Gallagher & Turner Open Exhibition 2021

 Ouseburn Viaducts

(acrylic on linen panel, 30x30 cm)

Late for the Match

(acrylic on board, 25x25 cm)

Two of my paintings have been selected for exhibition at Gallagher & Turner Gallery, in Newcastle. The exhibition runs from 26 November to 22 January.

Ouseburn Viaducts

 Ouseburn Viaducts

(Acrylic on canvas panel, 30x30 cm)

I slumped a little last week after my paintings of Staithes were rejected from a national exhibition I'd had real hopes of. I then had to scrub out several days work on a painting that I realised simply wasn’t going to work.

What do you do when that happens? You start painting again, of course, and if you’re lucky, a giraffe turns up.

Another Short Walk in the Ouseburn Valley

A beautiful day on the Tyne today, with wispy white clouds high above in the bright blue sky. At last a day out with the Urban Sketchers Tyne and Wear after months of Lockdown! Last year, as my Regular Reader may remember, I attempted to meet up with the other Urban Sketchers to get some drawing done in the Ouseburn Valley. As luck would have it, I didn't manage to meet any of them and got no drawing done.

This time was better. On arrival at The Cycle Hub, I found Richard on the cafe terrace, drawing Mark who was sitting in front of him apparently drawing the Blue Circle Cement factory across the river. 

After a bit of catching up, I figured I should make an effort to first of all find some of the others and maybe try to overcome what I recognised as the growing inertia that would probably stop me from even opening my sketch book. So, next stop: Allan, who'd already done a very nice drawing of some railings and was just started on another. After catching up with him, I felt guilty about stopping him from getting on with his new drawing, so I moved on up the burn, making a detour up some steps into a little area of commercial units. I was really taken with the colours and ridged metal walls of the units and I can see me making paintings of these fairly soon.

Coming out of the commercial unit area, I found I was on a grassy bank above the path that runs by the burn, and sitting on the grass, his back up against a convenient tree, was Andy, working away at a sketch of a boat on the water, with some of the run down buildings on the opposite bank. Cue : Catching Up.

And so, onwards upstream to my favourite musing bench, opposite the Ouseburn Farm with the wonderful Byker Viaducts in the background, where I sat for a short while listening to the ducks and the running water.

Were I in a properly-established sketching regime, I'd probably have just opened my sketchbook and started on this interesting subject, but it's a complicated thing and I wasn't ready for it. Up again then and I headed up to the area below some of the concrete supports of the Metro Viaduct. 

I knew there was a couple of stone slabs there that might provide a seat while I drew something simple like those concrete supports and when I rounded the corner, I spotted someone already sitting there who I thought at first might be one the sketchers I've not yet met. I smiled at him. He didn't smile back. It took me a moment or two to realise that the paper in his hand wasn't a sketchbook but possibly a bunch of betting slips and the bottle of Hobgoblin by his side, coupled with his continued stare, suggested that he might prefer to be left alone.

I turned away as if distracted by my phone beeping, then crossed the path to busy myself with a photo of some sheep grazing under the concrete supports I'd intended to draw. Kevin, who had indeed just made my phone beep, suddenly appeared round the bend in the path and it was time to wander back downstream.

What was left of the day? Only the chance to lean over the railings and photograph a swan sleeping on its not very elaborate nest on the muddy banks of the Ouseburn, and a brief goodbye to those still sketching at The Cycle Hub.

 Kevin and I tried to get a pint on the Quayside, but the pubs were either heaving with thirsty Geordies or set up for table bookings, so no luck there. 

Nonetheless, I great way to spend a few hours away from home and hey! rediscover the art of talking to people after this traumatic year.

 

A Short Walk in the Ouseburn Valley

This post should have been entitled something like "Sketch Crawl: in the Ouseburn Valley" but things worked out differently. There was a time when Sketch Crawls began at a civilised time and lasted until it was time to go home for tea. Under more recent Tyne and Wear Urban Sketcher management they've become daylong events so I find that, if I don't arrive for the ten o'clock start, there's a danger that I won't link up with the other sketchers. 

And so it was on Saturday. I'm not an early riser; never have been, never will be, but the current Lockdown situation has made it more difficult than ever to get up and out early. There's also the fear induced by getting onto a bus without knowing if it'll be full of people without masks breathing the Deadly Virus over me.

As it turned out, there were only six other people on the bus, all wore masks and were sitting in appropriately distanced seats, so I felt reasonably happy when I got off at the Baltic and urged my knees, now very stiff from months of sitting in the house, to cooperate in the relatively short walk across the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and along the Newcastle Quayside to the Cycle Hub where it was all about to Kick Off. Or where it was due to Kick Off at ten o'clock, but now it was eleven o'clock.

I looked in the Hub cafe, I looked down into the marina, I looked up and down the quay, but no sketchers visible. Maybe they'd moved up the Ouseburn? There's always something to draw in the way of derelict buildings, boats and ducks, so I headed upstream.

As passed under a road bridge, I noticed what, for me, is a new addition to the local decorations.

I've seen Candyman, so there was no chance of my saying the word ESSALAMUS three times and I passed safely through and soon came to the first of the day's boats.

I liked them and there were jolly workmen doing workman-like things to them, but my knees were aching, there was nowhere to sit down, the path was narrow and people kept passing by doing their best to socially-distance but inevitably failing, so I decided not to attempt a drawing and pressed on.

By the time I'd reached the area of the Cluny and Seven Stories I was developing a fairly clear idea that sketching would not happen. I sat on a bench in the sunshine opposite the pigs in the city farm, out of the annoying wind, and watched the ducks on the river as I contemplated my place in the world. Yes, it was that kind of day.

Having reached an accommodation with the day, I thought I'd walk on a little further up the valley to see what I might see. Round the corner I discovered a curious structure that turned out to be the Culvert Bandstand. I wondered how many unforgettable performances had taken place there without my ever knowing of its existence. None in recent times by the look of it.

The Bandstand may be a bit lacklustre but its situation is striking, set as it is in the valley below the soaring arches of Byker Bridge, the Victorian Ouseburn Viaduct and the more recent Byker Viaduct. 

As I left the Bandstand I was struck by a piece of graffiti that stood out amongst the inevitable gaggle of tags and crude colourings. Short and to point, without being specific, it seems to sum up what a lot of us are probably thinking every day of this year.

I figured it was time to go back, maybe find the others at the Cycle Hub and perhaps have a coffee. But no luck. Shortly before the Hub I passed Bethan, who said "Hi, they're all Down There", nodding back at the marina. If that were the case, her Down There was not the Down There I looked about. 

Feeling tired after my unaccustomed walk, I headed back to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, pausing only to admire, not for the first time and I'm sure, not for the last, the wonderful view up the River Tyne to Newcastle and Gateshead, nestled in the Tyne Gorge and linked by a series of splendid bridges..

Sketch Crawl : Back to the Ouseburn

The Old Chimney, Ouseburn

(Black marker in A5 sketchbook)

OK, I know I'm late in posting and everything seems to be becoming confused. Must do better.

The winter weather wasn't terribly conducive to outdoor sketching and I missed at least one sketch crawl (to Durham in January), but this drawing was made in December. We met in the Cafe at the Ouseburn Farm where hot chocolate and coffee made forays to draw outdoors possible. Some sketchers didn't even brave the outdoors, choosing to sit in the warm cafe and draw the view through the windows, but I decided to draw the Lime Street Chimney. The chimney was built in the late 1840s originally as part of a steam operated flax mill designed by John Dobson, the building now known as Cluny Warehouse.

Sketch Crawl : The Ouseburn again

The Toffee Factory

(markers in A5 sketchbook)

Bus problems on Saturday meant I arrived at the Cycle Hub just as the other Urban Sketchers were leaving to search out subjects. I should perhaps have followed them to the mouth of the Ouseburn to draw the boats berthed there because I do like a nice boat when I find one. Instead, however, I walked up the hill, past the Free Trade Inn and tried a view from up there. No joy, mainly because the buddleia has grown wild there and obscures the enticing view of the Toffee Factory.

Walking down a dodgy flight of stairs, I found myself back on the footpath by the Ouseburn where Michael was hard at work on a drawing of the Barrage. I've drawn the Barrage before, but the bench Michael was on gave a decent view of the Toffee Factory, so I settled on both the bench and the view. 

I realised there were too many trees for comfort and vowed to make an effort in future to work up a few different marks for sketching trees to avoid the somewhat generic trees I always end up with in my drawings. To lend a bit of difference to the shrubbery, I used a purple marker to colour the long flower spikes (they're called pannicles) on the buddleia.

Part of the Barrage

(0.5 marker in A5 sketchbook)

After making arrangements to meet up with the others for coffee at Kiln, I decided to do something about a subject I'd looked at last time we were there but had to leave because of rain. It's a bit of the Barrage that serves some useful function I've yet to determine; I guess it rises with the tide, so maybe it's just a buffer to prevent boats from running into the Barrage. 

I like the odd shapes of this thing and happily drew it, then found myself quite involved in the stones partly submerged in river mud. I'm always in my element with odd objects, stones and mud.

The coffee was good in Kiln and we were eventually able to all gather round a long table for a show-and-tell, although the numbers did mean conversation was a bit limited to those immediately to hand. Sadly, Kim wasn't able to be there, so no group photo this time.

Sketch Crawl : Mouth of the Ouseburn

Ouseburn Barrage
(Mixed media in A4 sketchbook)

Time to catch up on our most recent Sketch Crawl - Saturday, 10th June at the mouth of the Ouseburn.

The weather was unkind yet again, refusing to maintain the decent sunny spell of the days leading up to the Sketch Crawl and offering instead some light rain. As a consequence, last minute changes were made to the meeting point and when I got to The Cycle Hub, rather than the Tyne Bar, there was Allan sitting outside, but under cover, drawing a view of the bridges up the Tyne.

In the Hub cafe were Mike and Richard, half way through a breakfast coffee, so I joined them and did a bit of catching up.

After a while the rain moved away, so we set about getting down on paper what we could in the time before more arrived. There was a set of huge green floats in the Ouseburn that really took my fancy and would have made quite a simple subject, but without turning my sketchbook sideways I couldn't find a composition. And yes, some people would just turn their sketchbook sideways, but not me.

The Barrage presented a much more intriguing but potentially more demanding subject and it wasn't long after starting it that I began to think I'd bitten off more than I could chew. And yet ... it all started to come together when first I added some colour with brush pens, then seated in the shelter of the viaduct used coloured pencils to force it to work. The watercolour was added at home to finally make me happy with it.

Next time : 29th July is WorldWide SketchCrawl Day, so I think we'll be aiming to join in that. Stay tuned.

Sketch Crawl Saturday

(Photo: https://losingit.me.uk/2011/07/)

Our next North East Sketch Crawl is not far away! We will be meeting on Saturday 10th June to draw around the Ouseburn valley, Newcastle, meeting at the Tyne Bar at 1.00pm. For anyone coming by public transport, the Q3 bus runs along the Quayside right to the Tyne Bar and can be caught near the Monument Metro station. 

Later, we'll probably have coffee at the Cycle Hub.

Hope to see you there!

Sketch Crawl #11 : Ouseburn Farm

"Sea Song Sang",Ouseburn
(0.5 Micron marker in A4 sketchbook)

Ouseburn Farm Giraffes
(0.5 Micron marker and Pentel Brush Pen
 in A4 sketchbook)

Last Saturday was my eleventh Sketch Crawl and we'd decided to return to the Ouseburn. Last time we were there it rained constantly and we had to spend most of our time looking round the open studios in 36 Lime Street and my heart sank a little when I checked the weather forecast the night before: more rain.

No need to worry, however; the weather was very kind and only a brief shower interrupted us, so I was able to get done the drawing of the little "Sea Song Sang" boat that sits on the Ouseburn below the windows of the Seven Stories cafe. I'd wanted to draw that last time but without shelter from the rain it was impossible. Good to be able to do it this time then.

After a short regrouping to decide what to do with the rest of the afternoon, we went out to draw again. This time I had a good look round the Ouseburn Farm and found an interesting view of the railway and road arches, together with some plants and two concrete giraffes (sorry to disillusion anyone who thought there might be wild giraffes in Byker).

Two drawings. Definitely my limit it seems. When I was done I headed off to the Biscuit Factory cafe to drink coffee and compare sketchbooks with the others. There was a bit of a holdup at the cafe counter, but this was definitely absolutely nothing to do with Anita and indecisiveness didn't come into it at all.

Sketch Crawl # 5 : Ouseburn

Natalie Bell - Untitled (acrylic on board, 12 x 12 cm)

RAIN (and indoor entertainment) STOPPED PLAY

It was always going to be a questionable plan to arrange a Sketch Crawl to coincide with the Ouseburn Open Studios. The Ouseburn area is fascinating and in the right circumstances it would be great to draw the flying viaducts, old industrial buildings and even the urban farm animals. But on Saturday the weather wouldn't play ball. 

I think one or  two sketches were done and Liz managed to get a print in her sketchbook of a pig's snout, but mostly we all took advantage of looking round the artists' studios in The Biscuit Factory, 36 Lime Street and Jim Edwards's Studio Gallery.

In the end we all agreed it had been a very enjoyable afternoon, despite the lack of sketching, but decided that we should not try a Sketch Crawl in December. We'll arrange another in January in the no doubt foolish expectation that the weather will have improved by then.

And the painting illustrated? I couldn't resist buying this sweet little painting of a cup from Natalie Bell (no relation) at her open studio in 36 Lime Street.