Valley CreationsIn 2015 I made an arch from pollarded Sycamore branches, to mark the begining of the main steps down the garden. I didn’t expect it to last long. A bit later I added a carved sycamore owl to it. The insects were boring holes in to it already.
2026 and high winds have finally brought the arch down. It has done good service for wood from our own garden.
At the same time my latest sculpture project is coming along nicely. Something to smile at till the arch returns.
Yesterday evening Stacey Shaw gave us a session at Shelley Art Group. This is my attempt to summarise the messages she gave us and to add my own angles on it. Stacey reminded us that it always worth remembering the basics and used some good teaching methods to get across the messages clearly.
We started out with an arrangement of white cube, sphere, cone and cylinder. Stacy asked us to think how we could start to establish the shape on paper.
The cube has defined lines that give us its shape. It makes sense to sketch those lines in, if only to establish the perspective (if you want to stick to that perspective).
The sphere looks like a circle but we can usually see straight away that it is a sphere. Drawing the outline can help you to make it circular rather than some other shape but you run the risk of giving the sphere an edge. It’s optical edges are defined by where it goes out of our line of sight and where the background objects disappear behind it. You could begin to detail the shape by putting in the background objects.
Both the cone and the cylinder are versions of the sphere but with edges. If you chopped the sphere in two, you would have a sphere with a tricky perspective circle, in effect making it a figure with two faces. To indicate the shape better you could make lines that follow or indicate the shape and that would allow our brains to pick up those hints. To get a more nuanced shape definition we use the light which gives us shading and shadow. Tracey put a light on the objects to emphasise both of these. She also told us to make sure that we were constantly looking at what was actually happening with the shade and shadow and not making assumptions about what was happening. When I came to draw the grouping of objects I soon realised that the light source was slightly rounded, exaggerating the way the light radiates out and both the shading and shadows went in different directions for each object. When the close, directed, light was turned off there were multiple shades and shadows from the many lights in the room. Also the object themselves reflect some light onto other things around them.
That of course is the simple bit. Tracey quite rightly had a moan about denigrating art in education, when it is actually a very complex subject with multiple technical and social aspects to it. I’ll now try to set out, briefly, some of the other lessons from the session.
Without getting tied up by it, always try to remember that every object that you draw is a shape like these ones. It will have actual edges, points where it disappears from our view and surfaces which have a shape of their own (concave or convex, facing us, angled to us etc.). Even texture is a set of mini shapes on the surfaces of the object. There will also be perspective.
Try to resist getting too caught up with drawing edges on things.
Using the shape information, try to separate the effects of light and shade from the competing shades given by the colours of the object. Tracey gave us a strip of squares to shade from dark to light. If part of the object is light yellow and part dark blue, the shading differences given by the lighting and shape on each colour are likely to be mostly consistent across the colours.
Where object have colour, the reflected light from them has some colour also. This can affect adjacent objects.
When you are drawing or painting try to make sure that your body, arm and wrist positions allow you as much free, smooth and controllable movement as possible when you are making your marks.
Keep comparing your version with what is in front of you and remembering the basics set out above. Look at what you are producing from further away, as this gives you a better sense of the overall shape.
Of course these guidelines are mainly of value if you want to produce a persuasive facsimile. That isn’t the only aim of most pieces of work. It does help to have learned how to imitate things even if your aim is to do something else with them.
Last night I was at a workshop given by Sarah Moss, on watercolour landscapes including people. The group included those who mostly paint with watercolour and those who rarely do, people who paint in completely different ways and some who have little experience of the more technical aspects of this medium. This is an attempt to explain and simplify things a bit. I’m not going into detail about different sorts of watercolour paint, more the way of application and the papers.
This is what Sarah was getting us to paint (though I managed to miss that and made up my own).
Those of you with experience may realise straight away that this may be better on a slightly smoother paper. It is also painted using a wet on wet technique, which means putting lots of water on the paper and letting the paint flow on the surface.
Sarah said that 200lb paper would be best. Immediately we are into issues that can be confusing, with jargon in the advert or on the pad of paper can be somewhat off-putting. The good news is that Turner and his contemporaries mostly used writing paper to paint on with watercolours. That is because the writing paper of the day was reasonably heavy and had absorbency that took the ink but didn’t spread it around. The other good news is that, once you find a paper that works with your style, you can just buy it on repeat until you want to try a different way of doing things.
One jargon area is weight of the paper. Sarah specified that in lb (lbs), which relates to the, well past retirement date (unless you are American or old like some of us), Pounds and Ounces system. So we already have lb, lbs and pounds for one measure.
Another, more universal, measure is GSM, which is grams per square metre. The trouble is that there is no easy conversion between the two. That is because they measure slightly different things. Both are slightly odd in measuring on a flat scale (e.g. square metres) something that can have a whole range of thicknesses. Then, for a particular thickness there can different densities. Oh dear. So 200lb watercolour paper is usually 425gsm. That is a heavy paper. Because I have it, I used some old hand-made paper that is like card for the workshop. For most uses I would buy the heaviest that you feel you can afford both to buy and to waste. If it is lighter weight you can stretch your paper (wetting it till it expands and taping it down while it dries to make it tighter and less prone to wrinkling) but that is not without its problems, or you can put up with the wrinkling but that just makes the painting harder to control.
Let’s go back to the texture of the paper. This is indicated in various ways. It might be a reference to a particular way paper was made once e.g Bockingford or a manufacturing technique (NOT or Cold Pressed). Papers move from smooth through those that have a quite pronounce 3d texture. Some famous watercolourists used the texture of the paper to give visual texture to the paint. Sarah talked about adding texture with the paint by bleeding or removing colour from particular areas. She also introduced the idea of denting the paper (with the end of the brush handle) to make the paint pool in those areas. That way you get the effect of different paper textures where you want them, not all over the paper. Textured papers are like the wrinkled paper, there are peaks and troughs and pigment runs into the troughs. There is also more surface area, because of the little bumps, so that can make the paper appear relatively more absorbent. Apart from the little tricks that you pick up, I would get a small amount of each and play with it to see what happens. Then, alongside the weight you can afford, pick the paper that feels like the ones you were most satisfied with.
The final topic here, at least for the moment, is absorbency. Paper is lots of fibres squashed together. The paper often has glue(size) spread over the surface to fill in the ends of fibres that are facing upwards and to make a paper with a more controlled surface texture and absorbency. Some papers have size internally as well. I wouldn’t bother thinking about this too much. Just try experimenting over time, ask people who do it a lot or perhaps you could read up a bit. Just remember that people love to repeat the little they know as, often inappropriate, wise advice (including me of course).
I hope the message has come across to keep trying different things. If it helps, make notes, so you can recreate the successful efforts. I know I had enormous fun playing last night, painting in a way that was different to much that I do normally. I was happy with what I produced and will add it all to my stock of different options when I set out to paint something.
Of course, I had the right paper for the occasion, watercolours in tubes put into a palette that I use all the time, brushes that were of reasonable quality and that I am used to (the main flat brush I used is nearly sixty years old). So keep it simple, try different things in a reasonably organised way and be prepared to ask questions. Mainly have fun.
Despite the fact that humans can’t help doing art and have always done so, the world of art is full of rule making and snobbery.
There is a famous story about Constable, that Reynolds chided him for using such lurid colours in his landscapes, advising using tones related to a valuable old violin. Constable is reputed to have carried the old violin outside and laid it on the grass to demonstrate how mistaken that was. I’m not that fond of Constable’s paintings but that story is an example of rules and how they can lead to stagnation. I’m also pretty sure too that more people have heard of Constable than Reynolds and can picture a painting more readily.
The other thing that story inadvertently highlights is the question of who you are painting for. Reynolds was envisaging elite admirers and customers and also that you are painting to fit with an historic story of painting ideals. Constable was painting to suit himself and his view of reality and perhaps also more ordinary viewers of his paintings.
Hidden rules of this sort are everywhere, even in the world of amateur art. Can I suggest that you be aware of them, but also ignore them if they don’t help you to achieve what you want to do? You should paint or draw to please yourself, to keep developing your skills and to sometimes make yourself smile at what you’ve managed to do. It is even better if you can please other people at the same time.
Rule 1 – Don’t paint by numbers. This is pure snobbery and has only really existed since the Impressionists. The Sistine ceiling was painted by sketching in some detail into the wet plaster then following with the paint blocks.
The idea is that you should be able to choose and make a mark without drawing it out in detail and then filling in the blocks. The level of natural skill and vision required to even get close to that is immense. If you can aspire to get nearer, it is enough. Do less drawing and simplify the structure of your paint if you can but don’t think you are a lesser person if more freedom doesn’t work for you. A good example of this is wet on wet watercolour painting (you can do it with acrylic as well to some extent). The opportunities for chaos and disaster are as large as the chances of creating something free and inspiring. Keep trying though, as you may get a pleasant surprise. Here is one I did as a sketch for another painting. I thought it had just gone out of control but later saw a good bit within it and over-painted a couple of unwanted marks.
Incidentally there is a halfway house in watercolour between blocks of pure colour and wet on wet. Because of its transparency, if you start light, you can gradually add darker layers over the top. If you do it reasonably quickly and use you brush in the right way, you can activate some of the pigment in the lower layer to produce subtler gradations like you can get with wet on wet. You can also brush water onto the relevant areas of the lower layer, to activate the pigment in those areas before you add the higher layer.
Rule 2 – Develop your own style and stick to it. Sadly this is sometimes necessary if you want to have a loyal customer base. Galleries particularly like artists to do this. It is good to try to individualise your work but it shouldn’t be a shackle you, holding you back from invention and creativity.
Rule 3 – Paint big. This attitude pervades in a lot of art. Anyone who went to the recent Turner Prize exhibition in Bradford will have seen this in action. If Turner had tried to exhibit the beautiful, tiny watercolours that are held in the National Gallery of Scotland collection, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Paint/draw/collage whatever size and with whichever medium you can make work and that achieves what you want to achieve. It is nice if you can show respect for whatever subject you have chosen too. Not a patch on Turner, but this one of Robin Hoods Bay is only 9cmx14cm and pleases me.
Don’t mix mediums. To some extent this is practical. Oil paint doesn’t mix well with other mediums. Modern paints a much more flexible. Surprisingly effective results can be obtained by mixing opaque and transparent mediums, for instance. Read about the limitations and abilities of the mediums and methods but also carry out your own experiments. Scraps of paper allow you to test something before you put it on your work. Give yourself freedom to try out different ways of making marks, with different tools and materials. Enjoy playing like that child’s drawing at the top.
That is enough rules for today. Be aware of the rules and treat them as possible helpful guidelines but don’t let them hold you back from expressing yourself. Try to learn the little tricks that allow you to achieve a more fluid and lively look with improved textural feel. Recognise when to pause something that is going out of control and when to quickly remove some of the paint with a rag to make it easy to try it again later.
Enjoy watching and experimenting. Don’t tear things up and instead look at them later and see whether they can be rescued or which bits worked better and can provide a lesson for later.
I’ve just had a bit of a bad few days with one painting. It was going well, blending skills I have recently learnt with older ones and trying out some new ideas. I have learnt to add visual complexity and detail using a palette knife. That is particularly useful because of my tendency to shake and twitch (see the sudden bend in the rail line).
That close-up also shows that I have not always learnt to overcome the difficulties of sequencing in painting, with the rail line going over some of the foreground vegetation.
The rail lines and other similar details are another problem for me and the shakes, as I seem to get worse if I try to measure and use a ruler. I’ve learnt ways of relaxing before trying to make marks to reduce the shake and I’ve realised that we only really notice detail in particular situations, such as those rail lines and even then they don’t stand out in larger numbers
I was experimenting with various things to overcome some of these difficulties and have been trying acrylic pens, which seem to work except that they are a bit inconsistent for me. This is where another persistent problem came into play – failure to concentrate. In that close-up above there are crows and pylons (I love Pylons and wires). I didn’t have a black acrylic pen, so grabbed the finest black marker I could find and it worked, until later when I over hastily put a layer of matte varnish on. Without me noticing at first, the varnish simply smeared and wiped out all that detail I had put on. Arrgh.
This is where that other skill that age has taught me comes in – patience. Instead of having a minor tantrum and tearing it all up, I bought some acrylic ink and tried some experiments (on a spare piece of paper this time) using my ancient dip pen. I hated dip pens when we used them at school but this seems to have worked reasonably well. I even went as far as to add some gulls in white.
Even so I then reverted to type when it came to sticking the picture on to a cradled board support. For all my my measuring and marking, I manage to stick it down upside down and slightly skewed. Time for a break and some of that patience and persistence. Using my newly learned skills with palette knives and scrapers, I came back and carefully manged to remove it from the board with only two minor tears. Here is the corrected result.
Of course these messages also apply to everything you do. Even after several years of chair making my brain would go AWOL but there are always remedies. This is a detail from my last chair showing that I had to take it apart, fill in the hole in the wrong place and drill it in the right place. That is still probably the chair that most captures my style, warts and all.
Have fun and keep at it.
Of all the art works I’ve done over the last 70 years, the ones I’ve had least satisfaction with are portraits. Thankfully when I think of all the art I’ve looked at there are very few portraits by other artists that really please me as well. The Uffizi gallery with all those virgin and child, cherub filled pieces is by far the least enjoyable gallery I have ever been in. That’s personal of course. I am not even very keen on photographs of people.
Oddly an early pencil sketch I did of my grandad, really captured the subject and may still be adorning some wall up in Barrow-in-Furness. On the other hand I have been failing to get the scene below right for at least 20 years, mainly because of the singer’s mouth. In general the difficulty of portraits varies from side profile old men through a scale to full body young child. Animals seem to be easier, though horses are less so.
While this one from 1967, done with shoe brush and polish still works better for me.
Some people are such natural mark makers that they can capture people with real economy (Hockney, Daumier). Other artists chose a different tack. They concentrate on capturing character, movement and a sense of life. For me that is usually more successful to look at than more literal works. Below are some of the pictures I have on my wall, because they inspire me without making me a copyist.
Last night we did an exercise, thanks Wayne, doing 6 minute sketches,using different techniques, from B&W photos. I used the same photo each time, which is at the bottom. I think I’ve got the order last from first at the top. There was also a last one using the wrong hand, but I excused myself that one. For me the charcoal one struck me, as it started out well, with the hair, but the more I got into delicate detail the more my shaky hands betrayed me.
Yesterday I was at a Contemporary Landscape Painting workshop with Pippa. It was very stimulating, so I thought I’d pass the basics on.
We started by dividing a good sized piece of reasonably heavyweight cartridge paper into three rows and then making marks across each row with palette knife and undiluted acrylic paint. Desperately not thinking of landscapes we used a dark, medium and light colour in each, perhaps with a warm or cold colour relationship.
Make sure to leave a good quantity of white paper. On one row at least the dark should be black. The marks should overflow to give colour and texture subtleties. There should be slightly stronger areas of pigment and others could be almost scraped off. Don’t get too fussy.
Next take a small mount cut out and keep laying it over the paper to see if any interesting shapes or images emerge. You can twist the mount at whatever angle works. Pick as many images as you fancy playing with. They can’t overlap, as the next task is to cut them out and stick them to a sheet of paper to work on. In those bits you can think about landscape at last. You can paint over any bits that don’t work and add detail that adds more shape, distance and texture.
Lastly we did some larger (but still small for this exercise) pictures using the same stages on each piece of paper – Making flat marks in three colour shades, with different strengths, overlaps and textures. Doing it reminded me of Heather Burton’s advice to block in shapes quickly in flat colour at the start of a palette knife piece and the abstract session where we folded a paper that we had worked on to highlight different sections and stimulate new ideas.
The exercise aimed to give more liveliness to compositions. Using flat acrylics allows you to add layers of subtlety and detail afterwards.
This approach allowed me to free up a painting I’d been struggling with, trying to capture a day at Glencoe’s Signal Rock site, when there were many dragonflies. Not perfect but improved. Thanks again Pippa.
I’ve written elsewhere about how we should recognise that a lot of our behaviours, including art, a just our own versions of other animal behaviours. So have you watched a dog lie down? It is intriguing. First comes the impulse, then the spot selection, then walking on the spot in a circle, the head is down and the terrain is checked visually and in terms of scent and finally a satisfied plonk to ground. During this the dog will also be checking its environment, including checking on other animals it wishes to please or stay on good terms with.
That certainly describes a good part of my art process, except with drawings and paintings I am mostly walking back and forwards to decide when it feels right. I can’t help checking what others think either.
For some people art is almost like a meditation, where you are paying attention to each mark and excluding as many outside thoughts as possible. Does that sound similiar?
For others art is a way of expressing anger but the same is true of that too. You need to look for the point at which the demon has for the moment been exorcised. If it is just for therapy then that is enough. If you want to get a message across to others then you can also think about how well that has been achieved.
Even if you are just showing off, you still need to go round those circles until you have managed something that will light up people’s eyes.
Personally I think that the more technical art gets the more danger there is of loosing the feeling involved. If possible you need to manage to balance technique and feeling until you are at the point where you can plonk down and relax, at least for a short while.
I had a discussion the other day about the fact that people often pay good money to have something look like it has rusted with age, the fashionable use of Corten steel being an example. I have a love of letting sculptures develop as they will over the years, with minimal interference and restoration. Wooden ones sometimes need more attention but I love the way the metal ones change. Different metals have different characteristics and alloying and oxidisation processes affect that. I think the sculptures have a better feel and texture if left to evolve, with minimal interference, though lately I have been using a weak oil paint and linseed oil mix on parts of them to slow and subtly alter the changes.
Here are some examples.
I’ve just hired time in David Mayne’s sculpture studio to realise a dream I didn’t really know I had. I’ve often told visitors to Yorkshire Sculpture Park about people metaphorically patting me on the head for sculpture I made when I was 16 and then looking around at the professional SCULPTURES. I couldn’t see how I could move into that world and moved on.
After making a few metal sculptures in recent years, I had a vision of making up a group and decided to indulge myself.
I’d recently made two butterflies based on the Ringlet and they seemed to please others as well. One of them was left by its new owner to quietly oxidise by itself which will look more like the Ringlet, which is brown. After installing the second and looking at the way the light worked on it, I decided to experiment with putting a weak mixture of yellow ochre and linseed oil on the butterfly and sap green in the case of the leaf. That has worked well, changing the subtle effects of the heat worked markings and slowing the ageing process but not stopping it and not having an enameled surface that will later flake.
I decided to do a set of ten based on the Ringlet again and also the Comma. Here is the result grouped in the corridor at The Sculpture Lounge.
The stands allow them to be displayed on a flat surface, where they can be bolted down if required. Equally they can stand on soil and the rod goes through the stand to anchor further into the soil. Tent pegs can also be used with the cross pieces (we live in a windy garden).
Here is a shorter one in the flower bed by our kitchen. The leaf is temporarily yellow with some oil paint and the sun. It will slowly change colour.
Unlike the Ringlet, the Comma is quite bright yellow or orange on the upper side of the wing. The lower side is dull and brown, so that they look like a dead leaf when the wings are closed. Clever eh? I have started patination experiments on the same lines to give a gentle aging and earlier colour indication.
