Mick the Knife

As threatened over a month ago, I had decided to attempt using the principles advocated by Susan Sarback to make some paintings. On the advice of Wet Canvas regular, Michael McGuire, I had decided to look at her work. She is a teacher in the tradition of Henry Hensche and Charles Hawthorne. Her main messages relate to 'full colour seeing' and using a staged process to build the painting. It makes so much sense to me that I am about to follow some of the exercises, particularly the block exercises advocated in the book, 'Capturing Radiant Light and Colour'. The process consists of four stages.

Steps are:
1) Establish the masses;
2) Refine the masses;
3) Establish variation in the masses;
4) Add more variation in the masses.

The following three shots show my first attempt at trying the block exercises.

In this shot the masses are established and warm colours are used to show lit areas whilst cool colours are used for shadow areas.

Here the masses are beginning to be refined and the appropriate colour notes applied.

In the last shot I have established variation in the masses and at this point I've decided to give some thought to what further refinement might be required.

This exercise has given me a great deal of pleasure from a number of points of view. First of all it is my initial attempt at completing a whole piece with a painting knife as opposed to brushes. whilst awkward to use, as the work has gone on I have begun to feel a little more comfortable with these tools. Secondly, I have experienced a degree of freedom throughout the making of this picture that is different to the tightening up that often occurs when using brushes. The knife will certainly play a part in my armoury from now on. Lastly, the use of pure colour, as opposed to lots of mixing, imbues the work with a greater feeling of light. This is a lesson that I hope not to forget.

Long trip - little paint

There's a lot happened since my last post. Plenty of travel, lots of fun, interesting sights, great museums, lovely family occasions but little painting. Lets start by mentioning the annual trip to the opening of the Lake Artists Society Annual Exhibition. This takes place in late July each year and runs through to the start of September. It is held in the Village Hall, Grasmere and whilst it may not sound as the grandest of venues, the material on display is never less than interesting to visit and most of it is of a very high quality. There are a mixture of works in all sorts of different media. The Society maintains its standards by controlling the membership, who have to fulfill a residency criterion as well as being subject to election. If you are in the Lake District and fail to go and see the exhibition you will deny yourself a real treat.

Lake Artists Catalogue 2009

Home from the Lakes in time to pack a bag for two weeks away, London, Vienna and Slovakia.

We began with a few days in London, visiting family and crashing the galleries. First visit was to the National Portait Gallery to view the Annual BP Portrait Award Exhibition, always an interesting view. The selection of pictures below are drawn from the exhibition. The exhibition contains a wide variety of styles but each piece exhibited has a real impact, whether it be because of the stunning technique or the painterly impression. The whole of the exhibition is available to view on the NPG website. Changeling 2 was the first prize winner.

Changeling 2 - Peter Monkman, Oil on canvas 48" x 35"

Robert - Mark Clay, Oil on board 16" x 11"

Tom - Peter Holt, Oil on canvas 18" x 14"

Hats and Scarves - Tim Okamura, Oil on canvas 80" x 88"

John Anthony Portsmouth Football Club Westwood - Karl Rudziak, Oil on canvas 47" x 79"

My song - Jung-Im Song, Oil on canvas 24" x 18"

And so to Vienna and the amazing architechture, galleries, palaces and cafes of this wonderful city so dominated by the rule of the Hapsburgs. On this trip we were stopping off for a few days en route to Slovakia, so it was a case of cramming in as much we could. Three foot weary days later we had done a whistle stop tour of some of the attractions of this fascinating place. It would take too long to itemise all the highlights but I will leave you with two, Schloss Schonbrunn, summer palace of the Hapsburgs and one of the great masterpieces from the Kunsthistorisches collection. Leaving Vienna was done with a firm commitment to a prompt return.

Schloss Schonbrunn

Art of Painting - Vermeer

Last of all was our move across the border into Slovakia. This was in fact the main prompt for the trip in the first place. We had a family wedding to attend. Jane had become engaged to a Slovakian young man and for a variety of reasons they had decided to hold their wedding in his home village, Lesna. What a treat, hospitality, food and drink of the highest standard. People who were an absolute pleasure to be amongst and great fun and rejoicing as we acquainted ourselves with the customs and rituals around a Slovak wedding. I can thoroughly recommend the experience. All in all a great trip. We covered a lot of miles, saw a lot of sights and met a lot of wonderful people. My only regret was the fact that I only had one small opportunity, for about half an hour, when it was feasible for me to unearth the paint box. The small watercolour sketch below was the result. The plan, now that I'm home, is to start on those block exercises advocated by Susan Sarback and have my first experience of painting with nothing more than a knife.

Church Oravska Lesna - 12" x 10" Watercolour sketch on Not paper

Watercolour Sketch Book

As readers of the blog will know, Sheila and I are fortunate to spend quite a bit of time in the Lake District and whilst it's not always possible to spend lots of time painting, there's usually the opportunity to get out the sketchbook and splash a little bit of watercolour around. Time has been a little pressing recntly and we're off to a family wedding in Slovakia for the next couple of weeks so there will be little to report here. The oils have been put away for the last week, since finishing the Gun Hill picture, so I thought I'd post a few pages from my Lakes sketchbook. As you can see, I've been trying to work on matters like recession and differences in chroma and I think that the work is beginning to reap rewards. Given the weight restrictions and costs associated with luggage on economy airlines it's not possible to carry a lot of gear abroad, but I have managed to sneak a small watercolour box into the luggage while Sheila was engaged elsewhere. With any luck I'll get the chance to splash the paint in venues new to the family.

All images from my Lakes Sketchbook - Watercolour on Not paper

Gun Hill - Tweaked

I drummed up the courage to tweak this after helpful comments here and on Wet Canvas. What I did was to work on the foreground land first of all. I added rough strokes of Naples Yellow, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber and then blended them in with a rag to soften most of the edges. I then turned my attention to the water. Here I used mixes of Indanthrone Blue, a touch of Alizarin Crimson, touch of Raw Umber and Titanium White to produce a variety of tones that would give a better range of contrast as well as get rid of the highlight up the left bank. Having just finished painting I'm not sure whether it's done but my first thought is that it's about finished. Any comments?


Gun Hill - Oil on canvas board 20" x 16"

Gun Hill - Clearing Storm

This is my first stab at producing a painting from the source material brought back from Norfolk. The inspiration was the board sketch posted on June 30th. As you can see there are significant changes that were designed to produce an image with more drama than the original scene. The design was arrived at after a process of producing sketches and notans prior to deciding on the final composition. At the moment it is standing on the easel where it will stay until I can decide what additions might improve it. Any suggestions would be welcome.





Gun Hill - Clearing Storm - Oil on canvas 20" x 16"

Brain and Back Dead

The exertions of the two days with Martin Kinnear left me exhausted and the constant standing at an easel had my fragile back screaming for relief. But I was in Norfolk to paint and paint I would. The solution for me was to dig out my trusty watercolour box and armed with it, a couple of sable brushes and a Fabriano block I took up position on the sensibly located benches overlooking the harbour at Burnham Overy Staithe. This picture is the result.

Burnham Overy Staithe - Watercolour on Fabriano Rough 12" x 9"

The Daily Painting Routine

Analysis of the previous day's work stimulated us to thinking carefully about our successes/ failures of the previous day. By far the most difficult thing for all of us was editing the scene in front of us and taking away enough to provide the basis for studio painting. It followed that we should make a concerted effort to enhance our skill level in observing, editing and making crucial decisions about the approach to any composition.

Martin put up the photograph below as a prompt (scare tactic!) and asked how sense could be made of it in translating it into something simplified that could be built upon.




The following three pictures are how he then stripped this down to its essence in terms of a composition that had a focal point, colour notes and tonal relationships.




M. Kinnear

M. Kinnear

M. Kinnear

To summarise the approach:

1) On a daily basis, take a difficult photograph or go outside. Decide on a focal point and from that decide on a compositional plan;

2) Decide between a tonal or colour approach as the dominant feature for your composition;

3) Unify the elements, creating as few blocks of colour or tone as possible;

4) Block in the shapes then develop them with tones or hues keeping lit areas opaque and shadow areas translucent;

5) Try to minimise the detail to a few important and suggestive - rather than illustrative - marks.

Martin has published the routine on his blog, 'The Studio' at http://oilstudio.blogspot.com/

The next three panels are a selection of the ones that I produced in the ensuing feverish activity.

Light in the forest - 11" x 9" MDF panel

Sea Cave - 11" x 9" MDF panel

Boats laid up for the night - 11" x 9" MDF panel

This procedure along with Notan sketches provide significant source material for paintings and most of all underline, what for many of us, is the most difficult hurdle in developing our painting that being forgetting the ingrained search for photographic type imagery in our work. The essence of good painting being the way we draw the viewer into an interactive approach with the work prompted by the suggestive marks we have created on the canvas.