Untitled (Blue Strap)

 

Untitled (“Blue Strap”)

(Mixed media on board, 12x12 in)

The latest in my series of textured paintings of doors and walls. In making this, I learned a lesson in using different blues, ultramarine, cobalt and phthalo blue (green shade).

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.

Comments Book

The Free Trade Inn (Oil on canvas, 16 x 16 ins)
SOLD

Northumberland Fells (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins)
SOLD

Today my paintings came back from my solo show at the Arts Centre in Newcastle - minus these two, which happily have sold..

Yesterday I collected the Comments Book from the gallery and, if you can forgive me a little self-indulgence, I thought I might share some of the comments here.

Your hedges and walls make me want to go out and look for myself. Your vision of Newcastle is optimistic if not romantic. Good luck with this exhibition. - Paul

Really like the 'city scapes' and the differing view points. - Liz Atkins

What a wonderful exhibition. So much detail and colour, with even some "blue skies". Keep up the good work. Wishing you all the best, - Ann Elliott

Thank you Harry! I liked 'The Free Trade Inn' when I saw it on your blog, while researching Newcastle for an English class I teach. How wonderful now I finally visit, to find a whole exhibition of your strong shapes and colours and Norh East visions. I've just slept 2 nights in Sandhill and agree the roofs are full of pictures. Keep the art coming! - Sally (Holman) Johnson, London E17

Really liked the rich use of paint - my favourite, 'Wooden Spiral', reminiscent of Carel Weight's surreal atmosphere. - Joy Barsby

Love the oaks and hedgerows; the textures and colours are inspiring. - JGriffiths

Love the way you capture the feel of Newcastle. No.16, 'View from the Keep' somehow suggests the proximity of the sea. So glad I saw your works. - P Johnston, Berwick upon Tweed.

These are wonderful. Redolent of Edward Hopper without being remotely derivative and they are most certainly *not* illustrative. - Chandra Sankarayya

I'd like to thank all those who took the time to leave such generous comments in the Comments Book (and they were all positive) and those others who complimented me in person.

Prickly Too

Tram and Cactus (work in progress)

More work done on the cactus, a really enjoyable task. There's such a great opportunity to find colour within the overall greenness of the plant.

Next: development of the tram passengers and adjustment of the windows which seem to have become differently sized.

In a Venice Frame of Mind

Venetian Balcony (work in progress)

I should perhaps be pursuing those outstanding Tyne Valley landscapes, but I firmly believe that, unless you have an overriding reason (like a gallery deadline) for pushing on with work when you don't feel the desire to do so, it's generally counter-productive.

I was watching a TV programme set in Venice last week and the city has been on my mind. Despite the crowds (and the mosquitoes!) Pat and I loved our time there and will surely go again one day. It's a place unlike any other I've visited and at times it fills my head with images, so when I had the idea for this painting I decided to get on with it straight away.

I'm glad I did. The painting went well, the paint flying onto the canvas and the colours setting themselves up for later adjustments perfectly.

Vindolanda

Vindolanda (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 ins)

Although I managed to clear the stairs to the studio of snow a couple of days ago, I've not felt really keen on going down to paint. A combination of the bitter cold that's kept the snow on the ground despite there having been no further falls and a general malaise which always accompanies the end of a session of concentrated effort, in this case that for the Xmas paintings, has left me not a little dispirited.

As a consequence, I've spent my time over the past week or so simply drawing cartoons for The Cartoonist's Hat and surfing the web. To be honest, I think I'm on a cusp. My work may need to be shaken up a little. In a practical sense, I'm not sure I can go on filling up the house with the biggish paintings I've been making when the opportunities for displaying them are drying up.

Working on the cartoons has brought back to me that sense of enjoyment I always get working close up to a sheet of paper and I think perhaps a renewed effort to broaden my working methods might pay dividends.

Meanwhile, as I pondered these and other thoughts, I decided I should at least make a concerted attempt to get something done in the studio today. Hence this small painting which allowed me to tackle head on my bête noire, the landscape's ubiquitous green (perhaps that should be bête verte). I decided to simply not paint it green at all and for now at least, I think it works.

By the end of the afternoon my feet were frozen solid. I can heat up the air of the studio, but I can't do anything about the concrete floor.

Grey Day

Turnbull Winter (work in progress)

One of the hardest things about this painting is that I need to grey down most of the colours to make the seasonal light look right. This is particularly difficult with red because to do the greying down you really need to add green and as I've indicated before, my eyesight is red/green deficient. The Turnbull Building is proving resistant to the right amount of greying, but it seems to have worked okay for me in the building at the bottom right.

Ah well, who wants to be able to get a painting right in a day anyway?

Rugs & Icons

Rugs & Icons (oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

Working on the Shops & Stalls series gave me a greater insight into what it was I wanted from this subject so, although Rugs & Icons was the first of its type, I found I wanted to make some alterations to draw it into closer alignment with its children.

As a consequence, I've brightened up the colours of some of the rugs and taken down the colour of the walls round the shop. The blind has been made more substantial. I think now I'd be happier to show this with the later additions to the series.

Open the Gate Again

The Gate (work in progress)

This painting has been languishing in the studio for some time now. I last worked on it in 2008 and it just didn't seem to be going right. But today I pulled it out of the rack and had another go at it. I've simplified the composition and taken the colour down somewhat, which I think suits Newcastle better, but there's still some way to go before I'll be satisfied with it.

Another Black Ship

Black Ship and Mosque (work in progress)

I thought I'd get the day off to a good start today by laying out this new small picture of the black ship in Chania harbour, the disused mosque in the background.

Sometimes I'm really surprised when the first layers of colour turn out to be as vivid as these, because it's not something I generally do deliberately. Colour is something I think about when the composition is established, but maybe my constant colour thoughts are coming to the fore more than they once did.

View from the Keep 2

View from the Keep 2 - Turnbull Building (oil on canvas, 36 x 48 ins)

Another one under my belt. I think there may be too much red showing in this photograph, or maybe that's just my monitor. I can't tell.

A Natural Embrace

I took my back for a test drive today. After the last week of sitting in cars and trains for long periods, I found I was getting a lot of lower back discomfort and as a longish walk was mooted for Monday, I wanted to check things out. Not good, I found. For at least the first 45 minutes or so, it hurt rather a lot, then settled down, but after that my left foot started to ache. I guess I won't be walking down the Wear on Monday.

I'd chosen to walk down in the Valley, taking in Borders bookshop (nothing of any interest today) and Poundstretcher (big bag of birdseed), then along to Sainsbury's for some marmalade and back up round to home. In doing this, I had to go past the open field that lies beyond the dene at the end of my street.

Gateshead Council recently announced that it was having to make cuts in the Parks & Gardens budget and one effect of this seems to be that they've abandoned mowing this field. It was always meant to be a recreational area, but as it runs on a sharp slope down to the road, kids don't like to play ballgames on it. Its only purpose really is for people to walk their dogs. And now it's becoming meadow-like. I love it. It's taken on that wonderful pale sandy-yellow colour that you'd have to paint with Naples yellow and some white (or maybe raw sienna and a lot of white) and scattered amongst it are buttercups, ragwort and probably a lot more besides. I really hope they don't find the money to resume mowing.

I notice too that they've stopped spraying the edges of pavements and here and there colourful weeds and escapees from gardens are sprouting in the cracks and the angles between walls and paving stones. The natural world and the urban are coming together like fingers interlaced. Bring it on!

Too Much Colour?

The Gate (work in progress)

Because of a plumbing problem at home, I had little time to spend at the Club yesterday, but what time there was allowed me to reconsider this little picture I'd started last time I was there. In the intervening days I'd decided I didn't like it and intended to paint over it. Now that I've got it home again, I'm not so sure. I think I'll give it a little more work and see how it pans out. I suspect that what's troubling me, tonal painter that I am, is the full colour palette. Maybe it's a bit too Albert Irvin for my liking. Much as I like Albert Irvin, I don't think he's really me, or more exactly, that I'll ever really be him.

I'll start by toning down the magenta sky, I think (it's a lot stronger than the photograph suggest).

But I won't be able to start on it again today. I heard by letter that my picture in the People Show sold at the Gala evening last night, and as the show opens to the public today, I'm off to have a look at it with The Architect, who also has a picture in the show.

Later, we're meeting up with his wife, Mrs Sums, who wants me to consider a commission, so she's going to show me what it is she's interested in.

More Wansbeck

Wansbeck Houses (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

I was a bit lost for something to do at the Art Club yesterday, so I took along this drawing to see where I might get with it on a small board. Instead of including the boat in the foreground, I've lifted in (and reversed) the little boat with the cabin on the right of this drawing:




Wansbeck Shacks (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

I'm not sure that it's going too well. The lack of any colour notes is making me fly by the seat of my pants, and I find that disconcerting. But I thought it would be good practice. I didn't have my camera with me, so I'll let you see how it goes next week.

Worry

I'm still thinking over Tina Mammoser's suggestion that I create another blog on which to post sketches, and possibly these exercises in Photoshoppery. Meanwhile, because the trip to London interfered with time available to do an original, here's another of my cartoons newly coloured in Photoshop in response to Illustration Friday's brief, Worry.

Wide

I aim to spread my wings a little. I think part of my failure to get more drawing done is an over-concentration on oil painting. There are other skills I want to develop, including digital ones. So, this is a first attempt at colouring one of my cartoons with Photoshop. I'm going to post it on Illustration Friday, although without a thumbnail. Thumbnails and I don't see eye to eye, it seems. Those who understand and get along with them, might offer assistance, which would be gratefully received.

More Drawing Angst.

Mont Louis (A5 sketchbook, Rotring Art Pen)

I was reminded of this sketchbook drawing by some reading I've been doing across the blogs.

James Hobbs says in his blog, "Cafes remain a favourite place for me to work. They are often fantastically located, in the heart of a town, offering outdoor seating, tables to spread out on and plenty of refreshments."

I understand this absolutely. I still recall making that drawing in Mont Louis, on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees in 1991. Half way through the day we sat at a cafe table and ate our lunch, while I took as long as I felt necessary to make the drawing of the building opposite, refreshments arriving as required.. The fine lines are an indication of how my eyesight is not now what it was, and it was done with the instrument I loved so much then, the Rotring Art Pen. The damn thing seized up long ago and nothing I've been able to do to it has unclogged the nib. I'd buy another, were it not for the fact that I did buy another and the same thing happened to that. If anyone knows how to unclog them, I'd love to know.

It's become increasingly obvious that there's a huge movement around the blogosphere to encourage drawing and looking at this sketchbook makes me think again about how little I do myself.

There was a time when I did nothing but draw. By which I mean, I hadn't started to paint. I made images only with pencil or ink. Colour was actually something I avoided like the plague. I couldn't come to terms with it. At school, I would drag out the drawing part of the exercise so that I wouldn't have to "colour it in" and ruin it.

I began to paint seriously in 1989 and it's been a long hard slog to get to grips with colour, and colour and I are still wrestling with one another. In the process, I've allowed my drawing practice to fall away.

I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps once I stopped having to make artworks in my spare time (when the actual lack of time meant that a black and white image was a more economical use of the time), it didn't feel necessary. I don't know.

Maybe the need to create paintings to sell and prop up the sybaritic lifestyle to which I've become accustomed led me to feel that a drawing would not contribute to my welfare (despite having sold several drawings in the past). Perhaps.

Some of it may be to do with my working methods. In the early days of my painting, I would take a photograph, run it through the office copier and make a charcoal drawing from the photocopy. The resultant painting would come from using all three - the photograph, the photocopy and the drawing - as source material. But as time has gone on and my abilities have improved, I don't need to do that now, because I can make some of the adjustments that the process achieved, in my head.

As a result, I find that I only seem to draw when on holiday and even then, not a great deal. The drawing above is from a sketchbook started in 1990 and still less than half full. I really must rectify this, but how to do so, when all my good intentions to do so have so far failed? Maybe I should try to get involved with some of the blogging initiatives that I see happening, like the Moleskine Exchange project that Casey Klahn is about to take part in. But how do I get involved in something like that? Anyone care to throw me a lifeline?

Mud in the Sky

Skyscape (2nd pass)

Brought on by collecting my prize for last month's painting competition at the Art Club, a mood of optimism (or was it greed?) made me pull out and start again a sky painting.

Unfortunately, The Grumbler was in garrulous mood and I found I was painting with only half my mind. The other was on the grumbles and thinking of retorts. As a consequence, I'm afraid I've overworked the paint, particularly at the left. Some of the colours have definitely become muddy, although here are quite pleasing specks of colour peeking through elsewhere in the composition.

It's by no means a lost cause, so I've put it on the drying rack and will return to it next week.

2nd Venice Picture

Spotlight (1st pass)

I was looking for something new to start painting at the Art Club today, so I began to draw this subject out on an old canvas at home. ( This is the third picture I've begun on this canvas and it's developing a nice texture.)

"It would be nice to just get some paint on to obscure some of the more intrusive elements of the previous picture, " I thought to myself. And before I knew it, I was fully into it and the Club was out of the question. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow.

This handsome couple were caught in the spotlight of a vaporetto station as their own vaporetto sailed by. I wasn't sure I could make this one work, so it's not very big (20 x 20 ins), but things seem to be working out. There were several other people on the deck to the right of the couple, but I'm playing them down considerably, leaving them out of the spotlight.

I'm particularly happy that I'm having to think less about the colours I'm using - they're becoming much more intuitive and as a consequence, a lot freer, I think.

I'm more excited about this series than anything else I've done for quite some time.

New Venice Series

Vaporetto (1st pass)

Although I have a number of pictures in need of resolving and finishing, I realised recently that there's a big Figure 8 exhibition next year for which no work has been started.

What I'm hoping to do is make a series about Venice's fabulous water buses, the vaporetti. I've yet to capitalise on the hundreds of photographs I took there last year and this was one of the subjects I was particularly keen on developing.

It's something of a departure for me, in that it places figures squarely in the picture as the most important element. Even if bits of architecture put in an appearance, the figures are what it's about. This being largely untried territory, therefore, it's important that I make a start.
With that in mind, I began this new canvas yesterday. In a further departure from my usual practice, instead of a coloured acrylic ground, I laid down an imprimatura of terra rosa oil paint and before it was entirely dry, began to paint into it. This has produced some nice brushy paintwork which I'd like to retain as the picture develops.