While still in my studio in England, I created a new altered sketchbook. It's a beautiful thick book entitled 'Holiday House'. I tried putting beeswax on the cover and shined it up and I think it looks splendid! I am in the process of filling this new altered sketchbook from cover to cover.  My goal is to complete it while here.  There are about 30 remaining pages to draw on. 

My mornings begin by preparing the pages, I have already gessoed the pages once; I tape the edges and choose a background acrylic ink to blend with the pastel ground. I use a hairdryer to dry it quickly and find my space.

The barn is dark (even in daylight) so I needed to drag a light over to see the colours I was using as I looked out the window. In the garden I have used an umbrella to avoid glare on the pages and at night I used a head torch. The light faded fast and it was hard to find the edges … the mosquitoes were out too!

I would love to use this book as a way to find a residency somewhere. Can you think of a beautiful place where I could spend a week or two finding and recording what makes it special and memorable?

Morning Octagon

Nightlight from Apple Tree

Cypress Box and Hostas

Ferns and Fence

Jan Looking Garden

Happy Dark Leaved Dahlia

Happy Dark Leaved Dahlia, pastel on altered book page

When it's really busy I play a game with myself where I am absolutely focused getting things done and fritter away time in equal measure. Picking flowers isn't exactly essential, but can I refrain from doing it? There is this dahlia that Marshall's seeds refers to as 'Dark Leaved Dahlia - Happy Yellow Red Bicolour'.  

Patrick and I agree that it sticks out like a sore thumb in the garden and I think I will dig it up in the autumn but I couldn't help resist picking it for my bouquet. It's that thing where you need to love the thing you hate. Even in my little altered sketchbooks, titles are important to me. Obviously when I saw what Marshalls said about it I needed to name my little drawing after it.  And I was happy, putting aside the mountain of chores, to think in colour.

Nightlight Monotypes

Nightlight Meadow Battisford,
Monotype: Akua Intaglio on Hahnemühle,
10 x 10 cm

Using waterbased ink and a press means that plates can hang around and still be viable.  This morning I got up to yesterday's plate and a desire to think about night light. I made Nightlight Meadow Battisford by thinking about evening colours and using much of the composition already on the plate to evoke a different time, and perhaps a different season to yesterday's print.

I talked to the artist Andrew Farmer: https://www.andrewfarmerfineart.com at the New English Art Club opening a few weeks ago about how he paints nightlight.  A few summers ago I stood on the porch of the barn and drew the Gertmenian's house in the dark.  I had the porch light on but it was very difficult to see with the light behind me.  I thought about a head torch… The pastel is in one of my altered sketchbooks and the image below is the monotype I made today (staying quite true to the pastel in the altered sketchbook).  

Nightlight Gertmenian's Cranberry
Monotype: Akua Intaglio on Heritage,
10 x 10 cm

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Summer Bales Battisford

Summer Bales Battisford,
Monotype: Akua ink on Heritage 315 Gm paper,
10 x cm mini print 

From inside my studio I hear farm machinery whirring and wonder whether it's the wheat behind the studio being cut or our neighbour doing his hedges. I try not to get distracted. I am making a monotype of earlier in the year when they baled the hay.  I feel the pinky light of morning and the yellow-chartreuse of the little bit of grass left behind.  Trees on the side of the field cast long shadows across. The oak tree is almost inky blue.

I'm not going to be around for the Inspired by Becker show this year http://ibbas.co.uk . But, I did happen upon a show of Harry Becker's work while in London on Friday: http://www.abbottandholder-thelist.co.uk/harry-becker-2017/ Reading about Becker and looking at his work has shown me the magic of the Suffolk landscape and helped me to feel connected to it.  As I make mini prints I want to share the Suffolk I know.

Apricots, Opaline and Petunias, Pastel on paper 17.5 x 17.5 

I got up this morning raring to pick some flowers and draw. (I also needed to dead head the roses.) I needed a hit of colour and I needed to draw something other than people. It has been a week of people. I drew the above for a little over an hour this morning.  I hadn't slept well because my head was so full of the art I'd seen in London.

In London yesterday I visited the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/hokusai.aspx. It was crowded and dark but inpsired me in a number of ways. Apart from his art, Hokusai's attitude that he was getting better with age felt encouraging. Seeing the Rennaisance portraits at the National Portrait http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/encounter/exhibition/ and the British Watercolours at the British Museum http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/places_of_the_mind.aspx left me feeling inspired and quite overwhelmed by representation. Life drawing at the Mall Galleries was exciting but exhausting and my colourist side was aching to get out!

On Thursday I took four pieces to be considered for the Colchester Art Society's annual show.  On Thursday night I learned that all four had been accepted, including my (February) little altered sketchbook. I have this idea about altered sketchbooks and I want to progress it, but the first step was to get one of them seen.

Today was the opening of the Colchester Art Exhibition.  We arrived a little late and the speeches were in full flow. In fact they were just announcing the prizes.  Richard Stone, a renowned portrait painter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stone_(painter) had chosen the winners.  Imagine my surprise when I was the bronze winner, for my little altered sketchbook. Richard had very encouraging words for me and I feel empowered in my little idea.

When I got home, I got right back to work on the drawing I'd started.  The two sides weren't working and I'd been background thinking that in Colchester,  so I changed things around and kept going.

More portraits in pastel

Feven's new haircut, pastel on altered book page  14 x 20.5 cm

Grandson sits for pocket money, pastel on paper,  14.5 x 21 cm

I ran into Jane Lewis today and gave her a run down on what I am up to at the moment.  When I recounted what I have been doing I said that it was going to mess me up for a while before I could figure out how I could use all this learning to do something that feels like me.  I wondered when I'll come out the other side…

In my portrait group today I admitted to everyone that there is something satisfying about creating a recogniseable likeness - working tight. I just look and measure and reach for a few colours that translate what I see.  It feels different.  I am not struggling with the edge between figuaritve and abstract.  It's restful, not thrilling, though.

I wonder when I will come out the other side.

Painting a figure in a space

Fen came around today to sit for me again. Fen sat and I worked, for nearly two hours,  into an old canvas I'd sanded down .  My goal was to take some of the learning from the drawing and apply it to the painting.  The canvas was square 40 x 40 cm and as I began laying out the space I seemed to forget everything I'd been thinking about.  The figure is dead centre.  I'd forgotten to use my charcoal. I hadn't tried Antony Wilson's trick of working up the background before the model arrived…I was simply too excited to be painting again to down tools and begin again when I thought about it.  I was also too excited to clean my brushes at the start either. Or to try Craig Jefferson's technique of multiple palettes. I did manage to paint the figure and the space around it together in a sort of uniform way. It will be interesting to see how I manage to keep this up when I won't see Fen for more than a week. So far I am bogged down by local colour.  Perhaps there is too much of it!

Getting the whole figure in

When I begin a drawing I don't look long enough before I begin, and I am sure I was taught to do this.  The truth is I am usually so excited by what I see in front of me that I begin drawing what interests me and work from there. Antony Williams, who taught a portrait workshop at the NEAC recently, begins with the nose.  I don't have a go-to body part! This time I made a few marks at the head and the feet to fit everything in.

 At my classes with Mick Kirkbride on Friday evenings I felt self concious because I didn't always get the whole body on the page. Of course there is no reason to always contain the whole figure on the page, and Mick encourages us to say zero in on the chest, but that sort of intentionality hasn't always been part of my practice. The composition is creted by holding up two fingers and squinting through it and then just getting going intuitively. So today while I was warming up I decided to get the whole figure on the page.  The portrait black and whites are both ten minute poses and the paper is A3.  The square in 30 x 30 and that was a five minute pose.  Mick taught me a system to help me do this and if I look carefully and count at the start I can do it!

The last pose was 30 minutes and I wanted to work in colour.  I also wanted to use some new chalk pastels I had bought for a song at Atlantis art. I started with my thin vine charcoal and thought about the tones then started with the turquoise and was quickly juggling orange, blue and puce.

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

Finding my way in other's techniques

Fen - 65 x 46cm, pastel on paper

 Fully realising that I have never attempted to make portraits, I started this week by inviting a friend to sit for me.  I transformed a corner of the studio into a room and primed a large piece of Fabriano paper with a bubblegum pink. I drew Fen for two hours with pastel and then after she left, spent a few more hours working from the set up. This is not finished, but I think it represents an exploration of using the model to create a story, a likeness, something beyond simply a colour study.  I don't know where this will lead but I feel I need to explore some of the things I have learned over the last week.

Feven - 16.5 x 16.5, pastel on paper 

Feven - 13.5 x 20.5, pastel on altered book page

Today I did two small hour studies of Feven in pastel.  The first is in a square sketchbook.  The second is in my altered book.

A Week of tuition and travelling

As part of the New English Art Club scholarship, I am encouraged to attend as many of the NEAC classes as I can. I chose five out of six to attend, the sixth was during my open studio.

Ruth Stage taught her version of egg tempera and gave us each a sized and gessoed MDF panel to use.  Some of us went outside into the stifling heat and drew durng our lunch break, others copied something.  I discovered that the rubbish bins were just the right height to work on. Egg tempera is a fascinating process and it seemed to me that I should try to work the way I do in preparation, with a plein air sketch.  When I met Gabriella the next day she told me she doesn't like egg tempera because she finds it tacky, I sort of understood, as I made a sufficiently tacky painting in my attempt. Working from drawings without changing, inventing, adding to is always problematic for me; doing this with an egg yold and pigment was doubly complex!

Ruth Stage NEAC 

Seeing Ruth's egg tempera paintings after hearing her talk about her process and experimenting myself capped off a fascinating day and made me appreciate her work even more.

We went outdoors with Melissa Scott-Miller to find what makes Carlton Terrace characteristically itself.  Melissa wanted us to find landscape still lives.  Many people brought oil paint, which was what Melissa used.  I brought my tins of pastels and a chair. The light changed throughout the day and was it ever hot! I found I got bogged down by drawing accurately because I was drawing architecture and struggled to keep things open and energised. It was fascinating to see how Melissa works.  First in charcoal then with paint.  She  seems to use the black of the charcoal in her painting.

the start of Melissa Scott Miller's plein air painting of Carlton Terrace

Wednesday was life drawing with Julie Jackson. We started with quick poses in charcoal and then an hour pose where we covered the page in black and worked removing the black to make marks. For various reasons I had trouble making an interesting drawing woring into the black. In the second half of the day we used ink in five cups with different dilutions of ink to create tones. 

Thursday there were no workshops and I went to my portrait group.  I decided to work in ink to see if I could use it to capture something of Feven.

Antony Wilson taught portraiture in black and white to our group. We made 10-15 minute drawings first and then Antony showed us his technique. 

The second half of the day we made a more sustained drawing of the model's head, life-sized.  Antony wanted us to try to take some of his techniques onboard which I tried to do, but with very limited success!