Panting Expressive Watercolour, Bridget Woods - Book Review

I'd been after this book for a while and got it as a Fathers' Day present.  It's a 192-page paperback with some quite dense text in places so has taken me a while to get through.  Apart from on Amazon, I've never seen this book reviewed on line, so that makes this the definitive review.

There's about 30 pages of scene setting at the beginning.  Some stuff on materials and a lot about what makes watercolour great.  This sounds like a lot, but there's still more than 160 pages to go and there are already some amazing paintings to look at and be inspired by.

Then we get to about 50 pages where Bridget really goes back to basics and tells us how to make marks.  She talks about seven types of mark: wet into wet, dry into wet, wet on dry, dry on dry, SOS roll mark, drip & tip and flirty belly.  Interestingly, what others call wet into wet is what Bridget calls dry into wet and, even then, Bridget's technique is very different to the "pick up some paint straight from the tube" technique that I've seen in other books.  But anyway, I've never seen this stuff explained in such detail before and can’t imagine that anybody couldn't learn something from this.

After that, the rest of the book is a bit different.  Looking at the chapter headings which talk about tone, colour and shapes, you'd think that Bridget was just churning out the same stuff that's in so many other books.  She does start off this way, talking about the importance of preparing with tonal sketches (which she calls toenail sketches).  But otherwise the rest of the book takes a very different course.  The clue's in the name of the book - this is all about expressive painting.  It's sad but it's a big surprise when a book with a title about expressive painting actually turns out to be about expressive painting!  It talks not about the usual compositional rules on tone, colour and shapes but tries to get the reader thinking about how he can use tone, colour and shape to convey feelings and messages.

There are no demonstrations in this book but lots of exercises to try.  I liked how, in the bit about brushstrokes, Bridget poses the reader lots of questions but then goes on to give us her personal answers to the questions - I wasn't left confused.  For the expressive exercises, there are plenty of paintings in the book that, while not always being solutions to exercises, go a long way to getting the points across.

I liked Bridget's writing style and general attitude.  There's a message throughout the book that we're all on artistic journeys off our own.  However good you are, there are always new ways to develop.  I've seen some Amazon reviews, by the way that complain about Bridget's excessive use of the WW, DE, WD, DD, SOS, DT and FB abbreviations to describe the seven types of stroke that she describes in such detail.  I didn’t mind this at all - if I had to check back to earlier pages to see what these letters stood for, it actually reinforced those lessons.  I didn't forget these seven strokes after putting the book down.

I generally make some comment about how inspirational the artwork is in these books as sometimes that's where all the value is.  And, while the book is great, I must say the artwork is too.  Bridget has quite a loose wet style, although not as loose and wet as Jean Haines.  And it's not clear from the pages that you can preview in Amazon but she likes going abstract too.  Both abstracts of the "here are some shapes and colours that convey a mood" kind and the sort of representational paintings that veer off into abstract in places.

So, the artwork is great but that's never been enough for five palettes.  The second half of the book with its expressive ideas is intriguing, but also not enough for five palettes.  I may come back to revise that statement at some point though as I suspect that this might just be a case of me not yet being ready for higher level stuff like this.  The bits on brushstrokes, though?  I think they're a game changer and essential reading.  They are the reason this book scores five palettes.  Great job.

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Cotoneaster

It's been a bad day at the office today.  It started when I found that I'd plugged in the iPad to charge last night but not switched the socket on.  So I was without the iPad for a while today, leaving me no phot9 to work from.

So instead I thought I'd paint some brambles and maybe have access to the iPad later to be able to find some photos for the closer detail.  I started off with some Bridget Woods style wet into wet work.  Rather than repeat yesterday's sensible sky, I went for random colours, using six primaries: French ultramarine, Prussian blue, quinacridone magenta, Winsor red, transparent yellow and Indian yellow.  These colours feature throughout the painting, by the way, so it's not in any particular colour key.  Before leaving it to dry, I added in a couple of trees by mixing up some neutral colour (the ingredients of which I've forgotten) and painting it on using Bridget Woods' dry into wet technique.  I think my wet into wets were a bit too heavy - those are not gentle, airy background colours.  So I also threw on some salt in an attempt to quieten down the background.  I'm not sure whether it's quietened down the background or made it more noisy.

Before going any further, I decided to firm up the trees a bit and add a hilly horizon line (in place of one of the tree branches).  In both cases I used Bridget Woods' "SOS brushstroke" to get a hard edge on one side of the mark but have it fading away to nothing on the other.  Unless it goes wrong in the second half, her book's going to get a cracking rating.

By now my iPad was charged, so I was able to Google around for subject matter.  I decided on cotoneaster, some Chinese plant from the rose family.  I decided that there would be two layers of brambles, some in the foreground and some fainter brambles behind them.  First up were the background brambles.  The branches are a mix of transparent, quinacridone magenta and Prussian blue.  I painted water on the paper first, then tried to queerer the paint off the brush into it with my fingers (another Bridget Woods idea).  This didn't work for me, although it has done in practice exercises.  So I dabbed the paint into the water instead and let it run around.  I also added hints of berries in Winsor red.  At this stage, it's pretty clear I shouldn't have bothered with the trees in the underpainting - this is all pretty planless. 

Then onto the foreground brambles: I used the same neutral colour for them: transparent yellow, Prussian blue and quinacridone magenta.  But I put on at least two coats to make sure it was much darker than what was behind it.

And then I added the berries in Winsor red.  In places I left the background showing through as highlights or dropped in Indian yellow for a bit of colour variation or a little stab of the neutral colour for the rosetippy head (is that what you call it?).

But things weren't quite right.  The berries were not only disconnected from the restof the painting but were also too dull.  So I did some timkering:

- going over bits of the berries several times with (opaque) cadmium red

- making the berries more exciting by dropping on water and dabbing it off

- trying to unify the branches and berries by glazing the branches in places with Winsor red and trying to merge the berries into the branch

- trying to bring it all together by spattering all over with titanium: white cadmium yellow and cadmium red

Don't ask me what order I did all these things in.

The final result isn't satisfying and this won't be going in the shop window.  The worst thing about it is that the berries are so dull looking.  They should instead be the stars of the show in dazzling bright red.  If I ever do something like this again, I wave the berries at the start with masking fluid.

The best bit about the painting is this one berry.  A one inch by one inch masterpiece.

The Far Country

I was feeling keen to start putting some of these Bridget Woods lessons into practice.  Part of the lesson was to put together the monotone painting that you saw in the previous post, which used only the Daler Rowney tube of pthalo blue that I've had sitting around for a while.  I was keen to keep using that blue so picked this scene from The Far Country (1954 Western starring James Stewart, set in the Yukon).  But to get a little more variation, I also used a second cool blue (Prussian) and a cool red for a bit of contrasting warmth (permanent rose).  There's no yellow in there, so I can't say this is in a particular colour key.

I started with a rough pencil sketch, then masked out the foreground silhouettes and reserved some whites in the mountain in the top left.  I also spattered over some masking fluid to look a bit like falling snow.  Then I painted the sky in pthalo blue, using Bridget Woods' very prescriptive wet into wet techniques.  At the same time, I painted in both mountains.  The one on the left used Bridget's wet into dry techniques; the one on the left was separated from the sky by masking fluid, so I was able to paint it in with both blues without having to wait for the sky to dry.

Then I added the middleground using both blues. I added the tents before it was dry.  I wasn't concerned about getting them or the riders into focus as the top left mountain was going to be in focus.  You camn’t focus on background and foreground at the same tone in real like, so why should both be in focus in a painting?  The row of posts and the jaggedy hill lines near the foreground were both added much later.  So far, I've only used the two blues.

Next was the foreground.  To make it look churned up, muddy and slushy,  I used Bridget's dry onto dry technique, using the texture of the paper to create texture in the brushstrokes.  I was now using permanent rose as well as the two blues.

Then the masking fluid came off.  There was a bit too much white in the mountain, so I washed some very dilute Prussian blue over the most shadowy bits.

Finally, I added in the foreground figures.  I didn’t want to pick out individual horses and raiders, so just treated them as two silhouettes, painting in a variegated mix of all three colours.  I added shadows underneath, not distinguishing the shadows form the silhouettes.  I added some extra, darker churned up strokes to the foreground to on next it to the figures.  And then I added some more paint to the tents and threw on some salt.

This is definitely an acceptable painting and was quickly snapped up by the Scottish collector who already has a number of my other pieces.  It's the sky and the mountain that are the high points on this one, although the middleground snow and churned up foreground are also good.  There's even a bit of fog that's appeared at the foot of the top left mountain and may even be covering part of the middleground.  The figures and tents are the weakest element of the painting. It's a shame the silhouette on the right is more blue and less purple than the one on the left.  And the salt marks aren't perfect.  Still, until Roy Keane is let loose on my artwork, I'll always be my own worst critic.

Bridget Woods Exercises

The other book I got on Fathers' Day was Painting Expressive Watercolour by Bridget Woods.  I'm taking my time over reading this one as it's one of those few books that has exercises that I genuinely want to have a go at.  There's lots of detail about exactly how to do wet into wet, dry into wet, wet into dry and dry onto dry paint strokes.  So much detail that I'm going right back to basics and trying out the exercises she suggests.  Watch this space.

Hartlip Church Tower

It's been twelve days since I last painted in watercolour.  Just too many things going on at the moment, including the Euros.  It's not that these other things take up all the time - it's that they distract me and I really need to immerse myself in my work if it's to be any good.

Anyway, I'm back into action.  I went for a local scene.  If I didn’t, everyone that voted in the survey would be wondering why they even bothered.  This is based on a photo I took of the village church a while ago when I was out looking for painting ideas.

The plan for today was to draw the subject in rollerball in a reasonable amount of detail (so showing the odd brick here and there) and then to paint it in the multiple layered style that Hazel Lale talked about in the book I just read.  For colours, I used rose dore, cerulean blue and Indian yellow, so this is in the key of orange cool.  The cerulean was chosen for its granulating effects, the Indian yellow because I wanted things to look a bit sunny and the rose dore because it's the red in my palette that's most appropriate for stonework.

I even tried out some colour runs on scrap paper to check that the colours would work together.  But somehow, in doing this, I didn't spot how mixing all three together made a muddy brown rather than a sexy grey.  Actually, I should even have expected the brown given how my blue was only semi transparent and my red and yellow were dual pigment colours.

So to prepare, I drew out the subject using black rollerball.  The lines are all freehand but I admit I did start with pencil lines and a ruler.  This is in three point perspective, with a vanishing point above the painting (making the tower narrow the higher you go) as well as the usual vanishing points on the horizon on the left and right.  Then I did a little masking and spattered some masking fluid over the church.

I started with the sky.  This wasn't based on anything I've ever seen: I just put down the colours where I thought they looked good.  It came out pretty well.

Then it was on to the church.  In a number of separate glazes, I put on some yellows in the sunniest bits, yellows and blues in the greenest bits, reds and blues or both in the darkest bits, reds in the chimney.  I painted some of the visible bricks in various colours and dotted in some random stones using all three primaries.  Then I brought it all together by glazing  over it all using a variegated mix of all three primaries, still making the mix yellower in the sunniest bits and redder or bluer in the darkest bits.  I sprinkled over some salt at this point but it didn't work today.  I even put on some bits of water that I allowed to run down the church but they didn't do anything either.  I still wasn't finished though, so even after all this, I added extra glazes over the sunniest and darkest bits using the relevant primaries.

Then it was onto the tree.  Again I used all three colours.  At the extremes of the branches, I stippled on undiluted paint using a specialised Terry Harrison foliage brush.  The rest of the tree is just painted on as normal.  The addition of little bits of visible branches was a definite improvement.  At this point, I also added the background greens on both sides of the church.  The green on the right was necessary to connect the tree to the church; the green on the left is there for balance.

Then finally I added the shadows and birds and rubbed off all the masking fluid.  The shadows make this a very different painting.

It wasn't until this was all finished that I realised it all seems to work.  The multilayered colours are great and, yes, vibrant.  There's definitely some sun there too, in the yellows on the church and in the negative shapes around the shadows.

This was sold to a local churchgoer with all proceeds going to the church.

H1 2021 Survey Results

Thanks to everyone that participated in the survey.  I got 26 responses, which is a new record.  As usual, there were surprises for me in there.  Here are the results.

First, none of these works got any votes.  I can't really argue as I didn't vote for them.

Next, these all scored one vote.  Still nothing there that I voted for, so no surprises.

Two votes for these.  Michael Kneeling (top left) didn't get many votes.  My naked figure drawing rarely does but that's something I do for fun with little or no expectation of sales!

Three votes for these two.  Pleased to see Chadwick Boseman getting some votes, but shocked at Big Sam getting any.

Four votes.  Shocked to see The Regeneration Of Lord Ernie scoring so high - it's a work that almost went in the bin.  But I'm glad to see the others getting votes here.

Five votes.  The first couple of local landscapes appearing.

Six votes for each of these.  Surprised to see that moose coming out so high and Long Gone (second from left, top row) and Place Meadow (middle of bottom row) so low.

These all got seven votes.  The two on the left came out lower than I expected, the two on the right higher.  The Thin Ice (bottom right) has done exceptionally well for a painting that I was thinking of binning.

Eight votes.  We're getting near the top now and this is when the survey starts screaming out its messages. The abstract in the bottom right is the highest scoring work that's not a painting set in Hartlip.  Those Hartlip paintings have absolutely bossed this survey.  And I should point out they were doing this even before I posted a link to the survey on local Facebook and WhatsApp groups.

So, now that we know that we're only looking at Hartlip paintings, here are the two that scored nine votes.

And the two that scored eleven.

And finally the runaway winner with eighteen(!) votes was The Rose And Crown In The Snow.  I have to say the colours in this one are great.

And there you have it.  Obviously there's a big message there about local landscapes being popular.  But it's not just any local landscapes - it's portraits of houses that score highest.  And of those portraits, it's the ones with better planned values and reserved white spaces that are most popular.  Definitely food for thought there.

Vibrant Watercolours, Hazel Lale - Book Review

This is quite exciting.  I got two art instruction books from my oldest for Fathers' Day!  I've read this one already and am ready with my review.  It's a 128 page paperback but one of those paperbacks like the Jane Betteridge book that has covers that fold back inwards, making it feel more robust than a paperback and unlikely to ever end up dog eared.

I put this book on my list because I like the crazy colours that Hazel uses in her work.  I was hoping that this might be the book I've been longing for on the use of impressionistic colours but let's come to that later.

This is one of those books like Ron Stocke's and Joseph Stoddard’s that falls a little flat.  They're books that these artists "had in them" and wrote and published but that don't really have defined target markets.  There's too much at the beginning on the real basic stuff like the difference between tubes and pans and then the usual handy tips on perspective, planning values, composition.  And then you get the demonstrations, which is where most of the value lies.

Let's talk about this book in particular.  The five demonstrations, in particular the two that were portraits.  They gave me ideas about how to paint differently.  On the other hand, I didn't like that they were instructional ("do this, do that" rather than "this is what I did").  They had too many steps, some of which were too vague - "keep building up the colour" or whatever.  And they were all a bit samey.  I get the idea.  We're building up a painting in multiple layers.  Painting different subjects isn't enough variety for me - I need different techniques too.  And there was one bit that really grated.  One step tells us to do some colour runs, testing out lots of different colours on a separate sketch and working out which work best.  A great idea.  But then when the next step tells us to "paint Winsor lemon over the whole figure" that lesson's totally lost.  Is the artist going to choose their own colour or are they just going to copy the author?

There's a strange bit at the beginning where Hazel talks about the colours in her palette.  She tells us that she has two palettes: one with four light colours and one with sixteen dark colours.  Does she understand what we mean by palettes?  To me that's a palette of twenty colours.  The palette is a portfolio of colours.  The same word is used for the tin you store and mix them in but that's not what we're talking about here.  "You're a woman of style, Hazel.  Tell us about your wardrobe."  "Well, actually, I have two.  One is from MFI and in the main bedroom and has all my casual stuff, and the other is in the spare room and…”

Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say this book is aimed at beginners because of all the basic stuff at the start and the instructional nature of the demos.  But what beginner is going to be interested in the crazy colours?  Hazel should really have written two books: a simple one for beginners with normal colours and one for more advanced artists on how to add a bit of zing and vibrancy.

There's still stuff of value here, though.  There's the multi layer painting that's in the demos and there are the pictures in the book that can be inspiring.  It's just a shame that there's not more discussion about how Hazel chose the colours in those pictures - that's what I was really hoping for.

And the biggest laugh I got from this book was this painting.   Nice painting, great colours - this is what's best about the book.  But was this always a painting of some barns, or did it start off as a male nude and then get changed?  You can't unsee it once you’ve seen it.

Overall score?  Two palettes.  There's some stuff in there to inspire and some interesting examples of multi layer painting but I don't think I'd learn anything more from rereading this.  It's worth reminding people at this point that I’m trying to be stingy with palettes on these scores.  Two means that while I might not buy this book if my entire collection was stolen, it's not one that I regret adding to my Amazon list.  It does have redeeming qualities - I'm giving it three stars on Amazon.  This isn’t like Rate My Takeaway on YouTube where most places score 10/10 and anything less than 9/10 is really poor.

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Recognition!

Wow!  Casey Affleck just shared one of my works on Instagram and he already has over 1500 likes. If you're here after seeing me on Casey's timeline, I hope you like what you find here.

H1 2021 Survey

I need some help please guys.  It's been a busy first half of the year and I could do with finding out which of my works are most popular.  I've managed to narrow my starting list down to 50 works including my own favourites, all those that were sold, some that got more likes on Facebook than I was expecting them to and my Landscape Artist Of TheYear painting that had to be kept under wraps until January.

It's dead easy to participate.  Just head to https://poll.app.do/h1-2021-artistic-actuary-poll

and you'll see all 50 works.  All you have to do is to highlight all of those that you like, then press the submit button.  It should only take a couple of minutes.

All responses are appreciated, and I'll put the results up here when votes have dried up.  Cheers. 

Sam Allardyce

I'm still in too much of a rush today.  After that Gareth Southgate disaster, I thought I'd move on to Big Sam.  At least I know from drawing him on a bit of scrap paper a few weeks ago I can get some sort of likeness.

Again, this was all about the Charles Reid contour drawing, then the shading, then the wetting.  I still can't remember all the colours (leaf green, purple, some blues, some reds) but I can tell you I went straight for colours this time rather than repeating that experiment of starting with charcoal grey then tinting it.

The likeness is there  but not as good a likeness as the one I got on scrap paper.  But there are some problems.  One is the excessive amount of purple in Sam's face; the other is the unimaginative monotone clothes he's wearing.  No, make that three - that hair is horrible, looking too much like ugly pencil scribbles.

This is another for the bin.  I need to be much more disciplined about taking my time over paintings when I have other things to do later in the day.

Gareth Southgate

So the Euros have started and I'll be watching all three games today.  That's two good reasons for doing this inknse portrait of Gareth Southgate - it's based on a source photo that I've had sitting around for a while, unsure of which medium to paint it in.

I started with a Charles Reid-style contour drawing.  Then I shaded it in with pencils.  Today I started by only using charcoal grey, then later shaded other colours over the top to give the darks a bit of a tint.  And finally I painted over it with water.

It all feels a bit rushed to me (even this post).  I can't even list the colours I used, apart from them being blues, reds and my usual leaf green.  This one's a failure.  Although there are some good lines in the clothes, the likeness isn't there.  In fact it looks more like Danny Dyer.  I won't be putting this one in the shop window.

Secret Door Into Hartlip Church

The Euros start today, so my paintings might slow right down over the next few weeks unless I can start getting out of bed earlier.  There's only the one game today, so plenty of time to dash out this painting. After too many clunkers lately, I thought I'd go back to Hartlip Church to boost my confidence - these paintings tend to sell in a couple of hours.  This is a door in the side of the church that I often see while out walking the dog.

I'm trying out the Jean Haines style again today.  Watery, loose, not painting everything, Venetian technique.  The colours today are cerulean blue, raw sienna and quinacridone magenta.  Only three colours and in the key of green cool.  The cerulean and raw sienna are no brainiers for old buildings like this and, looking at my swatches, I thought quinacridone magenta made for a better triad than rose dore.

I started by drawing the subject.  Not something that Jean recommends but I do need something to guide the brush.  There was no masking fluid used today.  Instead I went straight for a watery underpainting.  I started with the raw sienna then dropped in the blue and red wherever I wanted things to be a bit darker or for bricks to show.  I used Jean's Venetian technique on the stonework in the underpainting, sprinkling on salt, laying on French stick wrapper, crinkling it and weighing it down.  I left this a few minutes to dry, rather than leaving it overnight the way I do with my random abstracts.

After that, well it was about painting over the top.  Painting the door and the bricks was a joy.  The ledges, window and "skirting stones" not too bad either.  I also did a bit of negative painting around the door.  I must have has two or three runs at adding these extra layers.

Finally, as finishing touches, I added the tree shadows and some very watery raw sienna to soften the edges of the sunny streak.

Result?  A success.  The best bits are the colours in the door, the variation in the bricks, the Venetian textures and the underpainting (I like the patch of blue in the top right).  If there's one thing wrong with it, it's that the door looks a bit too squat and square compared to its real life counterpart.

My sister picked this one out when I offered her a freebie.

Stevenson Building, Christ's College, Cambridge

I wanted to get back to painting buildings in landscapes, so picked out a photo of the Stevenson Building in Christ's College, Cambridge, the finest educational establishment in the world.

The main colours today were cerulean blue, viridian, raw sienna and rose dore, so this is in the key of green warm.  Raw sienna and rose dore were deliberately chosen in an attempt to get the building colour right.  There's also some French ultramarine in the sky and greenery and some dabs of Winsor red and Indian yellow at the bottom.

I start with a pencil drawing and then masking out the outlines and any white I wanted to reserve in the windows.  The drawing was a bad start - I've had to give the painting a serious rotation to get the verticals straight.

Next was the sky.  This started as cerulean at the bottom and ultramarine at the top and I dropped in some of the viridian and the rose dore.  I see the sky as the first movement in a symphony and I need to establish some ideas to be explored in later movements.

Then it was onto the buildings.  Most of the main colours are cerulean, rose dore and raw sienna, although there's also some viridian in the roofs and in the decor at the top of the end staircase.  I got some decent variegation going while I was doing this.  But then there are the shadows and the dark bits.  Most of these are made from viridian and rose dore but all of the shadows suffer from poor control of values.  The big shadows on the left are far too dark and the negative painting of the brick patterns above the bottom row of buildings look like I'd look if I decided to put on mascara.  Drunk and in the dark.  I tried to unite the shadows with the buildings by glazing over with a thin layer of raw sienna: it's helped slightly I guess.

The greenery at the bottom is better but not great.  I used both blues, the greens and ten raw sienna and tried dabbing on some Winsor red and Indian yellow with one of my Frank Clarke foliage brushes in an unsuccessful attempt to get a bit of colour.

This one's not going in the shop window.  A bad day at the office today.

I See The Gods In Battle Rage On High

I don't know why but when I have something to do later in the day it affects my painting.  I need to take my youngest to football training for 5pm and was out in the garden by 10am but I still felt rushed.  I was also suffering a bit from not having source material in front of me as the iPad was indoors charging.  So this wasn't a great bit of painting today.  Sorry.

I dug around and found a photo from the Arches National Park that I could at least use as a starting point, doing all the pencil work indoors in front of the iPad.  After all, I should be able to turn any outline of sandstone formations into a decent painting by now.

I went for the experimental 24-pan palette and chose as my main three colours today Payne's grey, Winsor red, Winsor orange and Winsor yellow.  With Payne's grey playing the role of cool blue, this is in the key of orange cool.  There are also appearances for sepia, cadmium red, light red, sap green and olive green.

So, after sketching the outline, I protected the edges of the sky with masking fluid and spattered over masking fluid spots.  Then I started painting.  I wet the while sky area first, dropped in some red and yellow bits and dropped Payne's grey around the them to fill up the sky areas.  I added more of those three colours in a thicker consistency in places.  And then things started going wrong.  A couple of big blooms had appeared - maybe I'd accidentally dried some water onto the sky.  I decided that the solution to the problem was to fill the sky with blooms, so I added lots more drops, then sprinkled on some salt.  The sky ended up going a bit crazy.

After removing the masking fluid, on to the foreground.  With such a crazy sky, I needed to be a bit more boring with the rocks.  I started with a variegated mix of Winsor yellow, Winsor red and Winsor orange.  This looked good.  I added some wet into wet rock cracks in sepia and cadmium red - remember these are opaque colours, so won't spread out of control like transparent do when applied wet into wet.  I also used a  bit of sepia in some shadows on  the right.  This wasn't entirely satisfactory for two reasons.  First the wet into wet cracks didn't diffuse at all - maybe it was too hot a day and paint was drying too quickly.  And second, the rocks all looked a bit flat and boring.  I know I didn't want the rocks to compete wit( the sky but there's not competing and there's not showing up at all!

So time for tinkering.  I added a second layer of the red, yellow and orange looking to exaggerate the best bits of colour and add in a few more shadows next to cracks.  I also brought in light red to help with the shadows - this is a warm red that used to be in my first choice palette but that lost its place a long time ago (being too opaque for my style) but that still sits in a tube in my tupperware takeaway tub of tubes.  With this second coat, I was careful to soften and fade away any edges.

And finally the finishing touches.  First I added some grassy bits at the front in sap green and olive green, although I should probably have mixed up a green from Payne's grey and Winsor yellow. But how else am I ever going to use up those green pans?  It's the second finishing touch I'm most proud of though.  It's an idea I've never seen anywhere else and that came to me on the spur of the moment.  I painted my left index finger first with Winsor red and later with cadmium: red and dabbed it gently onto the oranges and yellows in the rocks.  Where I was gentlest, the texture of the paper came through in the dabs, adding texture to the rocks.  Where I was too firm, I smoothed out the resulting fingerprints with my finger.

Overall, I don't rate this as a success and won't be putting it in the shop window.  I might have been able to get away with that sky if I'd make the rocks look like rocks.  I suspect it was a mistake to not include a blue (or maybe even green?) in there: red, yellow and orange are only ever going to make orange.  Still, the finger painting seemed to work out well.

Pale Horse Rider

OK, so I was in an Allman Betts Band mood today.  After painting Devon Allman, I thought I should really also paint Duane Betts.  But the best source material I could find was this shot of the two of them together from the video to Pale Horse Rider.

I started off thinking I'd do this in the style I like to use for Westerns: sensible background and abstracty, spacey silhouetted figures in front of it.  With there being a lot of sky showing, I thought I'd make it interesting by including lots of yellow, red and orange.  That was the plan.

The main colours in this one were rose dore, Winsor red, French ultramarine and Indian yellow.  With both reds being warm, this is in the key of orange warm.  There's lots of Payne's grey and titanium white in there too.

After masking out the figures (or at least the edge of the figures) the first job was to add the sky.  There's lots of the yellow and the reds (mainly the rose dore but also a little Winsor red) in there, as planned, but also some blue.  I was careful to make the sky yellow around Devon's head and blue around Duane's for a bit of contract.  The diagonal lines in the sky add a bit of energy, contracting against the vertical (or slightly left leaning) figures.

Then I added the hills: a variegated mix of Indian yellow, rose dore and French ultramarine.

Finally, on to the figures.  Masking fluid off first, then a spattering of masking fluid for stars.  Then I added the colours.  I started with Duane on the right.  I should have started by wetting the whole figure but didn’t.  Instead I dabbed in some Winsor red, French ultramarine and Indian yellow and tried to paint the Payne's grey around them.  The problem was that I needed to be slow and accurate with the Payne's grey around the outline of the figure and the primaries were all drying on me too quickly.  I tried to keep the primaries wet by adding water but wasn't brilliantly successful.  Anyway, once the Payne's grey was all on, I sprinkled on some salt.

Then on to Devon.  This time I wet the figure all over before dabbing on primaries and then dabbing the Payne's grey in the gaps and around the edge.  This was so much easier than what I did to Duane and the results were so much better!  Oh well, live and learn.  Once Devon was painted, I sprinkled over some salt.

And once it was all dry, I decided to do some tinkering.  For both figures, I wanted to give some small subtle indications of detail.  The odd crease in clothes, a sign of where the flesh stops and the clothes start, that sort of thing.  So I tinkered.  I added white hat bands and white patterns on Duane's poncho.  I glazed some yellow and red over any flesh.  I added creases in white and Payne's grey, added shadows in Payne's grey, darkened hats and hair in Payne's grey, added some curved lines to create 3D effects in Payne's grey, the tassels along Devon's chest in Payne's grey, some rough facial details in Payne’s grey.

And you know what?  I ended up with an interesting painting.  Likeness-wise, Duane's pretty good but Devon less so.  Devon also has a bit of a paunch in this one.  The combination of abstract spacey patterns and figure drawing-type marks has worked out well.  Payne's grey is made up of exactly the same three pigments as indigo (presumably in different proportions) and stands out against the orange sky just as well as indigo does.  If I'd known all along how this would turn out, I'd have either had a lighter sky behind Duane's head or made Duane's head lighter.

Not interesting enough, though, to go in the shop window.

Long Gone

I was flicking through one of my Jean Haines books last night for inspiration and decided to do something in her style today.  the subject matter for this one is something I've had in the ideas pile for a while.  It's a highly sunlit shot of Devon Allman with his guitar in the video to Long Gone by the Allman Betts Band - the song that they'll be playing at my funeral if I have any say in the matter.

Colours for this one were Winsor orange, permanent rose, French ultramarine and Winsor violet.  With Winsor orange serving as a warm yellow, this was in the key of purple warm.

I started by painting Devon's back, using all four colours in quite a pale variegated mix.  I dropped thicker versions of individual colours into their watery versions in places (a Jean Haines idea).  Then I dragged the colours to the right, facing them out to a soft edge before I got to where the front of Devon's body was.  Oh, except that I negatively painted the edge of the guitar with a hard edge.  Some bits of Devon I dragged off towards the top right and turned into the sky, using all four colours.  And I threw loads of salt onto Devon as he dried.

Then there was the foreground, painted again in a variegated mix but this time without the violet and with not as much of the red, so getting a greeny sort of colour.  I tried to vary the temperature by having more blue on the right and more yellow and red on the left.  I threw on salt and put some French stick wrapper on top and tried to scrunch it into patterns (the Jean Haines "Venetian technique").

The last bits to be added were the background trees on the other side of the water (warmer on the left, colder and fainter on the right), some shimmers in the water (only on the left) and a little bit of detail on the near end of the guitar.  There are also some very light marks in the river - most of these I did using a brush rinsed out in the dirty water!

And then I stopped.  Job done.  There's not much of the guitar there but there's enough to know it's there and it's good to let the viewer do some of the work.

This was a successful painting.  The mix of hard and soft edges is just right.  The missing bits are a new style for me and have worked out well.  The colours are great.  The way Devon's head blends into the sky is amazing.  I could be accused of using too much salt, I guess, but that's a petty minor problem.

This one's up for sale.

The Sea Fit

Two paintings in one day and the second is even better than the first.

After doing that first painting, it felt too early to be stopping but I didn't have enough painting capacity within me to do another landscape, so I thought I'd do one of those abstract underpaintings where I leave it overnight to dry and then think about what I can turn it into.

Today, I started with masking fluid.  I put on lots of spatters but the had the idea of adding some big blobs and blowing them sharply through a straw to make them explode, so I did that too.  As I was putting on the blobs, I noticed that some bits of the masking fluid had congealed into wet and slippery sausages attached to the (rubbishy old) brush that I use for masking fluid.  So I dragged these around, resulting in the white lines you can see.  When the fluid dried, I rubbed gently against some of the fluid in the middle of the explosions to leave small gaps for paint to seep in.

Then on went the colours.  I used quinacridone magenta, Winsor red, Prussian blue, French ultramarine, transparent yellow and a little cerulean blue and rose dore.  I quickly threw on some salt, put on four screwed up squares of toilet paper, covered it all with bubble wrap and French stick wrapper and weighed it down.

Today was a hot day though, and everything dried quickly so I've already unwrapped it.  And found that everything had worked.  The salt, the masking fluid, the holes in the masking fluid, the toilet paper, the French stick wrapper,  the bubble wrap and the colours. Everything has made its presence felt.

At this point I'd normally think about the painting overnight.  What it looks like, what it can be turned into.  I guess it could be rotated 90 degrees to the left to get some sort of hunchbacked bogeyman figure that I could negatively paint but would this really make the painting better?  I don't think it would.  I'm just going to leave it as it is: I won't even add spatters of opaque paint over the top.  I think it looks best this way round in landscape format but all four orientations possible.  And I've gone to my trusty list of Algernon Blackwood short stories to pick a name.

This one's up for sale.

Unidentified Scottish Hills

There's good news and bad news on the painting front.  First the bad news.  I won't be appearing on the next series of Landscape Artist Of The Year; my main application and wildcard application were both rejected.  So what's the good news?  Well, I've put the gazebo on the decking, meaning that I have my own art studio in the garden until there's wind or rain predicted, at which point the gazebo comes down.  It means I can paint on sunny days without the problem of paint drying too quickly to do its magic.

This year's first painting in the outdoor studio is this Scottish scene.  I don't know where these hills are and Google image search is no help.  Someone's suggested that they might be part of the Cullins on the Isle of Skye and he may well be right.

I had two objectives today.  One was to try to replicate the success of Glean a'Chroin but using my main colour palette, which doesn't include the indigo and Winsor orange that starred in that painting.  The other was to try to be a bit more accurate in my representation, drawing and painting the individual rocks in the foreground of my reference photo.

The main three colours today were rose dore, French ultramarine and Indian yellow, so this is in the key of  orange warm.  Because I wanted bright oranges and a warm blue to cover for the missing Winsor orange and indigo.  There were other colours in there too though.

The sky started off as Indian yellow, into which I stroked bits of French ultramarine, rose dore and quinacridone magenta.  I dabbed the paint with a paper towel when it was nearly dry to get the special effect in the final painting.

Then the hills.  The two in the background used just my main three primaries, being careful to put green in places where there was green in the reference photo.

For the foreground, I started by painting the rocks in a variegated mixture of burnt sienna and French ultramarine - everyone's favourite grey.  When it was dry, I painted shadows on the rocks using a darker version of the same mix.  Then I filled in all the grassy gaps with m6 three primaries - not green everywhere but a variegated mixture of all three.

But something wasn't quite right - the painting wasn't hanging together.  So I did some glazing.  First I painted a thin glaze of Prussian blue (a cool blue) over the distant hills.  I dabbed the paint with a paper towel as it was almost dry so that the glaze didn't dominate what was underneath.  Then I did exactly the same thing for the foreground but using French ultramarine, a warm blue.  But even the differing temperatures of the blues weren't enough to distinguish the foreground from the background, so I added a thicker glaze of Indian yellow over the top edge of the foreground grill and at various places on the hillside. That seemed to solve the problem.

Finally, I did some spattering.  Cobalt blue, titanium white, cadmium yellow and cadmium red in the foreground hill and some titanium white in the sky.  Then it was time to stop.

There's lots to like about this one, mainly in the colours.  The sky and the furthest mountain are particularly good.  The foreground spatters are nothing special close up but do add something when the painting is viewed from a distance.  And I do need to start being more careful about not dripping paint onto the paper.

This one's up for sale.

Jazmine

I've not done my artwork lately.  Too busy with a correspondence chess tournament - these things tend to take over your life.  But with one game left and a position I could win in my sleep, maybe it's time to start making the world a better place again.  Tomorrow the gazebo will be set up on the decking so I can paint every day whatever the weather.  But today I'm indoors, so it's back to figure sketching.

Today's model is Jazmine, making her debut. I started out by drawing her and colouring her in with charcoal grey, fuchsia, leaf green, mustard, iris blue and a tiny bit of poppy red.  Rather than continuing with my minimalist approach (which really works) I thought I'd be different and add a lot of colour, using mustard rather than blank paper for highlights.  I need to keep trying different approaches to keep everything fresh.

For the wetting stage, I started with a water brush as usual but only used this on the hands, hair, face and bits of the chest.  For everything else, I used a wet scrunched up paper towel just to be different.  Here's what I ended up with:

The values in this are all quite light.  For my normal minimalist approach, this is great.  But for one like this with lots of paper coverage, I need heavier values.  So I added a second coat of colours and wetted this time with a water brush, resulting in the final painting.

The final version definitely looks better.  The hair is the real highlight , perfect texture and with the blue and fuchsia colours livening out what would otherwise have been a plain charcoal grey.  The rest is OK, although a definite step down from the minimalist approach.  You can see in places where there's a loss of accuracy in switching from brushes to paper towels, so maybe I should stick to brushes.  And colour-wise, there's too much mustard for my liking and not enough of the red, green and blue.  The problem is this is hard to tell from looking at the pencil marks - it's not until you apply the water that you find out what's really going on.

Anyway, Jazmine's up for sale.