Shell Ginger

I thought I'd have a ago at some Jean Haines style painting today by painting a shell ginger flower.  The flowers are white on the outside and yellow and red in the middle.  Take a photo from the right angle and the flowers look like they're laughing at you, with two teeth showing.  I'm not sure anyone would recognise this as shell ginger though.  Some people probably think it's a bird.

Colours today were rose dore, Prussian blue, both yellows (transparent and Indian, because I wanted some green and some orange), viridian green, burnt umber and a bit of titanium white.  Viridian is making its debut.  It's the first time I've ever used a green from a tube.  I though I'd give it a go as it has a great turquoisey hue that I would struggle to get from blues and yellows.  I expect it will replace cerulean blue in my palette the next time it's cleaned out.

The Jean Haines influence is there in the energetic background with the diagonal stripes, the undefined white and orange buds on the far left and in the middle respectively and the soft edges on the right hand side of the main flower (which could be softer).  The white flower has ended up impressionistically grey, which would be good if it wasn’t so dark.  In fact, the main flower itself is the worst thing about the painting as the rest of it looks great.  The greens in the background are really good with the the supposedly cool transparent yellow looking really bright and sunny and the approximately complimentary reddy orange contrasting well against them.  The twigs have come out well too, probably because I was trying to hold the paintbrush at the far end rather than the end nearest the paper.  I guess I could have left more white showing: that's a pretty common theme with me.

This one has been cut up to use as collage material.

All Roads Lead To Lady Churchill's Rose Garden

This post was written on 30 July 2019 but is only being released now that the program has aired.

Now, this is more like it.  Not that I was ever asked to make a choice but this was my entry for the wildcard competition.  It's obviously the same view as my other painting and still includes the leafy canopy and the shadow on the ground.

It's also still in the key of triadic left, so the main three colours are again Prussian blue, Indian yellow and quinacridone magenta.  There's also some cadmium red, cadmium yellow and cerulean blue, though, stippled in in the tree on the left, the leafy canopy and the plants against the wall.  I needed to use some bright opaques to make the colours stand out in what was looking quite a dark, muddy painting.

Anyway, first things first.  You'll see that I painted this on a map of the area.  I glued it down onto cardboard and put on two or three coats of watercolour ground in advance of the recording, hoping that I might impress the judges with my unorthodoxy.  I found it quite tricky to paint on this surface, needing a lot of pigment to make colours show but then finding that the painting was quite dark.  The sky, background trees and walls are all darker than the should be.  It meant that I had to outline the wall in white gel pen at the end to make it stand out against the trees, but this white line got some good feedback from other wildcards.

The leafy canopy and shadow on the floor look better here but are still not perfect.  In particular, it's hard to distinguish the canopy on the left from the tree behind it.

It was only on the day that I decided to try to incorporate the roads on the map into the painting.  I first spotted that the M25 would make quite a good background tree line.  Then, later on, I painted the tree on the left with a trunk along one of those blue lines that indicate there's a bit of country that's covered both on this page of the road atlas and the page before.  And then there's a shadow that fills up the M23 bypass around Crawley and I made some of the foreground shadows cover the North to South roads in Sussex.  These are things that you have to look closely to spot, but they're there.

And then there's the star of the show.  All those Sussex roads that seem to be guiding the viewer upwards towards the gate.  And the A264 which runs East to West along the bottom of the wall on the right and between Crawley and the gate escalates it to another level, still pointing at the gate but contrasting the East/West road against the North/Souths, which is something that textbooks tell us to do.  And it was a good move to leave the inside of the gate white rather than painting what's behind it.  Everything points to the white space.  If any of this was deliberate I'd be a genius.  In reality it's a lucky accident.  The road grid on this page of the road atlas turned out to be the perfect backdrop to the painting - I couldn't have done this with a map of Milton Keynes, all grids and roundabouts.

Other wildcards commented that they liked the colours in this one.  It's another positive reinforcement for my 2020 three colour paintings, even if these aren’t the greatest colours that I've ever drawn out of a triadic left key.

I'm looking at the painting again now.  There are also roads in there that look like twigs on branches or cracks in the wall.  And the bends in the roads in the foreground make the hillside look bumpy and three-dimensional.  A student of general relativity would call those roads geodesics - on a bumpy surface the shortest distance between two routes will twist and turn a bit.  It's interesting.  It was up for sale for a while but has been taken down after one of my shop window purges.

Lady Churchill's Rose Garden, Chartwell

This post was written on 30 July 2019 but is only being released now that the program has aired.

I've had an amazing day today as a wildcard at Landscape Artist of The Year 2020 at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill's former home, new Westerham in Kent.  The first couple of hours painting were quite quiet and focused but after that, when some people had finished or fancied a break, they started "walking the room" and that's when the day became something special.  Every single one of those wild cards was positive and encouraging to all the others.  It was an amazing experience.  Everybody must have come away at the end having both learned something and had their confidence boosted.

Anyway, we were shown an area in which we all had to set up shop (appropriately socially distanced).  It was an interesting choice because this area had two separate views: one looking out across a very green valley with loads of trees and one looking towards the wall of Lady Churchill's rose garden.  I chose to paint the latter and the best location for me to paint the view from turned out to be under a tree, which was a big bonus on a hot, sweltering day.

With four hours in theory to paint (in reality six if you didn't take a break) I thought I'd run off two paintings.  If after the first couple of hours I was looking up against it, I'd have abandoned one of them and concentrated in the other.  But this didn't turn out to be a problem: I got both done in three hours.

This is the worst of my two paintings, and the one that I hid away when the judges started circulating.  It’s in the key of triadic left (Prussian blue, Indian yellow, quinacridone magenta) with no other colours used.  The idea was to make it as much about the leafy canopy and the shadows on the floor as about the wall.  But the canopy and shadow don't work, the wall looks like it's in a distorted wraparound perspective like How The West Was Won, the triangular shadow on the wall is too lonely and the plants against the wall in the right are two-dimensional.  Maybe the perspective problem is to do with the bottom of the wall on the far right, which should slope upwards towards a vanishing point, but which I've made slope downwards because that's the way the ground sloped.  Schoolboy error.

There's nothing good about this one.  I won't even put it up for sale.  Let's move on.

Jean Haines' Atmospheric Watercolours - Book Review

It's back to the watery world of Jean Haines with this chunky 176-page whopper.

This book is very much focussed on technique rather than on producing finished paintings.  Techniques covered include colourful underpaintings, negative painting, use of salt and clingfilm, picking detail out of abstracts, creating sunburst effects, leaving out the detail and (needless to say) Jean's watery paint runs.

But this book includes lots of demos so why am I saying it's about technique rather than about producing finished paintings?  Well, that's because many of the demos are exercises.  And because Jean says that if any of these exercises turn out to be finished paintings it means you've not experimented enough.  You're painting for the bin, not for the wall!  Even so, I reckon someone sheepishly following these exercises would end up with some frameable works at the end.

I noticed a lot of woolly motivational stuff in this book.  Not enough to detract from the real content but enough to make me mark up Paint Yourself Calm and Paint Yourself Positive as not interested in my Amazon recommendations.

Just as with The Essence Of Watercolour the other day, I found myself unintentionally inspired by some of the creative, impressionistic use of colour in the paintings in the book and would like to see the author write a book on this subject.  It may well be that Jean's already done this with Colour and Light In Watercolour - a book already sitting on my wishlist.

Finally, I should compare this book to the other Jean Haines book that I've read.  I said in my review of Atmospheric Flowers In Watercolour that it was more about style than substance. Well that's certainly the case with this book, which is all about explaining Jean's techniques.  In comparison, Atmospheric Flowers is less technique-oriented.  This book would be a better starting point for learning about Jean's wishywashy style, with Atmospheric Flowers as more of an extension into flowers.  I learned more about Jean's technique reading this book after having read Atmospheric Flowers whereas if I'd read this book first, all the extra knowledge  I'd have gained from Atmospheric Flowers would have been about flowers rather than technique.

We're looking at a solid four palettes here.

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The Essence Of Watercolour, Hazel Soan - Book Review

Next up is The Essence Of Watercolour by Hazel Soan.  It's a 128 page paperback.

This was a really quick read.  I got through it in one evening.  There are chapters on colours, wet into wet, brush strokes, values, light and shadow, correcting errors, simplification and learning to see.  All of the chapters are full of useful tips and, while there are some insights that will make a difference to my work, a lot of it was stuff that I already knew.  A lot of it felt a bit shallow and introductory.  I'm wondering whether this book is made up of eight introductions that will be covered more deeply in eight more Hazel Soan books (especially given that she's already written two of those on colour and light and shade). But unlike (say) Expressive Watercolours by Joseph Stoddard, the lack of a chapter on materials makes it clear that this isn't a book for beginners.

This doesn't sound great so far and you're probably wondering (spoiler alert) why this book gets four palettes rather than three.  Well, there are three reasons:

- Hazel Soan is a great author and exudes so much passion in her writing that you want to go straight outside and paint.

- While a lot of the tips in the book weren't new to me, it wouldn’t be right for me to mark the book down for this.  If I'd read it a year ago, I'd be raving about how much it had taught me.  And about how packed the book was with tips - there's almost something on every page.

- And, most of all, there's more to the book than tips.  The paintings in the book that are used to illustrate Hazel's tips do more than that.  They inspire me to go out and pant impressionistically with weird choices of colours.  There are pictures in there, for example, of lion cubs with all sorts of blues, reds and greens in their fur.  They're there to illustrate why to use transparent colours in one place and how to paint wet into wet in another but I pick up different lessons from them.

So this gets four palettes.  Until Hazel Soan writes the book I really want to see with lots of demos on impressionistic paintings of animals with weird colour choices, I'll just have to keep flicking through this book for inspiration.  And searching out that YouTube video of her painting elephants.

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Birthday Book Stash

I got all these nine new art instruction books for my birthday.  It may take some time but I'll definitely be reading them all and posting reviews of them here.  Some of the books will be so intense that I'll need to read them more than once before I can review them: I can already tell you that Making Color Sing will be one of those.  Hopefully they'll also all make a difference to my work.

Expressive Painting has already been reviewed and had some interesting content on painting night scenes, which I used in A Miserable Night In Torquay.

A Miserable Night In Torquay

I still have three new books sitting on the shelf and it would be very easy for me to stop painting for a month while I read them all.  But then I wouldn't get as much out of the books as I would if I painted in between and tried out some of the new techniques I've been reading about.  So, first up I thought that, after reading Joseph Stoddard's book on Expressive Painting, I really needed to paint a rainy night scene while the lessons were still in my head.

I picked Torquay's most famous hotel as my subject with the "stretch objective" of making it look welcoming.  I started by sketching it out in pencil, then drawing over the pencil with a cheap waterproof rollerball.  I then plonked on an underpainting with some white space in the middle, surrounded by Indian yellow, surrounded by quinacridone magenta, surrounded by French ultramarine.  And then I went over the underpainting a second time - as I said in the book review, Stoddard likes to lay it on thick.

And then the rest was tinkering, using my three primaries plus burnt sienna, sepia and titanium white.  So I added trees and foliage, shadows on the building, people, etc.  And I coloured in the roof, chimneys, external features and some of the windows.  And you can see how I've splattered some stars and added a sign.

There's so much that works about this one.  Stoddard's ideas about nighttime painting are brilliant.  I should try this again at some point.  I'm pleased with how I have some of the shadows working on the building.  And, for the first time in a while, I'm really happy with the trees and foliage - adding a bit of red worked out well, as did choosing carefully where to add the yellow to bring out the light.

What don't I like?  Well, the reflections in the road aren't working yet.  And the people in the foreground don't harmonise with the rest of the painting, despite being painted in French ultramarine and quinacridone magenta.  Maybe I needed to add in some of the yellow too, and maybe not make the people monotone.  But the biggest problem with the painting is the signpost.  With the hotel in the background being in focus and the people in the middleground being more blurry, the sign should definitely not be in focus.  Oh well.  When I come to frame this one, I'll be cropping out the signpost, even if it means losing the tree.

This one's for sale provided I can get hold of a 9 inch square frame.

Expressive Painting, Joseph Stoddard - Book Review

My birthday's coming up and I have loads of new art instruction books to look through.  First up is this 128 page volume by Joseph Stoddard, which I've had my eye on for a while.

Before I get on to specifics, I should talk about the weird feeling I get after reading this book that I'm not sure where it's coming from.  First, I wonder what its target market is.  At the start of the book it felt like it was aimed at the comparative beginner - someone who's read the Frank Clarke book and is looking to take a step further.  The first 40% or so felt like this.  But then there was the 40% in the middle (chapters on Colour and Painting) where there were lots of interesting tips.  And second, was this a book about watercolour painting of (mainly) urban scenes or a book about urban sketching with watercolour overlays?  I ask this because Joseph's style is to draw the scene first in pencil, then go over it in pen, then to paint it.  Still, I was aware when I added this book to my wishlist that it bordered on urban sketching, so I went into it with my eyes open.

Joseph has a definite style.  As I said, he likes his urban settings and he likes to draw first and colour in later.  But the other things about his style are that he's really adventurous with his colour choices (which I like and was inspired by) and that he likes to lay the paint on real thick, like acrylics (which I'm told I do and that I try to move away from but this guy slaps it on like Lesley Joseph at the dressing table).  The colour scheme on his palette includes cadmiums, which he misleadingly refers to as transparent, and which take some of the shine away from his paintings.  In terms of content, he paints really good urban scenes but his still lifes are nothing special and his landscapes leave me cold.  So there's stuff there to inspire me but I'm being choosy about what to try to emulate.

I found Joseph's writing style grated a little.  It was a bit too instructional (do this, do that), and a bit too specific in places (I use this brand of eraser!).  I think there would be arguments if I attended one of his classes.

What were the good things about this book, then?  What were the bits that I learned from and that I expect to make a difference to my painting?  Well, as well as the adventurous colours, he had some interesting thoughts on painting skies and on painting vignettes (by which he means not painting up to the edge, keeping the focus in the middle, a bit like Jean Haines).  But the best two learning points in the text (and most inspiring features of his paintings) are night scenes and reflections in the street on rainy days.  The choice of cover for the book was no accident.

I'm giving this one two palettes.  There were lessons and inspirations in there but (i) not enough of them, and (ii) too many things about his style that I didn’t like.  And his writing style grated a little.  I don’t regret buying it but it comes with a word of warning that it should only be read by aspiring artists with enough wherewithal to be able to pick and choose what to take out of the book and what to ignore.

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Hondo

I thought it was about time I did another Western silhouette painting as they're always popular. Today's painting is based on a still from Hondo, a 1954 black and white John Wayne Western.

Colour scheme today was French ultramarine, quinacridone magenta, raw sienna, burnt sienna and sepia.  The blue, the red and the raw sienna make up my elephant primary triad - I thought I'd try painting in the silhouettes the same way that Hazel Soan paints elephants.  Raw sienna down first then the red and then blue, both wet into wet, followed by sepia to bring out some features.

For once I didn't start with replicating the original still like a draftsman using an 8*8 grid.  Instead I put 25 little pencil spots on the paper approximating the corners of a 4*4 grid.  I'm trying to wean myself slowly off the full grid.  So today's drawing might not be right in places but it's more human.

There's a lot that's good about this one.  The colours on the dog reflect the heat of the day, so the Hazel Soan mimicry worked there.  The guy's face looks good, with some definite evil in the eyes and the beard.  The colours on him are not as good as those on the dog but they do have good highlights.  And he has a nice scarf.  And I'm pleased with the shadows.  Shadows are something I often forget or don't think about.  Today they were made from raw sienna and French ultramarine because green is the opposite colour to red, which was the predominant colour under the shadows.

The biggest negative about this painting is that the colours on John Wayne haven't worked as well as those on the dog.  This is because it was a hot day today and the raw sienna dried too quickly for me to be able to add in the red and blue wet into wet.  Next time I go elephant style, it has to be on a colder day.  The foliage behind the dog and in the bottom right isn't great but not a disaster.  And the main guy looks nothing like John Wayne and a bit too evil for his character Hondo.  But the vast majority of people won't know about that film.

Obviously this one's up for sale.