War and Peace

 At last - at last!

I have finished reading W & P, realizing rather too late that the version I have, the Constant Garnett translation from 1904, is the clunkiest, most turgid version available - for all that it was a magnificient achievement at the time, completed when Garnett's eyesight was fading.

He was a cruel devil though, was Tolstoy: you plough through nearly 1300 pages of novel to be confronted with another 40 pages of Part II, his epilogues, which don't bear on the characters in his novel other than Bonaparte and Tsar Alexander, and they're completely unnecessary - he's implied every point already in the novel itself, but garlands the ending of it with almost endless repetitions, parables, analogies, analyses, presumably just in case you'd missed the point.

Particularly galling, when you discover that in later life he changed his point of view on many of the positions he advanced.  It's called "the greatest novel ever written".  Perhaps it is - but that doesn't make it a novel which is any great pleasure to read, and over the last 20 years I've broken off from it and come back to it as time permitted; I say 20 years - I see now that my copy was published in 1972.

I began to enjoy it when I'd reach the quarter way in mark - I understood what he was saying, why he felt he had to say it, I grasped the politics, social and military; and I'm glad I stuck with it (to the extent I did - at least I kept coming back to it).  I'm told that people who have read it once tend to come back and read it again: well, 73 now, I doubt I have another 20 years left to me; so I suspect I won't - but if I do, it won't be in this translation.

It would have been much quicker to have learned Russian, and read the original. 

Another Watercolour

Well, the last post seems to have been emoting for posteritiy, because I don't think anyone read it.

Ah well.  The lot of the Lone Blogger.  We can but try - we may be doomed to fail.

We're certainly doomed to fail against this appalling weather - rain, rain, more rain, and then - a spot of rain.  Taking photographs outside, which given my dark flat I need to do, is impossible.  So I have to scan them.  

Scans, however, do not produce high quality results on the whole.  And I've still not got the Ipad to work - because I'm too frightened of the blessed thing to really take it to task.  If this is what old age does to you (relatively speaking old age) who needs it? 

So, scanned photo of my little 12 x 17cm interpretation of a section of the revetment at Ventnor, Isle of Wight.  On Hanhemühle Torchon paper - just about the best I've found for many years, for my particular touch, anyway.

 

Pornography - in its place, OK - out of its place: Not

 I don't have strong views against pornography. I don't object to good, honest smut.

And yet -don't tell me it's art.  It just - on the whole - isn't.  Tom of Finland was an artist - well yes; he was; he used pornography to express something deep within him.

But Tom of Finland was an exception; Robert Mapplethorpe was another.  Are these lines clear?  No - no of course they're not.  Pornography can be be many things; anarchic, revolutionary; disrespectful of a polity that doesn't deserve respect.

It can also be repellently exploitative and voyeuristic.  

I've had more than enough of an artist in digital media posting on Painters-Online, who posts pictures of highly pneumatic women, in a repulsively salivatory representation that affords them no respect at all - it just ogles them, and some stupid people, invasriably men, then trot up to tell us how "beautiful" it is. 

But it's not "beautiful".  It's sexist voyeurism which those who produce it and those who claim to find it beautiful need to grow out of: tabloid newspapers used to present their page 3 "stunnahs", displaying as much respect for women as the worst lech you could seek to find.  

I've no objection to a bit of smut: but sly, dishonest, sneaking, slimy smut, pretending to be something else, is nauseating.  Dirt, not art.  Those who produce it need to grow up beyond the smutty schoolboy stage, and admit their work is - well, shall we say meretricious?  I can think of worse interpretations.

Most of them can do better than this: and they should.  

More drawings

 Ever since I bought two Fude pens - the ones with the nibs turned up at the end - and a brush pen, I have been playing with ink, carbon pencil, and conté crayon drawings - and, hitting the wallet again, I bought some torchon watercolour paper from Hahnemühle UK - which is as good as I remember it being when I last used it, and enabled me to finish a small watercolour.

Unlike Arches rough, which I have been using, it doesn't guzzle the water as though it were suffering the devil's own thirst.  Try it - Arches is a good paper, but I don't think I've produced one good painting on it. 

It is I think very true that for every watercolour painter - not my primary medium, be it said - there's a different paper to suit their work; I've got on with Bockingford, The Langton, Canson, Saunders Waterford; not with Arches - I think I'll stay loyal to Hahnemühle (especially now I've learned how to insert the Umlaut - Alt 0252, if you're interested....

Here's a selection - photos could be better, a bit difficult to take 'em outside at the moment: dodging deluges...  The middle drawing was, I thought, suitable for Hallow'een.  

 Gatehouse

I've drawn this before, and painted it - but have lost the painting.  Probably as well, it wasn't that good.

However, drawn to it again, I've drawn it again .... as it were.  Mostly pen and ink, with bits of black and white conté crayon.

 GOODBYE, FACEBOOK/META!

I left Twitter, now X, long before Elon Musk took it over, and miss it not one little bit.

However, while I may miss Facebook/Meta slightly more - initially - I'm leaving both of my accounts there (once I've worked out how to get right of them).

You will still be able to contact me through this blog if you like, but even if you manage to get a message posted on Facebook, I won't see it.  My email address is: robertphillipjones.napa@gmail.com.

 Time for a bit of pen and ink

The top one, an experiment with two different types of ink, non-soluble, and soluble, with a wash of water activating the second without disturbing the first.

The lower one, a very distant memory - I was probably around 14 at the time, so close on 60 years ago - of a boat house on the River Thames.  The roof gradually giving way at the time, I doubt it's still there now.  

To "Susan" - an apology

 Dear Susan - you made an inquiry about one of my paintings some considerable time ago, and I didn't even notice, so didn't reply.

I'm so sorry about that - unfortunately, that piece is sold now, but my pricing isn't standard - I can make special offers when feeling generous, and staggered (as opposed to staggering) payments.

For some reason, Blogger seems not to have notified me that I had a comment, but I'll keep a closer eye on things in future.

Yours, Robert

 Roughly A4 sized watercolour.  

I must improve my photography "skills": tried and failed to photograph this one, so it's a scan - not a million miles out, but less than perfection.  

 Back to Watercolour for a while....

Here we go, then: this is a version of - be aware, now: version of - the old coal store at Castlehaven on Niton Undercliff.  The building is being reclaimed by nature, and that was what I wanted to convey, not every architectural detail  because it's not very architecturally interesting (and if it was, why are the owners, whoever they are, allowing it to fall to bits?).  It's several hundred years old, and served as a store for coal to the local garrison back in the day.  It probably stored things it shouldn't have done, too, given Niton was a haven for smuggling back in the 18th/19th centuries.  

I've painted it from recent memory, since I'm getting to crippled to seek out these scenes: but - it's what I remember and think of that matters to me, not the pin-sharp accuracy of any given scene.

Could be worse!  I could paint abstracts!

 The Twins in Spring

Acrylic, 18" x 14",  on canvas board.  Palette: Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow; Cadmium Lemon; Lemon Yellow; Yellow Ochre; Burnt Sienna; Crimson Alizarine; Ultramarine; Cobalt Blue; Cerulean Blue; Chromium Oxide Green.  

Castle Keep

 A view of Carisbrooke Castle's Keep - surroundings adjusted to reflect the space I left myself on a 12" x 12" canvas board, and painted with acylic, using two painting knives.  

It's so different from my normal stuff that I don't quite know what I think of it yet, but it was fun to do, which is the main point for me nowadays - selling has receded in interest; and anyway, not everyone is going to like knife painting.  If you enjoy glazing, scumbling, painting in layers over layers, though, it's well worth a try: whether you fall in love with your results or just appreciate the experience. 

Old Sally, world's best dog, in her advanced old age

 It is believed among those of us in a position to know, that Sally, who died in 1979, was around 19 years old.  As she was an Alsatian cross (crossed with what isn't clear) this is inherently unlikely.  However - I remember as a relatively small boy collecting her from the Godshill, Isle of Wight, RSPCA shelter for mistreated dogs; and sadly, I also remember, and wish I could forget, the last day of her life so many years later.

No dog is perfect - Sally had a cunning side; but her cunning was impressive - the way she snuck a gammon joint out of a cupboard, and sauntered out of the door with it before we'd noticed; the way she and her daughter (another long story there: she managed to slide back a bolt on our back door to let her boyfriend in) waited until burglars got through our kitchen window without alerting them to her presence: and then making them wish they'd chosen another career: mother, the blood!  

Both dogs then went back to sleep until the morning: a job well done.

If she wasn't perfect - she came nearer to it than any dog I've ever known.  She protected my young brother - if threatened, he'd only to call her name and she'd be there, of which he took full advantage.  She would grab hands and guide them away - push into any potential aggressor: 'you're not touching my little boy!'.

You can't but miss a dog like that, and all these years later, I still do.  

The Haven, blackthorn's out

 My first version of this was very like a picture postcard, the rustic view, the obligatory spot of red - I hated it.  I'm not very happy with it now, either, but at least it's a touch earthier.

Oil paint, Cremnitz White, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine; Mars Orange, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange (Hue), Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre - and possibly a few other colours in small quantities.  I didn't care for the surface - a birch panel, ca. 12" by 17"; too smooth, even with several coats of roughly applied acrylic primer; but the real problem here is the subject - the area is run-down, and not very interesting!

Still - someone might like it, eh...?  Paintings I'm deeply un-keen on at the time can grow on me later; sometimes much later: this just isn't my usual thing, and perhaps that's my problem with it.  Do comment and let me know what you think. 

The Old Lifeboat Station, Winter

 Good grief - I haven't posted anything here for months.   

Well, that's partly because I had camera trouble, and partly because I'm bone idle, but here is one I did back in February.  Oil, 12" x 16". using Cremnitz White, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna, Mars Orange, Viridian, Yellow Ochre, and Cadmium Yellow.

It's based on Totland Bay, but I've taken a few liberties.