Painting the night

Ok.... I did a bit of digging around on

(a) how to paint stars, moons etc... I had been curious about dealing with light sources in dark skies; wondering about mediums to do this in best, etc.
(b) changes in hue, temperature and mood as the sun sets.

I found a bit on each of these, but above all, I stumbled into a lively discussion on WetCanvas on plein air painters who paint by night. Here's a keyword search on the forums with 'nocturne'.

I also found this demo here on the artists' network site

It throws up all sorts of new questions around practicalities of how to paint at night, mix colours, use headlamps etc.

And, then of course, I got reminded of the current exhibition at the MoMA on Van Gogh's Colours of the Night. Brian had not long ago guest edited a review on Casey's Pastelblog.

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889
Oil on Canvas, 74x92cm
MoMA, New York

The MoMA has a great online resource of the exhibition, if you follow the link here.

I've got a couple of sketches of evening scenes that I did over the past few weeks. They are all in ink, and I need some time to play with hues for them. But there are a couple of points on how to develop this. It'll go into my luggage for next week.

Without a horizon...

I got a couple of new books - some on loan, some to keep, and all of them are about landscape/water/seascapes. Perhaps the best to start with is the most recent sketchbook from our Moley Exchange.

The latest addition in Lindsay's 'Maps and Destination' book are two seascapes in oil/coloured pencil by Vivien. I am so pleased to have them for the time being... By now the oils are pretty dry but when I first got a couple of weeks back, they weren't. There's a lot of detail in these sketches: water colour, changes, movement, spray, some rocks.

Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown,
Oil/Coloured pencil in Moleskine 18x14cm
See here for Vivien's own discussion on this entry in her blog
And here for the Moley exchange blog entry

Neither of them has a horizon line. But, structured by lines they are nonetheless. This one has a strong foreground with rock and plenty of spray. Yet, what intrigued me most was the water in the middleground: there's a wave on it's way, not quite built up yet, nowhere near breaking but it's rolling. It seems to me that Vivien's achieved this effect by line work and colour change.

Detail, Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown

Have a look at this detail: Clear linear marks in oil mark the advancing wave; in front of it, thinly applied oils with most of the colour (change) achieved through coloured pencil. It seems so much more still and calm in comparison to the line behind it that keeps moving forward.

So, do other structuring lines take the place of a clear horizon line to help make sense of a painting? Perhaps the horizon is just the most obvious, clear, understood way of demarcating heaven/earth, up/down, inside/outside and also indicate a piece as in fact a landscape?

A piece by August Strindberg that confused me when I first saw it:

August Strindberg, The Wave vii, 1901 Musee D'Orsay

It confused me for its abstract qualities. If it wasn't for the title, I wouldn't have made out 'what' it was. So, it's a landscape, but doesn't allow for easy (presumptious?) reading of such. Writing this, it becomes clear that this is of course nothing new: abstraction is the name of the game, I suppose. By taking it out of easily understood contexts, by verfremden - making it strange/foreign/alien.

As with the Strindberg piece, there is obviously also something about perspective and view point, and I've done some work on changing perspective and viewpoint on the shoreline sketches. Something is fairly straightforward, technical: as in vanishing points, angles and so on.

And, while I was stumped for a bit of what do with my entry in Lindsay's moley, I have a plan: I'll take it travelling with me... maps and destinations need a bit of journey, I think...

Happy birthday, Anni!

For the past few days I've been watching my calendar moving towards 10 October. There are two dates I've remembered since forever: 21 April 1913 and 10 October 1915 - two of my grandparent's birthdays.

Well: today it's my granny's. And as a present, she gets a seascape in mixed media printmaking. She loved travelling - not only did she have plenty of wanderlust but indeed experienced curious and incurable Fernweh - far sickness. She clearly didn't suffer from it, it wasn't an illness but something far better and more delicious than that. On that count I'm glad I'm her granddaughter.

Happy birthday, Anni!

Monotype Für's Fernweh meiner Oma
25x20cm on Tosa Shi paper
Masking, backdrawing, strings, crinkles and other

And another cornfield

...

This morning I finally took out the easel again after a while. I took out one - the only red! - already prepared greyboard (acrylics and pumice powder).

The bulk of the cornfield still kept me wondering - and the comments I got to my earlier request here pretty much went along the lines: yes, something I'd like to know about also.

Ok. My rationale was to do more persistent, stronger lines rights throughout the field, and to do them in acrylics - in highlights and lowlights.

Cornfields, Pastel/Acrylics on board
35x25cm
WIP: stage 1, underpainting

I then split the field into... hm, well,... really into a side view and a top view, trying to construct it somewhat 3d. While that wasn't the view I had IRL, it still seemed an appropriate way to counter the flatness.

Cornfields, Pastel/Acrylics on board
35x25cm
WIP: stage 2, pastels go on

In went a lot of repetitive marks - lines, about an inch long, overlayed and varied across the field.

Cornfields Detail , Pastel/Acrylics on board
35x25cm
WIP: stage 2, pastels go on

For the foreground, I put in much longer lines. Then I went back in to really work on the negative space by adding a lot of dark values in the foreground - to work on the illusion that one could see into the undergrowth.

Cornfields, Pastel/Acrylics on board
35x25cm
WIP: stage 3 foreground

Well, it's not flat anymore. I did prepare two panels with a similar underpainting. With the second one I'm thinking about constructing the field much more obviously 3d in acrylics before I start with the pastels. Would that work?

Things I cannot do

... sounds like the awesome new title for a series of posts - possibly even better than 'Paintings I like'.

While there is plenty I cannot do, the thing that kept bugging me for the past fortnight was - you probably guess right - a field. The field I see from my bedroom, next to garden. It's a corn field. Almost ready to be harvested, the corn sways in the wind, it's silver, purple, orange and green. Above all, it's bulky - well, 2 metres tall or so.

So, it is definitely not a meadow nor is it a grain field; a potato or sugar beet field it is neither. Yet - and here's the irritating bit: I am, for the life of me, not getting it to look like more than a grain field at best, most of the times it's looking like a flat meadow. And it's not that I haven't tried: plenty of sketches at any time of day, with or without sunshine, with or without wind or rain.

I am just not getting it. It's the bulkieness (?) that evades me - so, the field keeps teasing me, C'mon, Gesa, gie's another try.... I oblige, and then it becomes yet another meadow. Mind you, I do like my colour studies of it, so I get a sense about the difference of full sun at noon, or late afternoon, but: no chance for a corn field.

Corn fields at noon x2, soft pastel in Moleskine


Corn fields late afternoon x2, soft pastel in Moleskine

So, a plea to all the pastelists - because I think it's a technique with the medium that I cannot do: how does the field turn bulky, tall and swaying in the wind? The last attempt involved some ink, possibly not enough: I figure it's something to do with the strokes on the paper, maybe they need to be more systematic or so, so I tried some dark ink before I applied pastel, but it's not happening.

Cornfields or not, Ink and soft pastel in Moleskine, 26x21cm
[also obliging my Mum to do sth in orange]

Anyone any ideas?
So that I can come up with yet another series of 'The things I've learnt today'

Thank you!

With all these questions

... there's a bit of searching going on. - As Vivien rightly says in her comment to yesterday's post... so: do it.

Well... The post got sparked off (quite literally) but the most fabulous glow in the sky I had seen in a long time. A thunderstorm at around sunset turned the sky into that iridescent grey yellow which in turn reflected throughout the garden and coloured everything green into a kind of glowy red/orange.

No chance for a photo of it, though I tried as you can see. I think my amateur photography skills were no match for it.

So I sketched. Attempt #1 yesterday didn't get the sky. But it got something of the heavy rain shower making the trees fade in the distance.

Thunder at Sunset #1
Soft pastel in Moleskine

But, again, I'm kind stuck with the texture of the sketchbook. It refuses to take more than 2 (max 3) layers of my soft pastels. Then I remembered Brian's explanation (scroll down Vivien's post to read his comment) of how he made the beautiful British Columbia landscapes in his sketchbook for the exchange. So I followed the instructions: one layer, rubbed in well with some paper, another layer, rubbed in, etc. And to use fixative (well, my mum's hairspray in this case) in between. And: hey ho... darker than before, more transparent then before and all in all enough to keep me happy.

Soft pastel in Moleskine
Layering, rubbing and more of the same
Yellow, lime green, pale purple and neutral grey in various combinations

So, here's a bit of experimentation from today:
Note 1 - the transparency of the rubbed in layers
Note 2 - the depth of the dark pastels overlayed

Thunder at Sunset #2
Soft pastel in Moleskine


More Skyline
Soft pastel in Moleskine

So, all in all not a bad day... and that's been on the painting front alone.

Series production

or is it: serial or serious?

I have just been typing a lengthy comment in response to Yellow and Lindsay's comment on the difference between collage and scrapbooking, when I thought I should just write it up as a new post.

So, here's some more thoughts on creativity and generic commercials.

Some of the issues that I had been wondering about to do with creativity is the slap-dash approach to produce many of the same paintings, cards, collage to flog them successfully. - My adventures into the depth of Etsy, and even more Ebay, quickly take me to sites that do exactly that.

The funny thing is that I often work in series, do several variations of the same theme - early ones are the Bedrock and Clouds paintings; and just yesterday I realised that I must have done the four scenes of the fields at my parents' place well over thirty times since January - in sketches, pen and ink, acrylics, oil, collage, gouache and pastel. So, there's plenty of repetition.

In particular now that I've found my abstract shapes and lines in the compositions, it doesn't take me long to divide up the canvas for that composition, go on to fill in colours - and then... hey - is it still there? The IT being elusive, the non-mechanic, the bit that makes it work. Or probably: the bits (plural) that still make it work, the mix, the dynamic.

The road to the blue trees WIP, Mixed Media Collage,
70x50cm on board, Detail

But then again, in many ways, it is the mechanic, the non-thinking that is important and helpful - to get to somewhere accidental and incidental amongst all the purpose and intention.

So, it's not really straightforward with the IT, is it? Just as well as that there's nothing wrong at all with decorating ones diary, making greeting cards etc. - do that myself, too.

...

Ach... it still verges on elitist posturing but I think I'll keep trying for some more explication on this.

Canvas makings

I always seem to need quite some time to get to the actual painting I want to. So, it's been week 4 of 6 and I finally got going on the final set of oil paintings on the landscapes.

Part of the delay this time was the fact that I had run out of canvases. Well, I had plenty of ready-made or DIY small and square ones. But the last ones I worked with were considerably bigger, about 80x70cm or so, and I loved the feel of space and distance I could easily achieve with these. I also retracted my previous favouritism of square ones to go back to a landscape format. - The gouache studies used that format and very effectively so.

So, finally, this week I had planned ahead, had bought some stretcher bars, although not without difficulties; and also some more canvas. The very first lot of canvas fabric I had bought a couple of years back was some fairly fine callico - I loved it for acrylics and smaller sizes; but had bought some heavy cotton canvas after that: it was fairly coarse and heavy. So heavy that my fingers were sore after stretching it onto the wood.

So, when I was in the fabric shop this time I ended up buying some medium-heavy linen - Irish linen in fact - twice as expensive as the cotton canvas but seeing that I don't use that many large canvasses I was feeling generous.

Pulling the canvas over the stretcher bar

Easy to stretch, pull and fix, it was a joy to work with. After assembling the stretcher bars (use a hammer if it's too difficult by hand), I cut the fabric so that it just stretches around the wood on the back side. I begin by stapling the wide sides: three staples on one side, turn to the opposite, pull firmly into place, and again staple 2 or 3 (with 5cm between each staples or so); I then turn to the two other sides and continue to work round the whole frame by frequently turning, pulling and stretching evenly. Once I'm close to the corners, I pull these in neatly, fold over and staple firmly into place.

Working my way around the frame

As far as priming is concerned, I used acrylic gesso for the first ones. But ever since, I've been using simple white emulsion paint: much more economical, and it works well for the type of paintings I do - fine details rarely figure in my paintings, and so the emulsion paint is more than adequate. I gave each canvas four thickish layers of primer.

Seeing that used such precious canvas I was a bit doubtful about the cheap emulsion paint. But for the moment it looks great: the primer tightened the canvas to a good, sound drum; it bounces perfectly, has enough give, the surface is well sealed but still there is the weave texture throughout. It was such a pleasure to work on it.

I think that's one of the benefits of making my own canvas: the painting actually starts well before the paint/sketch/study - it's the selection of materials, bars, dimensions. So, by the time the first brushstroke goes on it, my canvas and I are already best pals...

Finished, stretched, primed and ready to go

For those precious found papers

... there are image transfers.


In one of my recent envelopes I received something too precious to cut up, glue on and paint over. It's a handwritten letter from my friend's gran. I think I'm getting very sentimental about things like that, in particular since I have only one grandparent left (who incidentally doesn't write letters but talks on the phone once in a while).

I did a big of digging around - remembering that much of mixed media and altered media works with transfers - image transfers with gel medium, alcohol or various other ways - not dissimilar to monotypes in printmaking.

So, I scanned in the letter, printed it on ordinary paper, treated the surface of the receiving paper with some acrylic gloss medium, positioned the print out onto it, used the back of a spoon to burnish the paper thoroughly before starting to peel off the print slowly.

There are various posts - some tell you to remove the print before it's totally dry, others want you to wait til it's dry - the paper separated quite neatly to leave the ink printing on the receiving paper. Some of the stuck on paper can be peeled off carefully once the medium has dried. But it requires some experimenting with best times, best effect etc. And once finished and dried should be sealed with some acrylic medium before proceeding further.

Transferred onto the prepared collage background.
Left the original plain paper, right the collage piece with
two layers, one in black and one in blue -
I'm pleased that the blue transferred quite strongly too,

I actually liked the effect of some transfer paper remaining stuck.

This plain paper transfer is a really simple technique - it produces a soft type of transfer but even for writing it seems to work to the extent that I was looking for.

Here are some useful posts and sites I've come across in the process,

• starting with the WetCanvas post on image transfers here
• the plain paper transfer is taken from this site here
• and Toni's A Spattering blog has a couple of further useful posts on transfer techniques here

Using the project for this kind of technique explorations is really good fun: it's plenty of reason enough to try out some of the more involved collage techniques as well as to push what particular media can or cannot do. - Otherwise it would be too much of an assembly line of artist books, anyway, wouldn't it.

Maybe you want to know, but I've now received twelve envelopes with various bits and pieces of recycling from Chicago, Ayrshire, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow, Newcastle (Australia), Jerusalem, ... and I've been told there are more in the post from Jerusalem (again), Birmingham and Sunderland... very good. I probably need a bigger box for the envelopes soon.

Bits and Pieces: ... and to take from it...

Joan Eardely, Catterline in Winter, 1963
Oil on board, 120x131cm
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Before the year's up, here is - as promised - a bit of personal reflection along the lines of look, observe, live and learn from Eardley's exhibition and the workshop that was running alongside it. [For previous posts on Eardley, see here]

I've grouped my comments along a number of themes. With a bit of difficulty of deciding where to start, I am settling on a bit of personal chronology along the lines of my own observations and markers as I picked them up.

They are losely grouped along colour - composition - markmaking - work process

As a starting point, then, there are the colours of Catterline in Winter - the first of Eardley's paintings that I came across. Part of my having started with pastels and their ready made colours was a real struggle to mix colour other than bright oranges, lime greens and purples. Here, the muted yet incredibly rich neutrals of the painting were a real eye opener to the power of grey and the variety therein. What I find really striking in all of Eardley's paintings is the sheer variety of neutral colours she uses, and there is very little repetition within.

The neutrals for Eardley act very much as the backdrop, balance - or indeed, even: frame - for splashes of bright hues: pinks, carmine, blues which structure, lift, offset and integrate the whole composition - and again: so little repitition of hue and value. This is most obvious in her series of interior scenes from the early-1950s: The Table, A Glasgow Tenement and also the male Nude. While I was first struck by the sombre ambience of these paintings, the variation of neutrals, interspersed with some bright colours actually works extremely well to provide a much lighter scene if you keep looking.

From Catterline's colours, the next theme emerges: composition.

Sketch of Joan Eardley's Catterline,
Graphite in Moleskine

During one of my visits I had begun to sketch quickly some of her landscapes - as an attempt to get more of a sense of composition and markmaking. And the simplicity of compositions - be it landscapes, seascapes or indeed the street scenes is remarkable. Strong compositions of horizon lines, a few diagonals, sun or moon in the sky and more linear marks through tracks, grasses in the fields etc. provide all that is needed. Sometimes, these are complemented by some strong diagonals in the foreground also.

More sketches of Eardley's landscapes, Graphite in Moleskine

My rough and ready sketches also tried to capture some of her markmaking - so noticable and strong. Many of the marks are spontaneous and seem almost incidental. Here, her ability to paint faces and figures out of what looks, close up, just as an accidental assemblage of dots, splashes and other marks, just made my jaw drop repeatedly. Again, without repitition, marks are made with various implements, reworked - but not generically - until they indeed make up children's figures, prams, laughter or wind through the high grasses.

More sketches of Eardley's landscapes, Graphite in Moleskine

Finally, onto some insights into her work process - and it is for these insights that I found the Bits and Pieces workshop really useful for ... over a number of sessions, more and more emerged and settled - not unlike a piece of collage itself.

For one, there is the process of sketching from life, from photos and then taking the sketches to work from them for paintings - a common work process for many artists. But of course, in doing so, more and more of the artist's response to - intellectually and emotionally - to the subject is becoming part of the artwork. The workshop broke up different steps in the process very deliberately - even rather simplistically - but afterwards I found that very helpful to unpick some of my own responses to life scenes.

As for sketching and painting, a number of pointers emerged:

• often dark outlines are visible;
• figures are based on shapes rather than anatomical form;
• highlights and lowlights are used to emphasise shape and not form - figures and scenes are flattened in this way.
• small detail, such as buttons, hairbands, laples or fabric patterns are highlights and emphasised
• the use of different media - charcoal, pastel and gouache in some of the studies and smaller pieces emphasised the above even further.
  

Collage is a working practice which takes the process of breaking down the work process further still: tearing out shapes and figures on the basis of one's sketches, even more forces one to remove the piece from a literal representation and to let it soak up own expressions and impressions - along with some technical (in)abilities.

Layering - paintings and collage - means going back to it, adding more - over time more and more is being worked into the painting. Evidence for this can be found in many of Eardley's seascapes, landscapes and street scenes.

Joan Eardley, Three Children at a Tenement Window, 1961
Gouache on paper, 46x37cm
The Eardley Family

Eardley painted the children on Glasgow's streets with arms linked, hands held, standing close together, looking the onlooker straight into the eyes, they are playful, in movement and curious. And while her paintings relied on so little repitition of colours and marks, these recurrent themes of children together make a good deal of the strength of her paintings and the responses they evoke. And, of course: the stormy and wild sea.

.

Working too late... on a photo set

... to accompany the tree talk... here are some of my own photos on the subject.

www.flickr.com

Gouache links and sources

I've been doing a bit of digging around gouache techniques, resources and artists.
I was hoping for an amazon one-click solution but was sadly disappointed. There seem to be very few technique books around.

The one that is consistently recommended is that by Pamela Kay, Gouache: a personal view, Atelier 1995. Yet it looks as if it's difficult to get hold of (an Amazon price tag of £95 isn't very encouraging). Katherine at Making a Mark has written up an excellent post as part of her floral project on Kay's floral artwork, which is very much based on gouache.

I have also found a couple of interesting blogs by artists who work with gouache:

• Erik Tiemens' Virtual Gouache Land

• Jared Shear's Terra Peer
  

• I found both through Charley Parker's Lines and Colors , who has a whole number of review of art blogs on his site

Working with progress

The landscapes from earlier this summer have been sitting in my living room and I've been going back to them frequently to work them up initially as oils and pastels. The plan is that once I've done a few more realist, scenic compositions I can then go and abstract from various parts of the actual paintings, rather than using the initial sketches and photo references.
The progress on getting to those abstractions, however, has been a bit slow. Nonetheless, one of the larger pastels is getting to the point that it is almost finished. I've been reworking it a quite a few times and now feel that it's almost done. Funnily, the very reason for starting this scene - a series of strong, almost unreal, shorelines along this loch shore - has been what's been problematic.
Just for fun, I thought I'd post a before and after picture to offer as sense of working through a painting and exploring the success of a particular composition.

Shoreline repetitions, Pastel on board, 70x50cm

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now, dear reader, can you spot the 10 changes between the two paintings? Happy searching!

In the zone...

Garden door, Crail, Mixed media in Sketchbook, 14x21 cm

Earlier today, a colleague mentioned how he'd been sketching while on holidays and how relaxing he found it just to focus on one thing at a time.

This feeling of 'being single-minded' resonates with my own thoughts on sketching. In fact, it was the recent class on reflective surfaces that reminded me of it: loosing myself in the observation of one object, its details, and how in turn these details make up the object and the scene.

There are many blogs and sites on the web that discuss sketching, keeping sketching journals and many of them discuss this simple beauty of making 'Travels with a sketchbook' (as Katherine Tyrrell's blog is called).

'Travelling' both literally and metaphorically is a good point here: while sitting still or standing to take in the scene and to get down a sketch, our eyes are all the same busy with watching, looking and our mind is busy making sense(s) - and so are our hands with pencils, graphite or other tools.

Here are a few recent discoveries of sketching/drawing blogs:

• See.Be.Draw
• Laurelines
• Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog

'Flow' is the term used in psychology on this sense of absorption and interest created by a challenging and interesting task. See here for some elaboration in a Wikipedia entry. And below are some examples of my own flow when sketching (all mixed media in sketchbook, 14x21 cm) in Crail - a very cutesy fishing village in Eastneuk:

Reflective surfaces

Green in the bottle, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cm

I went to a day course yesterday on painting reflective surfaces, and we were asked to bring along whatever medium we'd like. I took the pastels - they seem to be my firm favourite now and with some rearranged storage solutions (more on that later), they are so easy to pack up and take with me.
The course covered the two different types of reflection: (a) reflections within an object - such as stainless steel flask in first image, and (b) reflections of objects within something else. The second one is the more common one, and in particular deals with water surfaces.

A couple of useful tips included
- that colour doesn't reflect as intensely, in particular the further it is away from the breaking point
- that the size of reflection depends on position of observer, i.e. in case of water surface, the lower down the view point, the more elongated does the form appear in its reflections (which has to do with different angles of inflection and reflection.

In the morning, I did quite a few sketches of a facetted whisky flask which reflected beautifully a rather garish green striped table cloth. Finally, I did the pastel sketch above.

Rocky shoreline, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cm

The afternoon focussed on the second type of reflection - water surfaces reflecting landscapes, boats and other objects. I had enjoyed doing the whisky flask from life, but with the water reflections this was going to be more difficult. Hence, the afternoon sketches were done from photo references. I had picked one which I liked for the colours and also for it being similar to many of the other photos and sketches I’ve done in Ardnamurchan and Perthshire earlier on in the summer.

Jam making and creativity

... yesterday's post on how to find subjects to write about is still rippling through my mind. At lunchtime yesterday I had bought a pound of raspberries and greengages. Raspberries in particular have become the fruit of summer for me since I moved to Scotland: so many of them are around and for such a long time that I do on occasions stop minding too much rain.

A fews years ago, when I was finishing my PhD in geography and got exhausted from the sheer endless writing up of all those pages and the constant skintness, I started making jam. My grandparents had an allotment and there would be so much jam made and fruits bottled, similarly, many of my friends would try out new recipes for all the strawberries, currants, plums and so on in Germany. Making jam - if not having a garden - was a way of being closer to them, but also something practical that I really longed for. Subsequently, my shelves - and those of my friends here - got filled with all sorts of jam creations (mind you, that grape and red wine jelly was rather disappointing).

I haven't made much jam in the past few years - I actually rarely eat jam in the morning and there's only that much you can give away. But the practicality of something other than thinking/writing academically was absolute joy - in the process I tried a variety of other things, such as knitting and crochet. While they open up a number of possibilities, their creative potential seemed however rather limited - in the end, the jams I kept liking most and making again were redcurrant, plum and raspberries - so, nothing fancy at all.

Do you see where this is going? When I started drawing, the technicality of the tutor's instructions was easy enough to follow but it took a good few more rounds of being lost and starting to do things differently and 'just try this and see what happens when I do this' for me to get a sense of the endless possibilities and openings of painting and art in general.

This looks like a post that I will be coming back to. But in the meantime, here is a link to a blog which has a whole series of interesting thoughts and commentaries on creativity Libzoid is by Libby Mills, an American artist who works with polymer clay. I enjoy visiting her blog to get pointers on work process, inspiration alongside a commentary on a medium I know very little about.

In the meantime: This is what I had for breakfast

Greengage (Mirabellen) and raspberry jam

500 g raspberries
500 g greengages, finely chopped
500 g 2:1 jam sugar

Mix all in a large pot, mash the fruit up thoroughly and let sit for a couple of hours
Bring slowly to the boil while stirring

Let cook for at least 3 minutes
Fill in sterilised jars immediately and seal.

Keeping writing... keeping painting

WTTS #13, mixed media on WC paper, 5x8cm


Since I started writing here, I've come across an increasing range of other blogs - many of them are fascinating and the ability to go back frequently to see new posts and comments has been a true insight for a new use of the internet that I did not appreciate beforehand.
One post I came across today and which perfectly brought up a number of issues relating to writing entries on the blog is on Katherine Tyrrell's Making a Mark blog.
In Making a Mark: How do I find things to blog about? Katherine offers a detailed list of how to find topics to write about, how to organise ideas and entries. I had to smile particularly at her suggestions that, when one starts one wants to present all knowledge in one go - rather than breaking it up and organising it more sequentially, narratively - I perfectly remember the desire to have everything on the page at once without much patience of letting things build up. Partly, that probably came from a bit of anxiety and apprehension that I would run out of things to say.
Reading Katherine's post however, made me understand more clearly, that, of course, as well as with most other things, curiosity is created in the process of exploring something - which throws up more questions, and more openings.
In this, blogging is very similar to actual painting/sketching. When I started drawing, I could not for the life of me find things to draw - as if the translation between what I would see everywhere around me to something I would try and put down on paper just didn't exist. With time, it was fascinating to see how suddenly everything around could turn into something to draw/paint - suddenly the overripe pear in the fruit bowl transformed itself into a fascinating still life and the grey low clouds starting showing off their yellow, blues and purples.

Painting from photos

The online artforum WetCanvas frequently holds various type of projects. I've come across the Landscape forum's August project. Containing a series of photo references, various people submit and discuss their interpretations of these. Since it's not limited to one medium (such as oil, pencil or similar) and usually gets quite a few people involved, it's an interesting opportunity to see other people's interpreations and techniques for painting similar references.

The project photos contain various rock formations - and so I quickly jumped at it. I've been doing more sketches from my own photos and references to practice rocks, their internal structures and overall form - trying to keep the balance between generic (this is an angular rock) and more specific characteristics.

These are the two sketches I did for one of the reference images:


Pencil in sketchbook (14x21 cm)


Pastel on paper (30x40 cm)

The reference photos are all very interesting and fascinating, still, there is something strange about drawing from photos, in particular if it's other people's photos... all that goes along with the impression of the actual scene is gone or not there in the first place. It reminds me of the painting week in Perthshire - and the difference between the impressions on site and the actual photos.

The problems associated with painting from photos are well-known, and most people who paint from photos are aware of them and acknowledge them. Yet, reference photos remain an important tool to help painting indoors. Charles Sovek has a couple of good pointers in his Lessons from the Easel on how to improve the reference photos to reintroduce the vibrancy of actual scenes back into paintings.

Bedrock and Clouds No 5

This is just going to be a quick post: the n key on my keyboard is still broken, so every typing becomes a bit tedious (or trying to replace with words without the 'n'). I finished a few of my paintings and, in the process of formatting photos for the almost ready website) redid some photos that were still missing.
This is the final one of the Bedrock and Clouds series (it's #5)


Bedrock and Clouds #5, oil on canvas, 40x40cm

It was one where I tried to use the technique Lyonel Feininger used by applying geometric shapes and wiping back the oil colours before applying the next layer.
This link should take you to Google's image search of his pictures - look out for his 'Vogelwolke', which is one of my favourites and his Gelmeroda series.

Making my own pastel(s)

... sounds much more glorious than this unsuspecting lump of mid-value grey that's drying on the shelf. I've been collecting pastel dust from my paintings at home - less in an attempt to extend the lifetime of my beige cheap carpet (if anything, I'm looking for an excuse to replace it) but more in hope that all the greens, blues, purple, reds and yellows would come together in the end to make a neutral pastel stick.

Yesterday then was the day: I had collected cool and warm shades separately but the jar with the cool ones looks suspiciously similar to the vastness that is my Blue-Green-Earth Unison set ... I don't quite remember why I bought that set now, but I haven't really used it much at all. After mixing both cool and warm dust and grinding it with pestle and mortar, I added distilled water and rolled it into shape and it's been drying since.



This is the really simple way of making your own pastel - the binder that keeps the pigments together and determines degree of hardness/softness is gum tragacanth - yet, in the pastel dust, it is still contained and does not require anything other than merely adding water.

There are various instuctions on making soft pastels online - ranging from the complex ones like in this article by Phyllis Franklin on Wetcanvas to rather straightforward ones such as on the Earth Pigments website (who also supply, to North America, a glorious range of Natural Earth pigments). One of the few UK suppliers of the binder is the long established Cornelissen and Son in London who supply a wide range of traditional pigments and specialist artist equipment.

Two reasons mad me start looking into ways of making pastels:
- to match the hues and pigments of some of my favourite oil colours
- and more recently as part of my research into the desert sands and how natural iron oxide colours them in a variety of hues from gold to violet.

For the latter, I've come across the Clearwell Caves Ochre mine in England which also supplies fine ground ochre pigment from yellow to an unusual deep purple for painting purposes. That dark purple looks great - and it looks pretty close to one of my favourite dark neutrals I've been using.

Yet - somehow I feel that this isn't the kind of activity that my kitchen surface would welcome... yet another reason to look for some studio space, I suspect!