Collage with architecture

Crail Collage,
Mixed media collage on board x3
each 18x26 cm

Last weekend I had started to try out how small and complex mixed media collages would work with townscape scenery. The approach to make tissue paper bond with wide open spaces seems to work quite well, so I thought I'd try and see how well it works with some of my sketches of narrow cobbled streets, quaint houses and a scenery which seems to call much more for a tight drawing or at least wash and pen approach.

I seem to have been moving to smaller paintings: while before a lot of the pastels were around 70x50 cm, much of the mixed media works took place on smaller formats: 30x40 cm, or 30x30 cm. Part of that move was down to me seeing them simply as try-outs and studies. Another part was trying deliberately to sort out complex compositions to something simpler and tighter - small formats seem to enforce some discipline in that sense.

Stairs,
Mixed media collage on board
18x26 cm

So, these three mixed media collages are pretty small: about 26x18 cm or 10x8". With such small format I was somewhat apprehensive if the architectural scenes would work - in particular with the collage and mixed media - if anything these would loosen the painting rather than tighten it. It took several rounds and layers of crayons, tissue paper, acrylics, gouache, oil pastels, and ink. But I thinks they are pretty much done now? Or aren't they?

BTW: Casey, many thanks for suggesting these as a subject to work up - otherwise, I probably wouldn't have gone back to them so soon! And, these are for the PIF which I'll post out once I'm back from Germany.

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Favourite buildings

It's photographs not pastel sketches today. Back since yesterday, I've just downloaded my photos onto the computer. Besides the sketches and relevant reference photos, there are a many of one of my favorite buildings. It's the St Marien Kirche, a church right in the centre of the small town of Uelzen. Built in the c13th in a style known as northern German brickstone gothic (beware of literal translations again!), it's proportions - plump and wide with a tall solid bell tower - always made me stop, wander around, look up and all around, just to start all over again.

There is something with its proportions that give it solidity and elegance at the same time. I was looking for some good websites, but all I could find were about church services and Christmas carols... which I will just give a miss I think.

With plenty of visits to the town, I took my camera with me on the last day - but really, a sketchbook would have been much better, and I need to remember that for the next time I'll be going. Have a look for yourself:

More memories

My parents had bought a derelict farmhouse when I was 13 and we moved to this village where over the next years my dad with various help from all sides would rebuild the house and various outbuildings. Soon after we finally moved into the renovated building in 1989, my parents were set on taking down the glorious chestnut tree that has been there for ages and in (sad) anticipation I painted this one:


Watercolour on paper, 40x30cm

What happened next wasn't that the tree disappeared completely but instead was rather harshly cut back. However, 17 years on, it's grown back happily - and as you can see, too, the barn had received a facelift in the meantime too. In fact, my dad is now on the final building - a washhouse and storage building that is struggling to keep its roof.


Pen, Neopastel II in sketchbook, 21x28cm