Angela at the Shelley Art Group I go to said the other day that we should enjoy it when we work on something. Very wise. This when everyone else was painting a bit like Monet, while I just messed about. Previously, I’ve tended to expect to produce a finished product when I start painting or drawing. When it doesn’t work out right, I would get annoyed with myself.
Over the years the huge number of times I’ve been out sketching, often in public, have helped me relax more. Age and experience have probably helped too. Sometimes I even produce things that people really like.
Angela isn’t the only one who has recently helped me enjoy it more. When we were doing a session on abstract art there was a tip about folding up what you produce, snipping it and looking it from different perspectives. Now I’ve also got used to playing with palette knives and raw paint often mixed on the picture, that has also allowed me to take a more relaxed approach.
So when I wanted to paint a picture of Ruth sitting by the Coe river, as in Glencoe, from a sketch done when there were masses of dragonflies about, I started playing with both the picture and with different ways of doing dragonflies. I fully expected it to be haphazard, scruffy and throwaway. As it evolved I kept trying new ideas, Some work better, some don’t. Taking photos and cropping them allowed me to look at different compositional ideas and highlight what worked.
The bottom one of those is probably where I’ll go. Adding a bit of sky peeping through the foliage tells me to do a layer of sky first and then trunks and foliage on top. On the right I’ll probably make the foliage stand out as nearer to give more depth. I’ve got to add three people in there too. That should keep me occupied for a while.
If you are playing with acrylics, particularly with a palette knife, you can use cartridge paper or heavy grade lining paper but put a ground coat on beforehand, as it helps the paint move. This tip I owe to Julie and it helps make the acrylics behave more like oils, rather than the watercolour-like method used by Anthony Barrow. I am in the habit of using white gesso mixed with a touch of red for some reason.
Where I had little hope that I could manage it with my skill set, I now think I may be able to have another go using what I’ve learned. I may have accidentally produced a bit of a Monet as well.
Chimp keeping up with the craze for grass in the ear decoration
That picture is serious. Scientists have discovered that chimps adopt self decoration fads and crazes like grass in the ear.
This first bit of our art history covers a nice vague stretch from ‘the beginning’ to some time over three thousand years ago. As the latest indications are that hominids and probably Home Sapiens have been making tools since around 2.7 million years ago, that is a long time. Indications are also that different types of hominids overlapped, and in some cases, interbred for a lot longer than previously thought, so the history isn’t limited to Homo Sapiens.
Those early tools were made for over 300,000 years in the area around Kenya ( even since I first wrote this the date has been put back further). That means that there was a consistent culture passing on ideas and skills. As animals use gestures props to impress others, it is highly likely that humanoid groups did the same. Unfortunately evidence is slim. Apart from rare preservation of specimens (like Ötzi, the Alpine hunter preserved in ice from around 5,000 years ago), most artifacts made by early people are hard to find. The most commonly preserved things are hard materials like bone, stone and metal. Metal items particularly can be associated with richer individuals. Even large objects, such as canoes, are rare. The earliest so far, 10,000 years ago, is quite likely not the first. Items used by everyday people may not be as long lasting.
The earliest known musical instrument is a flute from around 50,000 years ago but even before that there may have been less robust noise makers and alongside that people will have vocalised and danced. They will almost certainly also have decorated themselves in some way.
In Australia indigenous art dates back beyond 20,000 years and that is from a people who had to migrate over millennia before they got to Australia. Discoveries are still being made using better dating techniques and both in Australia and Indonesia it is thought that examples may date from over 50,000 years ago.
When talking to people about art, I often mischieviosly refer to larger artworks and buildings as Totalitarian art. By this I mean work where someone has so much power and ego that they can commision art that is grandiose. Even today bigger scale art is given more respect than that of more modest size. Unfortunately people often admire this sort of art without thinking too much about the conditions involved in its production. I think all forms of craft and art have value. Some just grab you visually or emotionally and this effect varies from person to person. Some have more intellectual content or more subtle emotional effect than others and these often benefit from more study. No matter what the artist puts into the work, or intends us to think about it, it can sometimes be completely at odds with what people take from it. Interpretation is a personal and difficult thing. The further back in time we go, and the further from our own cultural assumptions, the more we need to take care before judging the work.
This post is a work in progress and I will add some visual examples of work and more detailed discussion to it over time.
Below is a list of selected early artifacts by date. The obvious, non building, art is in bold, but there will be art in later buildings, such as Knossos.
Ignoring the lists, categories, reviews and other opinions
I once heard a Blackbird imitating the ‘Captain Pugwash’ theme music, because it had been played so often on on a friend’s personal pirate radio station. The Blackbird didn’t call it Art, but many humans would have no hesitation in calling their own efforts at such imitation Art. Other birds create what many high minded artists would call Installations, to make courtship displays. Who amongst us that do art isn’t partly trying to impress others in the same way?
Mischievously, I have taken to saying about human art that it all went wrong when we stopped painting on rock walls. In the history of rock and wall paintings we have work that is observational, has elements of positioning and design, depicts heroism and teamwork, invokes spirits and memory, employs abstraction and symbolism and is also simply, stunningly, beautiful and skillful.
Just like Evolution has constantly kept re-inventing the crab, because it works, humans have reinvented ways of making art. To some extent this is often because part of showing off can involve denigrating previous efforts but there also exist a set of humans who don’t make their name by creating art but by listing, categorising, championing and judging it. One of our key historical sources on renaissance art is Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’. It does all of those things and also gossips, passes on myths and has always to be taken with a pinch of salt. Incidentally Vasari does mention some women artists but makes the usual assumptions about their art being less philosophical or heroic. As another aside, for those of you interested in the renaissance, if you look hard enough you can find the tax records of Florencians on line. They are full of fascinating pleas to pay less tax because life has been so hard recently.
When I was at school and first thinking about art as something I did and should know more about, I won the Biology prize and asked for The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. It was the first of many opinions and lists that I have studied over the years. What has become clearer to me with each thing I read is that a good degree of scepticism is required with all opinions (including mine of course). During years talking to people about art at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I’ve had some wonderful discussions and received interesting insights from others. I’ve also seen the light come on in people’s eyes when I give them an insight and permission to have an opinion, as long as they recognise that others might not agree and that better understanding often enriches experience.
The aim of what I am writing here is to help you see things more clearly with the aid of my lifetime’s experience of designing, creating, looking at and reading about, all forms of art and craft. Over time I hope to add to this post by highlighting some bits of the history to pass on some of that experience and knowledge to anyone reading. It will not be a long and specific list of art works. I want to widen the dialogue to include groups who are often left out of the story and to open our minds to let us do things without having to pay homage to particular ways of looking at the world. I have come to believe that we should respect what and who are around us and do our best to create what shows that respect and also tries to add our own perspectives and feelings to whatever we produce.
Last night we had a session at Shelley Art Group with Anthony Barrow.
He was very inspiring but threw a lot of information at us while painting rapidly. I work fast and free mostly but had to stop trying to take in every word to concentrate on transferring the ideas to the work. I thought I’d write what I learned and combine it with my own experiences to help others gain more from the possibilities in the techniques.
Thanks Anthony and also Sally for arranging the session.
This is what he produced as he talked, from a very small photo of the Langdale Pikes :
Let’s start with what we were painting on. Like Anthony I used 1400 grade lining paper taped to a board to reduce the curl as it got wet. You could stretch the paper beforehand by taping it down when wet. This would help the surface stay flat through the painting process. Mine still buckled a bit but is straight this morning. One advantage of the lining paper is that it is not brilliant white. So while the paper colour shows through with the wet on wet technique he used, it already has a warmer feel to it. Using acrylic you can then add white later if needed, either as as a wet in wet mix or a less transparent layer when dry. He also specified a reasonably large piece of paper. This is important to stop yourself getting trapped in detail and it also reduces the risk factor of over watering in wet on wet. You can scale down once you’ve become happier with the skills.
Next came sketching in the key shapes that are more important to get right. Using a colour that is part of the mix you want to end up with works well as many sketching mediums can interfere a bit, especially with wet on wet. When Heather Burton was doing the palette knife session she sketched the basic colour areas rather than detailed shapes, as she was using the paint in a different, undiluted, way. She knew that she could add detail later as the paint dried. Incidently Heather still uses thin layer with some transparency even with the palette knife, keeping the surface smooth to help adding upper layers. Because of the thicker paint and faster drying, it is also possible for her to scrape off areas of the upper layer to reveal more of the lower one.
What about that wet on wet technique? It’s scary isn’t it? It is easy to feel out of control but it tends to create smoother colour transitions. You also end up with nice thin transparent layers that you can then add on top of later. It is even possible to do that with water colour. Just make sure you have cloths or paper towels ready to dab off the worst mistakes and remember that with acrylic you can completely paint over the top later.
I’m not going to talk much about colour. Anthony was repeating for us the lesson of Jo’s session a couple of weeks ago. You can achieve a whole rich array of possibilities from a limited range of tubes or pots. Like all trained artists he obviously knows and indeed feels what different tubes can do in terms of warmth and transparency. It is hard to build up that knowledge, but starting with a limited range and experimenting helps. You can then add extras as you realise that a particular tube just adds something you want. Greens are particularly tricky.
Another little snippet Anthony said to me was that most people have trouble with foregrounds. It is not completely true, but in landscapes the foreground is often there just to look past. Unless it has something that you particularly want to come out in detail, a relaxed and sketchy approach to the foreground often works. Of course, unless you are way more naturally talented than I am, getting sketchy to still look true takes practice.
This is what I produced on the night. I’m a fairly literal person sometimes and like to respect the landscape I’m painting. From the photograph I was confused about the area in the middle, below the highest peak. As Wayne and I have climbed in that area, this niggled. Back home I found another picture and realised it was actually the area of rock on which we’d climbed, so that had to change. Next I realised that I had produced a misshapen version of the rocky middle right. One of the advantages of acrylic is that it is often easier to overpaint, if you haven’t gone overboard on texture. That bit got adjusted too. I decided that the picture we had been given was actually an amazing evening light, rather than a snow covering, so I adjusted accordingly. I also hardened up the mountain tops, that had been left blurred by the wet on wet. a few other little corrections and then finally I went back to that foreground. I decided to introduce a hint of another landscape layer nearer the viewer to add further depth and to balance the colours with the mountain shadows. I’m happier and have given it a single coat of varnish to bring out the colours. I’m finished now…. perhaps.
I hope that is helpful to anyone reading it. I certainly will be seeing if I can improve what I did last night and will think abut it all as an addition to my options in saying what I want to say.
I’ve been to the Sculpture lounge before to make sculptures with Mick Kirkby Geddes and David Mayne but this last weekend highlighted just how good they are as guides through this creative process.
Four people with different levels of experience and all of us guided through the choices very capably and skilfully. On the second day I was having a particularly trying day and making mistakes. Even though I don’t usually require large amounts of help, their joint radar was working all the time and gentle advice would appear at the right time.
I was making a design change to a previous mobile piece, then moving on to a butterfly on a garden obelisk for a friend. Both of these went well and were finished by the end of the first day. Ruth loved the butterfly and asked for on to go on top of one of our obelisks. Next day I got busy, but was tired and kept making mistakes. Cue David and Mick spotting my slips and digging me out of them.
The one above and immediately below is the one in our garden. I’ve added a transparent layer of green oil paint to the leaf since I first put it up, to tone it down a bit in bright light.
After a complete absence last year all the apples and pears have swung into full production this year. A pity that I no longer make alcohol and neither of us like crab apple jelly and that’s just one tree.
Sadly one of our cherry trees had become dangerously likely to split because of bark inclusion. It generated a lot of wood of one sort or another and a pile of wood chip for the garden paths. In amongst that I’m managing to find a toad and lily pads inside the tree remains. To be continued, as the wood dries.
After a family e-reminisce about the Old Bear stories, I got a small request about the possibility of extending the life of Old Table, who had served the Gray/Scott side of the family in London and Bristol, in different houses, through many family and friends gatherings and finally out in the garden when a young pretender entered the dining room.
Restoring and renewing are deeply ingrained in my brain, alongside creating from scratch, so a trip down country was arranged. Below gives an idea of what I found. The legs were also rotten at the bottom and different lengths.
There was obviously no instant fix here, so I had the adventure of trying to take it apart, doing as little extra damage as possible.
Back in Wakefield, I set about the business of staring at the pile, abandoning bits and slowly repairing, replacing and reassembling. The idea was to leave it as a flat-pack that I could fit in the car and reassemble the whole back in Bristol. When I completed the drawer surround front, I sent a picture. I proposed leaving the colour different so old and new were obvious. Rob mentioned Kintsugi and I realised I had used that idea before on split pieces of wood I was proposing to make into chairs. Building on conversations I’d heard at several of the those family/friends gatherings, I decided to incorporate a Bling Strip, though Rob has decided it is a go faster stripe. The result, ready for more good times.
Thank you Jo for keeping me occupied with another opportunity to make people smile.
All my life I have admired people who can make marks on paper that capture your imagination in some way. I watched carefully and tried to work out how it was done. That has widened to include other forms of design, like furniture, pottery, sculpture, fabric design, even knitting. I’ve never stopped trying to learn and develop.
All these activities mean acquiring skills but also learning what are essentially tricks. I’ve often told people about my dad saying ‘let the saw do the work’ and it taking me another 20 years to realise what he meant (don’t over work it, establish a smooth rhythm). If you know the trick, then the skill often becomes easier to achieve. About 45 years after my dad first said that, someone watching me make stage sets remarked on the sheer speed of my sawing and I gave a little inward smile.
Last week I mentioned to Shelley Art Group the old watercolour sky trick. Skies often have deeper colour at the top of your view than at the bottom. If you are using watercolour the liquid tends to run downwards, taking the pigment with it. If you are painting on the flat, then it tends to run to any low areas, often the edges or centre of the area you are painting. If you are painting a sky, then turning the paper upside down makes the pigment run to the top of the sky. which is usually what you want. If it is a blue sky with white clouds you can dab the clouds out using an edge of cloth or tissue.
Knowing the trick doesn’t guarantee a result but it usually means that you are not working against the materials. This in turn allows you to concentrate on developing the skills to make the best use of that trick. As with my sawing, you suddenly develop more freedom and control in what you are doing. In watercolour that often means that you can use wetter applications of paint that flow, rather than drawing and colouring in.
In one group of people I painted with, one of them had been an art teacher and went to the Slade Art School. I watched him working on a scene with figures. This is a hard thing to do if you are composing the picture youself. He did the background and then sketched the figures on separate pieces of paper and cut them out. He moved them about the painting till he was satisfied, changing figure size if necessary, then marked them in place and set to painting. I’ve never forgotten that trick and I now use it in digital sketches for painted works. The painting at the top of this piece is one I was asked for, of a kestrel sculpture I made that is down in Bristol. I had a couple of photos and I played with layouts, using a mixture of bits cut from photos, that I resized in Gimp and moved about and changed the angles of in Art Rage with digital paint for the sky. When I was happy with it, I painted the sky on the board/canvass first, using a mixture of palette knife and brush, then added the house roofs (palette knife). Finally I cut out the kestrel, moved it about, changed size and shape slightly again then marked it in place and painted it on. I moved the rod, that holds it up and allows it to be seen from different angles as well as possible, so that it was there but worked best with this painting angle.
One of the simplest tricks people often forget about is to keep standing back to look at what you are doing from further away. Find some way of standing it up and look from the other side of the room. Do it often. If you are making a sculptural object, put it somewhere that you can walk round it and peer at it from different angles. You don’t have to develop a skill for this one, just remember the trick. If you are working digitally keep zooming out to get the same effect. Because I tend to work flat nowadays because of slight tremors, I often have a simple lightweight stand to put the picture on to look at. Incidently working on a flat surface and standing above it also means you spend less time with your nose next to the surface too.
I’m Steve and I’ve been trying to make art/craft in all forms since I was little. Alongside various sport, it has been a constant in a much changing life. I have painted, drawn, used most printing techniques, sculpted, made posters, drawn cartoons, made furniture, designed made and painted stage sets, painted murals, landscaped gardens, made animated images and who knows what else. I keep trying and sometimes I am more pleased than others with what I’ve produced by the time I get to the point where I am just going to make it worse.
Alongside that I have also been involved with computers since the 1960’s. I have always been the person who can be given the most technical problem to solve but I was very pleased when someone said of me that I was also the person who could talk to any person at any level of an organisation and explain how things worked and how to use them best.
When home computers came along, I bought one to explore and to get my children used to them. I wrote and amended graphic computer games for them. Being a cruel person, I made them do arithmetic tests scaled to their age to get into the games. All the neighbourhood kids came round.
In 2003/4 Wayne and I went to New Zealand and walked the Milford Track. Each day I walked of ahead and then picked a spot and sat and sketched. People came along and looked at what I’d done and chatted. I’d been playing with my own website for years and after the walk I put all the sketches up there and everyone, from all over the world, who’d done the walk knew where they were and could look at them and remember the spots.
About 10 years ago Ruth bought me a Microsoft Surface, which is an iPad rival. I experimented with it but realised that other tools were often better suited to what I wanted to do. I did take it along to my eldest daughter’s birthday party to play with and ended up surrounded by kids and I gave each of them a new painting to work on in turn. Afterwards I put them all up on Facebook and they were shared around all over again. This year I put a new web page on my current website called The Fridge Door and I put those party images up there alongside all the images of kids’ art I had collected over the years. Cue a lot of sharing and relatives and friends being entertained once again.
Using computers I have put images on T-shirts, sent images to other parts of the world, put scenes on table and cup mats, sketched out designs, helped people get messages across by simplifying them into cartoon like images.
Today’s session should help you further along your journey to explore what a computer and a few apps cane do to add to your creative fun.
