Perfectible Spark

IN WITH THE NEW, IN WITH THE OLD

2012-01-12T11:30:00.003Z

A belated Happy New Year to anyone reading this blog!

After a rest over Christmas and the New Year I'm thinking of projects new and capping off projects old.

PROJECTS NEW

Here's my first work in progress of the new year. It's the piece I began just before Christmas, and it's provisionally called Private. It's a pure pen and ink piece on heavy grade watercolour paper, which is really nice to work on. I'm using larger pen nibs for this piece, partly because I want to progress this work as quickly as I can, I think the quicker I can get a feeling of having something under my belt the stronger my chances of actually achieving anything new this year. Also, the darker, bolder marks lend themselves nicely to the dark swirling lines and forms of the pine tree. Spiky and yet inviting at the same time. I like contradictions.

PROJECTS OLD

I was so pleased with Ink & Steel, and relieved that I'd managed to take something through from planning to exhibition stage. This may seem like a small thing to some impartial onlooker but it was significant for me, for a number of reasons.

I had some really nice feedback on the exhibition, but I was anxious at the end of it, that I had to close my exhibition on the morning of the 10th December instead of the end of the day. I really couldn't time it otherwise, and if I'd have known I would have put 9th December on the poster rather than the 10th. What made it worse for me was that I was told that a lady came in to see my exhibition after I had taken it down, which worried me no end as I really don't like to disappoint anyone.

So I had this idea, that it would be nice to make an on-line version of my exhibition, a kind of belated programme, which I will put on my website as a PDF to download and browse at leisure.

I've begun this now, and hope to have it up on my website, all being well, in the next week or two.

CHRISTMAS FAIR AT WHITE TREE GALLERY

2011-12-12T22:09:00.002Z

I'm taking part in the Christmas Fair at White Tree Gallery on Saturday.

RBSA OPEN ALL MEDIA

2011-11-25T19:30:00.007Z

I am extremely proud to have received a 'Highly Commended' at the RBSA's Open All Media exhibition.

I had a phone call on Tuesday evening to say that I had received a Highly Commended, and could I make it to the open night. I usually shy away from these things, but I made a special effort last night, and I'm glad I did. G went along with me (he was my 'plus one', I don't think I've ever had one of those and I don't think he'd ever been one either) and we walked up through the colourful and buzzing German Market, through the still busy streets of the City to the RBSA gallery. The gallery was buzzing with activity, and there really was a very enthusiastic turn out for the opening and speeches. All exhibitors were given little name badges to wear and the speeches were made to a packed audience. Myself and 5 other artists were awarded our Highly Commendeds by the Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and it really gave me a good feeling to go up and receive my certificate.

I'm hoping to go back and see the exhibition again, as the gallery was so crowded last night it was difficult to take a proper look, though first impressions were of an excellent show with many many skillful pieces, some beautiful work of which I'm really proud to be amongst.

As usual my pride and my pleasure were mingled with embarrasment, as I never feel that my work holds its own very well amongst other work of such a high standard. I never feel that my work looks as good as other people's work, but I'm still buzzing with pride at this achievement. I'm really very happy about it indeed.

New work. This is going to be another pure pen and ink piece on watercolour paper this time. Provisional title is Private.

Ink and Steel - Exhibition at Wolverhampton Central Library

2011-11-22T18:26:00.006Z

My exhibition is finally up.

I put my work in the 2 display cases on the first floor of Wolverhampton Central library this morning, and it looks something like this..

The left hand case is my most current work (apart from the small drawing bottom left, which I had to put in here due to there not being enough space in case 2).

The pieces in the right hand case are older work (mainly - again I had to re-jig due to my having miscalculated how many pieces would fit into case 1!).

The very last piece - Frou Frou, is my newest. At this end of the case is also a small display about the Pen Room - the museum of the pen industry. Birmingham was once famous for producing the steel dip pen nibs that I use for my drawings.

Still Water - Near enough finished

2011-11-17T19:20:00.003Z

I think I've nearly finished Still Wtaer. I was panicking last week, as I'd worked on it for a couple of evenings when I was far too tired. Consequently I doodled. Thats all. Doodled.

Hopefully I've rescued it now, though it's still far from perfect.

A few things I've learned from this I think though, subtle lessons.

I've an urge now to work on a few small intimate still lives, all moody darkness of worn out subjects. I need to motivate myself and find the time.

Despite this I've been working on a drawing I started earlier in the year (small) and embarked on a large pen and ink drawing of a subject I photographed earlier in the year (large).

Will I ever learn?

Art Materials Live

2011-11-05T22:45:00.005Z

I went to the NEC on Thursday to visit Arts Live (also Hobbycrafts and Christmas shows). It was RAMMED, and there seemed to be less room than last year, I don't know if they'd squashed more into less room, but I ended up lunching on a latte and a squishy chocolate muffin on a piece of floor about the size of a hanky, along with about three hundred other hungry and tired people. I've always liked the atmosphere of the NEC shows, but there comes a point when too many people forcing themselves down too narrow an avenue spells total deadlock. Standing still amid hundreds of strangers; on foot, in wheelchairs, elderly ladies pushing shopping trolleys full of crafting buys - jades the enthusiasm somewhat. I wish I had more stamina, but I was shattered by 1 o clock and left not long after.

I managed to buy a new portable daylight lamp though, which was one of the things I went looking for. Plus I got lots of ideas, and saw a few new products which inspired me. The wishlist grows ever longer.

Here's a little more progress on Still Water.

INK AND STEEL

2011-11-04T19:39:00.003Z

I have a revised date for my exhibition, which is now due to be held at Wolverhampton Central Library from Tuesday 22nd November until Saturday 10th December 2011.

The library has been undergoing extensive refurbishment over the past year, and will have to close on Monday 21 November for electrical tests. Unfortunately for me this is the first day of my exhibition. Hopefully all should be well and I should be putting my exhibition up early on Tuesday morning.

Fingers crossed!

Rolling the ball...

2011-10-25T22:14:00.004+01:00

Kate Bush sang about rolling the ball, and now I'm thinking that creativity is a lot like this, keeping a ball rolling. The longer you stand around pondering the ball the less likely you are to get anywhere because a ball that isn't rolling isn't fullfilling its purpose. It may as well be a cube.

I've found another old(ish) piece out tonight and between trying to calm myself down after a nasty Tax revelation (hopefully putting that right tommorow) and watching the new detective drama on BBC1 Death in Paradise (a bit like Jonathan Creek set in the Carribean) I've worked on it adding new splashes and layers of colour in watercolour, coloured pencil, gold acrylic ink and oil pastel.

I just hope all that lot stays on the Ingres paper and doesn't fall off!

A few new bright leaves

2011-10-24T21:57:00.006+01:00

I've taken a break from preparing for my exhibition and from my current work in progress (picture soon) to experiment with colouring an old drawing in Photoshop.

Where does the time go to? And where does life? It really makes me realise what a tremendous energy and creative force anyone who achieves anything in the arts possesses.

My pen and ink drawings take so long to produce, that's the problem, and hung on a wall amongst other artworks in an open exhibition they fade away. A couple of days ago I took one of my drawings to a framers to be scanned, and although the man there had no intention of offending me, he called my piece a sketch. I know he was just searching for some shorthand, some way of cataloguing it on his database, but that word stung me to the quick. I had poured hours and hours of effort into this drawing and it's dismissed in a moment as a sketch. A transient thing. A throwaway.

Anyway, later that night I received an e-mail inviting me to submit work to a local art sale, and I'd love to do this, but most of my work is mounted for my exhibition. I've found one small piece that didn't fit into the exhibition, but I'd like to enter another. So, I thought, why not try something I have wanted to do for years now - digitise one of my artworks, add something in Photoshop perhaps?

Some thing?

Anyway, here's my first rudimentary effort. It's a bit rough and ready, but at least I managed to kick-start myself into breaking out of routine.

From 2005 'A few leaves left'.

From 2011 - experiment number one.

To take this further? I need:-

A new scanner - preferably A3
A new printer - preferably A3

Add a little extra time, light the blue touch paper and wait.

Roots

2011-10-19T21:28:00.008+01:00

I've been steadily assembling the elements of my exhibition, which will be held at Wolverhampton Central Library in November.

It's amazing how time consuming all this has been so far and how frustrating it is when silly little things go wrong. I mounted the work quite quickly, then withdrew a piece because I had promised a drawing to a neighbour in payment for a favour they did myself and my mother this summer, so I had to find a replacement piece.

I have finally got to the point where I've mounted most of my work, printed out the accompanying images (I decided on tiles, rather than the cumbersome things on sticks I initially came up with). The tiles are basically split into 2 sections, to reflect the split of content over the 2 cases. The first case will contain tiles of an autumnal theme, with fragments of poetry from the notebook I have used over the past 3 years or so. The imagry will be photographs I took of the autumn windfalls I collected last year and have stored in a Roses chocolate tin, plus a few photographs of work in progress. The tiles in the second case consist of more close ups of work in progress and descriptive snippets regarding the very basics of pen and ink artwork, interspersed with these will be photographs I have taken of the tools of my trade - the actual pen nibs, aranged artfully alongside more autumnal windfalls and photographed in a hopefully dramatic way.

The nibs themselves take me onto the material which will take up the final corner of the second case. The history of the pen trade is rooted in Birmingham, I only discovered this fairly recently, and I was pleased because although my inspiration and heart lies in rural, organic settings far removed from the place I was born and have lived all my life in, the tools I use to make my art, the bridge between my reality and my dream, have their history here, in the West Midlands.

I visited the Pen Room a couple of weeks ago, to learn more about the history of the Birmingham pen trade. I'll blog more about this later.

Hopefully lost

2011-09-16T22:07:00.006+01:00

At last Frou Frou is showing some signs of life. Just a couple of times this evening and this morning, when I worked for about 20 minutes before catching the train to work, I lost myself in the drawing. Losing myself in a drawing is a good sign.

My new drawing is a deliberately simple affair. I want there to be lots of lush dark crosshatching involved, and the faintest shimmer of stippled light on still water. I want there to be more drama than detail, and more atmosphere than description. It will, in fact, be a more romantic (with a subscript r) affair than Frou Frou, which is hyper-lucid with a kind of waking dream (Richard Dadd) kind of look to it.

Tonight, by the way, I've been listening to a wonderful new Big Country compilation, passionate, melancholy, soulful and melodic in a big way.

Drawing in - the nights

2011-09-09T21:23:00.003+01:00

In a way I'm relieved that the nights are begining to draw in, even though they do so with remarkable speed. 7.30 sunset tonight, far too early.

And yet, this summer especially the garden has held me ransom. The hours I've spent seeing to our flowers, the tomato plants (they're heavy with tomatoes now, I don't know what to do with them. I don't even like tomatoes!), reading, sitting in the sunshine, snatching it when I can. And time, being so precious this year, as it was last year, nudges me further into obsession. This year more than any year I've felt almost driven to soak up as much of what passes for fresh air round here, earlier in the summer I sat out as long as I could until our solar lights came on, lighting up the garden path like a runway (Santa stop here!)

Tonight, a bumble bee, heavy with pollen or perhaps just tired out at the end of summer, has fallen asleep on the dropping sunflower near the veranda. I know how it feels. Sated on summer.

So now, the nights are drawing in, and I am freed to sit under the daylight lamp and work at my drawings. My neglected craft.

I think I began this drawing as much to keep chugging away at something as with any real intention at art. And it's been extremely slow progress, extremely frustrating. At least now I'm covering paper, but I don't know if I'm finding a pattern yet. I don't know if I will.

Last night I began a new drawing. A refreshingly simple subject, unemcumbered by detail. Or at least, keep the detail to a small area and surround it with painterly light and shade, pen and ink. Plus the pen glides more comfortably over the yellow Ingres paper than it does over the white watercolour paper. And at this moment I crave comfort.

I got a chance to give a first listen to one of my Christmas presents this evening. The National's Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers. Gorgeous.

Transparently obvious

2011-09-05T21:52:00.004+01:00

I made a bit of a boob with my transparency labels. I bought laser ones instead of inkjet (if they do them, that is). Result:- Labels that never dry.

Which is annoying because they weren't exactly cheap. I don't really want to buy another box of film, so I'll probably take my file and film and see if I can get them printed out professionally.

This setback threw me a bit, and I haven't really made as much progress today as I'd liked. I got some of the photographs together that I'd used as reference material and played around with ideas for displaying them with my drawings.

Including these little easels made from sticks and string.

I liked them at first, but I'm not sure now. They're a bit Blair Witch maybe.

Preparation

2011-09-03T21:17:00.006+01:00

I've mounted most of the pieces I hope to exhibit at the library. Although it's not until the end of November, and it's only a very small exhibition (I'd have trouble filling more wall space - makes me realise how precious these pieces are for me, as they represent such a huge portion of my life) I won't rest until I have everything ready and safely tucked away in a folder. Hopefully I can just transport it to the library and assemble it in the display cases, nerves always makes me clumsy (or more clumsy than usual, which is really saying something), and I want it to be a swift operation. Hopefully with no mishaps!

It's hard finding the space to mount work though, I've spent most of today crouched on the floor upstairs, in the tiny space where I work or out on the landing, which is so dark I had to take the daylight lamp out there so I could see where mounting card ended and fingers began!

I've just a couple more pieces to mount now, then hopefully I'll start typesetting and printing out labels. I'm hoping to print these onto acetate and attach them to the mounts. Less to fiddle with when I come to putting them up. And hopefully it will look nice too.

I've spent huge portions of today listening to radio comedy, the Count Arthur cd I had for my birthday - absolutely hilarious, and a really nice trip through time courtesy of Bill Oddie, Comedy Controller, on Radio 4 Extra. Great to hear ITMA, I haven't heard much of this series, and I feel I'm locked out of a lot of it as it's the kind of thing you had to be there first time round to get, but there are some pretty sharp bits still. And it was interesting hearing Hattie Jacques in an early role as a cake loving schoolgirl. I've an interest in ITMA as the novel I was writing last year (and a few years previous) was set partly in 1947 and the world of radio comedy, as well as the music hall. One thing about this exhibition, one part of my strategy at least, is that I'm hoping that I can use it as a kind of creative catalyst. I have to get back into my creative work in some way, and ideally on the other side of this exhibition I would like to produce new visual work and also, maybe, see my way to completing my novel.

Fingers crossed.

2011-08-26T20:48:00.003+01:00

I've set a date for my small exhibition. It will begin on Monday 21 November and end on Saturday 10th December 2011. As the exhibition will be in 2 glass cases on the first floor of the library, I'm hoping to use the split in order to theme my exhibition around firstly current work, and secondly, as a kind of retrospective of how my pen and ink work has developed over the past 10 years. Looking back at my older pieces now I had forgotten how small I began back in 2000, when my work was then mainly done in A5 sketchbooks. They seemed to take forever to do, and the nibs I used were the finest kind, I didn't begin to use a variety of nibs until 2005 when I began to experiment with larger pieces.

Those early drawings, like this exhibition, were exercises in self-confidence building. I find that confidence is like the weather; changeable and subject to uncontrollable circumstances. The mind, like meteorological forces, is unpredictable and sensitive.

Meanwhile the rain beats desultory time on our neighbour’s conservatory. My bookmark marches in sad fascination through Douglas Botting's biography of Gavin Maxwell. It's a strange biography - both sympathetic, admiring, and at the same time it never flinches from baring the man warts and all. I'm three quarter's through it, hooked. I know it ends badly, but I can't stop reading.

Plans

2011-08-22T21:44:00.010+01:00

I'm planning a small exhibition of my artwork at the library where I work. The library is a Carnegie library, a beautiful building with a particularly striking entrance hall where a marble staircase spirals gracefully up to the first floor and the imposing double glass cases which people can hire (for free). I've seen all kinds of things exhibited here, from displays of local artists' work and photography groups, to origami and collectable cigarette cards.

I can never resist looking up every time I climb the stairs to the first floor, because the domed ceiling with its round skylight is wonderful. Wolverhampton Central library is a gem of a building.

Anyway, I'm hopefully putting together a small exhibition of my artwork in these cases, later this year all being well, when the extensive work that's been going on at the library since last November is finally completed. I've begun by planning out the space, as I hope to present my pieces mounted but not framed. I've begun doing this by measuring out with string an equivalent space to the glass cases in the back garden, then laying out sheets of paper cut roughly to the size of my drawings within them.

I know this looks eccentric, but it helps me work out whether I've got enough pieces to fill the cases. The left hand case is going to be my most recent work, basically themed around my most recent exploration of a motif - trees. The right hand case is older work, with exception of the furthest right hand piece, which will be my as yet unfinished drawing Frou Frou. The older work pretty much represents the last 10 years of my visual artwork. I will exhibit the smallest pieces, which were the first drawings I made when I began to practice my visual art again, about 10 years ago now.

I'm hoping to approach this small thing as profesionally as possible. Hope nothing goes wrong. Fingers crossed.

Bright Water

2011-08-11T16:45:00.006+01:00

I have developed a very strange twitch in my right eye, I've had it since last Thursday. Probably I'm just a bit tired at the moment, but it's uncomfortable.

So today, apart from continuing with the home repairs that have gobbled up the last few weeks of my life (it feels like forever) I have been dashing into the garden between showers to sit in the warm and windy outdoors reading a biography of Gavin Maxwell I borrowed from the library, which is totally fascinating.

It's a sign that I've managed to find a little bit of space this week, that ideas have started to bubble up again. But they are frenzied kind of ideas, so many of them, so various, that I become paralized by choice. So while I'm happy that my creativity hasn't died totally, I am uncomfortable as I usually am when the dearth becomes a kind of creative death as I am plunged into a frustrated impasse.

I've managed to do about half an hour's work on my drawing. This is the first time I've touched it since my last blog entry on the subject. I'm struggling with enthusiasm for it, but I must finish it over the next few weeks, I can't give in to the impulse to let another thing go.

Googling Gavin Maxwell I found this lovely blog. Wish I could take it outside with me to read, or to work, where I will be tommorow, for my brief commute. It makes me yearn to be in Scotland again. Really does.

In the pink

2011-08-07T22:32:00.007+01:00

The last few weeks I've been mostly in our verandah, fixing the aging masonry (with the help of the neighbours, who pointed up their side of our old verandah wall)...

...painting, filling, fixing, more painting and tending our garden (Mom tends her plants, and I mine)...

(Mom also trims the hedge, and cuts the lawn, and everything else)

...I love the view from the newly painted verandah...

...and I love the accidental harmony of pinks, it's quite by chance that every plant I've bought or grown this year (except for the sunflowers) have hovered around the pinkish purplish, reddish end of the spectrum.

I've done no artwork, and am begining to feel a little rough with uncreativity. I never feel well when I don't work, either on my artwork or my writing. Partly to compensate, I've begun building an archive of my poetry on my website, publishing one poem from every year I have written (or I have saved digital versions of my poetry).

I've not polished any poetry for a couple of years, though I've written in small bursts. Small bursts have occured recently, usually when I'm very very tired. Writing in the dark is often the only kind of writing I can do. I don't know why that should be.

Frou Frou

2011-06-21T21:46:00.004+01:00

It's always harder for me to concentrate in summer, I love being out of doors, whether it's doing jobs in the garden or putting up the parasol and lazing about, reading and dosing. Relaxing in the back garden is one of my favourite things, despite the constant noise from the main road and neighbours.

Quiet is really an under appreciated luxury.

I haven't really made much progress on my drawing on my 2 free days (I had leave from my day job), even a chilly breezy day like today was too much temptation, and I spent a nice portion of it reading The Children's Book, which draws me deeper into its web.

A web of words, a web of lines.

My pen nibs have been getting on my nerves though. They keep clogging up, chewing up feathers of paper that block the flow of ink, or choking on ink that dries too quickly in the sticky warm air. It's one of those times I wish I could find some other way to work in ink, but nothing gives a crisp, sensitive line like a dip pen. Nothing else has that air of danger. (As the yellow streaks in this close-up illustrate - mistakes once made are there forever. I need to tone down the yellow gouache I've covered mine up with, hopefully it won't be so noticeable then)

Visiting and enjoying the garden

2011-06-20T21:29:00.011+01:00

What a lovely day it's been today. I've spent most of it in the garden, painting the fence, reading, listening to the cricket, reading AS Byatt's scrupulouly written The Children's Book (it really paints the era so vividly it feels luxurious and intellectual at the same time) and fitting in a little work, and much needed relaxation.

I've been working on Frou Frou, but progress is so excrutiatingly slow, I'll save posting work in progress until there's something worth showing.

I made another quick sketch of my beloved poplar tree, which towers so luxuriously (favourite word of the moment, it's a good job I'm not playing Just A Minute) over the garden. It's been a constant presence throughout my life, along with its partner which Mum employed a bunch of cowboys to lop a couple of years ago. They ended up butchering it, I have to try not to think about it, because I get quite upset.

Anyway, here's my sketch.

And here's an even quicker sketch of washing on the line.

Yesterday G and I visited the lovely, tranquil Moors Meadow Garden, which has recently been voted Most Romantic Garden.

It's very much a personal garden, no shop and no tearoom (though I think a tearoom would attract more visitors), and a little Googling found this sad piece. I hope the garden doesn't close to the public, it's such a gentle, beautiful place and utterly, deliciously quiet.

JOHN SALT, SAMUEL PALMER

2011-06-16T16:41:00.005+01:00

The last time I visited Walsall Art Gallery it was housed in an uninspiring building above the town's library. Today I visited the New Art Gallery (though it celebrated its tenth birthday last year) mainly to see the Samuel Palmer exhibition.

The gallery is showing its age a little, just some wear and tear here and there, but it's still a striking place, the solid building towering grandly over the slightly run down surroundings of Walsall town (though there are plenty of shops and coffee shops, Walsall isn't taking the recession lying down).

Samuel Palmer's tiny jewel like work worships and romanticises a rural world far removed from the industrial setting that surrounds it. His self-portrait is out of this world. Astonishingly lucidly real, stand in front of it and you look back across almost 200 years into the youthful, intense features of a young man with a life of inspiration and disappointment ahead of him. It's such a moving picture, technically superb. The splodges of what look like spilled water that scar the bottom right hand corner are so poignant. These marks make me think of the neglect that Samuel Palmer's work suffered in his own day, yet at the same time, these flaws in the perfection make the work fresh, utterly free from the confines of contemporaneous time. Flaws like these, like David Cox's freewheeling birds born of flaws in cheap paper, make us realise that art is made of the most fleeting impulses, and comes about through the most precarious of coincidences. True art is both enduring and fragile.

On rainy, grim Sunday just gone G and I went to see my 2 pictures in the RBSA Prize Exhibition. I enjoyed the exhibition, but was embarrassed by my pictures. I didn't think they deserved to hang there this year. Despite the fact that I'd been pleased with them both when they were in the safe cocoon of my box room studio.

Afterwards we went to the Ikon, another beautifully rendered building, modern architecture really does suit the art gallery. Cavernous, clean spaces are ideal to show all manner of artwork, and the light that modern architecture seems to love is ideal for illuminating works of art. The Birmingham artist John Salt is the opposite to Samuel Palmer in many ways - Palmer is a ruralist who's imagination flourished in the rural landscape of his youth, while Salt travelled to America to find his muse - the vanitas symbol of the abandoned car and run down trailer park. He produces immaculate paintings done in airbrush of these mostly unpeopled spaces. Ironically, the thing that I really loved in Salt's paintings however, are the things he has in common with Palmer - the treatment of light - light bleeding through the branches of an autumnal tree, or diffused in the wintry air of big open spaces. And like Palmer, Salt was a teacher. Unlike Samuel Palmer however, Salt has achieved success, he has seen his work praised and cherished, hung on the walls of galleries, his art has been deemed saleable and valuable in his lifetime. Something which Samuel Palmer did not experience.

A couple of sketches I've managed to do this week in the garden of our remaining Poplar tree (which I love) and our decrepit old shed (which I don't love).

I need to work from life more. Working from photographs constantly is making me lazy.

Time...

2011-06-09T20:49:00.003+01:00

...held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea.

My very favourite quote from a poem (I think I might have quoted it before on this blog. It comes to me from time to time, like an old friend). I learned it when I was 17 (during A Level English Language) and gradually it's dawned on me that it really is true.

Very little progress on anything creative this week. In fact, I feel so uncreative I can barely breathe or feel worthy of breathing.

I began a new drawing last week, it's going to take time as it's pure pen and ink. Rather frustratingly my ink seems to have lost some of its potency, I don't know whether it's becoming diluted with the water I use to clean my pen as I draw. But it's very worrying as the dilution will of course affect the lightfastness of the finished drawing.

So even that which we strive to make permanent has written into it impernanancy.

Best that I just post work in progress and go.

I'm calling it Frou Frou.

Compton Verney

2011-05-28T21:50:00.006+01:00

G drove me to Compton Verney today to see the Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson exhibition. Which I really enjoyed. Compton Verney is a beautiful listed building set in graceful Capability Brown landscaped grounds. It's changed quite a bit since the last time we went there. There's a lovely camera obscura a short walk from the newly re-positioned ticket booth. It's a garden shed with a huge silver globe on the top, it's a little odd and ungainly from the outside, but magical within.

You climb up stairs inside and poke your head up inside the globe, upon which is projected the surrounding landscape. The globe acts as an ampilfier both for any noise you make within and for the curious whooshing world without, so you feel kind of embryo like in a world of shadow and noise.

The most startling thing for me was a optical effect created by staring out at the lake through the shed windows, which are tinted pink. Then, if you shift your gaze directly from the pink windows to the green open doors everything jumps into startling vivid green focus. It only lasts a fraction of a second, but the visual jolt is really something, it's like your eyes are re-born - from pink to green, adding to the whole curious birth experience of this visit to the shed. Don't know if this was intentional, but it's what I took away from it anyway.

Compton Verney has got a nice collection of historical paintings and artwork, including a couple of pieces by Lucas Cranach, and a fascinating and amusing selection of folk art, but the stand out stars of their permanent collection for me are the rennaisance and Medieval carvings, in wood and alabaster the quality of which are quite astounding. I could gaze upon them forever and ever.

Another self-portrait which took about an hour to do. I'm getting ideas of how I'd like to develop these, if I can only find the time!!

Middle Aged Red

2011-05-27T21:44:00.003+01:00

...is the name which came for this self-portrait before I actually began it this evening.

The thing about drawing from life, for me anyway, is that although it's easy enough to begin a drawing and make rapid progress with it, it's more difficult to progress with that drawing, to refine it without killing the spontaneity, which is the breath of a drawing done from life

There's about an hour and half or so in this drawing, with lots of stops and starts. I like it, but it's raw, which my drawings often are. Should I try to refine it tomorrow evening? I think it would be a mistake to spend hours worrying away at the drawing for the sake of it, this would certainly ruin the thing. My other choice would be to make another drawing following the same routine, i.e. on heavy smooth water colour, stained with red acrylic ink which I dabbed at with tissue paper to give it some texture and movement, leave it to dry then work first in hard graphite pencil, then coloured pencil (red) then Chinese white and a Derwent Graphitone pencil to create the shadows that are necessary to give the drawing some weight, and to make it look like me! As my face has a lot of shadow in it. So I've always thought.

Inviting dark

2011-05-26T22:19:00.005+01:00

I've been taking a break from trees and have made a couple of quick self portraits. The first in charcoal and conte crayon on hardboard which I primed last summer and had been using to stretch paper on. When I cut the stretched paper off it this evening, I decided that I liked the surface, which I'd primed and stained slightly white. I stained it some more with white gouache tinted pink with a little acrylic ink, then began working on my drawing while the board was still damp.

I drew myself sitting in the growing dark in the glowing white light from the television behind me.

When I'd done as much as I can tonight on this I began a really quick drawing on Ingres paper in fibre pens (various sized nibs), dark was falling fast by then and I found my place on the paper as much by instinct as sight. I had to give up after 15 minutes or so.

I really wasn't feeling half as severe or as fretful as I look in these drawings by the way.

I'm enjoying a book about Courbet at the moment. I really like his self-portraits, in which he looks the epitome of the 19th century Bohemian. I love Courbet's use of shadow, the dark and the black in his paintings enfolds the subject and draws in the viewer, it's an intimate and dramatic darkness that seems both provocative and inviting. I saw Buriel at Ornans in 2003 in Paris. What an astounding picture. No reproduction can convey the drama or the sheer size of the piece.

RBSA PRIZE EXHIBITION

2011-05-25T21:29:00.002+01:00

Once more, like a game of good news bad news, my week continues.

Yesterday I got home to find 2 envelopes waiting for me. Some bad news...

My drawing PW PW 2001 had been rejected by the RA Summer Show.

And some good news...

My 2 new pieces Listen and Take An Axe And You Might Find A Rainbow, Let It Grow And The Sun Will Shine have both been accepted.

I'm really pleased to be showing these 2 new pieces of work. My self-confidence has its ups and its downs (its downs and its plateaus) but I know the quality of the work shown at the RBSA is consistently fine, and once again I'm proud to have my work shown in such company.

Detail of work in progress (almost finished, I think) 'Secret Dancer'

Wightwick Manor

2011-05-23T22:14:00.009+01:00

On Sunday G and I went to Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton.

Wightwick was featured on a recent television progamme about the Pre-Raphelites, Andrew Lloyd Webber was brought close to tears by this wonderful house which displays many artworks and applied art by or inspired by the Pre-Raphelites. There are paintings and drawings by Rossetti, Millais, a beautiful Burne Jones painting (borrowed from another National Trust property Upton House), ceramics by William de Morgan and fabrics and wallpapers by William Morris. There's a room devoted to William Morris, and the shop has many William Morris inspired pieces. The reason I went to Wightwick this Sunday however, was to see an art exhibition someone mentioned to me, organised by Wolverhampton College as part of their Enter Arts course. Making Art History nicely presents contemporary art and craft pieces amongst the antique pieces of Wightwick Manor.

Not an exhibit by the way (at least I don't think it is), but it deserves to be. This is in Wightwick's fruit and vegetable garden. Lots of crawl spacdes for insects to make homes in.

The National Trust are undertaking a number of contemporary art exhibitions this year, as they have often done in recent years, for instance 'Gimme Shelter' an exhibition of sculpture in the grounds of Attingham on the theme of habitats and housing. My favourite piece was a huge African style mud hut that was constructed in the woods. The first year we visited (about 3 years ago, I think) it was freshly built and you were able to walk inside. Now, the construction is slowly decaying, crumbling, sinking in on itself. I take photographs of it every time I visit. The decay, for all that, is not sad really, but a new stage in the building's development.

And here's a photograph of me...

...actually not, it's a scarecrow standing guard in Wightwick's vegetable garden.

Another National Trust property that juxtaposeds modern art with its permanent exhibit is A La Ronde. Like Wightwick Manor, A La Ronde is a fascinating place crammed with wonderful object' d' art and curios, and both there and at Wightwick it's nice to see the contrast between craft and artwork which may be separted by centuries, but which is united by the passion and imagination and the urge to create something original and beautiful.

Searching for links about the Wightwick exhibition I found this blog by one of the contributing artists.

I've begun a small drawing, on Ingres paper again, as before I've drawn in horizonal lines and given a few white gouache splats to animate the space before I begin.

GOOD THINGS...BAD THINGS

2011-05-19T21:49:00.006+01:00

Good things about my holiday (last week) in Dartmoor and Exmouth:-

Hounds Tor and Hounds Tor Medieval village - Astonishing place, mighty chunks of rock with unbelievable presence. No wonder Conan Doyle was so inspired by it. The village, nestling in the shadow of the Tor, is such a peaceful and evocative place. And the prize for the snack sign of the week goes to...'Hound of the Basket Meals'

Lovely Lovely Exmouth - all that wide open space to feel free in, or at least to revel in the illusion of freedom in.

Marine House and Steam Gallery, Beer - Some fantastic art here. I'd love to go back wearing an invisible cloak and peruse both galleries at unselfconscious leisure.

BAD THINGS

Slipping bum first on a rock at Hounds Tor - definitely NOT recommended. Pain is NOT a good souvenir to bring back from your hols.

GOOD THINGS...

Finding 2 (tatty) Ward Lock Guides and a (tattier still) paperback of Robert Aickman's stories in the fantastic Sanctuary second hand book shop in Lyme Regis. What a wonderful place.

AND MORE BAD THINGS...

Losing my filling (for second time in 2 years, the last time was in September 2009 at Smoo Cave!)

BUT TO END ON A GOOD THING...

The Hepworth Museum in Wakefield - I really want to go there. It looked stupendous on tonight's Culture Show.

Tracey Emin - I've heard her interviewed twice today, once on Woman's Hour and then later again on the Culture Show. Whatever you think of her work you've got to admit the lady is genuinely passionate about her art. I do admire that.

FINALLY, BETWEEN THE GOOD AND THE BAD (I'M NOT SURE WHERE) LIES...

Secret Dancer, work in progress...

And all kinds of new work in feotal progress...

SOCIETY OF WOMEN ARTISTS

2011-05-03T21:55:00.010+01:00

Tonight, when I got home from work, 1. Mom burned my pizza (I know I sound about 15 here but honestly I wish I was. 15 is a very very long time ago), 2. Royal Mail had taken my new book on Pre-Raphaelite drawing back to its delivery depot, which means walking up there on Thursday to collect and 3. there was a letter waiting from the SWA. I could hardly bear to open it. But when I did I was over the moon - my drawing 'Long Mossy Tree' has been accepted for the 150th Celebration Open Exhibition , to be held at the Mall Galleries, London, from 1st to 9th July 2011.

I really can't express how proud I am to have a piece accepted for this exhibtion. There are some stunning and exceptional pieces on their website, and the Society goes back all the way to 1855, when it was founded. Prestigious company indeed.

Latest work in progress on Secret Dancer. I was a bit down about this yesterday, I'm making much slower progress than I'd hoped, and I'm finding it difficult to pull something coherent out of the shadows, despite my preparation. But oh well, I've gone too far with it now to give up.

A sketch I made a couple of weeks ago of a cat that visits our garden to doze in the sunshine amongst last year's leaves.

Stiperstones

2011-05-01T21:36:00.010+01:00

I've had a lovely day at the Stiperstones today, a place beloved of Mary Webb. No photographs can do justice to this wild and wonderful place. Even though it's a short drive from Shrewsbury you really feel as if you're in a beautiful wilderness. The walk along the Ridgeway is really tough underfoot, and it was windy as hell today, but I really came away feeling alive. A very precious feeling indeed.

It would be a real tragedy if the National Grid goes ahead with its plan to site a series of pylons here. The energy the human race needs in order to run our resources always comes at a price, but this would just be too much.

A little more progress on Secret Dancer. I'm really hoping to knuckle down to work on this tomorrow. Hopefully there's a little wildness in this drawing as well.

PROGRESS AND PRE-RAPHAELITES...

2011-04-30T21:22:00.012+01:00

...and the Royal Wedding of course. I'm not really a monarchist but I watched every minute of it yesterday with Mum, and I think it was pretty special. Anything that cheers a gloomy nation up can't be half bad.

I've finished 'untitled' in all but name. I can't think what to call it at all.

Continued progress on Secret Dancer...

...and something new...

I've actually progressed quite a bit more on Secret Dancer but despite the Bank Holidays (which I was desperate for) I still can't find the time to do all the things I want to do...including relax, which I really NEED to do.

I did however get to the Pre-Raphaelite Drawing exhibition at Gas Hall. I loved this excellent exhibition, despite the slightly confusing layout and presentation being not quite as slick as it could have been. It was fantastic seeing the famous names alongside the not so famous ones. It was nice to see John Brett's work again (The Barber Institute's exhibition Objects of Affection was wonderful last year), and quirky moments like Dante Gabriel's drawing of Christina Rossetti throwing a temper tantrum. Christina Rossetti is one of my poetry hero's. A new name for me is Simeon Solomon, I wish I'd seen the retrospective held at the Gas hall in 2006. There was a fantastic pen and ink drawing by him which I really loved and got totally lost in, one of those moments when I wished I could climb up the wall and disappear into the picture.

Cheshire West and Chester Open Exhibition

2011-04-12T21:51:00.004+01:00

I'm really pleased that I've had my pen and ink drawing Wood From The Trees accepted for the Grosvenor Museum's 9th Open Art Exhibition which will be held at the Grovenor Museum and Art Gallery from 19th April until the 22nd June 2011. This will be the second time I've exhibited this drawing, having shown it at Sale, Greater Manchester last January.

11.4.11

2011-04-11T17:17:00.012+01:00

What a nice symmetrical date for today.

I've just got back through sunshine and showers from delivering my picture to a courier (Picture Post) to enter in another Open. Don't know how lucky I'll be this time.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, more like July than April. I spent most of it walking through the woods at Lower Brockhampton with G, taking photographs, marvelling at how everything has suddenly burst into life. The woods were a carpet of starry white wood anenomes, but there were also a few early bluebells too

I woke very early yesterday morning, determined to get a little work done. I masked off my current work in progress and flicked a little black acrylic paint on the unmasked areas.

Later this evening and tommorow I'll work some more into the darkly shaded areas, keeping the mask on for a while, because I want these areas to be more intense than the rest of the piece.

I began a new piece based on a photograph I took a couple of years ago. I've dithered for ages over begining this piece making experimental sketches since last summer really. The shape of the tree is so suggestive I've decided to call this picture Secret Dancer. I began with a clean wash of pink and blue, and began drawing into this with my usual dip pen and ink. However, I wanted to give it a quick shot of shade, to define the areas of darkness in the tangled undergrowth (the skirt of the dancer). So again, I made a mask by tracing the drawing through greaseproof paper and shading in the areas I wanted to be dark. Then I cut these areas out...

...then sprayed red acrylic ink and diluted black acrylic paint onto the piece...

...removed the greaseproof paper (when it was dry) and now I have a more solidly defined area of light and shade to work into. I wanted to do this as I was feeling a bit lost and frustrated seeing and knowing the rhythms I wanted to build in the picture but struggling to construct anything. Now, hopefully, I can begin to build those rythms of shade and shape a little more confidently.

It struck me as I was cutting out the areas I wanted shaded in my mask, that the dancing tree is shaped a little like the UK. And when looked at from side on, the splattered greaseproof paper looked a little like a beach pitted with rockpools.

Islands of paper floating on a cutting mat.

Dogged by GRRRRRRRRR

2011-03-25T22:29:00.002Z

I've just soothed my savage nerves with a bowl of Tiramasu icecream after an evening dogged by PC failures of various kind. I've been seriously pugilistic with my laptop, it's a surprise that it works at all.

But finally, 4 and a half hours later, I've managed to upload my website.

I'm hoping to make a few changes over the next few weeks. A new banner to start with...

...a new gallery and a few other tweaks.

If my pc keeps on playing, that is.

daylight eases out
xxxxxcomputer lightxxxxxsweating drone
of hard drivexxxxxaching

Spring Time

2011-03-24T21:57:00.010Z

It's been such a lovely day today, and I've tried to take advantage of it by breaking from progress on Listen to plant a few seeds in the back garden.
Also, because the sunshine in the room where I work was playing shadow puppets on my work.

As well as Listen I've been making steady progress with my still unamed piece...

The sririt of spring has gotten into me well and good, and I've begun to grow another new piece too. Just the bare bones at the moment.

Small, again, and on Ingres paper.

2b graphite pencil and coloured pencil.

But what a pain...my pc is really playing up (no new news there) and now I can't access Dreamweaver to update my website.

I much prefer soil, seed, paper and ink to keyboards and screens at the moment. I wish I could spend longer in this real world.

Soil, seed, paper, ink
debris under fingernails
grime beneath the keys.

Mellow Yell oh

2011-03-20T21:11:00.008Z

I've progressed more quickly than usual on my new drawing, which I haven't got a title for yet.

I've used acrylic ink and coloured pencil to add colour. The horizontal orange lines aren't part of any squaring up process, I added them after I'd made the initial drawing as I thought the diagonal thrust of the composition needed a little horizontal smoothing, or soothing.

I'm hoping to finish it this week.

Entertainment while I work has so far been provided by Count Arthur Strong, who was excellent last night at Stourbridge Town Hall. Clever, quirky, and very very funny.

Yellow is the new showdrop white.

March brings breezes loud and shrill

2011-03-10T09:59:00.009Z

...stirs the dancing daffodil...

...or the dancing pen, in my case.

I've managed to make more progress on Listen, and here it is.

This was progress as it stood on Sunday, since when I've managed to work more on the tree in the far left, here's how that area of the drawing looks now.

I need to work more on the foreground tree in order to finish, I was intending to push it forward more today but I've suddenly developed the frights - fear of ruining my work. So I'm going to leave off working on Listen for a few days, and sew new seeds of new work.

Here's something I began on Tuesday evening. I took the photograph I'm working from a while ago, and made a couple of preliminary studies from it recently. This is the work I did on Tuesday evening, very very brief beginings.

I'm so glad spring is finally on its way. Here's a little proof - a beautiful flower (I think it's a form of miniature Iris) bejewelled with raindrops at Durham Massey's Winter Garden.

Sunshiny day

2011-02-24T17:19:00.007Z

The weather is fooling us spring is here. But now the sun is setting, the birds are still singing, but it's getting chilly again. Nice while it lasted through.

I've been to collect my Blue Tree from Oakengates today, not such a long journey but as it was 2 trains, and the one to Shrewsbury runs only one an hour, it was a sizeable chunk out of my day. At my local station I was bemused to see a notice declaring 2 service cancellations due to 'no crew' being available. Cutbacks everywhere.

I've managed to creep forward a little more on my new piece, which I'm calling Listen.

I'm aware of this becoming a claustrophobic drawing, partly because of the green, which can be a smothering and claustrophobic colour (except when it's in nature, of course), as well as because of the detail. I've become very involved in the distant tree (as I so often do, backgrounds draw me into them, perhaps because I am one of nature's wallflowers). I do have a plan though, more of which later.

Splodges and seeds

2011-02-18T13:15:00.010Z

Mom and me have taken to feeding the birds that come to our garden. I bought a couple of dispensers from our local pound shop and some cheap bird food, suet based and seed, some of which the birds seem to love and some of which they don't.

It's funny to watch the littlest birds work so industriously worrying the seeds out of their mesh dispenser, and the fat, cumbersome, apparently lazy wood pigeons flutter down to grub around in the long grass for the seeds and suet pellets they drop. The pigeons are clever, letting the little birds do all the work so that they can reap the benefits. Not so different to some humans.

I'm so glad the UK government have shelved their plans to sell off Forestry Commission land. I'd like to think it's because they were moved by the mass of public protest, but the cynic in me says they probably just realised that all the trouble they'd have to go to selling the land wasn't worth the meagre funds they'd raise.

Work is progressing excruciatingly slowly on my green picture. I've done quite a lot of splodging too, much harder to disguise on a green base. I've tried to treat it as David Cox might have done, by elaborating on the splodges and trying to work them to my advantage, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes a splodge is destined to remain just a splodge.

This week, I've been continuing to enjoy Mozart and his letters. Also Never Let Me Go, a beautiful and unsentimental film who's message surpasses the plot. We're all donors and we all complete. That's what I'm taking from it.

LISTEN

2011-02-10T13:57:00.003Z

The birds have just stopped singing. A car engine starts up, its drone monotonous and bold.

More progress on my green drawing, which I've decided to call 'Listen'. Actually the title came pretty much with the begining of this piece.

I've pretty much wrecked the photographs I'm working from but the cost of Tri-colour cartridges for my inkjet printer are so pricey I'm loathe to print again. So I'm squinting round the ink blots and attempting to exercise my imagination, memory, and whatever else mysterious processes are at work to finish this piece.

Which I hope to do soon. The less time I have, the less patience too.

I wish I could work on more than one piece at simultaneously but time, space and temperament won't let me, at least at present.

I've been reading Mozart's letters. Anyone who loves Mozart should read this book. He's my obsession at the moment. His music is one of the few glimmers of light in my life right now. It inspires, moves, comforts and energises me. The very best of medicine.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOZART!

2011-01-27T20:15:00.004Z

I've been loving the music of Mozart since Radio 3 began the year with their Mozartfest. I'm listening to the Magic Flute and reading the libretto, though Mozart's highly dramatic and emotionally rollercoastering music conveys so much without words.

I'm hoping something musical might infuse my new drawing, as well as the vivid green ink I've stained the watercolour paper with.

I prepared the paper last year, I can't remember why I decided to stain it green, but I'm glad I did now. It was waiting for these lines to grow on it.

This mighty oak tree brings home all the more to me how crass, selfish and utterly immoral the current Government idea to sell off our (note that word 'our' - what the Government plan to do is basically theft) forests. They say it's necessary to plug this deficit, but I don't know. The only certain deficit I can see is the moral one.

If you disagree with what the Government plans to do with Forestry Commission land, please sign one or both of these petitions.

Forestry Commission's petition.

38 Degrees Petition

Telford and Wrekin Open 2011

2011-01-13T11:35:00.004Z

I spent most of Saturday on the train travelling first to Oakengates to hand in my piece for the Telford and Wrekin Open Exhibition, then travelling back in the other direction to collect PW PW 2001 from the RBSA. The lady was very complimentary about my work when I picked it up, she said that she could imagine working the way I do must be almost a kind of meditation, and I think this was very perceptive. And true.

I had another compliment this week for the piece I exhibited at the RBSA, a note from the artist Rob Perry, to say that he liked my work. It was just a brief note but I was very touched that he had gone to the trouble of sending me his compliments. Rob Perry is a well respected artist who I've been aware of since seeing an exhibition of his work at Dudley Art Gallery back in the late 1980s. He's got a great website.

I've spent the past fortnight emersed in wonderful Mozart. Yesterday was the final day (1791 day) of Radio 3's broadcast of all of his work. The word genius is spoken too often these days, true genius is a very rare thing and Mozart was definitely it.

Drawing to a close.

2010-12-09T20:08:00.008Z

This has been really strange year for me, since starting a new job back in March I've been slowly paying off debts and struggling to remain creative. I think Blue Tree is the only thing I've done this year that I really feel pleased with, since starting working full time that is. I've certainly not achieved anything near the quality of PW PW 2001, which was the last thing I completed before starting working full-time.

I'm trying to finish off a few pieces at the moment. First, my most recent piece in progress, which I'm calling Long Winter for the time being.

Then 1947 Ford, which I'm not entirely pleased with. It started off well, but there are more things that I don't like about it than those I do. I've tried to diffuse the pink coloured pencil by adding a little yellow and splattering it with more white gouache. I do like the textural effects of gouache layered over pen and ink and gesso. The coloured pencil goes with this combination better than I had expected.

And here's something I dug out last week, it's a drawing of snowdrops which I abandoned earlier this year. I like the juxtaposition of ink and gouache and the softening effect of the Ingres paper it's worked on. Maybe I'll try and finish this too, but I don't know if I'll do it before New Year's Eve.

Lost camera, Open All Media...

2010-11-29T21:00:00.004Z

Work in progress. I've had to scan my drawing (or a part of it) because I've lost my camera!

And on the reverse of my current work in progress is this abandoned one.

Last week I had a drawing accepted for the RBSA's Open All Media exhibition. It's the last drawing I made right at the begining of this year, before I began working full time, and it's the last good thing I've done. I exhibited it earlier this year at Worcester, it's called PW PW 2001.

1947 Ford

2010-11-18T10:40:00.006Z

I'm having all kinds of problems with my computer lately, so I'm tending to avoid it. Lest I go around breaking windows with flying PCs.

I've got to try and finish this today...

Out of frustration I've layered some red and white coloured pencil on top of the pen and the gesso I'd painted the paper with. The gesso is mixed witih gouache and acrylic paint, and it's not such a comfortable surface to work on with the dip pen as I'd hoped.

I popped into the only art shop I can walk to during my lunchbreak from work on Tuesday - High Town Art Shop in Chapel Ash. I bought a couple of nibs and my own stock is quickly diminishing. The lady in the shop told me that they were still manufactured by a company local to where I live, they're based in Oldbury. Birmingham used to famously produce steel pen nibs years ago, the Museum and art gallery have a huge display of pen nibs from one of the old firms there and I believe there is (or used to be) a pen museum. But it's good to know that these nibs are still being produced. Don't know what I'd do without them.

Black and white to colour

2010-10-28T19:24:00.007+01:00

More progress on my new drawing, which I think I'm going to call 1947 Ford.

I'm playing around with a colour version too, this is the start of it.

My working title is 'long golden'.

I've been trying out ideas for colour work in my sketchbooks, I've an idea of calling this one Golden Stretch, or something like that. The foreground tree has the presence of a figure for me, which is something that happens quite a lot with my tree drawings.

Both of the colour works are pure colour pencil, using Coloursoft and the wonderful Luminance.

Two out of five...

2010-10-22T20:29:00.006+01:00

Yesterday was bookended between 2 visits to the opticians, an early morning contact len check and a late afternoon eye test. My contact lenses have been blurry for some time, and now it turns out that the slight astigmatism in my right eye needs correcting. Also to help bring the close vision into focus my optician weakened my prescription so the distances are no longer crystal clear, but I stand a better chance of reading my own palm in dim light. Oh yes, and it turns out I'm also allergic to my new contact lens fluid. For the past few months my palms have resembled lunar landscapes all crusty and cracked. Hopefully have all that sorted soon.

I had a real shock today when I went to buy some of my favourite perfume. Smell really locks into emotion for me, especially the emotion of memory. There was a programme on Radio 4 about this recently, how even smells you can't name connect with memories, mostly childhood memories, so they reckon. But I feel that I'm constantly laying down these memory recall points, kind of like the way your PC makes reference points to roll back to if you have a problem. Givernchy's Very Irrisistable (a present from Mum a few years ago) gives me a good wintry feeling, luxurious and cool. I didn't realise it was so expensive though! Nearly £30 a squirt! Think I'll have to wait for Christmas again to access all those happy feelings.

Blue trees just feel so right to me at the moment. I've got to find a way of making a presentable image of one. I'm enjoying experimentnig with textured grounds, layering colour and texture (mainly gesso and white gouache) on top of each other. I'm not certain how to bring it all to fuition though.

Dreadful photographs...

2010-10-19T20:24:00.008+01:00

For which I apologise. I will attempt to do better in future.

I slashed the watercolour paper with white gouache before begining my drawing and splattered the paper with diluted gouache. I'm torn between making this a black and white or a colour composition, I've made preliminary sketches for both.

I've also begun another long drawing, another graffiti tree. This one's from a photograph I took earlier this year at Clent. The trees have quite a confrontational, soldierly look, the foreground tree wearing its graffiti like battle scars.

I slashed the paper with gold acrylic then dragged gesso over it. I'm interested in ways of making texture at the moment, though as I mixed acrylic with the gesso it doesn't make a particularly nice ground for the pen and ink to work on.

Benthall Edge Woods

2010-10-17T19:10:00.012+01:00

I don't know why, but despite the glories of autumn I'm drawn to turning the usual world of colour upside down at the moment, blue trees for instance...

...unstable trees especially, trees that are teetering, or appearing to teeter, drunkenly off the edge of the picture...maybe the tree has become a substitute figure for me, a human figure that is. And walking through a wood is like entering a fairytale world in which everyone has become instantly inanimate.

Of course woods aren't inanimate places at all, they are places of sometimes ravishing, often subtle beauty, noisy and quiet at the same time. Today G and I have visited Benthall Edge Woods, near Ironbridge. Country Living listed them amongst their roll call of idyllic autumn woods recently. They were truly magical and, luckily for us, G and I had them almost entirely to ourselves.

I love standing beneath a canopy of trees this time of year and just listening to the leaves and seeds dropping to earth, a bird's wing fluttering, or the crack of a twig as some unseen animal moves in the undergrowth. It's the very opposite of the kind of empty sensory overload you get in a town centre, this is sensory bliss, gradually as you stand there a whole world of sound, smells and sights come alive around you. You feel both insignificant and blessed. For me it's like being a child again. Both exciting and a comfort.

The Little Shop

2010-10-11T19:25:00.004+01:00

When I went to pick up the drawing I had included in August's Wolverhampton Open exhibition, Belinda, one of the organisers of the exhibition and one of the artists involved in The White Tree Studios, asked me if I would like to put some of my work in her 'little shop', an empty shop in Farmer's Fold, Wolverhampton. It's a real cornucopia of art with lots of styles and approaches on offer, though a little chaotic and bohemian looking at the moment. It's very much an artist's gallery, where as well as keeping shop when she can, Belinda is busy working on her own work.

Co-incidentally I just discovered that Belinda also exhibited at the Worcester 2010 Open at the Pitt Studio. Small world.

Waxing eloquent

2010-10-07T17:06:00.006+01:00

The drawing board I'm using for my blue tree is actually the top of an old coffee table that collapsed a few weeks ago. It's very heavy, and the rounded corners aren't practical (it wouldn't sit still for me when I photographed it, hence the wobble in focus) but as I'm short of boards for new pieces I'm not complaining.

I would really like to begin several pieces and work on them side by side, but I've not got the space to do this. In fact, for such a huge place this world seems to offer less and less space in which to manouvre, I've lost so many pen nibs lately by sweeping them onto the carpet. They bounce and come up with crooked Concord noses. Which is annoying as these fine pen nibs are really difficult to come by.

On Saturday G and I went to Westonbirt, a wonderful place this time of year. Autumn is an annual 'event' and you're rarely alone with the trees, except if, like us, you linger 'til the very end (well as near to it as light allows). There was a lovely moment beneath a canopy of softly yellowing leaves listening to the pine needles and seeds dropping into the mulch around our feet. We were being watched of course, by an absent minded squirrel. Wonder if he'll remember where he's hidden his treasure?

I came back with treasure of my own, including this curious seed case, which was bright red when I found it on the ground. I think it came from a magnolia tree, which was aflame with these peculiar things, held upright like candles which gradually split apart to allow hard orange berries to peer through, like so many alien eyes.

True blue electric blue

2010-10-05T20:42:00.011+01:00

I don't know why but my blue tree seems quite edible to me. Maybe it's because the white speckles make me think of icing sugar...

...yes, if I could eat this picture it would taste very sweet and have a crisp, slightly greasy surface, dusted with icing sugar like an expensive French pastry.

I've been playing around with ideas for more colour work...

My use of colour here is purely instinctive, maybe a little emotional. But there's nothing intellectual about it at all.

Aristocratic Trees

2010-10-04T20:28:00.005+01:00

Here's another attempt at using colour with my pen and ink work. I think it's coming on better than my last attempt, which I'm considering filing in little pieces in the recycle bin.

I don't know why but I'm compelled to make blue trees at the moment. Almost ice trees. Well I do know, or at least I analysed my own impulse - I think it's to do with wanting to thaw this creative hiatus I'm stranded in at the moment. The will is still there, but there's so much interference - both my own and external forces.

Or the blue tree is like a rare vein, like those in an Elizabethan portrait, a rare blue vein of freedom.

And here's something I picked up from a few weeks ago. A tangle of colour that I'm not too displeased with.

If at first you don't succeed...

2010-09-24T21:16:00.005+01:00

...keep waving.

I'm perserving with this drawing even though I'm cringing at the results. Well, parts of it I quite like, and if I could isolate those parts and magically transform them into semi-abstract landscapes I might have something I could live with, but as a whole...

...it's a bit sixth formish I think.

Trying not to feel too downhearted though. The trouble is my lack of time. Time is one of the many ingredients (blessings, you could say) that separates the hobbyist from the professional as much as financial payment. Though the latter would be nice as well.

One brief cry of thunder...

2010-09-23T17:23:00.005+01:00

...is what we've just had about 20 minutes ago. No more than that. It's a humid day, lovely earlier but now slightly sufforcating and grey.

But today has been my first glimpse of freedom since returning from a holiday in Scotland on Saturday. I've been suffering a cold since, but feel a lot better since today I've been able to work on my artwork, which is this...

...a second attempt at a composition I tried out last year. Last year's effort was in pure coloured pencil, a medium I obsess over, though never perservere enough with to produce more than junior scribbles. This time I'm attempting to mix it up with pen and ink. I'm semi-liking progress so far. But tommorow it's back to work and I'll no doubt be exhausted when I get home in the evening and I'll ruin it.

Pessimism, you see, is the mother of all achievement. At least for me it's always been that way.

WOLVERHAMPTON OPEN 2010

2010-08-06T10:24:00.002+01:00

Since my disappointment at being rejected for the RA Summer Show back in June I haven't entered my artwork in another open. As I'm not producing much lately I feel a little unmotivated. But I did see the Wolverhampton Open advertised during a series of exhibitions in a disused shop in the Mander Centre, Wolverhampton, an innovative idea and a varied show. The Wolverhampton Open is being organised by White Tree Studios at Chapel Ash. The piece I'm exhibiting is the piece rejected by the RA. Which gives me a little comfort, at least.

I wish I was escaping in that Jeep! A photograph I took on the island of Kerrera where G and I had a lovely day walking in September 2005. As I remember it there was only 1 loo on the island, so will power came in very handy!

SUNFLOWERS AND SONGBIRDS

2010-08-01T10:13:00.006+01:00

It's becoming ever difficult to keep up my creative work while working full-time, work on polishing my novel ground to a halt back in March and my artwork is a bare trickle. I began a new drawing about 6 weeks ago and this is as far as I've gotten with it.

My problems of concentration and motivation (and exhaustion) are so difficult to overcome at the moment that I've turned the drawing upside down and am drawing the foliage in this topsy turvy fashion in an attempt to, I don't know, spark SOMETHING.

At least I managed to produce a sunflower from the seeds I planted back in March. I mistakenly bought the giant variety instead of the dwarf kind, and then read that these aren't suitable for container planting. I started off with about 10 plants, and these have dwindled down to 6 (4 eaten away 2 mysteriously snapped in two overnight), 4 of which show signs of blooming. This one is beautiful though, thankfully.

Closed For Lunch

2010-06-08T17:00:00.000+01:00

RBSA PRIZE EXHIBTION 2010

2010-06-06T10:07:00.008+01:00

I'm extremely pleased to have 2 mixed media pieces accepted for this years's Prize Exhibition at the RBSA. The 2 pieces I've had accepted are Still Much To Offer and Chocolate Tree, which I'd fretted and frowned over through April. I seem to spend most of my life fretting and frowning over something. Here's my current face creasing exercise.

Although I use a daylight lamp most of the time, in the evenings I've been taking my work into my bedroom which gets the full evening sunlight. I open my window and try to concentrate on the birdsong rather than the incessant traffic noise, booming car stereos, shouting kids and general suburban mess. I'm enjoying watching my plants grow too; mint and tomato seedlings on my windowsill at present. Occassionally I'll pinch the leaves of the mint for a burst of uplifting zinginess (that reminds me of my childhood, instant transportation) or the pungent scent of the baby tomato plant leaves.

Parasite

2010-05-20T18:34:00.008+01:00

I'm working on a few things at the moment, here's a little detail from a small (smaller than A4) piece...

But I've been concentrating most of my energies on this new much larger piece. It's about the same height as the piece I exhibited at Gas Hall recently, but not so wide. So it's about A1 near enough in length. Here's where I'd got to at the begining of this week...

I made a few pencil sketches of this piece before I began it, and I despaired at its beginings, as it doesn't fit as comfortably as I'd wanted into the format of the page. I wanted to give the impression of a column of energy, starting with the roots of the parasite clinging onto the base of the tree, and crawling up the trunk...

...or maybe it could be draining into the ground, draining the energy of the tree. Depends on whether the glass is half full or empty I suppose.

There's a really gorgeous Nick Drake song called Parasite. For some reason I associate his intricate moody music with my drawings. That music is so English. When I hear the quick, delicate guitar phrasings I can smell the rain on the soil, hear it prickle the leaves and see the light filtering through the branches. Trees are brilliant chemists without knowing it. But then knowing a thing I think is sometimes overrated. You can be a thing without knowing it, in fact knowing what you are can often be totally detrimental. To be without knowing. Sounds like a kind of bliss to me.

Worcester Open 2010 - Part Two

2010-05-18T08:00:00.006+01:00

When I'm out visiting exhibitions (or shopping, or anything really) I'm a lot like Philip Larkin's character in Church Going. I'm nervy about going in somewhere where I'm going to get pounced on (I was actually asked if I needed help in Argos looking at their catalogue the other day! I think not...). I don't know if I'd have had the courage to visit the 2 smaller venues of the Worcester Open if I hadn't been driven by self-interest. If it had been in a huge cavernous space, or a smaller one with not a soul about (apart from the audience), I would have definitely stayed longer, absorbed more, instead of having my usual out of the body experience of extreme self-consciousness.

On the other hand, I would not have had chance to meet Nathaniel Pitt, organiser of this year's exhibition. Apart from being very kind about my drawing, which is exhibited in the small but light and sunny Pitt Studio, he made some very interesting comments about the presentation of my work which I will very much take on board. He asked me how I choose the frames for my work, and commented that a frame should be almost invisible, that the work should be the main feature not the frame. I understand entirely the point Nathaniel was making and am very grateful for his opinion. I actually dread framing my work, partly because my decision is almost always affected by financial constraints, or by the simple geographical (and temporal) constraints of my not being able to drive! So when I'm frame buying I'm generally tied to the bus route, or to begging favours of G to drive me somewhere to look for a frame. It would be nice to be able to hand my work over to someone else to frame for me, I wish I could.

Nathaniel's own work currently invoves performance art. He told me how each of the 4 Worcester based artists at the Pitt artist-led project space are taking it in turns to direct a project, and the Worcester Open this year was his own project. Next year's project sounded very interesting too, I really look forward to seeing it.

One final word about the website of the show, which is beautifully presented and extensive. I only found this by accident while Googling links for this site, and I've enjoyed looking at leisure at images from the show. There's a nice feature for participating artists to add a comment or a statement beneath their piece, which I'd have certainly have done earlier if I'd known it was there! Maybe an e-mail to participating artists from the webmaster inviting them to do this would have been useful.

Please go and see this exhibition if you've time, it has so much to offer. It runs until 26 June, check either the website or the Art Gallery for specific opening times of all 3 venues.

Worcester Open 2010

2010-05-16T08:03:00.005+01:00

G drove me to Worcester yesterday to see the Worcester Open, an extremely varied and enjoyable exhibition. Unusually this exhibition is held in 3 venues, each with a distinct ethos and feel. The Art Gallery itself houses the largest pieces of the show, those chosen by the selectors. The artists in this show tend to come from farther afield and include Ian Gonczarow, who featured in the BBC4 series about Goldsmiths. So the pieces in this part of the exhibition tend to have that post modern, ironic approach, or the more punchy, urban approach made famous by the likes of Goldsmiths and the Saatchi collection. My favourite piece here was by Fiona Hughes, a window glazed with small blocks of wax and lit from behind. I thought this piece was not only beautiful to look at but witty and full of poetry. Also impressive were John Robinson’s monochrome paintings, and the huge van made of corrugated cardboard by Aaron Head.

The very helpful gallery assistant gave me a map and directed me to the Annex21, which is a small gallery within the Worcester Arts Workshop, just a short walking distance from the main Museum and Art Gallery. The pieces here were generally (but not entirely) smaller in size and tended to have a more craft based approach. These included an eerie and brilliantly crafted piece by Luke Harkus-Jeffries a large dolls house size model which you can peer into via windows or tiny portholes to see the rooms, but there's definitely something suspect and gruesome going on in the basement! I'd seen one of this artist's pieces before at Wolverhampton Art Gallery a couple of years ago, I think it may have been part of the West Midlands Open. Brilliant. I also liked the 3 small glass panels hung high up on the wall above the doll’s house by Lisa Sheppey, which were beautifully crafted and had the added bonus for me on including writing about a ghost! I also really liked the small dark ruralist style landscapes by Edward Clark, again slightly discordant in atmosphere, they reminded me of slightly askew 17th Century Dutch landscapes, they had a haunted quality about them.

The Pitt Studio Gallery lies about 5 minutes walk from the main art gallery in the opposite direction to town. This is the smallest venue of the 3, a tiny veranda literally crammed salon style with pieces, both paintings, sculptures, crafted pieces, prints and drawings. Again, although the pieces here tended to be small, this wasn't entirely so, a painting by Paula Woof hangs here (again there's the inclusion of writing in the form of fragments of handwriting on the wall) and there's a very impressive painting of a man in 17th century armour by Liz Smith. I liked the dark, fairtytale atmosphere of James Howarth's landscape ‘Where the wild things are’, with a small figure perhaps lost or maybe lurking in the forest. A beautifully crafted, enjoyable piece. The pieces in this gallery, as at Annex21, are displayed Salon style, and unusually for an open, include (either on display at present or in rotation) one piece from each of the artists who submitted work to the Open. The nicely produced catalogue of the show (pricey at £10 (£8 for participating artists) but produced in full colour) is titled 'meta - open' and contains an interesting and thought provoking essay on the process of submitting work to Opens. The exhibition's organiser, Nathaniel Pitt, intends this year's open to be a comment on this process, particularly the expense of showing artwork, or submitting artwork to be judged and possibly shown (or not). I was very lucky to meet Nathaniel at the Pitt Gallery, more of which I'll blog about tomorrow...

Bye bye New Labour...

2010-05-11T20:39:00.005+01:00

...hello new pragmatism...

I'm not political at all, but I've found the last few days quite exciting, despite the fact that I have horrible fear that we're in for a rocky ride with our new 'cut until you drop' coalition. Gordon Brown's speech this evening was certainly dignified and quite moving. But finding politics exciting? I must be getting old.

I've finished my tree piece...

Don't have a title for it yet though.

I saw a flyer today for new exhibitions at Walsall Art Gallery. I'm ashamed to say I've never been to the new (as new as New Labour - well nearly. Incredibly Walsall Art Gallery is 10 years old this year) art gallery, but I'd like to see the exhibition by Adam Dant, his complex Piranesi style ink drawings look fantastic.

Spring fever

2010-05-10T19:48:00.008+01:00

Lovely bluebells at Dudmaston yesterday. This must be one of the most magical times of the year in nature, I love the intermediary times of spring and autumn. Autumn makes me feel gothic, romantic and vividly sombre. Spring is kind of mystical and mysterious.

Bluebell heaven.

I've finished my small tree in blossom piece...

...but I've an idea to surround it with a frame within a frame, so I've begun these simple vignettes.

I'm doing them in a kind of scraperboard or sgraffito style using coloured pencil and oil pastel. I like working this way, it's a nice way to get colour and line to co-exist. Though the end results are pretty fragile.

No one sees, how shaky my knees...

2010-05-07T20:22:00.009+01:00

On Sunday G drove me to Birmingham to pick up my large drawing from Gas Hall. The guy who handed my picture over said that about 20 or so pictures had sold altogether, so I was very lucky in selling mine. He said 'we all liked this one,' re: my large pen and ink drawing. Which was very nice of him. But then again, he probably says that to all the artists.

The next West Midlands Open will be held in 2 years time at Wolverhampton art gallery, and will be back in Birmingham, all being well, in 4 years time. I was told 'there are lots of opens to enter'. Which is true, but my problem at the moment is that now I'm working full-time I can't make many of the handing in dates because I'm working, or if I can hand in, I can't collect, and the galleries seem to be inflexible regarding pick ups and deliveries. G's doing me a huge favour tommorow in picking up my drawing from The Waterside Open, which is finished now, and the gallery wouldn't hold onto my drawing for another week so I could fetch it next week. All in all it's very difficult for artists to enter opens if A. They don't drive (like me) and B they work for an employer (like me also).

Some more progress of my 2 colour pieces. The small blossom picture is finished...

But the larger one is still a work in progress. A frustrating one too. I started off liking parts of it, but then made the fatal error of asking my Mum what she thought. After a moment's silence she said, 'I don't like it, it's blobby.'

So I'm now trying to unblobby it. I knew there were problems but I've got so little time at the moment, and I've invested quite a bit in this one. I'm loathe to discard it yet.

On our way home from Birmingham on Sunday G drove us to Tanworth-in-Arden where Nick Drake has a memorial stone. I think he was cremated and his ashes scattered, I'm not sure where. I've been listening to lots of Nick Drake lately, I find his music both mesmerising, comforting and discomforting. A glorious combination.

This morning I buried a bird

2010-05-06T10:34:00.005+01:00

No, that's not an old blues lyric. I've just come in from out of the general election drizzle, hung up my spade and tapped the mud off my shoes. Two nights ago a cat (presumably) killed a young bird in the night. It's so sad. Yesterday evening I came home from work to see a blackbird standing a few inches away from the corpse gazing at it, cocking its head to one side as if contemplating the poor thing. Do birds have any idea of mortality? Human beings are supposed to be the only creatures that are aware that we're not here forever, but a week or so ago there was a news report about a group of chimps that were apparently grieving for their lost elder. It would be awful, wouldn't it, if because of one dead bird, another bird was struck by the epiphany of death, and this news spread via birdsong to infect every bird?

I'd hate to be the one responsible for the death of birdsong. No birds could sing because sorrow had struck them dumb. There's a fairytale in there somewhere.

I did actually write a story years ago about the end of birdsong, but the idea was muddy and I grew obsessed with the wrong thing in it. It languishes still in the technical conundrum that is my external hard drive.

Enough of this purple procrastination. I've got a couple of hours this morning before I start my day job, and I've got work to do.

No bird will ever come to harm that sings in this tree.

Another new work in progress. Very small this one. An experiment, and I'm liking the way it's going.

Wild Rocket

2010-04-26T20:27:00.007+01:00

Painful progress on my tree picture. The colourful textures are so far comprised of splats (gold ink) and rubs (paint on Clingfilm). There's also some oil pastel (lower part of the picture). I'm thinking of tracing the whole thing again next, to find some solidity in the form, then maybe trying some kind of printing over what I've already done. Not sure yet.

I bought a pot of seeds from a pound store a few weeks ago. I sewed them and now I have seedlings. Wild Rocket. Every day I turn them away from the light and by evening they've found it again. I love that I share this same craving for sunshine. Makes me feel both at one with vegetable life and also, eerily insubstantial. I'd like to draw them leaning towards the light, one seedling tumbling over another in an attempt to soak up the most sunshine, just like people at a sale or struggling to be first on the train. So what I'm growing here, I suppose, isn't a pot of salad at all but a rat race in miniature!

How will I have the heart to put them on my sandwich now!

One thing about getting older is that I'm starting to think of my life as a story with flashbacks that occur in the text (totally randomly and for no reason) which tease the main narrative with hints at some meaning and subtlety that the protagonist mostly fails to understand.

I've always been self-conscious but this super-sense of myself riding the great whirling belt of life (holding all these explosive memories in my brain) is a new development. One day I imagine there will be more flashback than forward motion and the theatre of memory will become intertwined with the arena of the imagination. Maybe that won't be so bad afterall.

A lovely rainbow I photographed yesterday running through a hailstorm with G on Dover's Hill. It was truly wonderful watching the advancing clouds and the light transformed into something glorious. It didn't matter that I got half soaked at the end of it. Didn't find my pot of gold though.

All the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

2010-04-22T16:10:00.007+01:00

I had a disappointing rejection this morning which has shaken my confidence somewhat. Especially since a couple of days ago I had a wonderful surprise, I received an e-mail to say that Golden River had sold at the West Midlands Open. Amazing how one bit of bad news can so easily cancel out the good. Now I'm struggling to maintain my self-confidence, and struggling to remain optimistic about my life and my art.

I've started a new drawing but with the rejection coming hard on the heels of my failed drawing, I'm feeling pretty hopeless really. I knew working full time would take its toll on my creative work but it's hard to accept the reality of my situation. Time is as much an ingredient as inspiration, perspiration, paint, paper or ink. And I just don't have enough of it at the moment.

Ideas still swim in my head, but I feel like drowning them again. The Ivy drawing on this page has no soul, I'm making it with a deadline in mind, but don't have much faith in it because the passion and the belief are not there. I have a romantic idea of making a new drawing based on 3 photographs I took last year at Walberswick nature reserve. I was looking through my photographs the other night and they immediately made me think of 'and all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire'. I don't know why I love that poem so much, its still heat and its sense of suspended reality, as if the narrator stands before a precipice or that still moment beyond which, something pivotal is about to happen. Perhaps it's that.

I can see for miles and miles and miles

2010-04-20T19:20:00.006+01:00

Although I really want to work on my art this evening I find I can't.

Here's progress on my most recent piece. I'm not so pleased with it. I began it differently to my usual method, and though I quite like the effect in some areas, I'm not convinced by the whole. Last night I added some more colour to the tree in the hope of finding some definition, but my enthusiasm for this piece is dying on me.

Here's a new piece, or rather an old piece I began last year. Actually, it began as the gounding for a seascape, but I've diverted it, via Sidcup.

I've had some new specs today, so now I can see for mile and miles. But creeping Presbyopia keeps the detail at bay. Unless I take off my specs and look at life with frameless, uncorrected grey tinged reality.

Time, like an ever rolling stream...

2010-04-17T19:56:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was another lovely day today, though I missed most of it being at work at the library.

After tea (or dinner, the main evening meal) I rushed into the garden and garnered the dregs of my energy to make these 2 quick sketches. About an hour and half's work I managed (listening to The News Quiz, The Archers and Front Row) before I began to get cold and tiredness caught up with me.

Mom's always buying plants then, when a few weeks (days sometimes) later they start to wilt they get transported outside. These are the remains of a hyacinth (actually I bought that one for Mum) and a rose. The third (on the right) are my 'tete-a-tete' daffs, which I will eventually get round to planting in the garden for next year. Whenever I hear the phrase 'tete-a-tete' I always think of Jane Austen. I can't remember which novel it was (it may have been Pride and Prejudice) but it was definiely in an Austen novel that I first encountered this phrase, and it was a very long time ago!

After those dead plants I made this quick sketch of the top of our garden (I was a day ahead of myself when I dated it you see). The sun was setting and catching the edges of the new leaves coming on our old apple tree (on the right) and the dead leaves still clinging to the branches of our poplar tree (middle). Everything's starting to come into bloom now and it makes me happy to see it and sad too. Sad because of the losses of recent (and more distant) years, sad because of how time 'like an ever rolling stream' has played a trick on me. I've blinked and half my life has gone.

I had to Google the fragment by Isaac Watts by the way, I remember it from a Divine Comedy song, but my fragile memory lost more than it remembered.

Oak tree without a name...

2010-04-16T18:51:00.008+01:00

This is as far as I've got with my new drawing...

It hasn't got a name yet though.

The shadow of our house on next door's house

2010-04-14T19:00:00.003+01:00

Earlier this week I took advantage of the lovely spring sunshine (though I wrapped up in coat and scarf as I'm still feeling the cold) to make these quick sketches in our back garden.

I began wanting to draw our nextdoor neighbour's magnolia tree, and our old nicely weathered garden fence, but when I noticed how the sun threw the shadow of our house onto our neighbour's side wall, I became fascinated by that.

Our neighbour lends us a glimpse of their magnolia tree and we repay them with the shadow of our house. Sounds like a fair swap.

The past few weeks

2010-04-12T17:34:00.008+01:00

As time's been short lately for my creative work, I began this piece in a different way to usual. I thought I'd try giving a quick blast of texture then working into it, partly because the sight of a white expanse of untouched paper was a bit dispiriting. Partly because I just fancied trying something new(ish).

So I began with my photo, in this case a collage of a couple of photographs I printed out using my Inkjet printer, then taped together. I made a few sketches of this photograph collage, and added in something I took from another of my photographs to give me my composition.

I was mainly interested in the texture and the shadow play in this photograph. The shadows of the leaves staining the gnarly bark of the tree was what attracted me when I took the photograph, so the play of projected leaves and light on the bark was going to be the focus of this piece.

When I'd worked out my composition I made my initial drawing on paper which I'd stretched and given an undercoat of gesso and white gouache.

Then I quickly painted in the areas I planned to leave white, or the highlights to contrast with the shadows. I did this by painting these areas with masking fluid.

Then I splattered my drawing with a mixture of black acrylic and yellow ochre watercolour. I like the stubbly rough texture of the gesso and the black acrylic, which gave the scary white paper some quick textural animation.

I helped the drying process of the paint with a hairdryer, then when it was dry I used my hands and an eraser to rub off the yellow rubbery masking fluid...

...leaving clean white paper.

Then I began working from my 2 photographs (foreground and background basically) in pen and ink.

And this is as far as I've got so far.

Over the garden fence...

2010-04-10T20:24:00.009+01:00

I've been so busy working 2 part-time jobs that I've had to discipline myself to conserve my energy for what's important creatively. I'll make a post about my main work in progress later (hopefully). In the mean time, the weather was so lovely today, and I was frankly quite down about missing it, that as soon as I got home from work this evening I bolted down my tea then rushed into the garden where I made a couple of quick sketches.

I really wanted to try some colour for a change, so I made this first sketch of our old fence and the neighbour's flourshing Magnolia tree. I started with a quick pen sketch, then added some rough colour with Derwent's Aquatone pencils, turned them into a textural wash with a little water and finished off by adding some more vivid colour with my old Cotman watercolour sketch box.

I've had these watercolours for years...donkey's years, as they say here in the Black Country (they may say it elsewhere too). I was going to throw them out a few years ago. I'm so glad I didn't now.

And then just enough energy left to make this quick line sketch of our fence and what can be glimpsed over the top of it. I might add a little colour later, I'm not sure yet.

There's a name for bits of garden you benefit from 'over the garden fence' isn't there? I can't remember the term for it though.

Thank you!

2010-03-25T16:38:00.003Z

It's not often you get something for nothing, in fact I can count the instances on the knuckles of one finger, but today I was on the receiving end of an extremely generous gesture which in fact, saved the day for me.

I had bought a frame (with print in it) from a discount warehouse for a drawing I'm entering in an open exhibition very soon, but as I was disassembling it last night I found that the frame hadn't been sealed at the back using the usual little metal tags you just push over with a finger (I use a knife as the tags are a bit tough on soft finger tips), but with a staple gun instead.

So I hurried to Wolverhampton today, looking to buy some little metal tags I'd seen at Hobbycraft a few months ago. However, reluctant to add a bus journey on top of my train journey to get to Hobbycraft, I took a 5 minute walk from the train station to Chapel Ash to Creative Framing, where I thought I'd see if they sold those little tags to seal the back of my picture frame with.

The lady and gentleman in the framers were extremely friendly and more helpful than I could have hoped for. Although they didn't sell the little metal tags I wanted the man rushed upstairs and returned with a block of these other little tags, 'you can have these' he said, 'we usually use a gun to fix them into the frame, but you might be able to knock one in with a hammer.' He very helpfully showed me how I might be able to use them, and then dropped them into my bag, refusing to accept any money for them.

I was surprised and extremely touched by their generosity and helpfulness, it's something quite rare I think, and I was very grateful for their help.

Well I did manage to attach the tags to my frame,by taking out the glass and tapping them into place, and now thankfully my picture is wrapped snugly in bubble wrap and awaiting delivery next week.

But it's very much thanks to the people at Creative Framing, who were so generous asking for nothing at all except, I suppose, the hope that I might return at some time in future and use their picture framing services.

Which I fully intend to do.

Letters, lichen, moss and scars

2010-03-23T19:13:00.008Z

I've finished my piece, and finally given it a name. There's something about the tonal balance I'm not too pleased with, but I think I'd best leave it alone now because messing about with it last night I realised that I was in danger of doing more harm than good.

These close ups have given me an idea of where I want to go next...

Actually deciding where I want to go next with my visual art is not so much of a problem. My current problems are:-

1. Finding the time to go anywhere
2. Finding the finances to go anywhere
3. Finding the right source material to work from

G drove me to Clent a couple of weeks ago as there are some trees there that I'm really interested in. I first photographed them 5 years ago on a gloriously hot summer's day, and curiously going back this time I recognised a couple of the trees from my photographs.

My focus at the moment is aesthetically on shape, texture, framing (composition) to kind of re-invent my quite ordinary photographs as a more dynamic, 'tall skinny intense condensed' image. Emotionally and psychologically my focus is on the intense need to make one's mark. A human mark next to an organic/evolved one (I know what I mean, honestly I do). The human animal's relationship with nature.

Can't beat a good simulacra of an alien entity!

WORCESTER OPEN

2010-03-21T16:29:00.007Z

I had an e-mail this week to say that I've had my drawing PW PW 2001 accepted for this year's Worcester Open. I'm really pleased as this makes 4 pieces now in open exhibitions this year.

I'm making very small steps...

...even smaller at the moment...

My pen and ink drawings are so time consuming, I've been thinking about trying something else, not instead of but to complement my pen and ink work, but time...

...is precious and inflexible at the moment...

...just as long as I keep making those small steps and don't try to run.

I'm also enjoying reading Sarah Waters' novel 'The Little Stranger', it's as full of atmosphere and period detail as the stunning Nightwatch was. And I love a good ghost story.

Finally...sorry the pictures are so yellow in this posting, I don't know why they are. Maybe yellow's the new off white?

WATER WATER...BUT NO TIME!!!!

2010-03-15T13:16:00.012Z

Mum woke me in the early hours of this morning as we had briefly become the owners of a not so luxurious riverside residence! Well, not quite. A main had burst and Police were diverting traffic outside our gate (the road was blissfully quiet all morning) while a collection of worried Severn Trent workers gathered around the hubble-bubbling water that broke through the tarmac near the lovely old Victorian Post Office on the corner. There were news broadcast people outside my Uncle and Aunt's house (because the water had come up to their front door step) and Mum's friend called to say that no one was being allowed to walk into Great Bridge as she had seen cars submerged in the water.

I've begun a second job this week, hence only the smallest amount of progress on my drawing...

Creative time is like frayed rope at the moment and I'm clutching at strands finer than the lines produced by my dip pen nib.

Go under the ivy...

2010-03-05T09:00:00.002Z

More progress on my new drawing, and more mistakes! Only, for some reason, I'm not that bothered about them. No one frets, dwells upon and broils over their errors like I do. Naturally anxious, I regularly take a pimple and rub and scratch at it, worrying away at the thing until I have a huge suppurating sore.

Just like I worried away at that not very good simile.

Lets just say at the moment, my artwork is causing me a whole lot less anxiety than my animate existence. I escape into mark making, scrutinising my blurry photographs, interpreting a few splats of ink, scrounging around in my memory (beyond what I would recall easily, literally going 'under the Ivy' of what I recall consciously without visual prompt) to make lines that resemble nature. And I'm loving it, at the moment. Despite the stiff back, watery eyes and achy ears (my headphones are as indispensable as my dip pen and ink).

I'm wondering if I dare, seeing as this drawing (like any other) is a journey on so many levels, and seeing as this drawing has taken me down more bogus alleys than a dodgy satnav, I dare give it this title:-

Do you know I think I might.

...a note on a trailer for a programme on R4 in which the author talks about his multi-faceted creativity. What he says about practicing two disciplines is extremely interesting. Sounds like it's going to be a fascinating interview.

And this sounds like fun too…I love Paul Nash, his brooding seascape of the Winter Sea (Dymchurch) is as much to be a portrait of a state of mind as it is of ice on water.

OPEN NIGHT

2010-03-05T09:00:00.000Z

G drove me to Birmingham last night to see the West Midlands Open which is being held at Gas Hall. Unfortunately (incredibly) it took me an hour and 40 minutes to travel the 8 miles to Birmingham via bus then car and we arrived just as the prize giving and speeches had finished. There was a good atmosphere at the open night though and we spent an hour looking at the art and soaking up the buzz which was quite literal as Gas Hall is one of those big, hollow buildings with fuzzy acoustics. The combination of chatter, clinking glasses and shuffling feet made a drone like an engine ticking over.

I was surprised at the amount of photography on show, one of which picked up first prize, I think possibly because it lends itself to a particular wry, sardonic, post-modern approach which is popular here. Generally though the West Midlands Open has a generously broad interpretation of the word 'contemporary', hung on the walls and boards, and displayed on podiums throughout the gallery are delicate etchings, pencil drawings, vast oil paintings, humorous 3D works, stylish and intelligent photography, witty assemblages, amusing video and film pieces. The overall impression is of a vibrant, varied, occasionally quirky creative scene.

My own personal favourites included the huge and breathtaking pastel portrait by Oliver Jones, I'd seen his work last year at the RBSA. To use pastel on this scale is a tremendous achievement. I also loved the 2 oil paintings on paper by Lois Wallace, beautiful sombre compositions with gorgious textural values and extremely subtle psychological overtones suggestive of something just about to happen, or the significance of a moment when something hasn't yet happened.

I recognised a few artists from the RBSA including Brian Fletcher who exhibited a very nice pencil self-portrait and a beautiful colourful and textural oil painting of a derelict building frontage.

Gas Hall is a splendid venue for art, and I'm really proud to have a piece included in this exhibition. I'm hoping to pay it a second visit and hopefully take in Bridget Riley at the nearby Waterhall at the same time. There was so much impressive, large scale, slick artwork, really grand pieces, I couldn't help feeling self-conscious about my own pieces which seemed a bit pale by comparison. It's always the same for me, every time I have an artwork on display or a poem or story published I get that feeling, like catching sight of yourself in a shop window and cringing at your total ordinariness.

I'm very lucky to have work in this exhibition. But I need to shake off that shop window feeling now, or I might never be able to make another drawing again.

To err is human...but it's a blumin' nuisance!

2010-03-04T14:41:00.010Z

It's been a lovely spring day today, if a little rushed for me as tonight is the opening of the West Midlands Open 2010. It's hard for me to concentrate on my work for this, and other reasons, but still I make progress on my new drawing.

The sunshine just won't leave the boxroom alone though, prying into my drawing, distorting it, blurring it, making me squint so I can hardly see what I'm doing at all.

I made a pretty major error with my drawing. I don't know how detrimental this will be to the completed piece. It's more problematic with this one because I'm working on watercolour paper without any 'ground' work laid in with gouache and gesso, so it's blatently obvious that I made a mistake as the drawing will forever be scarred by a raised cicatrix of gouache. Pen and ink might have a 'safe' sound to it, but it's actually quite a dangerous medium to work in, totally unforgiving in fact to the erring draughtsman. Your attention only has to lapse a little and you have ruined your drawing irrevocably.

I've grown adept of disguising my blobs and errors over the years, thought not so imaginatively as David Cox, who transformed the blotches and marks on the wrapping paper he used for his beautiful watercolours into birds, wheeling through the blustery often rain drenched sky.

Last night's Mad Men was as superlative as ever, if a little more cluttered and snappier paced than usual. And this morning I've enjoyed travelling through time via rail at this nifty BBC web gallery. I love old railway posters, beautiful shapes, bright and breezy colours, liberating and optimistic. Was there ever a time when they didn't drip nostalgia? Even when they were brand new? I love them in the same way that I love the old Shell posters, many of which were designed by well known artists and illustrators of the day including Graham Sutherland and Edward Ardizzone. Travel is food for the mind, the body and the soul. That's what I've always found, anyway.

Reality Paper Paper Screen Paper

2010-03-03T23:16:00.011Z

I'm trying out a new way of sizing up my drawings from my photographs. I usually draw freehand, I don't trace or square up or anything (actually I never could square up, one I’m hopeless at anything mathematical and two I don't like to see pictures in a cage). But I really wanted a particular slice of this image, a particular proportional composition, and I was irritated that I might not be able to get this by freehand alone.

So I traced my photograph (which I had printed on my trusty HP Deskjet printer on HP Photo Plus paper) then cut this down to the slice of the image which came closest to the composition I had in mind. I then scribbled on the back of my tracing in 2B pencil, flipped it over again and re-drew my original tracing on an A3 sketchbook.

I played around with shading and composition on this skeleton tracing then, and took this sketch to the scanner.

I had to scan the image in two parts as I only have an A4 scanner (hence the lines across the middle of the scan image).

In Photoshop I opened up the 2 scans (top and bottom of image), making sure that they are both showing at the same % size. Then I dragged the bottom part of my sketch onto the top part, altering the transparency of the active later so that I could see the bottom layer through the top. This made it easier for me to align the two scans so they fit together as smoothly as possible. I had to rotate the top layer a little as well as dragging it as each page had scanned at a slightly different angle.

I then flattened my double layer image into one layer and saved the image of my sketch.

I then increased the length of my image to the required size in Photoshop (via Image > Image Size). Changing the length automatically resizes the width in proportion and hey presto! No need for any squaring up.

I printed the image in two halves (because I've only got an A4 printer then reverted to technological ludditism once more by sellotaping the two paper printed halves of my image together. I traced the new sized image again and transferred it onto my paper.

It sounds long winded but it actually took only a few minutes, and altering proportion to play around with the size of a compostion is pretty simple once the image is scanned into Photoshop.

I came up with a couple of versions of my image, neither was exactly perfection though. The drawback with this process of sizing up from a sketch is that I lose the subtleties of human error that occur when drawing freehand. Beautiful things are often flawed in some way, it’s the flaw which sparks that little bit of magic and makes the thing unique.

Nevertheless I’ve started a new drawing. Something I can get involved with over the next few weeks I hope. And at the back of mind something is simmering away…another drawing based on this same image. But I think I’ll be making that drawing freehand.

Blogsplash

2010-03-01T09:00:00.002Z

Today is a special blog entry. Author, poet and blogger Fiona Robyn is publishing her novel Thaw on-line in its entirety as a blog. The novel takes the form of a diary narrated by its central character, Ruth.

I think this is a great idea and wish Fiona good luck with her new venture.

So here's the first page of Thaw.

THAW, BY FIONA ROBYN

MARCH 1

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

To read the next installment (published tomorrow), simply click HERE and enjoy!

If you can't wait for tomorrow's installment, you can buy the entire novel at Amazon UK or The Book Depository if you’re in the US/elsewhere.

The past repeating

2010-02-26T18:02:00.007Z

Today's been one of those strange days when for all your will to get down to some work nothing seems to get done.

I messed around this morning with a couple of new composition ideas (which I'll blog about later), but have been dogged all day by this steady feeling of dissipated energies.

Then, returning from a shopping trip to my local Asda, I stuck my headphones on and spent an hour or so making these two self portraits.

I really wanted to be as honest as possible in these drawings. I've noticed lately certain changes in my appearance; age, bad diet, a combination of things has altered my jawline and I wanted to capture this, and other subtle changes.

The first drawing, though conscientiously done, is nice but nothing more. I've drawn myself so often over the years that it's difficult not to become mechanical when copying from life.

And copying is an impulse I really have to fight if I'm to make a good drawing.

In this first drawing I still look like the old me. It's a bit flattering I suppose, though I look miserable as usual, despite the fact that I was enjoying listening to XFM.

The second drawing was not as easy as the first. I was making marks with the 4b pencil but something failed to happen. I'm pretty good at getting a likeness and what was appearing on the page just didn't look like me. There was desperation, a sadness in the eyes and mouth, even the shape of the face seemed flabby and loose. Then something very strange happened. I began to see my Nan's eyes (my Mum's Mum) instead of my own on the page. My Nan died in 1986, when I was 19. I saw her dying in hospital and it affected me very deeply at the time. After she died (she lived with us during the last few months of her life, though I was only told that she had terminal cancer the night she finally left our house for the hospital) I began to see her face in mine. The same thing happened 4 years ago when my Dad died. I felt as if my Nan, then my father, had entered my body and a little bit of me had been squeazed out and that they were now inside me. I don't know why I should feel this way, maybe it's part of grief? Maybe these resemblances were there all the time, but the absence of the 'scaffold' of the other person, makes the resemblance all the more noticeable?

Eventually as I drew my Nan's melted away and there was my own face. Not exactly as I look in the mirror, but me in a deeper sense. This has never happened to me before in a drawing. It seems quite a spiritual thing, despite the matter of fact way it happened.

DRIP DRIP DRIP

2010-02-25T14:38:00.016Z

As I suspected last week when I finished PW PW 2001 I've now slumped into a state of picture limbo. I've been going through my photographs and making drawings from the PC screen, and I've planned a drawing which I've stretched the paper for, prepared the paper with a wash of gesso and white gouache, but I still feel limbo-fied.

I've had my Long Mossy Tree drawing professionally framed. It's the first time I've ever had this done (apart from a competition I came second in when I was 18, then my artwork was framed as part of my award). The fee was reasonable and it was done within a week by The Framer's Gallery in Wolverhampton.

But my main artistic aim at the moment is to settle my fractious brain. I've picked up a few old pieces and am attempting to resuscitate them...

...but really I need to get stuck into something I can feel whole heartedly obsessed with. I'm no good at multi-tasking, despite all I hear about how 'women' are supposed to be. I can juggle if I need to, most people can, but I'm happiest bedding down with one task and throwing my all into it. That's when I'm most comfortable.

Enjoying listening to Radio 7's repeats of Baldi, they're intelligent and entertaining detective stories, but what I really love about them is David Threlfall's voice which has a soothing quality that makes me feel quite comforted.

Two Exhibitions, One Movie and a Hill Fort

2010-02-21T20:40:00.005Z

I handed my 2 pictures in yesterday for the West Midlands Open, a quick and efficient process. The guy who took my pictures kindly positioned 2 rubber cushions to protect the bottom of my picture frames, which I thought was a very thoughtful touch. When I was there someone was delivering an enormous piece with the aid of a horse trailer! The huge Gas Hall was already teeming with pieces, I'm really looking forward to seeing this exhibition.

Afterwards G and me went to see the good looking but pretty vacant Wolfman. The whole thing dripped with Hammer Horror style, it was a veritable homage, but I've never seen anything as funny as the fight between the 2 werewolves at the end.

We also managed to fit in a trip to the Ikon where we joined a host of other art spectators shuffling around in the darkness for the film installation On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies. To be honest I didn't really get a lot out of this, though it was amusing to see how people cope with being plunged into darkness where we shuffled, edged, minced and drifted around like 'other astronomical bodies'.

I enjoyed Clare Rojas's exhibition We They, We They, particularly the installation upstairs in which Clare Rojas's bright folky images are collaged together on the walls to create an effect that reminded me of a chapel or church. In another room a multitude of small folky pieces were hung from cloak pegs. Some of these are illustrations to her children's book 'Pidgy' a copy of which you can see in the Resource Room. The artist’s folk-art embellished banjos which hang from the walls of the Tower Room are an amusing, quirky touch.

The photos on this page are all from today's jaunt to Old Oswestry Hill Fort in Shropshire, which looked beautiful in the snow. We had intended to visit Chirk Castle for the snowdrops but adverse weather conditions meant this had to be cancelled. We did however catch a glimpse of Wales under snow in all its dour, frowning beauty.

SLOW MO

2010-02-18T14:15:00.009Z

I'm really trying to finish PW PW 2001, probably trying too hard to finish it if i'm honest, but I have another deadline I want to make and I'm aware that within a few weeks my time will be constrained by my having taken a second part-time job.

The more I think about developing my artwork (I haven't really attacked it with anything like this much serious intent for many, many years) I realise how many shortcomings I have - I'm embarrassed at how naive I still am about the business side of art, I'm still like a dog with a bone, running with my creativity locked between gritted teeth hoping the rest of the world doesn't catch up with me and take my precious thing away.

Last night I made a few notes on my pocket pc about where I'm going with my grafitti drawings. I've taken photographs of grafitti (on walls, statues, trees) for years now, I've kept meaning to do 'something' with them, but it wasn't until about 5 years ago that I made my first grafitti tree drawing and last year when I began to develop this further. I'm really so slow at developing anything, despite the effort and the time I put into things I just seem to function at a very slow creative metabolic rate (if that makes sense). I must always have been this way, because I remember my art teacher, Mr Trafford, saying something along the lines of me being a slow developer, and my English Lit' teacher (Miss Warren) saying this also. I guess it's part of my psychology. I'm a slow mo.

Been laughing at the Goons while I worked this morning and still haunted by images and themes from the consistently wonderful Mad Men, which is one of the few things I watch religiously on television. Mad Men is perfect on every level -visually, dramatically, and certainly the writing is pure bliss managing to incorporate drama, plot intrigue, subtlety and depth of character, psychology and social change. It's pure art.

Roots & grafitti
What/who we are, what we come from, how we attempt to make our mark/express ourselves
The tangible natural/physical world
The intangible world of aspiration

YOU'RE BEING FRAMED

2010-02-17T15:46:00.016Z

Today I delivered my long mossy tree drawing to a picture framer. I've never had a picture professionally framed before as I've managed to find ready made frames fairly cheaply for my drawings, but this latest drawing is such an eccentric size I just can't find one 'off the peg'. It'll be ready in about 10 days, hopefully in time for the deadline I have in mind for it.

I've got to deliver my 2 pieces for the West Midlands Open this weekend. The largest of the two is almost A1 in size, so I had to dig out my old A1 folio, which I haven't used for mmmmm years. I had a surprise when I opened it, as this drawing was taped to the inside.

I think I made this drawing in about 1995 or 6. I hadn't made any drawings for some time, and then there was a space of several years following this date before I began to make my pen and ink drawings. It's a (rather flattering) self-portrait drawn in charcoal and Conte crayon. I've made quite a few self-portraits over the years ever since my teenage years, partly because I always used to enjoy drawing people, people interested me, but I knew so few people and I was (am) shy so finding subjects has always been difficult for me. It's always been the usual suspects for me I'm afraid, my parents or myself.

These pieces are from the period 1988 - 1990. During 1988-89 I worked in our veranda whilst subsisting on an Enterprise Allowance Scheme as a Fine Artist. Thinking about it now my naiveté (stupidity I would even go as far as calling it) astounds me. I had no idea what I wanted to do with these pieces. I was like a dog running with a bone. I was an artist and that was all that mattered.

I wonder now if I'm really any more savvy or 'grown up' despite being 20 years older. Maybe I just haven't got that gene.

I don't remember when this last piece was done, but it looks so lame to me. I don't know why I kept it. It's gone now, anyway.

SNOWDROP WEEKEND

2010-02-14T20:05:00.008Z

It's been a snowdrop weekend for me and G, yesterday we drove to Dudmaston and today the lovely Colesbourne Park Gardens in the Cotswolds. Colesbourne Park is a private garden famous for its snowdrops, with many, many varieties both on display and for sale. Some of these are rare and costly, the most expensive snowdrops on sale there cost £40! The garden featured on Gardener's Question Time on Friday, when Pippa Greenwood visited. They also offer snowdrop study days, which are very popular. The gardens, which donate money raised from the open days to charity, are open from the last week of January to the end of February, which is the main snowdrop season.

On the way back we took a diversion to visit Notgrove Long Barrow, an English Heritage site which lies beside the busy A436. The Cotswolds is full of these ancient sites, many of which are open to view for free courtesy of English Heritage and Gloucestershire County Council. Although there's nothing spectacular about Notgrove Long Barrow you can clearly see the busy network of interconnecting chambers beneath the undulating earth and it's possible to catch a moment of stillness and awe at the age of this site, the fact that it has survived all these centuries, and that for just a few minutes it's possible to connect across the centuries with a past civilisation.

The second of my Tete-A-Tete drawings. Nothing much has happened to my bulbs yet, mysteriously dormant in their little portion of earth.

TETE A TETE

2010-02-11T17:09:00.015Z

I haven't had such a fruitful day today, so I'm consoling myself by devouring the remainder of my Christmas Maltesers. I love the box design, which is beautifully festive. I think it was the same design they used last year. I wish I could think of a reason to hold onto the box when the last Malteser has gone, but I can't think of a use for it.

The problem with today was I just couldn't empty my head of various worries, obsessions and hassles enough to concentrate on my drawing. I know I'm trying to squash too much into my days before my time becomes 'challenged' by other commitments, I'm beginning to feel desperate and this is NOT good for my creative work.

I've made an error in judgement with this drawing. I've inadvertently slotted an extra foot or so into the height of the tree and now everything at the bottom is stretched so it throws all of the perspective out. Maybe I could blame it on my astigmatism, like certain experts do for El Greco?

Because I wasn't too happy with my drawing I flailed around the rest of the afternoon feeling lost. I finally finished messing up a piece I started a few weeks ago (another failed experiment) and was so disgusted with the results that it's now nestling in a textural heap at the bottom of my waste paper bin.

Then I dug out this coloured pencil piece I began late last year. I liked it at the time actually, but then a rejection of a coloured pencil drawing winded me of my confidence and I haven't had the courage to go back to coloured pencil since. I'm experimenting now with adding pen and ink to the colour. And then a bit of colour back to the pen and ink. I don't know how it'll turn out. Might join the other thing in the bin, who knows?

Yesterday was better. In a fit of Springful thinking I bought a 99p pot of 'Tete-a-Tete' daffodils from M&S and began drawing them. This is what I produced last night.

The drawing took a couple of hours to do (why do I work so slowly?) with a 45 intermission for the latest episode of Mad Men. Which is as glorious as ever.

My last Maltseser!

A journey into the dark of heartness...

2010-02-10T17:08:00.013Z

Yesterday I spent my lunch hour in the dark at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. I'm always a little lost in the new wing, although it's very fine architecturally the doors to the various exhibitions are not clearly indicated and you never quite know what's going to be on the other side.

Entering Shona Illingworth's film installation Balnakiel, you first peer into pitch blackness. Gradually your eyes adjust to see a series of white arrows on the floor, following these arrows you find yourself pushing through a black curtain into more darkness. At this point you might become worried, as the did people who entered the exhibition a few minutes after me with cries of 'what kind of a place is this! It's too dark!' But persevere, because the mystery is part of the pleasure.

The sound reaches you first, a vivid soundtrack weighted with drama; a military jet spreads a contrail of noise through the darkened gallery, a patchwork of voices, discordant snippets all of which build to repeated and often emotionally affecting crescendos while images pan and shift of a bleak yet beautiful landscape; seen from the air or from the multi-windowed control tower of a military base, silver clouds or the eerie, geologically ancient sea battled landscape of Balnakiel, a village on the North West tip of Scotland.

Shona Illingworth has created a film and soundscape of this remote Scottish village in the midst of a noisy, densely populated Black Country city - a wonderful disorientating and affecting piece of art that takes the viewer (or the artistic explorer) by surprise. For me the experience was so vivid that I lost literal time. Peering at my watch by the screen-light I realised that I had stayed much longer than I had thought and had to hurry out and back to the office, to a world so grey that it has to be lit by fluorescent tubes even on a sunny February afternoon.

The exhibition, which runs until 1 May 2010, is one of the most effective and affecting pieces I've seen in a long time. I'll certainly be taking this journey again.

Sudden and brief, snow this afternoon...

...while working on my current pen and ink piece, PW PW 2001...

...and listening to this excellent play on Radio 4.

A NICE SURPRISE

2010-02-07T11:15:00.006Z

G drove me back up the M6 yesterday to see the Waterside Open. It's a varied exhibition which includes photography, surprising to me as this is often excluded from Opens. The emphasis was on kitsch pop arty type work, of which there were several very nice examples. I particularly liked an endearingly garish kitsch piece by Lisa Ashcroft. Other pieces in the pop art vein included paintings by Nichola Brockelmann andGemma Parker . There was a strong emphasis on crafts with some striking ceramic and 3d pieces and plenty of mixed media work. My favourite piece was Emma Louise Lloyd's open book with its intricately carved surface that reminded me of a relief map of a mountain range. I like work in which one thing is transformed into another, altering books is a whole genre in itself. This artist's work is an excellent example, no surprise that it won the Best In Trafford Award.

Third prize at the exhibition went to Steven Proudfoot who has 2 paintings on show, both very nicely executed slices of life that reminded me of stills from a 1960's kitchen sink drama. First prize went to Deborah Newbold's sculpture, this artist's playful/thought provoking title (from memory it's something like 'Death is not an end but the begining of a journey') made me think of Damien Hirst's shark.

I was slightly disappointed that my drawing wasn't hung in the main Lauriston Gallery but in the less obviously glamorous Gallery Bar, the gallery to the right as you enter the main doors of the Waterside Arts Centre, opposite reception. Huge windows take up the entire wall of one side of this long room facing the wall where the majority of the exhibits hang. Placing glazed work opposite a window obviously causes problems. When I visited it was sunny and many of the glazed pieces were difficult to see because of reflections. In the Gallery Bar however there are many excellent pieces, including some colourful embroidery by Doreen Caldwell with beautiful and intricate textures, and two lovely colourful floral watercolours by Gillian French which were hidden away in the corner behind another exhibit.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see that my picture had been Highly Commended, and as only a handful of other pieces at the exhibition were Highly Commended I'm extremely pleased that the judges felt that my picture should share this honour.

All in all a very enjoyable visit to a lively and accessible art centre.

The wintry photographs on this page were taken at the National Trust owned Dunham Massey, just a few miles from Sale.

THIRD TIME LURGI

2010-02-05T18:05:00.011Z

For the third time since November I'm down with a cold. Not too bad this time, just doing my best (now unseasonal) Rudolph impression and making Tyrozets my very very best friend.

It's been a weird week though. Ups and downs that include an extremely sick auntie, a lost (and thankfully found) flashdrive and a new part-time job offer. I already work part-time in an office and am extremely protective of my spare 'creative' time at the end of the week (I choose to work part-time in order to devote regular time to my writing or artwork), but stubborn debts that just won't go away despite years of me attempting to be conscientious call for drastic action. I'm just worried about losing my creative time, and energy, especially as at the moment my visual artwork seems to be developing at a pace. Plus, although it's been very much on the backburner, I've actually completed my novel at last. I suppose I'll just have to be more disciplined and frankly brutal with my time while I'm working full-time in non-creative paid employment. Creativity is so important to me (in whatever form I'm compelled to peruse it), but the millstone of debt has become such a negative force in my life. It has to be dealt with somehow.

I've finished my long mossy tree drawing. I'm quite pleased with parts of it and have ideas for new pieces to springboard to from this one, though I'm stumped for a title for it yet. I do have a destination in mind however, just have to keep my fingers crossed for that one and perservere.

Here's something very very old, it's actually from my Degree show (back in 1988!!!). I studied graphic design but specialised in illustration during my final year. This was my interpretation of the horoscope type Leo (which just happens to be my own).

And here's something very new, the beginings of a new drawing. It's one of my graffiti trees and will be called PW PW 2001.

Gosh, isn't it dingy today?

2010-01-29T15:00:00.012Z

I found it hard to get going with my drawing this morning. Every week I set myself an aim, this week's was to finish my long mossy tree drawing. All was going well until this morning when I sat down and I guessed straight away that I'd struggle today. I have this creeping fear sometimes that makes it difficult to work. I've had this both with my drawing (not so often) and my writing (often), basically I get so indecisive that eventually I end up faffing about for hours and the precious day trickles away.

Luckily today music came to my aid. I've loved music all my life; classical, rock, indie, folk. When I was in my teens and twenties I was heavily into the music of my parents' generation - the 50's and 60's. Now I'm in my 40's I suppose you could say I'm into the music my kids would be into (if I had any). I've never believed in pigeon holing anyone. I hate to be categorized myself (when people try to do it, they invariably get it wrong) and I do my best not to do 'unto others' as I'd rather not be done to myself. It goes against my grain to see anything as simple. If I hear one other person say 'women can't read maps but they are naturally caring...' I'll scream...

I've continued preparing some paper for a drawing I want to make. It's another experiment, and a development of the drawings I made last week of my Poinsettia.

Here's the last drawing I made, before it began shedding leaves and curling up at the edges like a well read paperback.

And here is something very old.

In fact, I've no idea how old it is as in those days I don't seem to have either signed or dated my work. It's an old oil painting of my Mom, and judging by the settee (the one before the one we have now) it could have been done anytime pre 20 years or so ago. As you can see from the impasto I was heavily into Van Gogh at the time.

Van Gogh is still one of my creative heroes. His writing, like his art, is full of compassion, endeavour and honesty. Three things I value very highly indeed.

Seeing the Van Gogh letters exhibition at the Royal Academy is definitely on my 2010 to do wish list.

WEST MIDLANDS OPEN 2010

2010-01-28T17:01:00.006Z

I've had some wonderful news today. I've had two pieces accepted for the 2010 West Midlands Open Exhibition to be held at Gas Hall, which is part of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I'm really proud to have work accepted for this exhibition. I studied art and design at Birmingham Polytechnic and the museum and art gallery was a place I've visited again and again over the years, so for me this is a very high achievement.

I've been working hard these past few weeks at my long mossy tree drawing, which I based on a section of Wood From The Trees (using the original photograph for reference). I'm pleased with some aspects of it, mainly because it has opened up ideas of how my work might progress, though I find it difficult to wean myself away from what I find easy to do. Good art takes courage, and sometimes, especially the early part of the week when I'm tired out by my day job, all I want to do is listen to the radio and console myself with some comfy cross hatching. Most of the experiments I've started over the past year have ended up in my 'not sure what to do with these' pile (the largest pile, of course), but then again, in today's positive frame of mind, I'm thinking that maybe just because the experiments don't physically go anywhere maybe they do filter in through my thought processes somewhere and colour the way my work progresses.

Here's where I am with my long mossy tree anyway. Almost finished I think.

Too much thinking about work is never good for me, I need to put my thinking into action, so instead of just doodling and writing in my sketchbook, which doesn't always amount to much, as you can see...

…I've been going through my folders of photographs on the PC and making sketches with notes from the images on screen before printing a few photographs on my inkjet printer to make drawings from later.

CREASES AND DETAIL

2010-01-18T19:47:00.005Z

I've just managed to do a little more work this evening on my 'long mossy tree' study from 'Wood From The Trees'. I'm struggling a little to bring the disparate parts of the foreground together, plus I realise that I've made a mistake about the width of the composition as a whole and the scale of the foreground tree, but I'll keep plugging on, for a while at least.

And here's a quick Poinsettia study I made last night. It was an experiment really, firstly I'd pre-prepared some textured paper by crumpling it first then coating it with gesso to fix the creases, I really wanted a weathered look to work on, plus I had been playing around with pre-preparing paper by creasing it in a variety of ways. More about that later.

I made this drawing with a mixture of lightfast fine markers and coloured pencil (from the sadly defunct Signature range).

I kind of half like the effect, but really I need to try another drawing or a couple to get the kind of effect I was looking for.

TO SALE AND BACK VIA HOBBYCRAFT WORLD

2010-01-16T21:07:00.010Z

It was back up the motorway again today to collect my unselected work from the Waterside Arts Centre. While I was there I took time to visit the last day of an exhibition of paintings by Walter Kershaw, one of the selectors on the panel of the Waterside Open.

I really enjoyed this exhibition, which was my first visit to the spacious and well lit Lauriston Gallery. Walter Kershaw created the largest industrial mural in Europe for Trafford, and there are studies and photographs recording this on display here, as well as many large and small scale landscapes plus several paintings from his extensive travels. I was intrigued by one painting of a group of young women signed by a female name which appeared to be an anagram of Walter Kershaw. I could have asked the artist himself, as he stood nearby chatting with a small group of people. This added to the pleasant, laid back atmosphere in the gallery, which was very busy with interested folk of all ages.

My particular favourites were a tall painting of high rise apartments which was full of colour and skewed perspective, and a painting on hardboard of cooling towers, which had some really interesting shapes, almost abstract whilst being firmly rooted in the figurative. There were also some lovely snowscapes, which reminded me of how gorgeous everything looked this time last week when G and I drove up through the winter wonderland to deliver my drawings.
Nearly all of the snow was gone today. Just a few greying lumps lingered here and there, the remains of melted snowmen I assumed.

The canal outside the Waterside Art Centre was still frozen, but this time rather than being pristine and pure, the ice had just the opposite effect emphasising the grimmier aspects of everyday living; cigarette butts and drinks cans sat on the greyish crust, along with an array of yellow golf balls!

Last night I made another drawing of my Christmas Poinsettia. I'm quite pleased with this one, which inspired me to buy some more pens from Hobbycraft at Bridgmere, where G kindly took me on the way home. I'm suddenly filled with inspiration and new ideas for the spring. Won't jinx it though by typing it out loud as I seem to have done with so many ideas before, or like golf balls on the ice they might just sink slowly into oblivion!

Poinsettia

2010-01-15T11:37:00.009Z

I've been making an effort to draw from life lately, as a means of supporting the work I do from my own photographs. Here's one rather stern self-portrait (looking down at ones' self in the mirror is never the most flattering angle).

The other is a drawing I made last night while watching a repeat of QI (definitely a comfort blanket), it's of the little Poinsettia I bought 4 weeks ago from Tesco. It’s kind of a Bonsai Poinsettia and I expected it to last barely through Christmas, but it's still going strong, despite a few singed leaf tips. I over watered it at first, but now I just keep the soil moist and it seems quite happy. I suppose the rising heat from the radiator mitigates the effect of the icy draft from the window frame, and the plant seems to like it.

I stayed up late last night resting my arm and hand to watch Revolutionary Road. I've wanted to see this film since it came out, but oh, it’s so grim! Enjoyable though. The period detail is immaculate, in the same way that Mad Men is. DiCaprio and Winslet are both so wonderful to watch, the camera loves them. But their emotional cut and thrust doesn't quite match the mesmerising quality of Burton and Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I'm now going to lunch on some Christmas Chocolate and to hell with the consequences!

WATERSIDE OPEN 2010

2010-01-14T18:35:00.014Z

I was very pleased to receive an acceptance of a drawing for the 2010 Waterside Open, to be held at the Lauriston Gallery in Sale. For one thing, I'm relieved that I didn't beg G the favour of driving me up to Manchester last Saturday for nothing (we'll be paying a return visit this Saturday, as I had one drawing not accepted - think 'glass half full' Kay, I keep telling myself). I'm really pleased though, especially as this week hasn't been wonderful for me. I've been in some pain with a problem with my right hand, which yesterday erupted into a huge lumpy bruise (swollen knuckes, painful joints and skin that looks like orange peel with a rash). I'm doing my best to work through the pain though. If I can't do my artwork, or hold a pen to write, I don't know what I'll do.

I've been enjoying the snow his week, even though it makes commuting difficult. This is one of the few times I'm glad I can't drive. I don't envy all those stressed, snowbound drivers digging themselves out of parking spaces, turning over frozen engines.

The beauty of snow touches me every time. I thought today that with all those contrasts of black on white, it's the closest I get to walking into one of my drawings. Last Saturday was actually a gorgeous day, and after G and I dropped off my drawings we called at Tatton Park for lunch, and to glory in the magic.

I've made a little more progress on my re-working of 'Wood From The Trees'.

New and Old

2010-01-08T17:56:00.017Z

Firstly, two posthumous 'happy bithdays' - Elvis Presley and my Nan, two formative figures of my childhood. I lost my Nan almost exactly 24 years ago next month and I still miss her. Love to you Nan, wherever you are.

I've begun another drawing based on the mossy trees photograph, the one on which I based the drawing I finished earlier this week. In that drawing I left large areas of the foreground trees as white space and now I want to make a drawing that explores the texture and patterns of the moss more thoroughly.

I also like the figurative presence the trees in my drawings are taking on, almost in lieu of people or dramatic actors. As I began working on this drawing I started thinking how my rendering of texture and pattern often becomes stylised, and how I might play around with this for decorative effect. As a student I loved using collages of sweet wrappers and crumpled or torn paper, over working the rough texture with pastels and ink. I'm wondering now if this is something I might incorporate into my drawings. So far my attempts at adding colour to my drawings haven't been very successful, or the results haven't been what I've wanted. Adding colour to my pen and ink drawings definitely takes something away. I like the drama and the crispness of black and white and colour only seems to dilute this.

I began my new drawing yesterday, though I was already pondering a drawing of this design when working on the first one. I didn't stretch the paper this time, only stuck it to the plywood support with masking tape. I treated part of the paper with a thin wash of clear gesso mixed with white gouache, which gives a nice gritty and crisp surface to work on. As I laid down my initial pencil marks it struck me that it might also provide a nice surface for a pencil drawing. I've an idea for such a drawing, but it involves sitting in an open doorway and it's too cold for that at the moment!

I've also worked a little more on this old drawing of a Cornish harbour scene. Incredible to believe I began it last decade! One of these days I might finish it.

Finally, there was a touching obituary of Craigie Aitchison on Last words this afternoon. Although I don't know much about his work, his was a very distinctive style and by the sound of it he was quite a colourful character. How I envy people who can just be themselves without any constraints of self-consciousness or worrying about pleasing others. Just being 'yourself' - it's truly a gift.