Streetfighting Men WIP

(Photo taken in Dubrovnik)

(Sketch worked up in Photoshop from traced photo)

(WIP, with some paint and collage added)

This is a painting long in the gestation. I took the photo on holiday in Dubrovnik in 2012; the men were quite a long way off and the photo definition was really poor. So poor that when I tried to enlarge it in Photoshop it became hopelessly pixellated and I gave up on using it for a few years.

More recently, I bought a lightbox and tried tracing the printed photograph, scanned the tracing into Photoshop and then added some colour.

The next stage was to square it up on a 10 x 10 in. board, then add some collage. For that I dug out an old piece of an etching I'd saved from the Print Room bin at University (30 years ago!) - hence the curious round shapes at the right produced by someone's finger print on the etching plate's soft ground.

At the left I stuck down a torn fragment of a sheet that had contained a Gestetner stencil (science fiction fans will know all about those!) I'd use to produce a fanzine even longer ago. Who said stuff doesn't come in useful?

The stairs in the foreground have been started with some pieces of paper torn from a Sunday magazine supplement. 

The collage additions have produced a few challenges for the development of the painting. Hurrah! I like a challenge.

Sketchbook Revealed

Now that Becca, my second Partner in the Sketchbook Circle, has received her sketchbook back from me, I can show you the additions I made to her book.

The first four show Becca's original pages with my additions. On her introductory page she spoke of new beginnings but chose to include a number of skull drawings which we tend to associate with death. Working with those apparently opposing ideas, I started thinking about sprouting bulbs and new growth and went on from there in the first three. For the fourth, I had a blank page opposite a skull, so introduced the uniformed figure of "Major Death", complete with military medals.

For the five pages of my own I began by looking at scraps of collage material I had on and heads. Two anatomical diagrams of parts of the head, intended for students of life drawing, came together with a fragment of red stained etching paper on a background of  a map to give me "Skinned". More simply, I found an old photocopy of a cross-section of a head with what appears to be a foetus for a brain and laid it on another fragment of blue stained etching paper.

The girl from Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl was a torn fragment Becca had left in the back of her book for future consideration. I used it with some other ideas of "white" and made a new image.

"Onion Head" happened by accident. While looking for images of sprouting bulbs to use with the skull drawings, I had printed off from the internet an image of a sprouting onion but found it was too big for the any of the skull pages. Laying it down on a blank page, I suddenly saw it as a head; with the addition of a pair of eyes from the front page of an Observer Colour Supplement and some gouache, the mysterious character came to life.

Finally, the "Owl Queen" is a fragment of a photocopied image I put together in my days of Mail Art exchanges. Coming together with another curiously shaped fragment of old cut up brochure and a bright flame-like piece of etching paper, I think I made something mysterious.

Now comes the exciting bit: what will Becca make of all of this? Will she add to my images? Will she find something in them to strike some sparks? Time will tell.

And what do you make of all of this? I'm always interested to hear from you.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting on tenterhooks for my original sketchbook to come back from Ang with her additions.

And now it starts ...

(Various media in A5 sketchbook)

Now that my Sketchbook Circle book has been safely received by Ang, I can show the pages I prepared before sending the book off to her. At least, I can show you all of the pages except the inside front cover and Page 1, which somehow I failed to save when I scanned them in. I hope to add those when they become available again.

Having no previous experience of this kind of exchange, or indeed of this kind of sketchbook work, I simply set to and played with the pages. Some are collaged from magazine photographs with watercolour and body colour added; others are clearly straightforward marker drawings. There are a couple that use fragments of failed etchings salvaged from the bin of the print room at University.

And the last one should be of interest to my old science fiction pals - it's an imprint left on a folder that contained an inked stencil used in the production of one of the many Gannet fanzines.

The stencil imprint and the etching fragments have been in my studio for twenty years or more. A hoarder? Me!? I knew they'd come in useful one day.

What my sketchbook partner will make of these pages is anyone's guess. But that's half the fun. I've now received a sketchbook from Becca, my other partner in the Circle, and I have to start thinking about what I want to do to that. That's the other half of the fun.

Nest Forms

Nest Forms (etching, 12.5 x 21 cms)

Another week without painting. In a spirit of a glass half full, let's call it a period of retrenchment and reconsideration, rather than a block.

Some time ago I made myself a promise to have framed a small collection of prints I made at University. The actual framing has taken much longer than anticipated, but yesterday I collected them from Gallagher & Turner, the framers who've framed almost all of my work since I began to get serious about it.

This etching has always been a favourite of mine. It shows the influence of Graham Sutherland, I think, which is unsurprising given that I was about to write my dissertation on his Pembrokeshire landscapes. It was based on some drawings I did in what was then the Hancock Museum but which has now become part of the Great North Museum:.

Here's a relevant page from my sketchbook;


Bird objects (Rotring Art Pen in A4 sketchbook)

Happy New Year!

Etching: Still Life (Etching and aquatint)

It's been a fascinating 12 months on Boogie Street, and I'd like to thank all of you who've followed me through this blog. Your comments have been a real and very welcome encouragement. I hope you'll stay with me in the coming year.

The choice of image may seem a strange one, but I see it as one of hope. The making of the etching itself, in 1998, wasn't really successful: the plate was left in the acid too long and the aquatint started to come loose. However, the end result, with platelets of aquatint shifting about probably makes the print more interesting than it might have been had it worked the way it was meant to. It's been a year of promise and achievement, but some things didn't work out. Despite that, shining through the shifting platelets of 2008, there's still the bright white light of 2009. Better stop there before I get too purple.

I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2009. Happy New Year!