WIP - Yummies

WIP - Yummies

((Acrylic and collage on block canvas, 24 x 30 cm)

New painting begun, but lots to do on it. And some staffage to consider. Wandering around Newcastle, I took a few photographs of buildings and looking though them at home I was taken by the curious mix of the old and the new.

 

Architectural Doodle

Playing around for an hour tonight with pencil, Indian ink, black and white acrylic and no specific thoughts as to subject matter, except that I didn’t want to end up with a landscape. A4 watercolour paper.

Two Months in Crete : Sketch - Old Buildings

Old Buildings, Chania

(Black marker across two pages of 195x195 mm sketchbook)

Allowing myself more time, this drawing was completed while I sweated in the sunlight standing near these old buildings. I knew the buildings from previous visits to Chania and had them in mind when making plans for the trip. 

I started on the right hand page, them continued the drawing onto the left hand page.

Lost in the Woods

Tower in the Woods WIP

(Acrylic on board, 12 x 12 in)

Thinking I was on a roll with these woodland path paintings, I decided to try this one, based on a conflation of two photographs taken in Croatia. I've always liked  the idea of finding deserted or derelict buildings in the middle of woods so the Romantic in me was pleased. I think perhaps I would have liked it to have become darker, more sinister, but my sunny personality won out as always (winky emoji).

Initially, I'd planned to paint it on one of the more recent 8x8 inch canvases but then decided the subject deserved something a little larger, hence the 12x12 inch panel (incidentally cut from one of the many paintings I've had to destroy in the last year). Yet, as I've often found to be the case, the change in scale, even this small a change, proved awkward. By restricting the available area, the smaller sized paintings made me more economical with the shrubbery; given the relatively broad expanse of the new support (I exaggerate), I ran amok with wild and florid bushes and tree tops.

It was all too busy. What I've done now - and the photo shows where we are at the moment - is draw round the main clumps of bushes with a green Posca Pen and flatten out the shapes with darker paint within those outlines. It already looks better, so I'll try to reassert some of their solidity without, I hope, making it all too busy again.

The Man Who Sold the Tyne Bridge

Buildings with Tyne Bridge 
(oil on canvas, 9x12 in)

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be telling you about the most recent Sketch Crawl, but things keep happening. On Friday I discovered that this painting in the current Gateshead Art Society Xmas Exhibition, has sold. 

I'm really pleased, of course. I painted it about six years ago and have been mildly surprised that, despite it being exhibited several times in different galleries, it didn't sell earlier. I always considered it one of my better pieces and it has the Tyne Bridge in it, usually a magnet to local buyers. For whatever reason, it failed to walk off the wall. I guess it was just waiting for the right owner to come along. I hope it looks good in its new home and that its new owners like it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Urban Sketch Crawl

I'm filled with trepidation. My Regular Reader will know that I am not a stranger to drawing outside. I'm not even a stranger to drawing outside in towns. But I've always been somewhat averse to drawing outside in towns in the UK. 

For some reason, I'm prepared to stand in the street in a town in Crete or Croatia, get out my pen and sketchbook and spend an hour or so drawing what's in front of me. But I've always hated the prospect of doing it in British towns and cities.

Having said that, in the early days of my artistic endeavours I drew this building in Newcastle, standing in the street:

Northern Goldsmiths, 4th November 1990 
(Fine point marker and sepia ArtPen in A4 sketchbook)

I didn't enjoy the experience; it was terribly cold and once my feet had thawed out, they ached. I did no more drawings of this sort until I began my BA Fine Art course at Newcastle University in 1997, when we were required to go out every day for a week, drawing the urban environment. Here's a couple of the sketchbook drawings I did then:

 High Street Fire Escape (A4 sketchbook)



Concrete Walkways (A4 sketchbook)

Looking at the drawings I do every year on holiday you'll see that I often draw houses. I don't draw houses in the UK, but choose instead (if I'm put in the position of having to draw in a UK town) big chunks of urban concrete. There's a reason: Mediterranean buildings are often quite simple in design and are not cluttered up with neoclassical columns and bloody windows! Since the repeal of the Window Tax in 1851, we've stuck windows in every available wall and not just ordinary openings-with-shutters like Greek houses have, but complicated, fanciful structures with ornate lintels and ... oh, you get the picture, I'm sure.

But really, this is just another excuse for not getting down to drawing my world. Windows and architectural fol-de-rols may be awkward but they will no longer stand in my way. I will act! And hence my trepidation: tomorrow I'm off on my first Urban Sketch Crawl. I tried to link up with SketchCrawlers a few years ago, but no one in this area seemed up for it. Just last week, however, I discovered Sketch Crawl North East on Facebook : a group of occasional sketch crawlers in and around the cities of the North East. And by chance someone proposed a crawl tomorrow.

Now all I have to worry about, apart from what I might find myself having to draw, is what I'm going to draw it with and in which sketchbook. Life is full of difficult decisions ...

Sun Insurance Building

Sun Insurance Building, Newcastle (Oil on board, 12 x 24 ins)
SOLD

An interesting week, about which I may have more to say in the coming days, but notable in part for some sales of paintings. This is one of them. 

The painting shows the top of one of Newcastle's fine buildings, built originally for Sun Insurance, although they no longer have offices there. The work dates from a period when I was very interested in looking up at the tops of buildings, something that few people do, and is a kind of companion to this one (owned by the same purchaser):

Bigg Market Buildings (Oil on board, 5 x 7 ins)
Private Collection

Very First Sketchbook #17

Heraklion (Fine point marker in A5 sketchbook)

A return to Crete in September 1990 and here I am, sitting in a pavement cafe, drawing the building opposite. One of the difficulties in having only a fine point marker was that it took some time to fill in that black square with the Loggia Piano Bar sign on it.

The Wooden Spiral

The Wooden Spiral (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins)

This is one of the paintings included in my exhibition currently running at the Newcastle Arts Centre. It's quite an old one - from 2004 - and for a while I was uncertain whether I would keep it at all. Recently, however, I took it out of the rack, gave it a bit of a tidy up. and decided I actually do like it. There's a more subdued lighting in it that suits Newcastle rather well.

The subject, in case you don't know Newcastle, shows at the left  what was built as The Oxford Ballrooms but has over the years had its name changed to reflect the need for something new for the yoofs. You may have heard of Thomas Heatherwick: he's the man responsible for the cauldron at the Olympic Games, one of his better efforts. In Newcastle he persuaded the Council that it would be a good thing to lay a pretend carpet of tiles made from crushed blue sherry bottles. the result was not the bright blue carpet he intended but a rather dull grey landscape. A little more effective was his cladding of a functional spiral metal  staircase in wood panelling. That's what you can see at the right hand side of the painting. It leads through a barren land of empty office buildings to a bridge over the Central Motorway - not one of Newcastle's highlights.

A Week in Staithes

Staithes Roofs (0.8 fine line marker in 21 x 26 cm sketchbook)

As I do every year, I went off at the beginning of the month for a week's "painting" with some of my mates from the Art Club. I put that in inverted commas, because it's rare for me to get anywhere near some paint. Mostly, it's a couple of sketchbooks and some favourite pencils and pens and maybe a slosh of watercolour and a smudge of coloured Conte.

I honestly thought this year might be different.  For one, in Staithes  I'd be amongst buildings, which should mean I'd not be hunting for the odd twisted tree to provide some structure. Buildings, after all, are my thing. So it did seem as if I might at least get out the tubes of gouache I take along every year.

But I'd reckoned without the wonderful British weather. The north easterlies blew straight in off the North Sea and up the Staithes Beck valley. Although the torrential rain we'd been promised in the forecast didn't materialise, and the sun shone quite a bit, it was bitterly cold - one night saw temperatures drop to -6C!

But I set off with a good heart the day after we arrived, climbing up the side of the valley to look down on the town. From there I could see Westgate, the house we were staying in  That's it in the centre of the drawing, just across from the former chapel now housing the Captian Cook and Staithes Museum.

Surprisingly, the wind wasn't too bad at the top of the valley, so I was able to spend a couple of hours working on this drawing. I thought about adding colour, but I was coming to the view that I might do without colour or tone in the sketchbook on this trip, so I left it as it is.

West End Fish

West End Fish (Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cms)

One of the things I like about painting buildings in towns and cities is the opportunity it provides to celebrate the ordinary, the overlooked. I like to think that, without my painting, this building in Edinburgh on the corner of Queensferry Street and Charlotte Lane, would go largely unnoticed and uncelebrated.

Despite the busy traffic and pedestrians hurrying everywhere, the building's curves and cupola caught my eye and I knew I could do something with it. And I have.

I'm very pleased to report that after my tour of the galleries in and around Dundas Street, I was contacted by the Di Rollo Gallery and asked if I'd be interested in showing work with them during this year's Festival. You can probably guess what my answer was, especially in view of today's painting.