Black and white to colour

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.

One brief cry of thunder...

...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.

CREASES AND DETAIL

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.

SICKNESS AND HEALTH

I've done no work this week as I've been grounded by a heavy cold. Now, listless and with a head that feels as if it's been stuffed with newspaper, I'm feeling depressed and dull.

This morning I wandered into the spare room where I keep most of my art materials, and the sight of them cheered me up instantly.



I love art materials. I had a poem published earlier this year that was inspired by them, among other things.

In Love With Materials

I am in love with materials
that never produce a thing; kiss the pencil,
bless the paper, the scented pigment
the icon of the paintbrush.

Some strange appeal, to interact
with these things without an idea
of what I am doing, this desire
undoes the artist, the actor with the paintbrush.

On a raft of coloured pencils
the sensual river, flesh
and wood enact their own masterpiece;
to safely love. To be fooled without consequence.


I've had good and bad news this week. I entered 2 pictures in the RBSA Open Exhibition. One pen and ink drawing (which was accepted) and one of my new coloured pencil pieces (which was not). I know I should look on the positive side and be glad that the pen and ink drawing was accepted, but I have invested so much time, energy (and money) into developing my colour work that I can't help feeling a bit crestfallen.

Still, I do look forward to seeing the Open All Media Exhibition at the RBSA which runs from 18 November (the private view's this evening) until Christmas Eve.

Judging by the buzz at the gallery on handing in day (Sunday) I expect there were quite a few entries. I saw several extremely high quality pieces. So I was very lucky to have one piece chosen, all said.

Life Becoming Art Becoming Life

They say that life sometimes imitates art. Well that's not surprising, as art and life depend on the same material (physical and imaginative) - physically all materials are atoms compacted, randomly coalescing to create the tangible magical substances we call reality. Only in dreams is that which seems tangible not formed of atoms, and is all that we see or experience not formed of some combination of the chemical, the physical and the downright co-incidental (and lucky for us that co-incidences do happen, otherwise most of this world and everything on it would not be here – so my understanding leads me to believe).





This morning I spent trimming back the shrubs that my mother planted about 9 years ago now in our back garden. She got a little bit carried away back then and now we have a small linear forest of various shrubs lined up against the fence, which they have succeeded in punching holes through over the years with their knotty branches, greedy for space and light.






Once I'd recovered from the exertion of 2 hours pruning, I exchanged secateurs, shears and a fretsaw for paint brushes and pencils. I eased myself in by preparing another couple of sheets of paper for future work, basically stretching then staining previously stretched paper with watercolour. My current infatuation is with Ingres paper, that lovely thick textured paper usually used for pastel painting. A few weeks ago I stretched a few old scraps of Ingres paper I found in my paper hoard behind the bed in the spare room where I do most of my artwork. When I finally got round to working on it I was quite pleased with the results, and the base it gave me to work with a new medium, Derwent's lovely Coloursoft range of coloured pencils. I treated myself to a tin of their full range of 72 pencils as part of the Derwent Prize I was very, very lucky to be awarded back in June. I visited their website, where Derwent very helpfully provide a chart of all of their products lightfast ratings. I printed these off, and am carefully checking the lightfast rating before I use any of the pencils in the set (as I am doing with all the coloured pencils I use). I use only those with a rating of 7 and over, though the note on Derwent's on-line lightfast chart reads; 'values of BW6 and higher are considered to be lightfast'. I am somewhat hung up on the lightfast issue, and need really to investigate this further.





Anyway, last night I began working on another old piece of Ingres paper I had stretched a few weeks ago. It's an offcut and a bit of an awkward shape being very long and thin. I found a photograph of a lovely tree I had printed out, loving the graceful shape of the tree and the contrast of still green foliage and crisp freshly fallen golden leaves on the ground. I mentally cropped this image and sketched out my idea on the long skinny Ingres paper, then began lightly staining the paper with Derwent's Inktense colours (using their lightfast charts again to select only those with the highest ratings). I then laid down a wash of clear water to melt the pencil and waited for this to dry before working a little more with Coloursoft pencils, which have quite a different texture (more waxy and subtle) to the Inktense pencils. This morning I worked with more Inktense pencil, staining the paper again, then I sprinkled some opaque watercolour (Windsor & Newton's Artists range) over the leaves, both golden and green to animate the surface a little more. Then worked further in Coloursoft pencils.



I finished off my work for today by splattering some more opaque watercolour and now, I am waiting for it to dry. The splattering, by the way, is great fun. It's just a matter of mixing up some thick watercolour (or acrylic, though watercolour washes off the fingers more easily) then using a stiff brush (I used a square one) to flick the paint in the areas you want to sparkle.

Autumn Walk

I got my friend G to take me out to the leafy wilds last weekend, the weather was fine and I hoped that there'd be the beginings of a display of autumn colour to photograph for my work. I was a touch disappointed. Apparently, so I've read, this year's weather conditions mean that the trees are shedding their leaves more quickly than usual, which means they'll barely have the chance to change colour before they're fluttering to the ground.

We stood beneath this tree late on Sunday afternoon listening to leaves and seeds dropping all around us. Squirrels darted across the path, timid and forgetful.

I've been working on my own autumn walk this morning. Here's some work in progress.

8th Annual Open Internation Exhibition - UK Coloured Pencil Society

I had a nice morning at the RBSA on Thursday where the UK Coloured Pencil Society are holding their annual exhibition. Although I've visited the Society's website often (and have been astounded at the quality of the work being done in this medium) I've not really seen much coloured pencil work in the flesh before. I have been in love with pencils as actual objects for the past 5 or so years, ever since I bought a box of Signature Watercolour pencils from Heaton Cooper whilst on holiday in the Lake District. My attempts at creating work with them has, however, been somewhat disappointing. My colour work tends to disappoint me, I end up with something, but it's never usually what I would have liked. This, of course, is not such a rare thing (either with literature or the visual arts) and sometimes ending up somewhere completely unsuspected at the end of several hours, days, weeks even of effort can be quite exciting, but my final destinations have tended to be disappointing places.

There was some lovely work on show at the RBSA, experimental work such as Malcom Cudmore's large scale works on board and gesso and a breathtaking portrait by Julie Douglas of the artist's son, I'd never have guessed that this work was in coloured pencil, immaculate and flawless this beautiful large scale portrait seemed had the luminous quality of a watercolour. I loved the immaculate, static sill lives by Peter Woof and the vivid and densly executed coloured pencil paintings by Irina Garmashova-Cawton. Visiters to the exhibition are asked to vote for their favourite piece, and my vote went to Kate Clarke's Old Timer's, One, Two, Free! A virtuoso tryptic portrait of the artist's elderly mother which explores her struggle with Alzheimers Disease. The text that dances and eventually disinstegrates in the sitter's hair perfectly expresses the fragmented thought processes of someone with dementia.

I also loved the beautiful dark and moody coloured pencil paintings by Neil Houghton, immaculately executed in the creamiest and most opaque of pigment, 'Driver of the Great Marquees' is a very fine portrait, and again you would probably not immediately guess that this piece was excecuted in coloured pencil.

Nice touches at the exhibition were copies of the Coloured Pencil Society magazine to browse through, and the opportunity to win works of art by leading exponents of the coloured pencil medium. My favourite was the lushly textural painting by Vera Curnow, founder of the Coloured Pencil Society of America.

It's a shame that there wasn't an illustrated programme to go with this exhibition, I'd have liked a reminder of the work on display here. Instead I'll have to make do with the on-line exhibition here, which features all of the work on display at the gallery.

I had a quick look at the other exhibitions at the RBSA while I was there, on the first floor is A Window On Iran, an exhibition of paintings by three Iranian artists. This is a colouful and striking exhibition with a nice full colour guide and explanatory notes. On the ground floor near the small cafe and reception, are exhibitions of etchings, jewellery, paintings and crafts. I particularly liked Danielle Spelman's ceramics which are colouful and appealingly tactile.

As I said, over the past few years I've really been attracted to the medium of coloured pencil, even if I haven't yet managed to produce anything I'm pleased with. A few years ago I executed a mixed media piece in which coloured pencil played a prominent part, I wasn't too displeased with it until it was rejected from an open exhibition I entered, then I couldn't stand the sight of it!

Something about the photograph I based it on still niggles at me however, and I've begun another piece based on this. I began by laying down large areas of loose flat colour with Inktense pencils, which I freed and fixed with a layer of water. When this had dried, I began working in coloured pencil on top using Derwent Signature (now sadly discontinued) and Caran d' Ache Supracolour and my single Luminance pencil (Bleu De Phtalocyanine) - a free gift with with a magazine from earlier this year. I'd love a set of these pencils, but they're very expensive!

Anyway, here is the piece I made a couple of years ago based on my autumnal photograph.

And here is an early stage of my current work in progress.

In the pink

As well as continuing work with my pure coloured pencil drawing (see the two pictures below), I've begun another piece, which I intend to be in coloured pencil again. This time, I began by sanding down the smooth side of a piece of hardboard, then adding several layers of thin gesso mixed with white acrylic paint, sanding down once again between applications. Then, I gave the board another coat of gesso, this time with a pink tint. On this I began my drawing, in graphite pencil, the gesso has a nice tooth to work on with pencil, though it's difficult not to smudge work in progress by leaning on it. Rather than fixing the pencil drawing with fixative, I gave it another coat of this time clear gesso. This smudged the pencil a little, but I didn't mind that at all as my scene is a watery one, another beach scene. Now the pencil is fixed, I'm going to work on it again, maybe with coloured pencil, or perhaps some more graphite again. This is similar to the way I began my Silver Sands of Morar picture, though I hope this time to produce something a little more refined.

The pink gesso beach, by the way, is again taken from a photograph of the silver sands area of the western Scottish coast. The composition this time is quite abstract, with lots of space. An empty beach, my idea of heaven.

I've also been progressing with a pen and ink drawing I began a few weeks ago, it's another slightly abstract composition, smaller than my gigantic tree drawing of last month. Pen and ink, the way I work with it, is extremely time consuming, an aspect I both love and lose patience with. I love it though, because stippling, hatching and cross hatching, can be extremely relaxing procedures. Before the wrist and back ache sets in, that is!

I've done very little with the revision of my novel since last week, and despite my promise not to chase any more literary projects until I have completed this one, I've found myself tinkering with poem ideas, mainly haiku length, or one draft poems. I can't seem to write much these days however, thinking in words has got a bit frustrating and a bit painful for me. It's at times like these I'm glad that I'm 'Jack of all trades' after all.

But there are so many distractions lately, I’ve launched a Facebook page, something which I wasn’t really that keen on doing because I don’t really like the ‘closed’ network thing, it reminds me too much of playground cliques, but after finding a couple of messages waiting for me on my un-developed Facebook account, I decided to give it a go. I must say it’s a very slick and complex set-up, with so many ways of interacting with groups and other Facebook people (even if you aren’t their friends), there are so many poets on there too! I was very impressed, if not a little anxious and daunted once again by the ‘closed network’ aspect of things. Yet the widgets and the ways of bringing into Facebook other elements of your on-line existence are amazing, my main problem turned out to be how not to let myself get carried away with this highly addictive on-line environment. Hours of fun (and anxiety, if you’re like me).

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING...

I'm keen to find a personal style, perhaps a more distinctive style, for my artwork. Because the only medium I've really worked at with any steadiness over the years is pen and ink, my colour work is lacking in direction and impact.

I'm also aware that I'm lacking any real philosophy in my artwork, and that I don't really have an intellectual approach. I have ideas but they're not really heartfelt enough for me to get obsessive over them, or to really believe in them enough to carry them through.

One idea I'm toying with came about through my photographing work in progress, especially the mixed media pieces I've been doing. At the moment I'm working on 2 very different approaches to a landscape based on a photograph I took of a seaweed strewn beach. Posted here is the mixed media approach, two stages of it plus various detail shots. Today I've been working on another image based on the same photograph but worked in coloured pencil. I've posted work in progress on my Flickr Page.

Whilst I worked today and yesterday I've been listening to Radio 4 Sports Xtra's coverage of the Ashes. I got into cricket in 2005, when the BBC still had TV coverage rights. I watched it with my Dad, who explained the basics to me of this complex game. This year is the first time I've been able to listen to it since Dad died in 2006, I'm enjoying it, but the enjoyment is bitter sweet as it brings back so many memories. I guess this will always be the case.

DRAWINGS

At Wolverhampton Art Gallery at the moment is an exhibition by an artist called Anthony Boswell. Tony and I were students together at Birmingham Poly, so it was really nice to see his work. The exhibition is in a small, well lit area to the left of the main entrance, and the pencil drawings are displayed in an informal way which suits the intimate, domestic subject matter well. None are glazed, but instead they are hung on the wall from bulldog clips, the air of physical fragility this method of presentation suggests mirrors the sombre and fragile subject matter. There is something quite melancholy and slightly claustrophobic about the mostly domestic interiors, my favourites are the drawing of the wedding dressing, and the portrait which is basically the back of someone's head reflected in a mirror. Very subtle. They made me think of the Sickert, Gilman school of English artists from the begining of the last century with a similar quiet intensity. Very nice pencil drawings, nice to see an exhibition of monochrome work for a change too.

Upstairs at the gallery is an excellent exhibition of works on paper, and Tony's one man show complements this nicely.

Detail of work in progress - Coloured pencil drawing of a beach

Black and White

I've been busy getting pictures ready for competitions and open exhibitions I'm hoping to enter. One pen and ink piece I'm just about finishing, based on a photograph I took back in 2004 (5 years ago! Time frightens me) of a Cornish NT garden called Glendurgan, a beautiful sub tropical garden that leads down to the sea.

There's a place in the drawing that troubles me where the detail's got a bit fuzzy and any defining contrast has become lost. I'm thinking of trying to add a bit of definition with white body colour, but I'm afraid of causing more harm than good, so although my deadline is next week, I'm trying not to be too hasty. Once the deed is done there will be no turning back. That's the one thing about pen and ink, you have to get it right first time more or less, it's very difficult to right your wrongs.

I'm ever aware of the lack of colour in my work, and yet at the moment, just as the impulse is to draw instead of write, it is also to work in black and white as opposed to colour. So far my attempts to buck the trend have fizzled out as my enthusiasm fails me. One attempt, the Neolithic barrow I posted last month, is unfinished, though there are things I like about it. Another, below, in coloured pencil, has failed to spark my enthusiasm. Here's the work in progress then, but I'm not promising that I will ever finish it.

A Scottish Diversion

This is the picture I mentioned in my previous post, the one I began in order to divert myself from my Yorkshire picture.

Actually, it's not such a bad idea to have a few pictures on the go at once, it's useful to give yourself some distance from a piece, in order to gain the perspective necessary to judge it more accurately. The Castlerigg picture, for instance, is now looking a touch less impressive than it did last week. Too flat, too smooth, a bit clumbsy.

For the Scottish picture I printed the photograph on my inkjet printer, I had an idea that I'd like to do something that was almost black and white, perhaps to bridge my pen and ink work with the colour work I'd begun doing. So I begun by working on a white gesso base on paper, drawing in 3b pencil. The drawing was a bit lame, and the photograph, though clear, was confusing me. I wasn't doing a very good job of copying it, and this knocked my confidence somewhat. So I painted over the pencil, as had been my plan, in gesso again, made semi-transparent with white acrylic paint with a tint of blue. Then more pencil work again. Okay, but not brilliant. Another coat of gesso, just plain gesso this time, a thin coat just to stop the pencil from coming off on my sleeve and hand. I worked over the gesso and original pencil with coloured pencil, a nice set produced by Derwent, 12 Drawing Pencils, which are produced in earthy colours. They're nice to handle and the pigment feels rich when it goes on, but I'm not sure how lightfast these pencils are. I worry about the lightfastness of materials, and am trying to find out more about the archival properties of the materials I use. It's not something I used to worry about too much, but as I get older I suppose permanence is something which plays on my mind more. A few years ago I invested in a set of Signature coloured pencils, these are advertised as being superbly lightfast, but I'm not certain how coloured pencil, or oil pastel or that matter, would compare to the light fastness of say oil paint? Again, it's something I need to research.

The Scottish beach drawing has had its ups and downs so far, and as it currently stands I'm not too pleased with it. I made a tiny graphite sketch, in order to work out the tonal strengths of the image, and altered the viewpoint of my composition, as I realised that I had over estimated the amount of the photograph I could reproduce on my small piece of paper. I used a pallette knife and acrylic paint, more oil pastel and coloured pencil, as well as a little Indian ink and dip pen in an attempt to add a little crispness to those rocks, but so far I'm still a bit down in the dumps about it. I plan to have one last go at it and then call it a day.

The size of this piece by the way is approx 42cm x 33cm.

Standing Stone Picture almost finished, I think

I'm quite pleased with parts of this picture now. I worked more using oil pastel and Signature and Caran d' ache coloured pencil, mainly Diox Violet, which I dipped in water so it goes on mushy and rich, in the heat of working I did actually moisten the pencil by sticking it in my mouth, but I decided that this might not be the wisest thing to do, health wise.

I made a conscious effort to draw the picture together using tone and colour, in particular the rich reddish purple colour and texture of the heather, which I achieved by using coloured pencil and oil pastel. I was also aware that the 2 diverging pathways could open up the perspective of the piece, this, and the contrast of the pebbles/scree in pencil picked out on barely worked gesso ground against the surrounding almost impasto oil pastel work, are effects and themes which interest me and which I will be exploring in future pictures.

The one area where I'm uncertain and unsatisfied are the distant fields, most of this work was done in coloured pencil, with just a little overlay of oil pastel. I was unwilling to work much in oil pastel in this area, as I didn't want to flatten the picture, but at the same time, I'm not sure if the effect is a little more sketchy than I had wanted. I think I'll put this picture aside now for a short while, turn it to the wall like a naughty child, and check on it later. See how I feel about it then.





Oh, and while I'm here I should give the dimensions of this piece. They are 54cm x 37cm approx.

I thought I'd ruined it

Continuing from my pencil sketch, my next step was to add some colour. I have a portfolio of vivid memories of my brief visit to the North Yorkshire Moors, of texture and the rich purple and yellow ochre hues of the heather and the bumpy, rutted pathways. The poor little digital photographs spat out by my inket printer came nowhere near recreating these, but at least my photo's gave me a something to hang my memories on. Plus, of course, short of getting on a train back up to Yorkshire, there was no way I could recover enough detail from memory alone to put pencil to paper.

So I washed in some colour, using acrylic ink and watercolour. Urgh, I thought, what a disaster!! It's too flat, the composition's too bitty, the double drift of pathway and strewn bolders split the picture in half giving me 2 focal points, neither one of which are particualarly scintilating, I may as well give up now!!!

Feeling a bit desperate, I began to work in oil pastel, referring to the little black and white sketch I'd made when consolidating my 3 photographs into a composition, I realised that I needed to get some tonal order into the painting, to draw it together by finding similar tonal areas throughout the composition in order to give it some substance, some depth, and to stop it literally floating off the page with banality!

I worked on the distant hills with coloured pencil, using coloured pencil to outline the tumble of rocks and the standing stone itself, then using oil pastel I blocked in the darker, heavier areas, largely the purple heather.

It was at this point that I actually began to like what I had produced.