Work in Progress

Here's one way to start a painting.

You could do this in oil or acrylic.  In this particular case, it's an oil.  And I'm using a quick-drying white - you could use Alkyd White; or Underpainting White; but this time, I'm using the remains of my lead-based Flake White, which is becoming harder and harder to lay hands on - partly thanks to European Health and Safety Regulations, but mostly because the last major manufacturers of lead chromate have shut down.  So if it's going to be available in the future, it's going to be expensive - the remaining manufacturers will of course put their prices up.

Anyhow - I've got some, so I'm using it!

First, I've stained the canvas board with Burnt Sienna, diluted with Low Odour Thinners (could just as easily have been Turpentine).  Then, I've drawn a basic design with a mix of Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue; and then I've worked into that with the Flake White, the idea being to allow these lights to shine through paint applied on top of them - in other words, this is a means of achieving the "glazing" method in oil paint.

Over the next few days or weeks - emergency dental appointments permitting: don't ask - I shall glaze transparent colours over the top of this underpainting, which has now dried; I'll probably need several layers, increasing the amount of oil very gradually in each so I can avoid any risk of the paint cracking later.  And - hugely bravely, you might think: I certainly do - I'll show the stages here and elsewhere, in the fond hope it'll all work out on the night.  I may need some luck with this....

Biting the Tongue

I've made two comments this evening on the Painters Online blogs, and have then scrubbed both of them, on the grounds that there's no point being wilfully offensive.  Actually, there's probably a LOT of point being wilfully offensive, but I know POL: posting provocative views just upsets people for no great gain.  So I've censored myself.

But here, I can let rip .... one blogger tells us how inspired she is by the Zen practice (or practitioner?) of Wabi Sabi; she's flogging something, or trying to; another goes to town with a screed of psychobabble about meditation, unleashing the hidden power of creativity (this on a site for artists, who, you may feel, have already got into touch with their creative impulses): and she's flogging something too, specifically her holidays in Spain where, for a modest raid on your wallet, she will teach you - armed, as she is, with a polytechnic degree and a teaching certificate - how to relax; although the whole exercise seems calculated to cause her bank manager to slip into blissful contentment rather than anyone  else: apart from herself.

You can base your painting practice on any damn' thing you like: it rarely makes the least difference; we have religious painters, painters who are simply inspired by religion, metaphysical painters, painters inspired by, for all I know, a Plumbing Manual.  What gives you the first push varies from person to person, and has very little relevance or importance.  If you want to wallow in this New Age pile of old socks, you do it.

But it's just a little odd how often those who talk the most vacuous old toss are nearly always insinuating a clutching paw into your pocket at the same time, isn't it?

Painters Online is a site for artists and would-be artists; not a forum for spurious life-coaches flogging continental holidays with a bit of woo thrown in.  But if I said that on POL, I should be a horrid, grumpy old man.  Well, I AM a horrid, grumpy old man: and this sort of festering cobblers makes me even grumpier.  Why do people fall for it ......?

I post below a couple of the very small oil paintings I did in February - 7" by 5", on stretched box canvas,  offers in excess of £50 each cheerfully considered.   You see, I'm after your money too.  But at least I don't dress it up in mother's crumpled old corsets pretending they're a silk gown......

The Utter Silence

Nothing from me since the end of January - appalling.  Why, I ask myself, have I been so uncharacteristically reticent?  Well obviously, sheer idleness explains much of it.  Why blog, or indeed do anything else, if you can stay in bed?  It defies all reason....

But there have been other issues too.  The light has been awful - useless for painting.  I've been cold - well, all right, so have you, but unclenching those little fingers and handling chilly art materials - paint, water, oil - in this freezing little hovel I call home just hasn't appealed.

After a while, though, said fingers begin to itch.  Stray towards brush or pen or pencil .... and even laziness is put to flight.

Just to add to my litany of excuses, though, I've had one or two health problems - principally around the teeth; infected sinuses; lots of antibiotic; and I've got to have a full blood test - phials of the stuff - just over a year after I had my haemorrhage: to see all the blood they put into me has mixed happily with the sludge that was already there, I suppose.

Well go and do it, you say.  Get it all seen to.  Ha!  Easy for you, I reply - but I've got to get to the hospital, and fast - ie, not eat for 12 hours (how ghastly!), and then the dentist is miles away as well, and I don't drive......  I mean, I do prevaricate: I admit it.  I even put off putting things off.  But it's not easy, you know; when one's rich in years but nothing else; has no transport; services miles away....

Granted, this is 95% self-pity.  Say 97%.....  but it does strike me that when people speak so blithely about the efficiencies of centralization of health services, "centres of excellence", and so on, they do overlook the desire of your average patient to be treated near to home.  If you have cancer, you're going to be very likely to be treated at centralized locations, and given that's where the best treatment is that's probably where you're going to want to go.  But we hear on the Patients Council at St Mary's Hospital of people who are given ridiculously early appointments in the morning which, given our inadequate transport links, they've no hope of getting to.

I have many reasons to be grateful to the NHS, but now and then you get the impression that some of those who manage it have cottage-cheese for brains - and fail to take into account the sheer physical difficulty of moving object A, the patient, to location B, the clinic.  Strange how none of the reforms introduced by Lansley and the little Hunt who's taken over from him seem to make the slightest difference to the convenience of the patient, though.

Book on Kindle Store, Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5JYU7O

People have had some trouble finding this,but it should be there now, fingers crossed.

The Last of the Titchy-Pics....

Months ago, I bought a job lot of 10 7" x 5" block canvases.  I only really needed one of them, but as it happened they were on offer....

So having painted the one which I'd been commissioned (as it were; brother's birthday present, in fact) to do, I then had another 9 canvases to paint; and whether my eyesight's got worse, or whether it just wasn't a great idea to start with, I don't know: but it's been a bit of a struggle just to see the blessed things.

Anyway!  I've painted the very last one - you can see all three of the last tranche on my Facebook page, but for those of you who wouldn't go on Facebook if paid in gold bars, here's one of them.

It's a rather summery painting for this time of year, but it's so grey and dreary outside that I wanted something with a bit more colour.

And - Stop Press - my e-book, now titled Oil Paint Basics, has now been made available for the Kindle, and is available from Amazon UK.  I also have some work on show in a new café in Upper High Street, Ryde IW: unfortunately - I don't know the name of the café...  Ryde isn't the easiest place to get to from here.  But there can't be that many up there, so should you be in the vicinity, take your cheque book for a nice walk, cup of tea, slice of cake, and a painting to take home.   You know you want to.  You do.  No, really - you do.

Flooded Fields

I was given a tube of Aureolin watercolour made for the SAA (Society for All Artists) the other day, and it cleared up a longstanding mystery.  I have wondered quite why demonstrators of watercolour techniques on the Painting and Drawing Channel (www.thepaintinganddrawingchannel.co.uk) use paints that (like Aureolin, Rose Madder, Alizarin Crimson and several others) are "fugitive", ie not lightfast.

The reason would seem to be that while these SAA paints carry the old names, they aren't the same pigments at all.  Makes you wonder why some manufacturers stick to these old labels when anyone who knows the first thing about paint durability wouldn't trust them not to fade or darken over a few months.  It must surely confuse painters - there's a website called Handprint.com which is full of information about paint characteristics if it's of interest.

Anyway - responding to a challenge to produce a painting in 30 minutes, I did this one - the actual painting took a bit less than 30 minutes, but you can add another 30 to that to allow for the drying time.  It has its points; I'd have preferred to take a bit longer, and iron some of the odder shapes out.  Used Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red, Winsor Red, Cobalt Blue - and a touch of that Aureolin.

The cover of my E-book, available (in PDF) on DVD for £10 including postage and packing, or £8 for a download.  Email me at robertjones@ratville.freeserve.co.uk for your copy.  As advertised on Facebook - and indeed anywhere else I can think of....

This is the second and improved version - although those who have bought the first won't find it so spectacularly different that it would be worth shelling out again for it!  If existing customers  really want it though - and who am I to say thee nay? - I will happily send a copy of the second edition for free by download, or the dvd for £3.00 to cover my post and packing.

The cover painting is of Summer Fields at Arreton, Isle of Wight - 10" by 10", for sale unframed at £80.00.

Painting again!

All sorts of things have cropped up to delay me this year, but rather than moan about them as is probably my wont, I shall just post my recently completed acrylic, which can also be viewed in all its multi-coloured splendour on www.painters-online.co.uk, and on my Facebook page.

For this one, I used a canvas-covered board by Pieraccini (www.pieraccine.com) supplied by Jacksons' Arts, and used Cryla Acrylic from Daler-Rowney, a bit of Winsor & Newton Artists' Acrylic, and Chromacolour (www.chromacolour.co.uk) for touches of glazing and detail.  I'm particularly fond of their Naples Yellow - mixes with greens and blues to make a range of different greens: it doesn't behave anything like oil Naples Yellow, but it's a very useful colour in its own right.

Still looking for help with running my website: I've got a bit phobic about it - what I need is a young person to whom these things seem to be second nature.  I shall feel a fool, of course, taking direction from a stripling, but I'd rather feel a fool than continue to be incapable of updating my own site.

So if anyone is out there .... you know where to find me.

Anyway, this painting is provisionally entitled Path to the Marsh, and is 30 by 40cm in size; it's for sale, as all my stuff is; and I have to confess I've forgotten where it was that I made the sketch for it - not that this should really matter very much, because all of my paintings are fairly freely adapted from the scene in front of me anyway.  I know it's either Newtown Creek on the Isle of Wight, or a walk near Emsworth in Sussex ...  must get into the habit of dating and placing my sketches.....

Painted on a red-coloured base, I used Titanium and Chroma White, Cobalt Blue, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, Naples Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Light, and a touch of Burnt Umber.  That's my version of a limited palette in acrylic: normally, I use more colours in acrylic than in oil, and more in oil than I use in watercolour.  

New Followers

Welcome to you - please make comments, add your own thoughts: it gets lonely out here - and I don't remove comments unless they're stupidly rude: a bit of honest criticism never comes amiss.

Those fresh from Comment is Free (chortle, gasp, snigger) on the Guardian will know what I think of as rude.  Insult my opinions as much as you like: but don't insult me unless you know me well enough to do so.

And if you do know me well enough to do so - what kind of friend are you anyway, you git?

Latest on Painters Online

http://www.painters-online.co.uk/Blogs/New-Start/Confessions/_bl284_po2795_pg1

Hope you can find this - at times, blogger baffles me.   At times?   This is the man who can't even manage his own website......  help urgently required to sort it out for me.....

Anyway; look, here; consider; reflect - the purpose of this blog was really to determine if there's a market for lead white oil paint.  There ought to be, if people are really interested in genuine oil painting rather than the miserable substitutes for same offered to leisure painters and hobbyists.

If you're interested in getting your hands on genuine lead white oil paint - Flake, Cremnitz, and Foundation White - please get in touch with me: here or on Facebook.  Then we might be able to secure a reliable supply, and paint in oil to its fullest degree of possibility and achievement.

By the way - my e-book Oil Painting Basics is still available at £8 per download, £10 on dvd.   Email me at

robertjones@ratville.freeserve.co.uk OR

jones-ratville@hotmail.co,uk

If you want to pay for it via my website, go to www.isleofwightlandscapes.net, but, especially if you want the dvd, don't neglect to email me with your address.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Robert Phillip Jones

(www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk)

Another Milestone (and welcome to new follower)

I have never, in all my extensive and drawn out puff, had a toothache such as that I endured over the last week - even nudging the thing with my tongue set off waves of agony and caused me to wonder if life were really, on the whole, taken by and large, worth all the bother......

Fortunately, the dentist's antibiotics, the chemist's Oil of Cloves, the Internet's suggestion of a salt and bicarb poultice, and the fact that all together caused the foul thing to burst (I shall spare you the details, the rich multiplicity of colours thus produced, wishing that someone might have spared me too) and eased the ghastly agonies sufficiently to enable me to enjoy lunch with my mother, brother and sister-in-law on Saturday at the New Inn, at Shalfleet, Isle of Wight (wonderful fish!) and also lunch today at the Buddle Inn, just down the road, for some of the best roast beef, Yorkshire pud and roast potatoes, courtesy of my friend Mr Skidmore, I've had for a long time.  And today was my birthday.  Yes, no more pretence that we are a mere 39, which seemed to be fooling just about no one; we have entered our 63rd year: and if it could be held free of the gastric haemorrhage, chest infections and tooth abscess we've had this year, I shall be grateful.  I realize that Fate has had a high old time this year, working out what to inflict on me next, but - take a break, eh?  Don't work yourself into an early grave.....  Turn the attention somewhere else......

Interest has been expressed by several people in my e-book; one has worked out how to pay for it and done so; others require the dvd version and will be provided with the same the moment they give me a) their money, b) their addresses.  Hint.  I am not being bowled over in the rush, but that's rather the way I anticipated it - a steady and gentle stream will suit me much better.

Did I say, it's awfully GOOD.....?

Welcome to my new follower, who brings the total number of regular readers up to 11.  Also a slow and steady build-up....

Back to painting as soon as possible - I haven't had the time for a month while I wrote the book, or the inclination since one infection followed another ....  but I hope the last of these emergencies and disasters has, for the time being at least, passed by.  I'm not sure quite how many more I could take.....  But we seem to trundle on, like an old tank.....

Complete, finished, available! Just a pity about me teeth....

My e-book, Oil Painting for the Total Beginner, all 11 Chapters, 21,000 words, illustrations, notes - including suggested colour mixes - and Glossary of art terms is finished, done, ready.

It's in PDF form only at present: I can put it on a CD or DVD for you, at £10 including postage and packing; or send you a download, at £8: just email me at either 

robertjones@ratville.freeserve.co.uk

Or

jones-ratville@hotmail.co.uk


Tell me what form you'd like the book in, and I will reply to you telling you how it can be paid for (preferably via Paypal, on my website - www.isleofwightlandscapes.net, but I also take cheques, postal orders, and dubious services in kind......).  Incidentally, I can also print it - but at 54 A4 pages, I'd have to have a think about costs: I might be able to do it for £10, but would have to add p & p on top.

My warm glow of accomplishment at having finished the thing was slightly tempered when I woke up yesterday with raging toothache; just nicely in time for my birthday, too......  However, I've been able to get an emergency appointment via the NHS Dental Helpline, at 2.30 this very afternoon.  How I look forward to it...........

I have something of a dental phobia, but there are things - like crashing pain every time you so much as hit the tooth with your tongue - that rather get you over that.

For those similarly banjaxed, and seeking temporary pain relief while awaiting the dentist and his sturdy pliers, Oil of Cloves, on a wad of cotton wool, applied to the tooth, actually DOES help.  Just enough to enable one to write and think without whimpering for Mummy......

Finished bar the shouting!!

My E-book, provisionally titled Oil Painting for Total Beginners, is written and illustrated; 20,000 words, give or take, glossary, Notes including sample colour mixes.  It will be available on PDF download (zip file), or on CD (again, PDF - no animation!) as preferred.

I would prefer payment via Paypal, from my website - haven't settled on the price yet, have to work out costs of making the download available as opposed to the CD, but £10 for the download would be about right.

Well, I think it would be about right .... I'm open to outraged suggestions to the contrary....

Anyone interested at this stage might like to email me - this would put you at the head of the ENORMOUS list of persons just waiting to get their hooks into my masterly work.

The download will be ready by the end of this week (November 16th); the CD will have to wait a few days - if it's actually wanted in that form at all - while I actually get some recordable CDs (or DVDs).  

I can also do a printed copy - I'd rather not, to be honest, because it's going to take me a while to churn out some 50 pages on my old printers: I'll only do this by special order: have to give consideration to the binding, otherwise it's going to be a rather shoddier product than the download.  And we don't want shoddy.

Details on request - sample pages available if desired.

Well come on then, what are you waiting for?

New Follower!

Welcome Basil

Being slow, I haven't quite worked out who you are and to whom you're connected, although I've got a sort of idea; a head cold is fogging my intellectual processes.  Which are always a wee bit on the misty side.

No work to post, because it's all been done for other people and is specific to them; in other words, I should  spoil the surprise they're hoping their Christmas cards will cause this year if I go and show my (obviously fabulous) artwork here.

My e-book on oil painting for beginners is nearly finished, though - back, back, patience! - and I shall shortly advertise its availability and wait for those orders to come pouring in, making me fabulously wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.  Although my dreams are pretty wild....  the reality is likely to be somewhat less so.

And in the meantime, I'm still trying to get my Pension Credits sorted out ... the Dept of Work and Pensions thought I was self-employed - until they looked at this year's sales figures....