Aspö, Sweden
Holiday watercolour sketches hastily made between the wonderful exertions of wild swimming. Missing being there already!
Paintings
Celery
This isn’t quite finished.
I tried applying the white highlights to leafs and reflective glass but ended up with smudges as the paint below was still too wet after 24hrs of drying. A rookie mistake really. The whites became green and grey smudges and not the bright highlights intended.
However I’m learning some of the ways to structure these kinds of Still Lifes and paintings more generally. The lines that order and proportion the canvas, the location of the vanishing point and position of objects are critical considerations before commencing. I now realise they cannot be left to chance.
So in this painting the order comes from the grey square of the rear wall, the vanishing point of the table cloth below the lip of the vase, the water almost level with the eye, and the celery fitting within the remaining frame of canvas. These are simple satisfactions.
Tottenham Art Class
Bathroom bedroom
Bits of this larger oil painting work and others don’t. I found myself endlessly trying to repaint the bedlinen, to get the light and shade of the folds correct but have stopped as I was getting nowhere. It was also a fiddle, having to lean into the middle of a wet canvas to describe this detail. If I was doing this again perhaps this is where I should have started.
The other difficulty is straight lines. I’m learning that a smudge to indicate a door’s panelling or the shape a book on a shelf perhaps can work. This kind of inaccuracy is difficult having spent years as an architect always drawing straight lines.
Some of the colour and tone is good along with the reflective light but I know I can do better. The next oil painting will be from a day of life drawing which I’m looking forward to.
Five Lemons
Self portrait
Some progress. I rushed the clothing and background where the tone and colours are not right. The earlier versions were better.
Self portraits
This is the second oil painting I’ve tried since I was at school. With the encouragement of Andy Pankhurst at the Royal Drawing School it was the obvious progression to learn how to paint. I’m learning much about the new media: better colour retention and the ability of the wet paint to be reworked.
Below is a sequence of other attempts at trying to capture myself. This is difficult and raises many questions. Do I wear my glasses to be able to see what I’m doing? Do I take them off so I can see my face and eyes properly? As I concentrate my eyes freeze staring at my own reflection – can I try to hold a smile?
Tottenham Art Class
An evening of quick drawing of 5 and 20min sessions. Good to be back in the class with a great model, Father Christmas!
Towards Walberswick
This is the fourth time I’ve tried to capture this view. The colours look too bright, as if I’ve applied my recent colour theory tuition to the extreme. As a reminder, please see the earlier versions below:
Summer School: Life Painting
I’ve just concluded a week’s painting at the Royal Drawing School. It was another excellent course tutored by Andy Pankhurst introducing me to colour theory, temperatures and tone, subjects I vaguely knew about but had never learnt how to apply or understand.
The challenge was to paint a single pose in three days after two preparatory days with other life models to explore figure drawing and painting. It was hard but very rewarding. I learnt about Jean Antoine Wattau, a 17th century French artist, the power of Phthalo Blue pigment and the wonderful work of Euan Unglow, a 20th century British painter.
Below is some of my preparatory work which shows my development during the intensive five days.
Art from a Bicycle 