Sunday 28 June 2020

(Two Of) The Hateful Eight

I thought it was about time I went back to my most popular series of paintings, the abstractified Westerns.  Today, I found a still from The Hateful Eight with two silhouetted figures standing inside a barn while it was all snow and fog outside, a scene that was just made for me to paint.

Before I get on to the painting, yes, I know that pitiful excuse for a human being Harvey Weinstein was producer for this film.  But he's only the producer.  It’s the director, cast and all sorts of other people that make a film great - the producer just sits in the background looking after finances and (in this case) abusing his power.  Anyway, back to talking about the painting.

This painting is in the key of purple cool, with the three main primaries being transparent yellow, French ultramarine and quinacridone magenta.  This is definitely not a three colour painting though.

I started by masking out the figures and the door frame.  Then I painted in the house, coach and fence in sepia.  Sepia is a stainer and I used it so that it would be resilient to the foggy glaze that went over the top.  Then I added some snow using French ultramarine and burnt sienna.  These two colours make a great combination and granulated unbelievably well.  Then there was the foreground along the bottom. I started  with some raw sienna with some burnt sienna and burnt umber dropped in.  It wasn’t great so I also dropped in my three primaries.  What I've ended up with is a fairly neutral colour without as much variety to it as I was looking for, although you can still spot the odd bit of blue.

Next was the foggy glaze.  It's made up of titanium white, cobalt blue and tiny bits of French ultramarine and quinacridone magenta. I painted this all over, being really careful with the snowy banks where I hadn't used strainers (dumb error).  Just as the sheen from that glaze was disappearing, I sprinkled on some salt, whose effect can be seen but it's a pity so much of it can be seen on the ground and so little in the sky.

And then it's the fun bit where I get to use my three primaries.  First, all the existing masking fluid came off, then I spattered in more masking fluid, trying to get most of it in the figures and the door frame.  Along the top of the doorframe you can see where I've done some directional, left to right spattering.  Once that had dried, I started on the doorframe.  After checking that my three primaries would mix together to make a good neutral, I started painting the doorframe in neutral colours.  But once every inch or two I would change the neutral tone by adding in more red, yellow or blue.  The right hand door frame could still be described as neutral but when I got to to the other two sides, I was being more adventurous with the colour variation, which seems to have come out well.  I dropped in a couple of bits of water to try to encourage some cauliflowers - the best ones are in the bottom left and top right.  I also went around the edge of the doorframe with a bit of raw sienna, allowing it to mix with the colours already there.

The onto the figures.  In both cases, I painted around the outside first in neutral tone, then dropped in blues, reds, yellows and neutral tones to fill the figures up.  I encouraged colours to mix and tried to make the left sides more yellow and the right sides more blue, to get some sort of 3D effect.  They seemed to come out OK.  And then there was possibly my favourite bit which is to rub off all the masking fluid spattering (and, less excitingly any salt).  It's amazing seeing all these white spots appearing from nowhere.  Are they stars?  Snow?  Bullet holes?  Woodworm?  I don't know and I don't care - let the viewer decide.

This one is another big success.  It's heavily influenced by The Searchers and Tombstone, both of which sold, so I'm hoping it will be equally popular.  I like the natural framing of the picture (which is down to Quentin Tarantino) but I also like the bit I've added, which is the contrast between body heat inside the figures and the cold outside, which makes it all look even colder out there.

This one's up for sale.

Tuesday 23 June 2020

Marker Portraits Poll Results

So here are the results of my latest poll.

Only a handful of surprises there.  Bernardine Evaristo did better than I expected, James Coburn and Charles Bronson worse than expected.  Maybe, if anything, it's telling me that giving people Interesting poses and props is more important than getting the likenesses right.

Wednesday 17 June 2020

The Glamour Of The Snow

I thought a bit of watercolour painting was overdue, so I've been out there this morning running off this little number.  The thunder started as I was wetting the paper at the beginning and it was a race against time to get it finished before the heavens opened.  I just about managed to get there in time, although I had to put it in the wooden playhouse to dry.

Without any particular plan on mind, I thought I'd have a go at another random landscape.  But I can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again, so I came up with three experiments.

The first was to use some of that Daler-Rowley pthalo blue that's still sitting around in the old takeaway carton that I use for my tubes.  As Prussian blue (another cool, greeny blue) worked so well with Indian yellow and quinacridone magenta (in the "triadic left" key) I thought I'd try out pthalo blue with both of those colours.  It's an interesting threesome, of which the results can be seen in the sky, but I don't think the greens and purples are as good as those with Prussian blue.

The second experiment was the debut for two new ink colours: titanium white and gold shimmer.  The gold shimmer is different to my previous gold - it's like a gold shimmer in a colourless solution rather than gold shimmer in gold solution.  The jury's out on the gold for now but the titanium white is already interesting.  It's very opaque and unfortunately (like waterfall green) doesn't granulate well. It will be good for snowy scenes.  But I can't make the same mistake again as I made here: the white needs to be applied separately from all other colours otherwise it mixes with them to form something looking like melted ice cream.  And if there's brown in there or a number of different colours, it turns to chocolate ice cream mud, not just in colour but also in properties - looking at the drying painting from the side I can see hills of mud.

The third experiment was blowing.  I've seen YouTube videos where people blow paint around gently using drinking straws.  But rather than drinking straws, I was using the plastic tubes from the middle of rolls of dog poo bags.  They're wider than drinking straws and it meant that I needed to go for quick sharp blows rather than slow gentle ones.  It had a great effect on the ink, resulting in explosions wherever I wanted them.  I'm going to try this again another time but without mixing white ink with other colours - with white ink there it tended to mix up ice cream too often.

I thought the pthalo blue/quinacridone magenta combination would make for a great night sky, so should really have spattered on some stars using masking fluid but forgot and wet the paper without thinking.  If the sky hadn't already thundered, I'd have waited for it to dry, then spattered the masking fluid but I didn't have the time for that.  I'll have to do a night scene with pthalo blue another day.  Doing things another day is becoming a common theme with this painting.

The foreground with my three primaries looked good but has since been covered up with inks.  I tried a wet into wet tree line in the background but couldn’t get it to work so was happy to see that inked over.  The sepia ink tree on the right came out well but has been spoilt a bit by having too much snow added to it.  The inky hillsides are starting to grow on me.  I thought they might suffer from the ink runs all being too parallel and vertical but I can now see that those vertical runs are not parallel, coming closer together near the top, making the hillside look tall and the viewer feel small.  In terms of granulation, the sepia ink is looking far superior to all others.  The titanium white and waterfall green need blowing to get them to do anything interesting.

I spattered some titanium white over the sky not really knowing whether it was supposed to be snow or stars.  I can tell you now that it's snow.  The clouds that I lifted out of the sky with kitchen paper actually look more like stars.  There's also an interesting area on the left where the inks are a bit smeared.  That's where the painting nearly fell off its perch while drying and I caught it and ended up  with ink all over my hand.  Looks OK though.

Overall, I think this is pretty good.  There are bits of ambiguity there: faces in the cliff face and a tree that could be a stag.  There's a cold, ghostly feeling to it all, which is why I've named it after an Algernon Blackwood ghost story.  Blackwood's best stories are nature based, leaving you scared of the snow, the trees, the wind, the sand, whatever.  I get the same feeling from this painting.

It's up for sale.

Saturday 13 June 2020

The Artist's Guide To Painting Water In Watercolour: 30 Techniques, Ron Hazell - Book Review

This one had been on my list for a while and was starting to look difficult to find on Amazon, so I had a hunt around and found a website that was still selling brand new versions and ordered it while I still could.  It's a 144 page paperback.

Just looking at the contents page should be enough to tell you that this is a really thorough book.  There are chapters on calm water, rippled water, rough water, breaking waves, the open sea, rivers/waterfalls, fog/rain/puddles and snow/ice.  There's reference to 30 techniques in the title of the book.  There was no master list of techniques for me to count but 30 must be an understatement.

Within each chapter, Ron starts off with some science about the shape of the water surface and why it makes different bits lighter or darker, what colours they are and what colour and shapes the reflections are.  He even illustrates this with photos.  At times it reminded me of Zoltan Szabo's chapter in the rules of reflection but this goes into much greater detail.  This is all good.  Science works for me.

And then Ron illustrates this all with some quick exercises and then some long demos.  I must admit I was worried about the demos.  Was I buying another Terry Harrison book for beginners?  Well, the demos were very much "do this, do that" rather than "this is what I did" but that was as far as the resemblance to Terry ended.  Because the big emphasis within the demos was on why Ron did what he did and how it illustrated the science preceding it.  This felt as natural and non-condescending as the worked examples in a physics textbook.

All this would be great but there's even more.  Throughout the book there are lots of other tips that have nothing to do with painting water that are still useful.  Information on colours and the pros and cons of transparent  colours, staining colours, granulating colours.  How to paint rocks.  The idea of signing a painting early with masking fluid if the bottom corners are going to be too dark to sign afterwards.  Perspective.  Underpaintings.  Composition.  Using warmer colours on the side of the painting where the light is coming from.  There's loads more that I could list.  He's put heart and soul into this and not held anything back for a second book.

So, how to paint water, lots of extra tips too.  Surely that's enough.  No.  There's more.  There's the inspiration I get from looking at his paintings.  I do like the look of his background tree lines.  An impressionistic soft-edged mix of blue, yellow and red, with the yellow or red often being earthy.  And then harder edged tree shapes in front of them.  It looks really good.

I also liked that Prussian blue was one of Ron's favourite colours, even if he's careful to warn about its staining ability and to warn us not to use it if we're wanting to lift it off.  Prussian blue doesn't appear in books as often as it should.  He also uses ultramarine and cerulean blue.  In fact, some of his work with cerulean is making me wonder whether it should return to my palette in place of cobalt as my opaque blue - it's not as if I've used cobalt blue in a long time.

So, yes, this book was amazing and I'm so pleased I bought it in time.  You should order a copy while you still can,  it's an easy five palettes from me for a book that's (at the time of writing) up there in my all time top five.

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨

Thursday 11 June 2020

The Magnificent Seven Collection, Framed

All framed now and ready to go in the post.  Looking good, I must say.

They've been given to my given to my father as a combined fathers day/77th birthday present.  The good news is that he spotted straight away that they were the Magnificent Seven.  I'm not sure he believes that this is my own artwork though.

With my dad no longer with us, these portraits were taken away as part of the house clearance and are probably now in a charity shop somewhere.

Sunday 7 June 2020

Eli Wallach

Today on Portrait Artist Of The Week It was Clare Balding.  I didn’t rate my chances of doing Clare justice so I've instead headed back to The Magnificent Seven to draw Eli Wallach who played Calvera, the leader of a gang of Mexican bandits.

The problem with a set of seven portraits is that (unless three or four of them are landscape aligned) it's hard to find an off the shelf framing solution.  That was another good reason for drawing Eli - a set of eight will be easier to frame.

As for the picture, there's no likeness but there's some interesting personality on there.  There's evil and vulnerability, which Eli has in spades, but it's just not Eli's evil and vulnerability.  Still, he'll make a grand addition to the set.  I'll come back to Eli another day when I get around to drawing a The Good, The Bad And The Ugly collection.

And I've just realised that the  great thing about this film is the clothes.  It's the clothes that make some of these drawings so recognisable even in the absence of  likeness.

It's too late to add Eli to the survey - he'll have to go in next time.

Saturday 6 June 2020

Marker Portraits Poll

It's time for another poll, this time on my marker drawings.

If you have a couple of minutes to spare (honestly, that's all it takes) please could you head to https://poll.app.do/portraits-with-markers-poll.  You'll be shown 32 portraits.  All you need to do is highlight your favourites and click on send.

You won't know most of the subjects so won't be able to tell whether they're good likenesses, so feel free to pick those that look human or that exude enough personality that you feel you know them or where you like the colours or composition.  Just whatever rocks your boat really.

Cheers.

The Magnificent Seven

And here's the set all together.  I actually think they work well as a collection.  They all have something different to bring to the party, just like in the film.  And while only James Coburn and Charles Bronson can stand alone as good likenesses, I think the seven of them as a set have a decent likeness to the seven as a team.

I'm going to Eli Wallach to the set, frame them and give them to my father as a present.  That'll be something different.

And Introducing Horst Buchholz

And here's the last one in the set.  It's Horst Buchholz as Chico.

I'm not sure he's instantly recognisable unless you're looking at all seven portraits together, but it feels like a decent portrait with some good marks and nothing being overdone.  The shirt is a bit eyeball roll inducing but I like the sunset background, where I've managed to gradate the colours really well.  I wanted something warm in the background to reflect Chico's hotheadedness and I think this does the trick.

The Hidden Gorilla

I've finished the experimental painting that I started on Thursday.

I’ve added more watercolour.  This again is mainly Prussian blue, Indian yellow, quinacridone magenta and viridian.  But now there are two more colours in there.  The skyline on the right has some cadmium yellow in it - it's  an opaque colour and I wanted to change the shape of the skyline.  The other extra colour is titanium white, which I've used to glaze the sky a few times in an attempt to make the hills stand out better against it and to make it all look a bit misty (both of these were ideas from Ann Blockley's Watercolour Workshop).  There's also a bit of titanium white in the blue mountain on the left.  I’ve been quite heavy with the Prussian blue on the left as there was an odd ink lump on the second peak from the left that I wanted to disguise.

I've also added more inks but this time it's just indigo, gold, waterfall green and sepia, although the sepia has long since disappeared under other layers.  I applied the ink a number of times to the mountain in the foreground with granulation fluid added to it, sometimes making it all run downwards, sometimes left to right.

As a landscape it's OK I guess.  I think the blue and red mountains look great, the green hills in the foreground less so.  The sky and hills also have too similar values for my liking too - this wouldn’t look that great in black and white.

But what sets it apart is the hidden gorilla.  Once you've seen the gorilla, it's like a whole new painting.  If you've read the previous post about this painting you’ll know where to find the gorilla.  The gorilla makes this one a winner for me.  Unfortunately the colours on this one have really deteriorated since I took the photo (and I wish I knew why) so the painting has had to be binned,

Friday 5 June 2020

Yul Brynner

One more member of the Magnificent Seven.  It's Yul Brynner as Chris Adams.  I would say he's the coolest of the seven but I think Britt (James Coburn) has him beaten in that department.

This is one of the better likenesses in the set.  Maybe third behind Coburn and Bronson.  It's not perfect though.  The right side of Yul's jaw needed to be made up of straight lines rather than a smooth curve (which is was in the underdrawing).  And I've been a bit too heavy with the shadows across the face.  Still pretty cool though.

Steve McQueen

Back to the Magnificent Seven and it's Steve McQueen as Vin Tanner.

I really struggled to get. a likeness, so thought I'd have some fun with colours instead, using blue in the skin tone shadows and yellow in the highlights.  It's given him some personality I guess.

It's looking like Charles Bronson and James Coburn are having to do all the heavy lifting in this crazy collection.

Thursday 4 June 2020

Another Experiment

I've been taking another look through Ann Blockley's Watercolour Workshop over the last couple of evenings, so was in the mood for another of those experiments where I just create an abstract letting the paint do all the work, then try to turn it into something mor realistic afterwards.

I'm halfway through now, having created this abstract background.  I started with some directionally spattered masking fluid.  One bit came out in a big glob, which I scraped some lines into - that's the big white bit down the left.

Next I painted over it all with the triadic left trio (Indian yellow, Prussian blue, quinacridone magenta) which was so successful in that sunset a few weeks ago.  But I also invited viridian to the party.  That's mainly down the left with some blue and yellow added in places.

While the paint was still wet, I added some acrylic inks (Earth red, sepia, indigo, waterfall green and what little I had left of gold).  I dropped in some granulation fluid and tried to get the ink to move around a bit by tipping it around.

And then I chucked on some salt down what is the right hand side, put a crunched up bit of Easter egg foil in the middle and wrapped it all in that transparent spotty textured crinkly paper that French sticks come in.  I didn't put any weight on top today - I just sat there and watched it dry while kicking myself for forgetting to add some bits of torn up watercolour paper on top.  Oh well.

And here's how it all turned out after removing the salt and masking fluid.  There are some interesting table salt effects against the pink in the bottom right but these are a bit too subtle compared to everything else to be able to attract attention.  I like the scratch marks in the big masked area on the left too.  There's maybe a bit too much of the Earth red ink in there though, and I did have trouble getting the waterfall green ink to run around.  And maybe there's too much green down the left, both from the paint and the ink.

What to do with it though?  I could turn it 90 degrees to the left and try to turn it into a landscape but that feels a bit too obvious and the colours fit the subject too well.  Instead, my favourite idea for now  (and I'm going to keep thinking for a couple of days) is to keep it this way round and turn it Into some sort of simian looking face staring out to the right.  Or turn it upside down and turn it into an orang utang.

Monday 1 June 2020

What to buy a potential new watercolourist

I've been meaning to do a post like this for a while.  Say you've been to CenterParcs, your other half went to one one of those watercolour classes and you think he might take it up permanently but you're not sure.  What would make up a nice well-thought-out package of gifts for his birthday or Christmas that will get him out of your hair for a while?  Well it's all in this post.

First, what not to get.  Don't buy a set of paints however tempting they look.  I mean, they're a nice present  and everything but we're going for something a bit less off-the-peg here.  A set of colours that work well together and that doesn't include any colours that will never be used.  Let's get on to the proper list.

1. A palette box.  It could be plastic, it could be metal.  Either will be fine.  Do some research - see what you like the look of.  But make sure that the palette box is empty and that it's either made for full pans to fit in (in which case you may need to buy the empty plastic pans to fill it up) or little 2-3 square centimetre holes that paint can be squeezed into.  We need there to be holes/pans for at least 8 colours.  Ideally more than that.  Maybe 10 or 12.  If he turns out to like painting, he may end up with 16 colours at some point but let's keep it to 10-12 for now as we won't be buying 16 colours.

2.  Brushes.  I confess I'm not a brush expert.  Go for brushes that feel nice and soft.  I hear that animal hair performs better than synthetic.  Go for three brushes to start with: one that's flat and maybe an inch wide, a number 10 which will have more of a cylindrical tip and a rigger for detail.  Actually, if there's a squeeze plasticky pipette there, pick one of those up - they're good for diluting paint mixtures.

3. Paper.  Buy a watercolour block - this is a pad stuck down on (almost) all four sides so the paper doesn't buckle.  The weight of the paper is important - go for 300 gsm.  For the surface I'd start with either hot pressed which is the smoothest or cold pressed (aka "not") which is in the middle.  Just don't go for rough.  Size-wise I'd go with something small like 5 inches by 7 or 6 by 8.  Save the 9 by 12 for when he's more experienced.

4. Paint.  Now we're talking.  We're going for tube paints that he can squeeze into his palette box.  Winsor & Newton is the manufacturer I understand and use, so we'll go for them.  I'd go for artist quality paint rather than the student quality Cotman paint.  The 5ml tubes will be fine for a starter gift.

First six colours are the primaries.  A warm and cool version of each of them (ie two versions of each primary, tending to the two secondaries on either side).  All six are transparent, which makes for better looking paintings and, most importantly, reduces the chances of creating mud when mixing them.  The six are quinacridone magenta, rose dore, Indian yellow, transparent yellow, Prussian blue and French ultramarine.  Don't be tempted to go for anything different - you may be making the mistake of picking an opaque colour.  And there are no greens, oranges or purples, but you're always better off mixing these.

The next two are Earth colours: burnt umber and raw sienna, both transparent.  If we have eight pans we can stop there.  With ten pans I'd add in Payne's grey (opaque but great in overcast skies) and titanium white (opaque but good for highlights, definitely not for mixing).  I'd probably stop there for the starter set even if we have a 12 or 16 pan palette.

Later on (but not in this gift collection) if he wanted to fill empty spaces, he might want to add viridian and burnt sienna to a 12-pan palette, and those two plus cadmium red, cadmium yellow, cerulean (or maybe cobalt) blue and sepia (all opaque) to a 16-pan palette.

5. What about a book?  The best starter book I've seen is Frank Clarke's Paintbox.  The only word of warning I'd give is that there are lots of opaques in Frank's palette, whereas we're mainly buying transparent colours.  So whereas Frank paints hills over the top of the sky, our new artist might need to paint the sky around the hills, so the hills just go down onto white paper.  There are also some colour translations between Frank's palette and ours.  Where Frank uses lemon yellow we use transparent yellow, cobalt blue becomes Prussian blue, light red becomes rose dore, alizarin crimson becomes quinacridone magenta.

If he's enjoying painting, or if you wanted to buy another book, the next step could be Terry Harrison's Complete Guide To Watercolour Landscapes.  Terry uses pre-mixed greens but by the time anyone's been through the Frank Clarke book they'll be comfortable mixing greens themselves from blues and yellows.  Or maybe it's The Complete Watercolourist's Essential Notebook (not the Keep Painting book) by Gordon McKenzie which I've never read but which looks great on YouTube.  After that it's about where his style is going and what, in particular he wants to improve.  There's a lot out there - check out some of my reviews and those on ParkaBlogs.

If the Frank Clarke Book is no longer available, then that Gordon McKenzie book may well be OK as a first book - I wouldn't start with Terry Harrison.  <July 2022 edit: I've since seen the Paul Clark beginners' book and taken a quick look - that might be another alternative>

And that's the list.  Buy all this and you've come up with a really well thought out present.

Feel free to ask questions if any of this is unclear.