The dance of the Hyacinth, getting to grips with bigger pastels and plants with minds of their own

Hyacinth Inclination, pastel on fabriano,  40 x 37 cm 

In order to understand the anguish I sometimes have to go through to finish a bigger drawing I thought you might like to see what I began looking at and what I finished looking at and how far my drawing departs from reality in order to make the image come together… if it does.
Below you can see what I saw when I began drawing on Sunday morning, late afternoon and  today, when I think I have finished.

when I first set the still life up

at the end of the first drawing day

when I finished drawing today

When I visited Peter Clossick in his studio with the NEAC, he showed me three books that he felt I should read.  The other morning I downloaded Aesthetics and Painting by Jason Gaiger.  Because my painting and drawing degree was practical above all and I love looking at pictures and consult them primarily for advice, apart from painting book essays,  and what I read for the art history part of my degree, I am not overly genned up on the philosophy of painting.  I am finding the book enlightening and it's making me think in different ways.  For example, that old query: 'what are you trying to say' has a different set of questions, or at least they are expressed differently and they are making me ask them of myself differently.

So when I came to the studio yesterday evening, after reading another slug of the book, quite dejected about the ten-or-so hours I'd already put into the drawing and how much of a failure it was, I was wondering about whether the world should be expressed as it is or in a perfected way.  Do I need to bother with the colour of what I actually see or is the still life a stimulus for something I want to see.  I know I used to think that way…The NEAC scholarship has pushed me towards being accurate in my observation and that means I hit this snag.  What if the colour doesn't work?  

That's what happened yesterday, the colour didn't work.  I hated the colour in places.  The composition was bitty and I was ready to give up. The book with its analysis of opposing viewpoints helped me find a way around the snag - I would simplify what I was drawing - not wipe it out as Peter suggests (that makes pastels muddy depressing)- erase and use the side of the pastel to reject what I see in order to see what else can work. As John and Mick and Peter would say 'it's not a copy'.

I found something similar to the colour so that I could find a different 'reality' I and draped it behind.  The picture would become a postcard and I'd let the hyacinth collapse and the tulips splay. When I was done and it was dark (9pm) the left side and the right side weren't speaking to each other. This morning after reading another few pages of Gaiger I was thinking about the marks versus the objects and how to create excitement in the marks which add to but are distinct in themselves. That thought helped me to bring the sides together.

Bigger pastels of live things are troublesome but perhaps that working harder is a good thing? Sandy Larkman asked for something big and colourful for Brushstrokes, a charity that raises money through art exhibitions. Maybe I'll exhibit this one.

January light

It's one of those reassuring January things when the flower of the hellebore appears. As you know, it's been busy around Nayland Farm and frankly amazing that I have mananged to do anything let alone a little painting on book pages. I wedged myself in the corner of the studio while Figgy and Jonny made monotypes for the week they were home. Over a few days, before the hellebore drooped and closed I worked in spurts. I made a conscious decision not to have any pattern and wanted a feeling of white so chose my objects with that objective. I would have painted on (but needed to teach Figgy to frame her own gorgeous monotypes) and I still could but there is a certain freshness that I suspect I will just leave. But what do you think, should I crop it to the edge of the painting or not, or should I crop it into a square?

Meanwhile, I returned to London on Friday to visit John Dobbs (WONDERFUL) and to draw, or in this case make monotypes with the NEAC drawing school. Kate sat for the full two hours and I made two prints and two ghosts.

Colour and nightlight

I've been talking about nightlight  and still yearn to make more night light drawings, but drawing at night is difficult if you don't have your head torch… Towards the end of 2017, while in London, I made a few evening drawings before going to a drawing session at the Mall. The cold, the fading light and just standing outside in the dark didn't have much to recommend it.  But I was still mezmorized by the light and the colour, so took a few pictures to remind me, with the hope of using them to trigger a memory to paint from later.

A few times a week I promise myself that I will get in a car and draw with my head torch. It's still just been too busy, so to date it's a wish not yet realised. Yesterday I found the images I'd taken on my phone and did some quick studies in my Silent Traveller in London altered book, to see where that idea went. 

Keeping on the theme of light and lack of it, this afternoon I went to Carol's to draw David.  Carol has a studio at the end of her garden and the light was a beautiful pink while it lasted. I thought about James Bland and his red ear and looked for the highest and lowest key colours. I didn't erase anything and feel the resulting drawing (above) shows that struggle a bit.

As the session wore on the light disappeared.  At one point we really only had a silhouette of David to work from. I was working in charcoal, trying to establish the darks and the darkers. Then we switched the light on .  The drawing is about the tension of light, colour and value, (and I think I lost).

Urban and Rural Landscapes

Wet Field Combs, pastel on paper, 16 x16 cm

I sat in the landrover today and twisted myself into a position where I could see the view from the verge. There are signs all over that say CONSERVATION Keep off. This is new.  If I'd had my plein air easel I would have been able to position myself and to stand.  As it was I was cramped but warm and protected from the howling wind. 

The clouds raged across the sky and sometimes it was white and blue and sometimes it seemed to threaten rain and go all grey. I caught it somewhere between the two.  The unploughed field looked brown and red and blue and purple and yellow and then on the verge in front, there should have been grass but it was puddling and muddy in the middle. I kept thinking about Barbara Rae.

My mother loves the trees when they are leafless. Patrick and Juliet can identify them by shape.  I just find them a little sad.  I met someone at a preview in Colchester, not long ago, who told me he only paints unbeautiful things.  Today when I was drawing in the car I felt the view was so beautiful that no matter what, I was on the verge of schmaltz. Perhaps beauty is the curse of the rural landscape for this slightly cynical New Yorker?

Rainy Museum Day, pastel on altered book page, 9 x 12.5 cm 

Meanwhile, before Christmas I was in London nursing a rotten cold, visiting exhibits and hauling my supplies for drawing from pillar to post. At one point I sat in the National Gallery near a window and drew the wet weather.  It was a pencil drawing as I learned that you need special permission to use pastels or watercolour in the National Gallery. Using my sketch and a photo I took, I tried to evoke that November moment, today. 

I hate the idea of drawing buildings.  Perspective makes me a little sick, because I don't know any and all those angles overwhelm me.  I could read a book and learn but that would be at odds with my teaching, so I struggle… The thing is,  I love breaking the paper up with angles so it's a bit of a catch 22. And I guess city drawing can be less (on the surface) beautiful so you need to really commune with it to find something to say!

Line,colour and tone - quick studies at Sudbury Life Drawing

Emily, pastel on altered book page, 9.5 x 14 cm

Fig came with me to life drawing today.  It was a full house. Emily is a still, quiet and contemplative model. I had some new Jaxell pastels to try out but I was looking at tone, line and colour as I saw it today, so did't get a chance to use the bold deep colours. I looked over at Jo's musky unison pastels with awe. Quite partial to the drawing above, tried to find the essence, not particularly successful otherwise. 

Emily, charcoal on cartridge, 26 x 29cm

Emily, pastel on paper,12.5 x 21cm

Emily, pastel on paper, 16 x 16cm

Emily, pastel on altered book page, 9.5 x 14 cm

New Year, new defiant start - NEAC Drawing School

 I ran into Mick from The NEAC drawing school at the Life Room exhibition at the RA. That bit of serendipity felt like a great beginning to my January in London - such a small town that I run into one of the only people I know! I'd already seen the Drawing Year exhibition at the royal Drawing School so I mooched around dragging my bag of tricks, a new bag of tricks until 5:40, having a tea here and happening upon an exhibit there. 

When I arrived at the Mall Galleries studio space at the back, ready to begin my second six months as a Drawing Scholar I felt puffed up and determined to BE MYSELF and produce work that isn't just jumping through hoops. NO, that's not fair… It has not been jumping through hoops, it has been back to art school and art school is about being open enough to do some things that you don't succeed at so well, trying things and gaining new perspectives and skills, to see where it takes you - to grow.  I've been doing that  and it's been great, but over the break I realised that I also need to apply this learning to 'my practice' so I don't just produce work that doesn't feel like me in the sessions and end up hating what I show at the exhibition in June.

Mick was wonderfully receptive and in the two hour session I made two prints and printed two ghosts. I brought my pastels but was so excited about the journey of the line and the pentimento that direct monotypes bring to life drawing that I never got there.  Perhaps next week!

Looking again - why I like after studies

Waiting for the Party, Oil on prepared book page, 10 x 15 cm,

When I began this blog in 2009, I had a basket of ten objects which I drew over and over in different situations. I learned through experience that objects are dependent on their context and become real through relationships. It's not surprising that the way I work, colour laid next to colour, helps me to find the reality of what I see in front of me. And perhaps this explains why I like to work from observation best of all. 

The image above is a little darker than the real thing.  It is another grey day here in Suffolk and I photographed a few minutes ago when the day is getting darker.  Still it gives the flavour of the slightly different arrangement  point of view, shape of paper (not canvas this time). The still life extension to the front.  The apple sits inside the spoon with the blue handle. When I came to paint, holding up my frame deciding on my point of view, I realised it would be better to omit that stuff in the front. I was moving in and cropping out. 

I like after studies because problems have been solved.  But this time I made new problems in version two which were equally difficult to deal with.  Luckily this little painting is small - 10 x 15 cm painted on a prepared book page.  But small is difficult in a different way.

I traded a simple orangey cloth for some of the pattern of the previous, but it was difficult to keep the colour from becoming insipid.  I painted and painted until it was believable. Each shift somewhere else meant I had to go back to it. That red vase is a devil! I picked two of them up a few days after Christmas. when I looked at them I knew their modern form would confound me but why not? My mum chivied me on. The pom poms make me think of a mexican hacienda.

Thiking about it, what I like about after studies is the same thing you like about a sequel -  the opportunity to connect with the subject in a different way so that it lives again in a new guise.