The Last Cake

The Last Cake before the New Year Diet

(black marker with digital colour)

In the last few days I've posted on my Facebook Pages albums of all the paintings I completed in 2017 and all the sketchbook drawings I did in 2017 directly from the subject (on sketch crawls and on holiday). 

There were 14 paintings (excluding one or two that need to be re-photographed) and 16 sketches. That's not too many. Last year was a somewhat confused year and it took me quite some time to get into the creative swing of things. Drawing with the Tyne & Wear Urban Sketchers kept me (relatively) sane and there was the displacement activity of the Sketchbook Circle, but it wasn't until June that I began painting again.

I expected to resume oil painting and had bought a new radial easel to ease the transition from my old, larger basement studio to the new, attic conversion studio. But in the end, I found myself renewing my acquaintance with acrylics and working at a desk. Partly this was due to my use of water-based media in the Sketchbook Circle books, partly because I wasn't sure about the white spirit fumes in the smaller studio and partly out of a genuine desire to shake things up and try something new.

I last used acrylics in the late 80s and I was delighted to find how different they are today. I'm so please with the paintings I've done with them that I fully expect to continue exploring what they can do for the foreseeable future. 

As for drawing, my sketching with the Urban Sketchers will continue (next sketch crawl is on 27th January - venue yet to be decided) and having dropped out of the Sketchbook Circle for this year, I plan on getting more self-initiated sketchbook work done.

To that end, here's the first little sketchbook drawing of 2018. In the sketchbook it's only a black line drawing, but I still get great enjoyment out of colouring these things in Photoshop. Still, I may try some watercolour on the original in an effort to get more to grips with the slippery stuff so I can use it outdoors.

I hope my Regular Reader stays with me for what I hope will be an interestingly creative twelvemonth. Best Wishes to you all!

Knife Painting Workshop

Knife Workshop WIP

(acrylic on watercolour paper)

This is the result of an interesting workshop this afternoon, led by my old friend Tony Montague. Using one of Tony's own photographs of a garden whose name I've forgotten, this was done with heavy body acrylics and a couple of painting knives. No brush, other than to lay in some base colours on the 140 lb watercolour paper, and me very much out of my comfort zone.

It took me until the coffee break, when I stepped away, to recognise the better aspects of this painting, and I was very grateful for Tony's later offer of a pot of fluorescent orange that helped make it sing a bit.

This was my first use of heavy body acrylics and I was surprised to find that parts of the painting were still wet when it was time to take it home. All my recent experience of acrylic painting has been with standard, flow formula and fluid acrylic, all of which dry frighteningly fast.

I quite like this painting, but it needs cropping and I'm already thinking about how it might be improved with a brush and some other colours.

Adding to the Mix

Yesterday's progress on these three paintings. I'm beginning to realise the forgiving nature of acrylics and understand why so many artists who use them often end up describing their work as "mixed media".

I continue to find it difficult to thin the paint to a consistency thin enough to make fine lines. Maybe that's just lack of practice, but I also seem to be having trouble getting an even distribution of colour, so that there are areas that simply appear slightly translucent and so need over-painting.

On a recent trip to Hobbycraft I bought a couple of white Posca Marker Pens with the idea of using them in my Sketchbook Circle work, but it occurred to me yesterday that, as they contain water-based pigment ink, they'd be suitable for use with acrylic paints. And so they turned out to be - ideal for some of the fiddly white markings on the Attic Vessels, as well as on some of the details on the Food Station painting.

This led on to my using black markers on the Food Station to sketch in the figures and then finding that, like the heavy outlining in Attic Vessels, I want to keep some of the black lines. I always thought that changing to working in acrylics might be beneficial in terms of making different work and so it's proving to be. Early days yet, but I can see how collage might be incorporated soon. All very normal for many artists, I know, but quite exciting for me at this stage.

Lesley Seeger Workshop

Last week I travelled down to Huttons Ambo with my Sketch Crawl mates, Richard and Mike, for a one day Exploring Abstraction workshop with Lesley Seeger. We had a great time, the weather was excellent, the food and company were great and Lesley was a warmly enthusiastic and encouraging tutor.

Her methods are unusual, or they are in terms of how I'd normally work, even allowing for the fact that I don't normally work in acrylic. At her suggestion, I took three small (20x20 cm) canvases, two tubes of acrylic, a few brushes, a pot of acrylic medium and a little pot of water out into the local fields and from the vantage point of the hill in the photograph above, I made a a tonal drawing in blue acrylic - the canvas above - which I later worked on back at the Village Hall.

Moving on to Rake's Lane, a beautiful nearby hollow way, I made this second image with two colours and again worked on it back at the Hall.

From just up the Lane, looking back at the village, I made this third canvas. At first it was quite like the second one but somehow I managed to slop a dollop of painting medium onto the canvas and the whole affair took on a completely different character - hence the very pronounced linear quality. Again, more work was done on it back at the Village Hall.

Apart from being a really enjoyable experience, I learned quite a bit about the nature of acrylics and how they might behave. These three canvases are far from finished, of course, and whether I continue in exactly this way is uncertain, but I have a better idea of where I might be going if I pursue this medium.

Water and Oil

I recently agreed to take part in an exhibition by the North of England Art Club at the Bondgate Gallery in Alnwick, the theme of which will be the rather vague "Northumbrian Scenes". There are two restrictions: the paintings must all be 20x20 cm and must all have a fixed selling price of £50.

Having agreed to get them ready by 12 May, I was dismayed to find that the date for handing in has changed to 28 April to allow for their framing. So the last few days have seen me hunting for images to fit the brief and suitably sized boards on which to paint them.

The studio still isn't really set up for oil painting, so I'd have preferred to work in acrylics, especially as I've just invested in a new set of Atelier Interactive Acrylics and would like to see how they perform. But the boards I found already have old oil paintings on them and acrylic over oil paint isn't a very good idea.

Another problem: most of my oil paints are still in the studio at my old house, so I found myself painting with a set of 8 Van Gogh water-mixable oils. Inevitably the colours aren't really those I would have chosen but they provided me with enough colour to cover over the old paintings.

This is where I got today with my two images which are, incidentally, scenes from Holy Island.

Not yet the Siegfried Line

Washing WIP (acrylic on canvas board)

Back at Gateshead Art Society's Friday meeting, I find myself increasingly frustrated with my acrylics. Having rejigged the composition on this painting, I now find I can't easily cover up the construction lines. I'm guessing that this is simply due to a lack of sufficient pigment in the brands of acrylics I'm using. Perhaps I'll have to bite the bullet and pay for the more expensive Golden brand, but I've recently heard good reports of Jackson's own make. Anyone able to confirm?

I'm happier with this slight change in composition which reduces the problem of the buildings receding in perspective and the umpteen cars parked in the street at ground level. But I'm constantly tempted to resume the picture in oils because I'd have so much more confidence in making it work. That will not happen, however; I'm determined to master this medium.

Washed up

Washing WIP (Acrylic on board, 12 x 10 in)

I'm starting to feel like it's time to really get working again, so off I went on Friday to Gateshead Art Society, a box of acrylics and a new board in my hot little hands.

I'd made every effort the previous night to ensure I'd have all the necessary items with me, but when I unpacked my gear at the club I realised I'd left behind a worked over and squared up inkjet print essential to the new project. What I'd brought instead was an earlier reference photo which was the wrong dimensions.

Never say die, I made the best of it and got the board covered as you can see, but it's not right. Later I had to square it up using the correct reference material and now I'm ready to start again when I get to the club next week. Who said acrylics allowed you to work faster|?

On Course

I think I mentioned when beginning work on my wooden heart, that I'd signed up for an online painting course. It's with Este MacLeod and it started this week. Este's paintings are nothing like mine; her background is in textiles, she paints in an abstract manner and she uses acrylics, on this course Golden Fluid Acrylics. All of which I thought would throw me out of my comfort zone and maybe give me a push in a different direction.

It already feels like it's working. There's that old feeling of finding water unpredictable and uncontrollable and relief to find that she uses mostly acrylic medium to thin her paint. But not knowing, and finding out how paint and colour will behave is a getting-back-to-basics strategy and is truly fascinating.

At the top of this post is one of the colour exercises and here's a couple of pages of fanciful flowers put together, quite quickly, from deconstructed fruit and veg.

More as things unfold.

I Heart Acrylics?

Some blocking in done on my wooden heart. It's already starting to look like it might work out, but I'm struggling a little with acrylics after something like 20 years without using them. 

Instead of painting in oils, I decided  to use up some tubes of Liquitex and Galeria acrylics from 20 years ago and while I'm getting on OK with them I'm sure I'd find the more modern acrylic paints more to my liking. 

In the days when I used acrylics I preferred Liquitex and only bought Galeria at university,but many of my painting friends recommend Golden. I recently bought some Golden High Flow acrylics, but they're for an online course I've signed up for. Still, I've run out of ultramarine, so I may have to raid them for that.