What about watercolour life drawings in an altered sketchbook?

Doreen is a special model, utterly natural.  Today she moved around the room slowly with her lavender piece of organza for the first fifteen minutes. I mostly made a contour drawing as she moved - which was confusing. Doing that got my eye in, though, so when we had ten minute poses, I was primed to look with care.

I have never mixed watercolour with pastel before and today it just sort of happened. For one thing, I forgot the pad I had prepared so ended up doing different things to what I had imagined. I forgot my kitchen roll so every mark needed to work. 

Some of the drawings/paintings are on cartridge paper, others are in two of my altered sketchbooks.  The tan pages are watercolour ground over book pages.  The orangey is a pastel ground.  I drew in the wet watercolour with the pastel. It was all fun.

Painting from life with Alex Fowler

Oil on canvas, 25 x 35 cm

Last week I went to Alex Fowler's Tuesday class at Chelsea Wharf.  I was a little late arriving because it is very far from Stowmarket to Chelsea Wharf and there is always a hold-up on one of the trains or the tube.

When I visited Alex in his studio a few weeks before, he talked about not naming parts of my drawings and about his approach to working. We talked a lot about colour. I was intrigued and in the spirit of the NEAC scholarship, signed up. The space is fabulous and Alex has a good group of people on Tuesdays. I slotted in to the third and last session of painting this model, although others painted the view out the window, and set up still lifes to work from too. I was on the darker side of the model and as the day wore on it became darker and darker, so dark that I really couldn't see what colour I was mixing at the end.

As a result, the trajectory of my painting went from excited passages to a struggle between too dark and not dark enough and it changed in colour.  At about 2pm, it was quite muddy but Alex was great at giving me a suggestion and I think I found a way to show the light. I wasn't so successful at adopting Alex' way of working in terms of blocks of colour, though.  At the start I thought I knew what he meant but later when I saw him painting I realised he was talking about much bigger blocks of colour than I had imagined.  He blocks in the big areas of colour and then works to the more specific, finding that sweet spot between too much and not enough information. He feels that correct colour says almost enough about a subject to describe it.  The colour he saw was much brighter and more high key than the colour I saw. Perhaps when we talk about painting the colour we see we are talking about different things?

So my painting has a few places where I like the painting, but mostly just feels boring and descriptive to me.  I don't feel I have got into the emotion of the situation nor created an interplay of light dark  and brushtrokes that is particulalry exciting or original .

Self Educating in contour and watercolour

watercolour on book page, A Bold Venture

It's tempting to do the same thing and perhaps repeat the same errors.  I guess one of the questions the NEAC drawing scholarship has made me think about is what assumptions do I bring to my drawing that are interfering with my observation? I am learning (anew) to look critically at what I am doing in order to do it better the next time. Sometimes, maybe even often, I return from one of my life drawing classes, a workshop or a studio visit feeling quite inadequate. In a way I also feel like a performing seal who hasn't learned the routine. But, of course what I don't want to do is to perform.  What I do want to do is learn and progress.

One of my big 'fails' has been the three watercolour workshops I have taken part in.  The teaching was good but I didn't have the time and head space, at the time to test things in a way that was relevant to me.  I was trying to think like the teacher, because that seems to me to be the best way of getting the most out of a workshop. As a beginner with watercolour,  I knew after the workshops that I would need to do a lot more of it later - until now I haven't had that elusive time. I have been thinking about things though, and in preparation for my exploration, I bought something that I learned about from Rebecca (life drawing) called 'watercolour ground' to paint on surfaces so the watercolour adheres in a similar way to watercolour paper. While at Great Art in London one day, I found some Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground.  There were other varieties, but the one I bought was on sale and in a smallish tub, so afordable. There wasn't any white, though, so I bought buff titanium. I painted that on a gessoed book page in my ongoing altered sketchbook, A Bold Venture. 

Before beginning a watercolour, I began another project I have been wanting to start. My friend and mentor, Jack Heliker told me (when I had graduated from Stanford) that I should read Kimon Nicolaïdes' book The Natural Way to Draw, and complete all the exercises. Heliker and Nicolaïdes had both taught at the Art Students' League. In New York, I worked my way through some of the book.  Recently, I decided that alongside my current Drawing School learning, going back to Nicolaïdes would be a good discipline.

The rules for the first session (3hrs total, of which I did 1 hour) were that you needed to not look at your paper, to draw the contour with a very sharp 3B pencil and to work on a piece of manila paper 15 x 20 inches.  I couldn't find a 3B, so used a 4B and used a pink pig sketchbook, standing at an easel. 

30 minute contour drawing

Beause I don't hold my pencil properly, my hand got very tired.  My brain got very tired and in the first drawing I looked at my paper to find a place to start quite a few times. In the second drawing, below, my drawing became smaller and smaller, but I really tried to feel the contours.

30 minute contour drawing

After really looking for that hour, I moved over to the watercolour experiment. I explored the techniques Neil had shown us.  My book was on an easel, so it dripped, but I used paper towels and Q-tips to mop up. Lots ot think about… quite a challenge!

Green Scrolls

Whoop, Whoop, I finally have had a little time again and my studio and house are pretty clean and tidy.  The annual deadline for the Pastel Society has passed and that means I can turn my attention to the other media that I work in and although I am itching to paint, I wanted to explore an idea that's been buzzing in my head that I thought might be interesting.  There is an open submission coming up that it might work for. 

By titling these I have given you an in into what is in my head.  I didn't tell Patrick anything but showed him the top fused plastic collage and asked him for three words.  He looked worried, but when pressed, his first word was 'Chinese'.  I was so delighted by his first word that he never gave me the other two words. As I worked on the 'Green Scroll' over a few days, I began to feel something Asian in it. I wanted to play with the power of different colours in the arrangement.  I was thinking about my night light drawing. The medallions are landscapes and may tell stories.

Green Scroll II was even more difficult to realize.  I wanted a companion piece and as I worked in a similar way, the plastic melted differently, my shapes shrunk and contorted and when I finished working yesterday it was a mess.  The background colour began as yellow then became whites and finally today I masked the medallions with tape and painted in tones of blue and green acrylic paint to float the focal plastic shapes.

A Fan of Colour and Complexity

Fan, Figurine and Flowers, 16.5 x 16.5, pastel on paper

Yesterday was a Wednesday and I wasn't volunteering with the refugees as it's half term so I treated myself to a carboot outing. I bought a few things all for 50p or less.  There are four in this drawing. I used a little lighting as it's another overcast day.  The frame (Mick Kirkbride) helped me to organise the space but in the drawing and redrawing (Peter Clossick) I moved the fan a bit and it took absolute centre stage, which wasn't what I intended when I began. 

What I liked about the still life as I composed it, was the subtle repetition of form and colour and the way the white in the feverfew became the brightest spot in the drawing.

This drawing took me a long time but it was fun as there were many complex patterened spaces that were fun to work through. I chose 14 colours and two whites and didn't need to find any more asfter I'd started.  Because it's a small drawing and I wanted some detail I did need my pastel pencils in places. when it got too fiddly, I got my eraser out and removed the fiddle.

Drawing Practice

5pm Trafalgar Square, pastel on altered book page.

What with birthdays, anniversaries, and family visits, this week has been a case of snatching drawing time where I've been able to. Yesterday was a Monday NEAC drawing day.  I hadn't arranged any studio visits so I left later and had a few hours before drawing began to visit the National Portrait, to find Great Art in a wander around Shoreditch and to do a 40 minute sketch in The London Silent Traveller in London sketchbook, that I hope to fill up before the end of my NEAC term.

Peter Clossick has been the tutor at Life drawing for the past two sessions as Mick is away with his family drawing for a week. Peter helped me to think differently about my process and although the resulting drawings are certainly mine in feeling, while I was doing it,  It felt alien and challenging and the struggle enlived the process.

Life drawing (Sudbury Life drawing) at the Quay, Pete

Inherited culture working to a brief

Inherited culture, pastel on paper, 17 x 16 cm

Today's job was to build on some of the things I have learned so far on my NEAC year and to make something that could be construed as meeting the brief for 'inheritance', an juried exhibition at Norwich Castle Museum with a deadline at the end of the month.

I began by asking myself what exactly I have inherited from my mother.  These are the relevant things that I came up with: a love of flowers, a love of colour, a love of making things, a love of collecting things and a love of other cultures.  With that in mind, I gathered objects. The central picture is a photo of me when I was young that my mother gifted to me, from her collection.

While visiting Mick Kirkbride in his studio last week, I talked about how I am trying to internalise all that he says and all that I have discovered so far.  Last week at life drawing class I finally understood about how a ruler and a window can help me - that the angles and the position don't lie.

I began by framing my subject by holding up a cardboard window and checking the height, checking the angles with that and a ruler.  Wow, it was much easier to understand the space. I used Melissa's approach of composing the picture with charcoal (in places).  I kept checking with the rule and the mount. 

Another thing Mick talked about last week was the focus, bringing it in and out of focus to direct the eye.  Of course I think about this and make choices every time I draw, but today I experimented actively with it.

Another thing I've been meaning to do but until now havent…I wrote some things down in my day book! I chose 32 pastels and I used most of them. 

Seasonal Reds

Seasonal Reds, pastel on paper, 16 x 16.5 cm, 

As the garden wanes I've noticed that the remaining flowers tend towards the vibrant reds. So in October I find myself with dramatic arrangements that look forward to December and all that. For me, reds and pinks and fuchsias are colours I love to explore.  One year when I was in school I only wore reds for the whole month of December. Some people think putting all those related colours together creates a clash. As I assembled the objects, including the harlequin stripes, I just felt excited.

The drawing has been stop and start all week and bringing it to a conclusion has proved more difficult than anticipated. Luckily, I concentrated on the flowers in the first instance as the flowers as they are now are rather sorry. 

Hedge meadow picnic

Monotype: Akua Intaglio on zinc, printed on Heritage paper 10 x 10 cm

Every summer we spend time in the beautiful Suffolk Meadow we are 'babysitting' for as long as we can.  Earlier in the summer on one evening I did a little drawing and took a few photos to help me remember the space for later,  when it would change beyond recognition and would be too cold for sitting in.  We were hoping for the owls to come out on this particular evening but, alas, we didn't see them. Still, what could be better than a picnic in the field with a view of the ancient hedge, flowers from the garden and a tall glass of something delicious.

Patrick thinks I should use this one as my replacement for the mini print.  What do you think?

The Long Pose, Heatherleys and colour studies with Sarah, NEAC Drawing School

Sarah, charcoal on paper 53 x 75 cm

I arrived late at Heatherleys and found a place far back with a slice of the model between two easels. The light was beautiful and Sarah was fun to draw. Antony Williams let me get on with my drawing for the most part, his insights, or even just having him stand next to me, made me see things I needed to change. I could see better than I am able at the Learning Centre, in a light infused space and I never tired.  I stuck to willow charcoal, using my various erasers, measuring distances in my head, looking for shapes, trying to see marks to make, squinting most of the time, I'm sure. All in all, above was probably just under four hours of drawing and looking.

Pose 1 9.10.17, pastel on paper 16.5.x 16.5 cm

The model was on a stool for the first pose and I was very close.  I mostly just put wedges of colour together, having a hard time fitting the part of the model I wanted on the page onto the paper. I did a lot of erasing with my putty rubber.  It was a joy to use colour ater a day of charcoal, though.

I think the top pose is more successful, I had longer.  I was looking down on the model for the second pose and began with an almost  flourescent pink chalk. As I drew I kept thinking about the Buddha I had bought at the car boot sale and drawn recently and that was a little distracting, but made me smile.

Pose 1 9.10.17, pastel on paper 16.5.x 16.5 cm

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.

Monotype experiment after London

Nightlight with Zinnias and Cosmos, monotype with pastel,  10 x 15cm

I took some work down to London for one of those open exhibitions yesterday and had a ticket for  Matisse in The Studio as well.  The drop-off was quick so I was able to visit many galleries on the way and after my visit to the RA. I went to London in a problem solving mood so was looking at technique and approach as much as enjoying the art. One of the artists I found at Panter and Hall was Christine Woodside. http://panterandhall.com/artist/christine-woodside/Available-or-Enquire I can't see the exact paintings online - the ones I saw were painterly and joyous and featured colourful flowers - they were strong.

I saw Matisse twice and ranged from Renoir to Lucas Arruda and Emma Stibbon, through the Mayfair galleries. 

Back home in the studio today I wondered what would happen if I put some clear gesso on top of a monotype to create the nightlight behind a vivid bouquet; I wondered whether I could suggest the joy of both nightlight and that thing that flowers do to me. With Matisse's Middle Eastern delight  in my head, I explored the possibilites. I found that the monotype didn't change and the pastels went down well. I'll explore this again.

Summer Corner

It's Labor Day  tomorrow and this house, this view, has that poignant summer feeling.  I can remember early September in Maine, when I was a child, and how we'd do all of our favourite things one last time before the end of summer and the drive back to NYC.  Our friends, the Sullivans, bought the house from an islander, Winslow, and lovingly restored it beyond its former glory.

Thinking of Deibenkorn, I played with their view, looking at a black and white photo, turning it over, reversing the shapes in my monotype way. My childhood friend Don designed the porch and another friend Michael constructed it. As I made the monotype, I was not only sailing into colour and light, but into the past and a place that I love.

The To and Fro

Zinnias and Fog day 2, oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm

Painting after drawing after painting takes me down a different path. Each iteration throws up other conflicts and my personality is to jump in head first and thrash around until something feels right.  There are still some things to straighten out.. the bottom of the frame, for one but finding the right colour for the right place seems to be the challenge of the moment. Scroll back a few days and you will see what I mean. In focus, out of focus, painting and drawing all at the same time.