A very subtle contrast

I'm close to finishing Rhododendron Frame, which is my provisional title for my latest drawing. As usual I'm pleased with parts of it, and not pleased with others. I like the thundery background and the drama of the blossom contrasted with the slightly contorted branches of the rhododendron, but I guessed I'd have problems with the expanse of dead leaves on the left middle ground. It's pretty bland and it's been a struggle to keep forground from sinking into it or being confused with it. And now, I'm fiddling, of course, in an attempt to regain some of the drama of the contrast between ink and paper which has been lost a little partly because of my greasy hand passing repeatedly over the paper, and partly because of various ineptitudes of execution. I have sped along with this one though begining it the first week in March, so at 6 weeks it's almost sketching speed for me.


I depressed myself thoroughly this week by attempting a brilliant idea I had and instantly failing. So, in order to try to keep my spirits boyant, I've begun another pen and ink drawing on my 'behind bars' theme. I am thinking more and more that I must try and stretch myself, or even revisit other media, but it is simply more convenient for me at the moment, with my time constrained by full-time work, to keep ploughing the same, or developing the same, ground.

I began this one by marking in the barbed wire fence in Payne's Grey Acrylic Ink then working the rest of the drawing in Indian Ink (back to Windsor and Newton for this one). The Payne's Grey doesn't really look much different to the black ink though. A very subtle contrast.


I've been listening a lot to the Titanicfest provided by BBC radio this week. The sinking of that great ship of inequalities, of hope and old fashioned Edwardian decorum still fascinates, as much for all that it embodies of the struggles to come within the next few years, as for morbid fascination. Though morbid fascination is, I admit, pretty potent stuff.

PRIVATE

I've just finished Private and here it is...


It's my first exploration of a theme I'm hoping to explore more of fenced in spaces, of areas of abundance restricted or curtailed in some way by human intervention.

Still Water - Near enough finished

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?

Frou Frou

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)

Stiperstones

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.

March brings breezes loud and shrill

...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.

1947 Ford

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

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.

Parasite

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.

The past few weeks

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.

Go under the ivy...

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.

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.

LINES

I'm putting my drawing aside for now. I think it's finished, though this decision is often the most difficult one to make. Starting a new piece is often fretful, I'm addled by choice and fearful that I've made the wrong decision, from then on, if the decision was right, there are ups and downs, sometimes a horrible feeling of panic grips my throat and either makes it difficult for me to keep still (I'm up and down like a Yoyo, fetching a can of pop from the fridge, feasting on my fingernails), or else I freeze and can only sit looking at what I've done. A radio feature becomes so fascinating that I have to turn it up and give it my whole attention, though of course, my eyes are drawn back to the sticky surface of my drawing.


All that's over for this piece, I think. I've decided to leave the white areas of the foreground tree and the two trees at the extreme left and right of the composition white, for a breathing space, compositional silence.

Someone once told me when I was a student that it can be wise to juxtapose a detailed or highly defined area of work with an area that is more loosely worked. In those days my work tended to be abstract or abstracted, but I'm begining to realise how valuable this piece of advice was and how I should bear it in mind when bringing a piece of figurative work to a conclusion.

I'm going to indulge myself now in a Quorn sandwich (garnished with pickled cabbage with a side order of mixed pickles - a feast as welded to Christmas for me as Santa Claus and Handel).

Lines...

...and a blot on the landscape...


Finally, I wish whoever reads my final blog posting for 2009 a very HAPPY NEW YEAR.