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!