A Few Recent Additions

From the top - Into the Marsh, acrylic; then Dream House, oil sketch on paper; then Memory of River Thames holiday; and finally Dream House, Carbon pencil, conté crayon and acrylic black and white on cartridge paper.  

The Old Tower

This was the main entrance to Reeth Lodge, until it was demolished as a dangerous structure - I live in the other half of the house, or part of it; this wing is the older part, which was unfortunately undermined by the landslip in ca. 1995.  Since then, the land has been drained, and rock armour has been installed in Reeth Bay, so it's as safe as ..... a slice of steak in a dog's bowl...

The tower came down a few years ago: what's left is a hole, like a gap in a row of teeth.  But don't talk to me about teeth.  I said - don't talk to me about teeth!

Drawn in charcoal, A3 size.

How to paint looser watercolors

Pictures from an Exhibition

These were taken at our recent Vectis Artisans exhibition at the Presentation House Gallery in Ryde, IW.  One shows a couple of my paintings, another shows paintings by Becky Samuelson, Tony Westmore, Murray Ince, and others; and the ceramic models are by Juliet Collins.

It has to be admitted that we did not do well at this Gallery, which is a new venture and unfortunately situated in a quiet part of town (other parts of which can be anything but) and has not yet made a name for itself as a venue.  It is however a beautiful building, and I very much hope that in time it will become the premier venue it so deserves to be - a bit more work on publicity is required before that's likely to happen; but although it wasn't profitable for us, on the whole, it was a pleasure to spent time with other artists in the group, whom I'd not got to know well before, and to learn about their techniques and approach to painting.

We learn a bit more from each exhibition, and although these are hard times for anyone working in the visual arts, I hope we'll have more financial success next time.

Sorry, old age!  I've forgotten who painted the picture on the far right in the second photo - pity, as I DO remember it received a lot of very favourable comments....  I had the name when I started this post, but it deserted me minutes later.  Oh dear.  I'd take a memory pill, if I could remember where I put them..........

Get Well Roger....

A get-well card to Roger Skidmore, who had the inestimable privilege to be my optician for some years, who has suffered a detached retina.  As I've had the same operation, I fully sympathize: it takes a while to recover from this.   I hope his surgeon was as good as mine.

Vectis Artisans Exhibition, August 23rd to 28th, Ryde, Isle of Wight

Vectis Artisans (Vectis being the Roman name for the Isle of Wight), a group of 11 island artists founded by Murray Ince, are holding only their second joint exhibition from Aug 23rd to  28th at the old Nunnery (Presentation House), 55 High Street, Ryde.  Doors open between 11am and 4pm.  Paintings, ceramic sculpture, photography - come and pay us a visit.

Oink!

Painted this Capitalist Pig for a birthday card for a friend of socialist leanings - well, I say leanings ... if he leaned any further he'd be out of the window.   One Stephen Edward Moorcroft, to be precise, who has adopted C. Pig for his Facebook homepage.  Or is it Steven .... could well be...  

Am I getting old and forgetful?  Well - yes, obviously.

Capitalist Pig is an oil painting on a cigar-box lid - I'm running out of cigar boxes, so this would be just a splendid opportunity for all my many admirers (hallo....?  Are you there.....?)  to send me more boxes; with cigars in them, naturally.  Big 'uns, I like .... All right, I appreciate you may not run to Havanas, but the Nicaraguans do a very satisfactory range.  Don't stint.  No sense in spoiling the ship for a ha'port of tar, eh?

Wood - at least at this size, at which warping isn't much of a problem - is a very satisfactory surface for oil paint, once it's primed and sealed of course.  It takes the paint well and allows detailed drawing, if you want it: canvas, at least the cotton duck variety which most of us use, isn't so forgiving or accommodating.  I think I'd use wood all the time, if I could get a reliable supply - must investigate.

loose watercolors The Wesson way

Great video demonstration by Alan Owen, one of my favourite watercolourists who deserves a wider audience even though he's conquered YouTube, which is more than I've done!

Mick Saunders

Rest in peace Mick, also known to many of us as Bloodaxe (and well-named!), a talented pastellist and oil painter, a fellow devotee of lead white oil paint, and a watercolourist  until a stroke robbed him of manual dexterity.

He'll be much missed on Painters Online - deepest sympathy from all of us to Marilyn Saunders and family.

Wide Blue Yonder

Posting this latest acrylic with Chromacolour, from a photograph by Bob Blake of an area I well know but find it difficult to get to these days.....  30cm by 40cm.  And for sale (of course) - I must put it on the website, which sorely needs an update...

A fellow-artist was wondering the other day whether, in view of the expense, it's possible to go on painting in oil.  Trouble is that if you get a bit better at it, you want better paint - and the better paint costs a lot more than the basic student grades, like Daler Rowney Georgian and Winsor and Newton's Winton.  It IS a problem, but I'll never abandon oil unless it just becomes prohibitive.

Acrylic, fortunately, remains affordable and has its own advantages.  I'm told that art buyers favour oil over acrylic, but if they do they're going to find the cost of work steadily climbing.  Working on a small one at the moment - it'll take longer to finish than this acrylic did, because of drying times.

Nervously waiting .....

An exhibition looms with Vectis Artisans on Wednesday pm (set-up), from June 13th to 18th, at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, in which I'm supposed to be taking part.  

Well, I WILL take part, one way or the other, but am awaiting framing pieces which, as yet, haven't arrived...  They would have done, of course, if I'd ordered them earlier; or I could have got the pictures framed professionally - am just reluctant to provide any more than temporary frames, because I like buyers to choose their own frames: a minority view, probably, but then most of my views are minority views.

I'm not, for various reasons, quite ready or prepared for this exhibition - thanks solely to my failure to pay attention, I was planning towards another exhibition we're to hold in August, in Ryde town itself, and allowed this one to creep up on me.

Anyway, this photograph taken by my landlord, one Chris Hayes-Davis, shows me waiting anxiously at the gates.....

Surplus to My Requirements - But How About Yours?

I have in the region of 100 artists' magazines - mostly The Artist, Artists & Illustrators, and International Artist, presently taking up space which I don't really have to spare.  They were useful in their time, but I've read them now and absorbed all I'm ever going to.

If you're an art student, tutor, interested artist, or a dentist with a waiting room, come to that, you're more than welcome to them.  I don't want anything for them, but the downside is that unless you only want a few and live near enough to me for me to be able to get them to you, you'll have to collect them.  They're in generally good condition, and date from between 2000 and 2011,

First come (if anybody does) first served.

God, it's COLD

May 23rd, and it's so cold still I've had the heating on ......  

Anyway: have found a new NHS dentist, just a few miles away from me (Mr Brian D Hamilton, BDS); had my teeth scaled and polished, and a new filling; and some 20 years of dental phobia have been put to flight, because there was no heavy drilling; there was just the one injection, which scarcely hurt at all because it was skilfully administered; and while I have to have further treatment, it has been scheduled at 3 monthly intervals throughout the year.   So I don't have to lie there for half an hour at a time while major reconstruction work is conducted.  

All to the good - and I've been lucky: because the only other dentist offered to me on the NHS was around 13 miles away, and difficult to get to from here (as most places are).  

And in the meantime, the pocket watch I was given on my 21st birthday, some 41 years ago, has been repaired by the splendid Mr Burrage of Ryte Time Watch Repairs, and should arrive back here at the Batcave tomorrow.  While pocket watches are not the splendid things they were before the wrist-watch was introduced, they still have a certain something which the wrist-watch (could I but bear to wear one) lacks: t'is true that I should like a Waltham, or an Elgin, or a Hamilton - encased in rolled gold.  But these are beyond my means: as it is, I have some Russian watches, a German one, and a Swiss Jean Pierre - the youngest of which is around 10 years, the oldest nearer 50 - now, if you were all to go out (don't delay, do it now) and buy a pocket watch, imagine the surge in popularity they would enjoy.  Off you go, then.

Oh, and if anyone would like to give me a Waltham, or Elgin, or Hamilton (or Pathek Phillipe; or Tissot) don't hesitate!  I must have a birthday coming up sooner or later.   So much better with a nice chain, by the way - rolled gold, perhaps; or rose gold ..... Don't stint.  Just not a wristwatch - I hate things that lurk about my wrists as much as I despise ankle-socks; socks must be LONG: knee length; gents underwear must eschew anything hinting of the boxer, or short (one has to think of support, you see, and unsightly bulges - so that you DON'T see), and trousers should ideally fit way above the hip bone (which is just hideously uncomfortable, especially if the hips are beginning to give trouble) in the region of what was once the natural waist: somewhere just below the nipples, for preference.  

Young men may ignore all this: but believe me, lissom youth - your time will come: comfort will one day be your watch-word.   And, if you do not repulse the loathsomely trendy tailor and reject the "slim-fit" suit or shirt, if you do not demand a cut which ensures that there is not a ridiculous flash of shirt between the bottom of your waistcoat the the band of your trousers NOW, you will find that, when you come to the age of seniority and experience and require these things, there will be no one capable of making them.   Oh, and put a TIE on, for God's sake.  

One just loathes a sloven.    Aged watch shown below.  

  

Eye Off Ball.....

I took a look through my old entries today, in order to find something, and discovered a number of comments I wasn't aware had been made - so will have to check back more often. Apologies that I didn't reply, where replies might have been advisable - there must be a way of receiving notification from Blogger that comments have been made, but I don't at the moment know what it is.  

Similarly, I have no idea what happened to the formatting of the last post, where a gap appears in the last paragraph for no obvious reason.  Can't edit it out, no matter how I try.  

One of the comments referred to a piece on  Bob Ross - and argued that Ross used painting as therapy, and that many of his students then and now do the same; and that it's not reasonable to judge his or their paintings as, eg, landscape painting.  I've summarized the argument a bit without I hope misrepresenting it.  

This is true so far as it goes - and you might also argue that when seeking tuition, you tend to find that which suits the level you wish to reach: so that the student who wants to go on, and delve into the minutiae of technique, colour-mixing and all the rest of it, is not likely to be lingering over, say, Bob Ross, Bill Alexander, or Darryl Crow for long; he/she will leave them behind as not being enough - will go elsewhere because the Bob Ross approach is for hobbyists rather than serious painters (words a problem here: I have nothing against "hobbyists", and don't always go all slack-jawed in amazement at the "serious painter", either).  

I don't think the argument is too sustainable though if you look at what is now the Bob Ross Corporation (TM), its protection of the brand image - eg, by taking anything down from YouTube which shows more that a few minutes worth of Ross's work - or if you look at the mass of equipment available in the BR (and Bill Alexander) method.  It's a big business, and the various "certified Bob Ross instructors" ARE selling what they call painting tuition.  I don't see how the person starting out in oil painting is necessarily going to know that the methods are not at all easily transferable to more straightforward, or traditional, or ultimately far more enjoyable and productive methods.   What I object to is primarily the extreme expense the BR approach entails - I don't think it's fair to those starting out; and I would still warn them that there are better ways: indeed, I think almost any other way is better. 

However, I had an email correspondence a while ago with a Bob Ross instructor named Jason Bowen, who has some work on YouTube: he seems to be a genuine young man, and also made the point that he's not trying to be the next Rembrandt or Van Gogh; he knows his painting is a hobby, and he's trying to give people a sense of achievement - something they've made with their own hands and can take pride in.  I accept that - while reserving the view that even for those who don't have ambitions to stride a bit farther, there are still far more satisfying ways of doing what they want to do.  

But there we are.  Thanks for the posts, and I don't at all object if they disagree with mine - so keep 'em coming. 

Signs of Spring

I think I've nearly finished this painting - one or two small details to add, but I don't think I need to do (or can do) anything very major with it.  It was surprisingly difficult - you'd think what's the problem?  A big lump of distant rock, a nearer lump of rock, a few tree-tops, a bit of sky - but I got too tight and literal, and to break free of myself I included a promontory that isn't really there and allowed the rock textures to look a bit warmer than they really do - because it kept turning into Gormenghast otherwise!  A grim fortress-like appearance.  

One day, I might do the grim version; probably not in acrylic though, which this is.  30cm by 40cm, on canvas covered board.  It's an impression of Gore Cliff and Blackgang Chine:  there's a holiday-cum-pleasure park at the foot of the cliffs, but you hardly know that at all                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          from the cliff walk, unless you get much nearer to the edge than I ever want to do.