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.

Watercolour another way

I spent yesterday in a light-filled studio at Heatherley's Art School exploring the properties of watercolour, mark making, collage and 'breaking the page' with Jane Lewis. 

http://www.janelewisart.co.uk/JaneLewis/Jane_Lewis_Art.html

Jane's paintings have a 'je ne sais quoi' that those of us who know her work find irresistible. As an associate member of the RWS, Jane agreed to teach a workshop to coincide with the members' annual exhibition at Bankside. 

I am not a watercolour artist, so it was fabulous to have a day to  think differently, to get inside Jane Lewis' head… And Jane was very generous, explaining her process and giving us license to test her approach. 

Like Neil Pittaway, Jane added colour in different ways, allowing layers to show through and demonstrated how the paper towel is like the eraser to charcoal, removing, some of what you have just done, leaving a trace. 

With Neil I spent my whole time removing and had nothing but a ghost of an idea at the end.  This time I was determined to celebrate the colour of my St Petersburg (White Nights) colours. I also brought and used Gouache, something Jane never mixes with her watercolours.

I was particularly interested in what happens when you paint onto a non, or not very absorbent surface.  Jane showed us how a piece of Pink Pig paper doesn't absorb  the same way 'proper' watercolour paper does, encouraging us to test this ourselves.  I had brought paper I had painted with oil paint and gessoed book pages to experiment on. 

 As I began trying out the watercolours I realised how similar the process felt to my fused plastic.  Although usually not involving paint until the end, I felt I wanted to cut up what I had made, to reassemble it even stitch it together. At the end of the session I had time to do that with what I had made and what I had brought.

Petals fall as I paint

Yellow Dahlias pastel on paper, 28 x 28 cm

This is the second time, lately, when I have integrated the serendipity of petals falling in my drawing or painting.  I suppose it says as much about how long I am spending on drawings (or my stop and start schedule) as it does about compositional elements and colour in a drawing or painting. But I find it interesting.

It usually takes me at least half an hour to arrange what I want to draw.  Then I stand in front of it and find the view that is most compelling. Sometimes it's hard to tell, so this time I used my camera to take a series of pictures and then reviewed them in Bridge before I assembled my drawing table. I stand when I draw so I will often stack boxes to change the height of what I am looking at. My studio is getting more and more crowded as I move my mother-in-law's furniture from storage  to create room like set ups.  The latest object I've brought indoors is a metre high corner cupboard.  This still life is on top of that. 

I have been searching for figurines at the car boot sale.  When I was in Maine I discovered my mother's wonderful Asian figurines and incorporated them in a few of my drawings. I seem to feel I need some of my own.  The Buddha is the only one I've found so far and I had to break my £2 rule to acquire it.

I began this drawing on Monday afternoon when we returned from Glasgow. I had chunks and snippets of time and kept coming back to it, but never drawing if it was too late in the day so that the light was different.  

I sold a few things last week: an oil on paper that Henry from Art Unlocked had as well as one of my mini prints at the mini print exhibition at the Garage Gallery.

Bouquet Afterstudy A,  oil on paper

Nightlight Battisford, monotype, Akua Intaglio on paper

Arran with a few pastels

From the table in Ardbeag, Whiting Bay, Arran 29_09_17, Pastel on book page 

Just back from a whistlestop tour on the Isle of Arran.  In the morning I got up early and tried to make sense of the view from the kitchen table.  The weather in Arran is capricious and the clouds moved across the sky as it changed from pale orange to grey and blue.  Trees and shrubs fringed my view of the water. I had to put my pastels away  before I had really suceeded in pinning down what I saw so we could eat.

From the bench at Whiting Bay, Arran, 29_09_17, pastel on book page

After we returned from climbing Goatfell, Jonny encouraged Hudson and Figgy to swim. We had walked about five hours and shopped for supper.  I didn't go swimming but when they returned everyone told me I'd love the light and should go down to the water to draw, so I did.  It was never drawing weather again - they were right. I had much less time than I needed, but enjoyed every minute of looking at the horizon from the bench on the beach.

And this really is what it looked like from the top of Goatfell.  It was very windy and my hands were numb so there was no chance to draw.  Miraculously, the clouds and fog lifted for a few seconds and we had a bit of a view of the staggering mountain tops. as we climbed down, a rainbow touched the water.

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.

A different way to begin a painting

Inherited Textiles Flowers Teacup and Vases, oil on canvas 27 x 35 cm

On Friday I collected work that hadn't been selected from one of those open exhibitions and tied that chore in with a studio visit to New English Art Club artist, Melissa Scott-Miller http://scottmillerart.com. Melissa had led a workshop earlier in the summer and from that brief encounter I knew that I wanted to visit her, luckily she agreed, she also offered to take me plein air painting and although it was wet, we managed to fit a bit of painting in to the day too.

Melissa begins her paintings by drawing in charcoal on her canvas.  I decided to try her approach as we stood in St Pancras station with our plein air easels.  I used charcoal and soft pastels to establish my composition and to pin down some of the confusing elements. We were there for a little over an hour before we were asked to move on by an official, so neither of us got very far, but drawing and watching Melissa draw was instructive!

Yesterday I set something up in the studio and began my canvas by drawing in charcoal and oil pastel/paint sticks.  Another thing that Melissa does that is totally different to the way I have worked before is that she doesn't use medium, she uses pure paint, so as I had at St Pancras, I did that again back in the studio. In fact, I used the same plastic plates I had bought when I realised I had forgotten my palette.  This process is much closer to the way I draw with soft pastel and I wonder if day two of this painting looks more like my drawings than my paintings? 

Drawing Alexis

I guess summer is coming to an end because the routine is returning.  Today was the first day back at my portrait group where I began drawing a new model, Alexis. 

Drawing the model has always been something done in silence, but in this group there is some talking.  It's interesting, you get to know the model more when you talk with them and I suspect the conversation helps you to see the subject differently.

I tried to think about some of James Bland's techniques, finding the lightest spot and comparing it in temperature and value with other parts of the composition.