What is it about drawing in a book?

so far as we can judge, pastel on 'opened book', 40 x 35 cm framed,

This drawing in the book English Wildlife (I found the book in Needham Market car boot sale), was one of a few images I made while thinking about the word 'Borders' with reference to The River Stour. The Colchester Art Society together with Ipswich Art Society is exhibiting at Firstsite, in Colchester.  Borders exhibition details

 

As I was drawing, I thought about a 'walk and draw' I took with Ruth Philo from Flatford, some years ago.  Ruth introduced me to Rebecca Solnit. Rebecca Solnit mentions the blue of distance and it was that ‘blue of distance' that Ruth saw in my drawing. I am interested in the place where the horizon extends. I wonder how far it goes, or I can see. For me that border is a border of suspended disbelief, of longing, of hope, of ambiguity.

 

When I get a book that I think might inspire me, I look at the words at the top and bottom of each page, hoping that something will give me a starting place. 'so far as we can judge' was perfect.

 

I worked from drawings, memories and fragments of photos to try to conjure the Stour, as that is one border which separates Essex and Suffolk and was the essence of the Firstsite collaboration. I was delighted to learn that the drawing sold last week. If you are interested in seeing more of my drawings on books you can find some on my website. More 'opened books'.

Firstsite exhibition 

day after day without, pastel on 1/2 an opened book,  

This has been a busy family week and because of the heat (and lack of rain), my garden has needed lots of TLC so less time in the studio than usual. But while I watered etc… I was thinking of new ways to make book pages and managed to do a few drawings. In this one, 'day after day without' I took a book apart and glued part of it down onto half of the cover. I want to have the option of making portrait drawings without having to make two related drawings.  I like having the cover as part of the piece. The image is my front garden and I was thinking about lockdown and how I have noticed so much more of what is nearby.  I am attuned to nature in a heightened way.  These are CHANGED TIMES and it is a little day after day without.

Flowers and Food, pastel on book pages. 

I have noticed how bleached everything has become because of the heat and drought. Even some of my bright flowers seem muted.  The potentilla was peach and is now almost white. Having said that, some flowers are eye-poppingly lurid.  I love magenta! This still life was a response to the bleaching of my world in the hot sun. It is also narrative, a response to the words on the page. 

 

And in other ways of playing with the media, the lavender at the bottom, which I hope reads as a book cover, is not really a book cover.  I made book cover facsimile with bookend paper and card. The drawing is not glued down yet.  The drawing was made on three book page-spreads glued together. These experiments will go somewhere, I hope.

Peaches say Summer to me

Thirty years ago, when we lived in Rome, I bought most of my food from the local markets. In the summer the peaches were one of those necessary  indulgences, not just for their smell and taste but because of their form and colour.  I vividly remember bringing home a bag of peaches, I think I had bought a mix of yellow and white peaches, and spilling them out onto our table. We had very little furniture and very few things in general.  Our tablecloth was an offcut I found in a shop in Stratford-on-Avon, that apparently was the fabric used in a BBC studio.  It was blue and white.  I could barely wait to begin drawing what lay before me.  I still have the drawing, somewhere.

When I composed this I hadn't been thinking about the visceral pleasure the orange peaches on the blue tablecloth thirty years before had given me, but as I drew, I remembered and tried to evoke that intensity again. 

This was another stop-and-go still life. I picked two bouquets this time but in the end it would have been necessary anyway as I needed that white flower to still the composition.

The Painting is Always King

Kingdom of Flora (30 x 20 cm) egg tempera on panel

I set up the still life for this painting on the 13th of July. Between then and now I finished a portrait for an NHS Hero, did plenty of pastel drawings in my sketchbooks, and gessoed 38 panels - this panel was the last of my bigger panels.  The new panels are all bigger and they have a coat of rabbit skin glue, followed by nine coats of gesso and then another coat of rabbit skin glue. There is a lot of waiting for things to dry. It's laborious but also uplifting - so much hope. The panels took two days this time.   I'm not sure when I actually began this painting but I certainly had something down over last weekend. It was stop and go but I also had a few problems from the outset.  The set up was more square than horizontal and the only panel I had was a long panel, . The flowers didn't live very long, at all.  The Gazanias died in about half a day. I couldn't really replace the flowers once they'd died.  It is the start of my dahlia season, there weren't any new ones blooming yet. I wasn't really convinced by the colours in the arrangement at all.  When I put the colours I saw on the panel, there was always something discordant, or simply ugly about it. But I I wasn't going to let that stop me.

Although I have plenty of objects to choose from, I like to vary what I am looking at and imagine people like to see different things. As a compulsive charity shopper, Covid 19 has forced me into a less consumerish way of working.  I have nothing new and exciting to begin the dialogue between the objects.

Still, as I was painting I began adding objects to the the still life to try to 'fix' things. I covered colours and objects  up and to change what I was looking at to make the composition work horizontally and to find a balance.  IT IS MUCH BETTER TO PLAN YOUR STILL LIFE CAREFULLY SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO REARRANGE ON THE PANEL. One day I decided that I needed an orangeish shape on the right hand side.  I trawled through Pinterest until I found what I needed. The plums rotted. The leaves shrivelled up and I had to redraw things as I brought fresh items to the table. On Friday (looking at my third bouquet) I remembered it was OK to paint what I needed, not what I saw. I was suddenly Rousseau looking at my tabletop peaceable kingdom. 

I think I'm convinced by it now, or is too stylised?

what I began with

When real people popped up in my still lifes

Lucy in Lockdown
egg tempera on panel 30 x 20 cm

I'm astounded to see that it has been months since I posted my last blog! I have been putting things up on instagram.  You can look there if you'd like and have time instagram   but although in many ways a precious period, lockdown did change my routine, it feels good to be back. 

Mostly what I've been doing is making Portraits For NHS Heroes while backstopping our children and their friends, looking after Lyra (our dog) and tending to our bounteous garden in capricious weather. I have also been sketching in various sketchbooks not far from the house and returning to my still life arrangements because there is so much to say about objects and colour now. I have a mail chimp newsletter that I send out occasionally. You can see that and subscribe here: Rebeccaguyverart newsletter  and that would take you up to a few months ago when I began exploring the idea of putting real people's likenesses in still lifes. 

This one, Lucy in Lockdown, was a commission.  Lucy had seen my newsletter and was interested in buying one of the pieces she'd seen.  We had a socially distanced studio visit and I talked her into letting me try to make something that would reflect lockdown for her and have some of the elements she liked in some of my other work in it. She sent me some photos and I set up a scenario. 

I looked online for some figurines that might inspire me in making Lucy and used one I had to understand the light. One thing lock down has helped with is being freed to use photos in whatever way helps me, without guilt. 

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.

Egg Envy, egg tempera on panel, 30 x 20 cm, 

I set up a still life on Monday morning.  No more frivolous trips to the supermarket to buy  fancy spring flowers. Here we are in 'lockdown and it's ''make do and mend, 'victory garden' and 'pick your own'. Luckily my bulbs are coming up and a new roadside egg seller sells scrumptiously beautiful pastel coloured eggs!

My Monday stilllife was not peaceful and I had a lot of jobs to do (including sewing a cloth mask) so I got through the day without beginning it.  It is difficult to settle down in lockdown. On Tuesday morning I began again.  This set up was easy on my unsettled eyes so I stuck to it all day and thought about it when I woke in the middle of the night and continued today. 

I never thought I would paint a cat figurine, but I hadn't expected my mother would carry a cat figurine from Orlando and give it to me for Christmas. She must have known that on a Tuesday in March we'd all be social distancing and I'd need a little pastel coloured light relief. 

Sadie in under thirty minutes

Sadie, 20 minutes, 17 x 12 cm, pastel on paper 

 Sadie is slight and not tall.  Fitting her on the page when she is stretched out is problematic… she only fills a little of the space. I took the Felicity House approach to masking the background with white and then erased the white to find the body in the drawing at the top.  Sadie grew and shrank into the space until I got her proportions right and her right heel into the frame. I wasn't sure about the bright pink ground but surprise.  It worked.

Sadie, 10 minutes, 12 x 18 cm, pastel on paper

I suspect this drawing was less than ten minutes.  Sue had lost track of time and when she called time I had only just begun. Later we returned to the pose but Sadie's head was entirely different so I began again in a book.

Sadie, 25 minutes, 13 x 20 cm, pastel on book page

Sadie, 20 minutes, 13 x 16 cm, pastel on paper

Sadie, 10 minutes, 10 x 10 cm, pastel on paper