Back At Last

After weeks of preparations we finally had the Wedding of the Year on a fine Saturday in early April.  The all day epic for 170 of us ended at 1.30 am when I kicked out the last of the boppers and started to think about painting again.  To prove I was there, here is a shot of the proud father-of-the-bride and his elder daughter in their best kit.  I cringe when I think that those shoes cost me more than a Jullian box easel!

In early May David Pilgrim and I had a great time staying with David and Herme Bachmann in Seville. Mike Richardson joined us after a couple of days.  The Davids and Mike produced some splendid stuff over the concentrated week of painting.  Eric Davis had Tony Dakin to stay in his flat just round the corner from the Bachmanns, so for a few days there were 6 of us out on the streets.  I loved Seville - I think we all did - and I would go back there like a shot.  I did 30 oil sketches and numerous drawings over the 9 days.  My favourite site was the Royal Alcázar Palace and because David B had got us all special passes we were able to wander in and out of the palace gardens at will. Below I have posted just a few of the paintings done on the trip.

Dome, Cypress and Belltower

We painted this on our first and last days - it is in the cathedral square.  

In The Plaza Nueva

The Triana Bridge

Plaza Elvira and Michael Richardson

Mike was hard at work at the other end of this little square, painting us.

The Alcázar Gardens

Both the Davids made a good job of this - they seemed to get the heat of the day in somehow.

The Water Organ, Alcázar Gardens

When the reservoir for the organ became full, the flow would be released and the organ would play two tunes, both of which became 'brain worms' if you stayed there too long!

Pool in the Carlos V Pabellon

Mike captured another view of this beautifully.  There are openings on all four sides and this pool is a 

'must' for next time

Mercury and The Tank 1

I found the 'Jimmy' (as the Royal Corps of Signals call it) irresistible and painted it 5 or 6 times.

Mercury and The Tank 2

Cenador Del Leon

This is quite close to the Charles 5th Pavilion, in the Réal Alcázar gardens

Urn and Seat, Alcázar Gardens

Rooftop View from Aire

I had paint left on my palette after my 'Final' painting, so went up onto David B's rooftop terrace and painted this in about 30 minutes - making it the final, final painting

Now I am preparing for my nephew's wedding in Canada in late July - a whole weekend of it including a full-blown Ukranian Orthodox service to tie the knot.  Maddy is allowing me time to paint (she is bringing books) so when we are not sight-seeing I hope to do some oil sketching on 10x7 and 9x7 boards and using very lightweight kit.  I have just finished making two wet panel boxes (to take 7 inch boards up to 11 inches long) and a new 'palette-easel'.  The latter is simplicity itself and only weighs 450 grams (1lb).  Once I have screwed one of those Ken Bromley brackets on the bottom I will be able to mount it on my ancient Zeiss tripod, which is made of brass, beautifully engineered and less than half the weight of a modern tripod.

The palette-easel folds into itself to look like a medium sized book

Then when you open it all the way round it becomes a combined easel and palette.  My DIY skills are almost non-existent but I find these gadgets very satisfying to make, especially as all the wood is salvaged and I get what I really need at the end.

Blogless In Beckley (Almost)

It is nearly a whole month since my last post.  I am looking for an excuse and 'wedding planning' might do but actually I have been able to sneak out and get stuff done. I have also been reasonably busy in the studio.  In fact I seem to have clocked up 36 small panels of one sort or another since the last post so here goes with some of them.

Beckley Park, below our 'piste', is always a draw for me and the tobogganing wasn't up to much this year so I dumped my toboggan and tried an 8x10 while I had the chance:

Towards Beckley Park 8x10

21 Jan 13

When we had the snow we also had very flat light and it was hard to find something that sparkled a bit.   On what was meant to be a shopping trip I caught these boys playing football in Witney:

 Football, Witney 10x8

22 Jan 13

The next day I tried 2 sketches from the 7-acre field above the village but they were both a little 'strong'. I will knock them back a bit at some point but here is one of them:

Beckley From 7 Acres 8x10

Then came the floods.  I have never seen the River Ray at Islip burst its banks over so wide an area:

Flooded Fields Islip 8x10

30 Jan 13

Flooded Fields Islip 8x12

1 Feb 13

I went back to the 7-acre field one sunny morning and did two small panels.  This is the first of them:

Beckley From 7-acres 8x10

2 Feb 13

The second fall of snow went quickly but I just managed to catch this one from above Stanton St John:

Towards Forest Hill 8x10

12 Feb 13

Michael Worthington and I then had a sunny day in Brill where we each did two small oils.  This is my first one.  A deeper panel would have allowed a proper foreground but it was all I had.:

Main Street, Brill 5x9

15 Feb 13

Finally, I have continued to experiment with the Atelier Acrylics on slightly larger paintings of Venice, based on th sketches I made there in late November.  This is an example:

Waiting For Customers, San Barnaba 10x8

Messing About With Atelier Interactive

It is just cold enough for me to get out on our village 'piste' and try a little tobogganing today.  Once the kids have been on it for a day or two and it has re-frozen it is generally pretty fast.  Whilst waiting for the piste to pack down (and getting my brother-in-law into hospital for a heart operation) I have been trying out Atelier Interactive acrylics for the first time.  I thought that they might be just the thing for our trip to my nephew's wedding in Canada this summer.  Last time I took pastels and they were great for quick work but required looking after rather carefully.  They were also bulky.

The idea that one could 're-open' dried acrylics and blend them like oils really appealed to me.  I started with this one:

San Giorgio - Winter dawn 7x8 inches

That was OK but I found that (contrary to the advertising blurb) there is just as much tonal shift when Atelier paints dry as with ordinary acrylics.  In consequence, the more I painted new paint over dried paint the darker everything became.  I then tried a looser, more fluid approach to the Crown Mines:

Crown Mines, Botallack 7x8 inches

This seemed to go better.  The more positive and fluid I was with brushstrokes the easier it was to maintain tonal balance.  Then this morning, I tried a Canada scene from an old pastel:

Bow Lake, Canadian Rockies 6x8 inches

I think this is beginning to work and I could paint on a small scale, en plein air with these paints.  They do stay open longer and can be re-opened after becoming touch dry but the tonal shift that you get with acrylics is still there.  Probably the biggest advantage is that it is much easier to clean up if you are using a dry palette rather than a Staywet type.  I reckon that working really large is much easier with these paints than regular acrylics. I have heard that painting in humid conditions can be difficult because then Atelier is reluctant to dry but in the Rockies in summer I think I will be OK.

As far as quality goes, as with most manufacturers, the pigments used in reds and yellows are the ones to watch.  I would not trust the Carmine in the Atelier starter set (I think it uses PR47:4 which is not very lightfast) so I bought their 'Permanent Alizarine' which uses PR175 and PR122 as my cool red and their Pyrrole Red (PR254) as my hot red.  Both of these are Series 3 so a little more expensive. Otherwise all the pigments in the starter set are reliably permanent and all the paints are reasonably priced.

Manet's Muse in Black

At last I have finished - and submitted - our accounts so we can think about art and music again!  It always hangs over me like a black cloud at the turn of the year.

Talking of black, I am really looking forward to the Manet Portraits exhibition at the RA.  In 1996 we took the children to a massive Manet exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland.  There we saw the iconic portrait of Berthe Morisot, Manet's sister-in-law, in black.  It was much smaller than we expected but that is what happens when you only see reproductions in books.  Very few artists can paint with black successfully: maybe just Goya, Sargent and Manet?  Using black often kills a painting (I don't mean mixed 'blacks' of course but the stuff straight from the tube) but Manet always seemed to get away with it.

I have always loved that Morisot portrait.  She was a wonderful artist herself - like Elizabeth Thomson Butler, Mary Cassatt, Gwen John and many other women artists who had to struggle for recognition in a male-dominated profession.  Her sister Edma could perhaps have been just as successful (Paul Guichard evidently thought so) but she married Adolphe Pontillon very young and the rest as they say is history.  It is a pity too that Manet did not live long enough to paint his niece, Julie.  Her wide eyed beauty reminds me of Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler's model for 'Symphony in White' and I am sure Manet would have made his portrait of Julie an equally great example of the genre had he painted it.

All I have is a postcard of the Morisot portrait but in January 2 years ago I found it very handy to place in some small studies I was doing in the early mornings.  Here are three of them.

Still Life with Manet Postcard 8x8 inches

The Shanghai Cup 8x8 inches

Berthe and the Shanghai Cup 8x8 inches

Actually those 'before breakfast' paintings were wonderfully instructive.  I worked in acrylics on a very small scale - these two are only about 6x4 inches each.  This year I am hoping to use the remaining January mornings for something similar unless the call of the wild is too strong:

The First Primroses 6x4 inches

Pomegranate and Pinks 6.5x4.5 inches

Worthington's New Year Sortie

Drowsy. Slightly sore head.  New Year's Day.  I stagger to the phone and realise that it is already 9.20am.  Michael Worthington sounds bright and breezy.  I ask Management what to do and she says 'paint' so at 1030 we are in his car speeding towards the Oxford Canal at Enslow.

We walk along the tow path for ages, turn round and walk back to a spot we identified earlier.  We are 'with the light' so pin up our coats on the thorn bushes behind us to keep the sun off.  He opens his pochade box: I open the champagne.  Neither of us feels that a masterpiece is necessarily on the way but at least we are out there and the champagne is chilled.

After blocking in my 8x10 I pour Worthington a glass and we wish the passers by a Happy New Year.  He looks rather sheepish:

Ninety minutes later and slightly light-headed we decide that the god of plein air has received due obeisance and retreat to the car.  I thank Mr W for getting me out on the very first day of the year.  'We return to our places' (apologies to TS Eliot).  The plein air rat has been fed; the chicken has been sacrificed and the entrails examined; the omens (albeit seen through all those champagne bubbles) are possibly good but my sketch is not.  I am comforted by a quote from David Curtis that old paintings make good fire-lighters. And there is also tomorrow.

  Oxford Canal at Enslow

Last Post of 2012

Happy New Year folks!

In between dealing with the mince pie mountain and the even tougher job of testing various champagnes for my daughter's wedding I have (in a rather desultory way, ie without any great hope for a masterpiece) scribbled down some pastels based on the Venice trip.  It kept me sane and allowed me to try out a new way of keeping the support's surface from clogging so quickly.

I paint pastels on mountboard.  I prime it front, edges and back with acrylic primer and then use a mixture of pigment, marble dust and primer to put a darkish surface on it that will take pastel.  As I tend to overdo the pastel marks (I guess that I still think I am painting in oils) and I don't want to keep fixing the painting too much, the support surface clogs up quite quickly.  Recently I have been using a thin acrylic underpainting to provide a starting layer that does not affect the 'bite' of the surface.  I have even mixed marble dust with the colours in an attempt to keep everything 'rough'.  I am not sure about the technique but it has been fun to try when the chances of being allowed out to paint are nil and all is dark and wet out there anyway.

This one of the Salute is pretty extreme for me but helped to prove the concept:

Salute - Evening

I was starting another one of the Salute from the Accademia Bridge - actually I had 10 pastels on the go at that stage - when Maddy came in and shouted: 'Stop - leave it as it is - you have already overworked the first three'.  'But I am just getting started and there is hardly any pastel on it'.  'Leave it alone'.  Like any good Dalek I obeyed. I can see what she means but the temptation to keep developing it is irresistible. 

Salute from Accademia Bridge - First State

 Probably the most successful so far has been this one of the San Marco facade.  Maybe the 'architectural' views are more suitable for pastel but I shall persist with the watery ones as well and see what comes out.

San Marco Facade

The days are getting longer, my autumn-flowering snowdrop (galanthus reginae-olgae subsp. reginae-olgae) will soon be joined by Galanthus 'John Gray' and the other early snowdrops and I can't wait to get out there and paint once the rain stops!

Lewis

On Monday night (17 Dec) I joined many painting pals at the annual Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) 'Art Evening' in the Mall Galleries after an afternoon painting in Green Park with Michael Worthington.

I am in the ROI show with two paintings and many friends have managed to 'get one (or more) in' this year but I barely had time to check where mine had been hung or view any friends' work before the bun fight began.  This year it seemed more crowded than ever.  Because I was ill when I might have remembered to book I thought I would just be watching but as luck would have it some booked places were not filled so I paid my £10 and found a place among the easels.  There were three models: Yvonne, Sophie and Lewis.

Lewis is a lovely lad and although clearly not a professional model was brilliant at holding the pose.  I really enjoyed painting him and in the end the small format (13x10 inches) did not really affect the portrait.  In fact I seemed to have a lot more time this year and as the wine and mincepies were only available towards the end of the session my head was a lot clearer!

'Lewis'  13x10 Oil on board

It was a great evening, with some lovely work, nicely capped by Haidee-Jo Summers winning the first prize for the best non-member painting (of Yvonne) and Pauline Hazelwood winning the runner-up prize (for 'Sophie').  Pauline's son took the third prize (for another 'Yvonne') and I was particularly chuffed about that because I was able to lend him my spare dipper as he had mislaid his.

I felt very rusty on the afternoon session with Michael but as my recent chest X-Ray indicates 'all clear' I was just glad to be outdoors again after 2 weeks of inactivity.

Lansdowne House from Green Park 10x7 inches

I am now looking forward to many more 'en plein air' sessions and in the studio I am working on some pastels based on the Venice trip so will try to post some next time.  

Let us all remember the homeless at this time of the year and give what we can.  A very Happy Christmas to everyone.