A FEW LEAVES LEFT

As the last few leaves are shaken from the trees I've been attempting to hold onto the beauty of autumn in all its golden prime with my current work in progress.

I'm currently working simultaneously on a few pieces, the first is a second version of a small pencil drawing I made a few weeks ago. I began with a wash of watercolour to block in the basic shapes of the composition then worked a little with Inktense pencils, then the lovely Colourfast pencils (my favourites at the moment).

I wanted to add a little texture to the smooth paper, so I spashed some paint and then some opaque white gesso onto the paper, then added another wash of watercolour over the top of this then worked further over this now bumpy texture.

I like the way the colour snags on those little gesso pimples.

For my second piece I overpainted a picture I'd started a few weeks ago on hardboard. I didn't like it at all so I simply painted over it with gesso and white acrylic thinking I'd begin an entirely new piece, but then I liked the way the previous picture (which I'd begun in watercolour, acrylic and Inktense pencils) bled through the thin gesso layer, so I began drawing the foreground tree with dip pen in Indian Ink.

To enliven the surface, I spottled some watercolour onto the board using a stiff brush.

I'm now working on this nice scratchy spotty surface with my dip pen and indian ink some more.

I quite like this piece, it's got a suitably Gothic feel. I've been listening to lots of Handel lately, as I often do this time of the year. Autumn always makes me feel particuarly Baroque.

Art and Worship

On Saturday and Sunday G took me to Dunham Massey and to Westonbirt in search of some Autumn colour. Comparing the photographs I took this year with last its pretty obvious that this October is much less colourful than 2008. That didn't stop me from filling my SD card with lots of autumnal images however, especially at Westonbirt, where the trees seemed in danger of being outnumbered by dogs and people.


Some people seemed much less respectful of the trees than the dogs though, I saw at least 3 grown men plucking leaves from the beautiful Japanese Maples. Their beauty is fragile enough without us helping them along (helping nature to its grave seems to be a particular human pastime).


Then again, it's the fragility of this autumnal beauty that gives it a deeper resonance, and makes it, like all rare things, all the more precious and poingnant. The last few leaves clinging to the branches are the saddest and the sweetest.



I took a few treasures home with me from Westonbirt and Dunham Massey (all windfalls, of course), including these chestnuts and their pods, which I've been drawing. I love Dunham Massey, I've been there 3 times and always at this time of the year. There's a magical atmosphere particularly in the deer park where the deer seem to have remarkable patience with us interlopers. One fine stag was being very patient on Saturday, lying in the frail late afternoon sunshine surrounding by photographers. They crept towards him, crouched down in the bracken as if they were making an act of supplication. Maybe we haven't progressed so far since the days when cave men recreated the images of deer and bison on the walls of their caves.

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.

Perfectible...

Art (drawing, painting) was a huge part of my early life. I have a degree in Graphic Design (specialised in illustration) from the then City of Birmingham Polytechnic, but I always wrote as well, and this has been the form my creativity has taken over the years.

From time to time I get the urge to do something visual though, often it's tied into the seasonal creativity thing - i.e. at certain times of the year I get specific creative urges, the times when I'm most likely to have the visual urge is spring, and autumn. The obvious reason for this being that simply, I love the transitional seasons - right now I love trees in a blaze of colour, and the strange fungi that are bursting through the mulch of leaves and moss and fallen seeds, nuts and seed pods, these natural phenomenom I find so inspiring. Mostly lately I appease my urge to capture something visually (to capture the moment, to understand something about my own interaction with the world, a childlike interaction that I hope I will never lose) by digital photography. I feel guilty though that I allow my artistic skills, mostly drawing, to atrophy, though the main reason for this is a practical one - there simply isn't the time to do EVERYTHING, to write poetry, to write fiction, to slog at getting these published (to deal with the failure when I don't - dealing with failure is EXTREMELY time consuming) and to express myself visually as well.

I tend to work visually off and on, exhibiting occasionally, mostly at one of the annual RBSA open exhibitions. Still, I'm aware at the moment that I need to pack my life with creativity in order to keep my 'spark' going, and this blog is part of my strategy of doing this.

I'll explain, later...