Jelly Shoes

Jelly Shoes

(acrylic on board, 12 x 12 in)

I made a bit of a push to finish this painting in time for the Newcastle Painters Group meeting on Saturday and am well pleased with the result and with the comments I received at the meeting.

You'll see that the mysterious woman who appeared behind the jelly shoe rack has been eliminated. I decided she wasn't required and in fact detracted from the arrangement of colourful footwear.

Trees and Mausoleum

Trees and Mausoleum

(acrylic on board, 30 x 30 cm)

This is the painting I worked on last week to get it ready for the Newcastle Painters Group meeting on Saturday. I had to fight my natural inclination to use brighter colour, but I thought it important to maintain the mood and sombre colour seemed appropriate to do that. So it is that most of it was achieved with raw umber, Payne's grey, unbleached titanium and sap green. Only the sky was allowed a little variation to include cobalt blue, ultramarine, cerulean blue and more Payne's grey. This may not be obvious from the photograph because of reflection into the camera lens. I hope the eventual varnishing will help with that.

[I'm not very happy with the title - Trees with Mausoleum may be accurate but falls short of the more poetic title I think it probably deserves. Serious suggestions welcome.]

Spanish Pot

Spanish Pot

(acrylic on board, 7 x 7 in.)

Friday afternoon at Gateshead Art Society sometimes presents me with a decision on what I should do. There's a published programme that I'm free to ignore or follow, as the whim takes me, and this can be useful when I'm between paintings.

This week we had visitors at home so what spare time I had available was used to finish of a painting to take to the Newcastle Painters meeting on Saturday (more on that tomorrow) and little opportunity to research subject matter for a new painting to start at the Shipley on Friday. The programme suggested we do a painting without using any brushes and complete it in one session. In a rush, I chose a few tools and paints, grabbed a small prepared panel, printed off a photograph of a pot I'd seen in Seville and set off to make my little painting.

And after about an hour and a half, the painting was done. It was fascinating, frustrating and enlightening to see what could be done with my chosen tools - a pipe cleaner and a cosmetic sponge. The pattern on the pot proved most difficult but I like the rather primitive effect the folded sponge achieved.

Mint Street Parade

Mint Street Parade

(acrylic on board, 25 x 25 cm)

In December I had trouble with very visible Sharpie lines on this panel but solved it with a layer of thin paper. Last week I pushed on and thought I'd finished the painting. 

I was a little dissatisfied with what seemed to be simply a street scene with a man standing there with his shopping bag and I'm always acutely aware that the good folk of the North East don't like buying pictures of places they don't recognise and Mint Street is in Lincoln.

My admiration for Carel Weight suggested an addition. In many of Weight's paintings there are mysterious or unexplained events, often taking place out of the picture, and into my head jumped the idea of a passing parade. Hence the balloons.

Oddly, when I showed this picture to my friends at the recent Newcastle Painters meeting, no one noticed the balloons and my little joke was lost.

Winter's Jar

Winter's Jar

(acrylic on board, 24 x 24 cm)

In an effort to get some things done before the next meeting of the Newcastle Painters Group, I pressed on and completed this small winter landscape, featuring another of the pharmacy jars I saw in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The landscape itself is a view of hills in Little Langdale, where I went on one of my painting trips ten years ago. The snow, of course, is pure invention.

I'm really quite pleased with this picture and was glad to find it met with a favourable reaction at the Painters group meeting.

Ian Bennett

Ian Bennett

RIP

I'm greatly saddened to report the passing of my old friend and painting buddy, Ian Bennett, who died on 29th of December 2017.

Ian was one quarter of the Figure 8 painting group which we set up in 2004. We had our first exhibition together in that year in the Long Gallery, University of Newcastle and went on to show as Figure 8 in twelve further exhibitions over ten years around the region.

Ian was also instrumental in starting the Newcastle Painters Group and acted as the unofficial "secretary" until last year.

It may have been due to his calling (he was a Canon at St Nicholas's Cathedral in Newcastle - I referred to him fondly as "the loose canon"), but I prefer to believe that it was because he was just a Very Nice Man that I never heard him say a bad thing about anyone. Everyone who knew him liked him.

To the end his greatest wish was to get back to his painting and when his family came to see to his affairs, there was a fresh canvas on his easel.

I shall miss him.

Sketch Crawl - The 'Into' Building, 16th December

South Africa War Memorial, from the Into Building

(0.8 marker in A4 sketchbook)

For some reason I completely forgot to post this drawing, done on the last sketch crawl of the year. The "crawl" was a bit unusual, in that the Tyne & Wear Urban Sketchers were invited to join the Newcastle Painters Group for an informal lunch, before we went up to the top floor of Newcastle University's 'Into' Building to do some sketching.

What a view! I've never been able to see the angel on top of the South Africa War Memorial so clearly before and I'm well pleased with the drawing I made. A good end to the year's sketching.

I Looked *Everywhere*.

Winter's Jar WIP

(acrylic on board, 24 x 24 cm)

Still Life with Fish and Chair WIP

(acrylic on board, 10 x 10 in)

Collage Jar WIP

(acrylic on board, 18 x 20 cm)

On Friday I decided to try to get these three paintings finished in time for a meeting of the Newcastle Painters Group on Saturday, only to realise I couldn't find my box of paints. During the week we'd moved the rest of my stuff from the old house and in making room for all the boxes, I'd put my container of most-used colours Somewhere Safe.

After a search Everywhere, I pressed on with some of my other colours but progress was slow and I didn't complete any of them. Still, they were well-received on Saturday and I've since looked in that other place that wasn't Everywhere and found the mislaid paints.