Sketch for Still Life Painting

 

A pencil sketch, with some digital tone added, for a potential still life painting to follow on from the Flowers in a Green Vase. This is at least less busy than a previously discarded sketch. I might go with this one and see how it looks when the paint's applied, changing it as it progresses.

Houseplant

 Houseplant

(0.5 marker in small square sketchbook)

It feels like I've done very little drawing this year, so on a family visit, I made a little time to do a little drawing.

Bird Table

Bird Table 
(Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

I completed this little painting a couple of weeks ago, but forgot to post it here. I know it's a bit sentimental, but sentimentality is nice now and again, and I like it. If you like it, it's available - just email me.

Here's the sketch it was based on:

Food for Thought

Food Station 
(Digitally coloured)

While it may have been the least accomplished of the sketches I did on Saturday's sketch crawl, the Market Square drawing is the most likely to prove useful. Today I ran it through Photoshop to see if it might work as a painting. And I think it might.

Henry Pijohn

Henry Pijohn, 4 May 1972 (Ballpoint on scrap paper)

Drawn the year following the other fragments, this is a quick sketch of Henry Pijohn who sat opposite me in the office. He and I became firm friends for many years until - and no one really understands why - he abruptly cut off contact with me and his other friends in our circle.

Very First Sketchbook #19

Poly corridor, 16 October 1990(Fine point marker in A5 sketchbook)

Like the previous sketch from the Very First Sketchbook (#18), this was done while roaming the corridors of Newcastle Polytechnic one night. I like the sense of emptiness in the corridor, the feeling that no one else is around. It's an idea I've returned to many times in my paintings.

This is the final sketch in my Very First Sketchbook. Although there were many pages left untouched, I decided that I didn't like the ring binding or indeed the fine point marker I'd stored in the binding, so I moved on to a series of differently sized sketchbooks. Whether this was a good move is debatable, as it eventually seems to have led to a falling away of the sketching habit. However, if you'd like me to, I think it might be interesting to post sketches and drawings from those other sketchbooks. Let me know what you think.

Very First Sketchbook (#5)

Naxos Alley, 27.9.85 (Fine point marker in A5 sketchbook)

Done the same day as the previous sketch, this was also in the winding passageways of the kastro (old town) of Naxos. The island was once under the control of the Venetians and the kastro has all the hallmarks of the alleys and passageways of Venice in miniature.

Very First Sketchbook (#3)

Kiosk, Naxos Harbour (Fine point marker in A5 sketchbook)

The second of my sketches on Naxos.. It eventually led to a small painting, although in titling it, it seems I moved it to Paros.

Kiosk on Paros (Oil on board, 6 x 4 ins)

Very First Sketchbook (#2)

Monastery above Naxos
(Fine marker and grey Magic marker in A5 sketchbook)

Let's return to this occasional series. Moving on from Athens by way of a ferry from Piraeus, I found somewhere to stay in the kastro at Naxos. Walking out above the town, I made this quick sketch of a monastery. It's rather crude but effective I think.

For Auld Lang Syne

Architctural Fragment (Pilot disposable pen in A5 sketchbook)

One of the traditions of the Art Club is to hold a bit of a party in the studio on a Thursday shortly before Xmas. And that's what we did last Thursday. Despite a fresh scattering of snow, there was a good turnout of around 25 people. The tables were well presented with pies, cakes, sausage rolls, and all the other things that members had thought fit to bring., including bottles of wine.

We all had a good time, but what made this one memorable and worthy of comment here, I think, is that this was the last such party we'll ever have in the studio at Bolbec Hall. Things have been uncomfortable at Bolbec for some time now, because the owners can't let the rest of the building, they're losing money on it hand over fist and a new buyer hasn't been forthcoming. Would you want to buy a building with the oldest (listed) lift in Newcastle and an art club in the attic?

So, in April next year. we'll up sticks and move to new premises at the Newcastle Arts Centre. This promises to be an interesting new era for us. I understand the studio there isn't quite as big as the one we currently occupy and it will cost us more, but I'm sure there will be compensations (not least the presence of an arts materials shop downstairs).

The club will also be changing it's name from the North of England Art Club (incorporating the Newcastle Society of Artists) to the Newcastle Society of Artists (incorporating the North of England Art Club). You see what we did there? There are historical reasons for the change, as well as practical ones - galleries are more interested in a "Society" than a "Club", for instance.

So the party was a good one, but certainly a poignant one.

Six Years

Waste Pipe (2B automatic pencil, 6 x 4 sketchbook)

Another Boogie Street anniversary slipped by without my noticing. On the 15th April, the six anniversary of my first post came and went.

A little googling shows that the traditional gift for a sixth anniversary is something made of iron, so I thought I'd trawl through my sketchbooks for something suitable. Quite a lot of things made of steel, but the only subject definitely of iron is this cast iron waste pipe. Drawn in a break from office life, it evidently took me away from my duties for 20 minutes, yet another example of public spending waste.

The subject should not in any respect be taken as a comment on the blog, however. I still find it fun to post things here and it often serves as a stimulus to get some painting done to show you. But not today it seems.

Home from the Island

Lindisfarne Castle from the Harbour

I was wrong about the weather. Although there was a strong wind blowing a lot of the time, we also got a fair bit of sunshine and by the end of the two days I'd adopted my "caught by the sun" beetroot look.

As is often the case with short holidays where others make the agenda, it proved difficult to do any sketching , so I opted for taking as many photographs as possible. There are certainly potential paintings in some of those, and the walking we did round the island made up for the lack of any sketching.

On the way back from one of our walks , I noticed a thrush behaving oddly on a window sill. He was jumping around, looking in through the window and tapping on it. Moments later, an old lady came to the door with a bowl in her hand and her dog scurrying round her ankles. The thrush, rather than flying away, jumped down and ran to the door where the lady threw food to it from the bowl. The dog and the bird ignored one another. Apparently this is the fourth year the thrush has come to her house for feeding. The natural world continually surprises me.

Lindisfarne

Holy Island (Rotring ArtPen, sketchbook)

I was last on Holy Island (Lindisfarne) in November 1996. It was a cold wet and windy day and the visit was only fleeting, but I managed to get this sketch done,despite the ArtPen beginning it's journey into clogging scratchiness, a journey from which it never recovered. Frustrating, disappointing and so far, despite advice from all quarters of the Interweb, non-reversible.

I'm off to Holy Island again tomorrow, this time stopping overnight and I had hoped that the weather - such a delight over the last week - would serve me better and perhaps let me get some more sketching done. Of course, as luck would have it, the weather has changed again for the worse, so I may find myself desperately searching for shelter on what is, as I recall, a rather barren island.

Tree Sketches

Vivien Blackburn has come up with another challenge and as I'm unlikely to be able to post anything new in the coming week, I thought this was a suitable way of keeping at least some of you amused.

Vivien has asked for "sketches of trees done from life". Luckily trees (and rocks) tend to be the only thing I ever find to draw when I'm in the country, unless it's a bit of broken-down agricultural machinery. So here's a slideshow of various trees, stumps and branches, done over a period of some years, all from life

Low Fogrigg again

Oil pastel on print-out map, 9 x 5 ins.

Apparently, it's pronounced, "Fogridge."

Back from London

Back from several days in London. It seems by going there, Patsy123 and I left behind most of the good weather. Although we were able to sit in our friends' garden for breakfast on Friday, for the rest of our stay there the whole south of England sat under a belt of rain, while the north basked in sunshine. Bugger.

In an effort to kick-start some drawing and sketching, I'd taken along a little sketchbook and tried to get down the woman opposite without attracting her attention. I don't think I managed it, because she shifted position soon after I'd started and rested her chin on her hand . As a result, I wasn't able to get the articulation of her glasses and bridge of her nose right.



Passenger (A6 sketchbook, rollerball)


The weather was such that, although we went to Cambridge for the day on Monday, we weren't really able to go to see Kettle's Yard, something I've wanted to do for a very long time. Oh well, I'll keep it on my list.

We did, however, go to the National Gallery on Friday to see Alison Watt's exhibition, Phantom. Beautiful, cool, sensual. Big. If you go, it's well worth taking the time to watch the short film about her making of the pictures. You may find yourself wondering, as I did, why she thought it a good idea to load her brush with a little paint, climb a stepladder to apply it, then climb down again and repeat the process without stepping back to view what effect the first few brushstrokes had had.. A little hand-held palette would have been so much easier.

From Alison Watt's huge paintings, we went round the corner to the utterly delightful exhibition of mostly small works by Melita Denaro.at John Martin of London. Painted mostly plein air, her landscapes of Ireland capture the damp and blustery atmosphere perfectly.

We had the opportunity to chat with Denaro herself, and found her just as fresh and charming as her pictures. She seemed genuinely surprised and delighted to learn that I'd gone there deliberately to see her work and not just wandered in off the street.

The Oak Citadel

Oak Citadel (Charcoal, charcoal and coloured Conte on A3 cartridge)

It's been my intention for some time to try to work on drawings outside which are bigger than sketchbook size. Oddly enough, although I've done it in the less agreeable surroundings of Newcastle, I've never really attempted it in the countryside.

This time I went prepared. I had with me a Mapac bag containing an A3 pad of Winsor & Newton Medium Surface cartridge paper and all manner of drawing stuff - charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencils, pastels and coloured Conte. And a new can of fixative. The fixative is really important to my working method. I spray as often as is necessary, rubbing down elements of the current drawing and spraying again, until there develops a crystalline tooth to the drawing.

Despite my preparedness, I still didn't achieve what I set out to do. Mainly because I hadn't prepared myself for something outside my control - the wind. The thing about little pieces of charcoal, Conte sticks and the packs they come in, is that they're very light. So a great deal of my time was taken up with rushing about retrieving materials and generally cursing the elements.

I know it's a poor workman who blames his tools, but I also found that my choice of medium surface cartridge was a mistake - I really don't like the rather mechanical tooth it's been prepared with. Maybe the other side would have been better for my purposes, but smooth would have been best of all.

Anyway, after a considerable time cursing and grunting, a black cloud came and threatened me and I was forced to give up. So the drawing as it stands lacks a certain definition in the trees. The trunks don't seem to have sufficient body and even the rocks are a little anaemic. I do like the way the shadows of the branches are cast over the rock face, however: something I would find difficult to invent because even standing in front of them, I couldn't figure out which branch was casting which shadow.

I may return to it in the studio when the time is right.

Compo & Clegg Week 2008

Tree & Rock (A4 sketchbook, pencil, Inktense pencils)

You have to play the cards Fate deals you. As I sit here typing in a hot room, the sun streaming down outside, I ponder on events which led us to book last week in the Lake District, rather than this one. Because, of course, last week was your classic Lake District week, all rain, sun and showers.

But it doesn't pay to ponder too long. We booked the week we did, and we played the cards we were dealt. So we ended up having a good week, although the work we produced was limited by the weather.

The drawing above was my first attempt at getting to grips with what seems to be becoming something of an obsession when I go out into the country - trees and rocks. I'm not all that convinced by it, but there are things about it that I like. I still don't find the Inktense pencils particularly good to work with, but no doubt I'll return to them at some time in the future.

The tree growing out of a cleft in the rock was at the side of a lane running up past a farm in Near Sawrey towards a tarn at Moss Eccles. It continued to exert a fascination for a few days and when I found the weather too bad to go out and work, I had a go at working from the first sketch and from memory on something more colourful.



Tree & Rock (12 x 8 ins, watercolour paper, mixed media)


I started out with a pencil and watercolour pencil drawing, then added gouache because it wasn't working right . After that, I guess it just developed a life of its own. I worked over it with coloured Conte and some pastel, rubbing it down now and then with an eraser and frequently spraying with fixative.

I rather like the end product, although it does seem a little strange. But then I've never been averse to the strange.






Tree in Rock Cleft (A4 sketchbook, brush pen)

I ended my engagement with the tree in the rocky cleft by moving round to the opposite side and doing this drawing in Pentel brush-pen. As I usually find with black markers of whatever kind, I ended up rounding off the forms - a remnant of my cartoon days, I think.

At the bottom of the valley from our cottage lay Esthwaite Water, and in a field by the side of the road running down to the lake I came across a massive rock outcrop on top of which were several old and gnarled oaks, their roots bursting through the seams of rock.

Oak & Rocks (Sketchbook, 8 x 9.5 ins, 4B pencil)





I liked these rocks. They had great presence and genuinely interesting fissures running in parallel lines through them. The oaks sat on top, feeding their roots down through the fissures and splitting off great slabs. And one old oak, over the years, is clearly edging his way off his pedestal towards the road. Beware.









The Oak Steps Down (Sketchbook, 8 x 9.5 ins., 2B mechanical pencil)

Old Gadgie with a Dog

It seems to have been a day of travelling on and hanging about waiting for Metro trains. But at least it gives me the chance to see interesting characters like this.