| My (Steve) paintings are a mixed bag, with some themes. Some are are just places and weather, but usually developed from sketches and memories. Some are what Ruth calls social realism, that are made up from memories and bits of photos to evoke events, people, a time, even place. Others represent what is evoked by a book, as in the gandalf paintings that I started doing for people, on their student room windows, in the the early 1970’s. Some are to get people to think about things that might otherwise be ignored, such as the trees in big houses and gardens. There are examples here of sketches, acrylic works, e-pictures, murals and combinations of those. During 2020 I made a work that was a collage of mini versions of parts of the view from our bedroom during Lockdown. I then did some others of the same view based on the Lockdown experience, put into the view. I often paint best when someone says something like ‘I like washing on the line’ and I commemerate that. Some of the photos are not very good because they are old and I don’t have access to the paintings to redo them. |
- Failing to Portrait
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.
Spencer 
Hogarth 
Hockney 
Chagal 
Daumier 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.
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Not looking at drawing 
