Green and Red

One of our colleagues on Painters Online (web pages of The Artist and Leisure Painter magazines) painted a picture in a range of greens.  In admiring her (Louise Naimian's) work, I remarked that the late F C Johnston, ex-editor of Leisure Painter and the author of a book on oil painting technique, recommended painting studies in Viridian (Green) and Alizarin Crimson, as a lesson in tone rather than pure colour.

Louise is one of those people who, faced with an idea, has to accept it as a challenge.  You can see her watercolour using red and green on POL now (just type in her name to find her gallery).  I also, unwisely, mentioned I'd painted a few studies in Viridian and Alizarin - without mentioning I did them 30 years ago, and Louise wanted to see them.  

Well, they could be anywhere now - they're probably here in a file somewhere.  Anyway - rather than disappoint or brand myself a liar, I thought I'd do a new one.  It's only a very quick effort, in acrylic on Daler Rowney System 3 acrylic paper (which I don't like very much, in sharp distinction to nearly all other D-R products) and  yes, I know the chimney pot is wonky: the point of doing this sort of thing is to explore tone, light and dark and the bits in between, and Viridian and Crimson produces a very strong range of colours.

Except ....... it ain't Viridian; I've run out.  So it's Hookers Green, plus Alizarin Crimson; and being acrylic, it has to have a bit of white with it, which watercolour wouldn't need (but oil would, obviously).  Always useful to have a go at this sort of thing, if you haven't already: I wouldn't argue the results are especially pretty, but that's not the point.

Finished? Don't Know - Plus Another One....

I think I've finished my painting of the Undercliff landslip - I could only really fiddle with it beyond this point, because I can't go back there and try working from the same place .... a) things have changed, b) it's a touch hazardous....

While thinking about that one, I did another - a scene to which I've returned, from various different standpoints, three or four times.  The interesting thing about this one - well, from my point of view - is that it was painted in one sitting (almost - apart from a bit of defining when it had dried).  The board on which it's painted had been the base for a scene that just wasn't working; so I scraped the old paint off, washed it down with White Spirit, let it dry, applied a very thin coat of Winsor and Newton Oil Painting Medium, and painted on top of that.

Both of these are oils, 30 by 40cm.

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Work in Progress, oil

The landslip on Undercliff Drive, between Niton and Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, has closed a major artery of communication and a major tourist route.   I walked as far as I could in order to see the disaster at first hand, but couldn't get beyond the road-closed signs: not entirely unreasonably, the Council has tried to shut the road so that no one can gain access to the abandoned properties along its length.

Very sad - people have lost all they had, and this follows on from the disastrous fire at Puckaster Close, just a mile or so away from the slip.

I've been trying to paint the landslip so far as I can see it - but am having to imagine it as best I can.  This (always assuming I can locate my pictures from my increasingly complicated hard-drive!) is the first stage of my attempt to paint it.

Threat to Cadmium Pigments

Urgent - the European Union is considering banning Cadmium in artists' paint, whether watercolour, acrylic or oil.

Cadmium is widely used by artists, professional and amateur, and as yet there are no good alternatives to it.  The danger is said to come from its being washed into the water supply, especially by those using watercolour, acrylic with water, or water-soluble oils.

The paintings of the Impressionists would, on the whole, have been impossible without Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Red.  These paints have a strength, density, opacity, and longevity which nothing else can equal.

The evidence that Cadmium, in the quantities in which artists are likely to use it, is making any significant contribution to the pollution of water is very thin indeed - can't go into that here, but look it up online.

And please go to a) the European Union website, b) your MEP, to stop this potential disaster from befalling artists throughout the world.  Quite simply, modern painting methods would not be possible without the Cadmiums - visit the link below (copy and paste if it's not live) and comment if you believe this matters.


http://www.echa.europa.eu/restrictions-under-consideration

Castlehaven (Reeth Bay), Evening

I painted this a while ago - few weeks, that is - but followed it up with the small sketch of the same subject but in daylight.  I posted the little 'un, but had camera issues and couldn't show the bigger.  It's fairly fussy, really - I was experimenting with various kinds of oil paint.  I don't honestly know what I think of it, but anyway - here it is, for better or for worse.

This one is 30 by 40 cm, on canvas-covered MDF board.  And - probably obviously - it's an oil.

A "dirty picture", plus a bleak one

A couple of watercolours today - Bleak Coast (and believe me, it was) and Dark Corner: the dark one, "dirty" because there's a lot of dark paint in it, Payne's Grey mixed with various blues and reds and spattered with salt, didn't turn out as I'd intended but I let it go because I was interested to see what it would do more or less left to its own devices - it has a je ne sais quoi; or at least I think it has.  Can't speak for anyone else, of course.........

There are those who like very precise paintings, lots of detail, everything drawn with the brush to resemble as closely as possible realistic forms.  I don't do a lot of that - there may be a fair amount of detail, sometimes too much: but it's more in the nature of random brush strokes than very careful drawing.  This is because the paper I use for watercolour is invariably either Rough or NOT (cold-pressed) - if you're after fine detail and limpid washes, the paper to use is Hot Pressed: a smooth paper, with little texture.  I admire paintings like that, but have no desire to paint them myself.

Anyway: these are both around 10 by 7 inches, on 140lb paper (The Langton NOT).

Bleak Coast

Dark Corner

At Knowles Farm

Departing from my usual practice of building up an oil painting on a coloured ground - or Imprimatura, if you'd like the arty word - I painted this one straight onto a white canvas board; alla prima, to use another couple of arty words, i.e. in one go rather than building it up in many layers.

Which isn't to say I finished it in one sitting, but it was done without any great deal of faffing about, over a week of working fairly intermittently.  I know it's not everyone's draught of poison, but I think I rather like it - it's not been fiddled with or fussed over.  It could probably do with rather greater aerial perspective, but that's for another day.

30 by 40 cm, framed.

Rest in Peace, Tony.

Vectis Artisans - back at Quarr Abbey for Spring Show

Vectis Artisans, or at least many of us in the group - some can't make it this time round - are having their third exhibition, the second at Quarr Abbey, between Fishbourne and Binstead, Ryde Isle of Wight, on Thursday March 20th to Tuesday March 25th.

Paintings, sculptures, some cards, some photographs - should be something for anyone interested in collecting art, or just coming along to take a look.

Hours are 10am to 4pm - entrance is free.

Neighbour's House Destroyed

An "exciting" night, for all the wrong reasons.  Puckaster Lodge, a substantial house not far from here and clearly visible from Reeth, was burnt to a shell last night - the house was occupied, adjoining smaller properties were tenanted - the fire seems to have wiped out the lot; people are homeless, their possessions gone, but fortunately no one was hurt.

What with landslips thanks to the unprecedented rainfall, and the collapse of the road into Ventnor for much the same reason, this has not been a great year so far for Niton Undercliff.

A month of NOTHING

Other than bits and pieces, I've painted nothing at all since the last posting; slumped into a period of masterly inactivity.  Why?  I don't know - (isn't that helpful?)

I get these periods though, and I think many of us do; there are some painters possessed of such joie de vivre that they can paint a new picture every other day.  I've never been a bit like that...  Every now and then, despite having sketchbooks a-plenty with ideas for paintings, I just can't think what to paint next; or whether I should even bother to paint at all.

This is highly unprofessional, of course - but if this is the way your mind works, I don't know what you're supposed to do about it.  I suppose I could churn out pot-boilers - the sort of painting that you can do in your sleep, requiring you to learn and do nothing new - but even if I were selling more often than I am at present, I wouldn't want to do that.

Just in case you have the same problem, I can only suggest you don't beat yourself over the head about it: you're not alone, and I don't think it's helpful to try to force yourself to paint - you'd be able to do it if people were banging on your door with commissions, but if they're not, it really doesn't matter if you fail to add another painting to your canon for a month or two.  The more pressure you put on yourself, the more you worry and fret and blame yourself for your laziness, the less you'll feel you want to get the paints out again.

You're allowed to have a rest sometimes.  So just stop, and do something else.

And I HAVE just started a new oil painting - in that I've laid on the Imprimatura in thin Scarlet Lake, and painted in the basic drawing with a turpsy wash of Burnt Umber - it's gone no further than this as I sit here pretending not to notice it, but it will.  And I feel much happier in consequence, because something is actually happening.

Joint exhibition with friends from the Vectis Artisans painting group in Quarr Abbey, near Ryde, from March 19th - will this one be ready in time?  I don't know, but I'm not going to pressure myself into finishing it, even though I've got all this time to do so: can't handle this sort of urgency any more....   Am I getting old?

Of course you are, you senile old fool.

I may post the preliminary drawing in a bit, so you can see the task I'm lumbered myself with.

Oil sketch, Reeth Bay

Did this little one, on a cigar box lid, as a study for a bigger painting - in the event, I like it a lot more than the bigger painting, in which I changed the colour and, as I sometimes do, tightened up a bit too much.

Bob Ross strikes back ....

Well, not Bob himself - sadly no longer with us - but one of his admirers, or at least someone who doesn't share my hostility to the Bob Ross method, has replied to a blog post of mine back in August 2012.  I had more comments on that post - a mix of views - than on any other I've put on here.  I imagine that's simply because people Google Bob's name, and this blog post crops up eventually.

Let's get it right, though.  Bob Ross did what Bob Ross did - and I don't have any trouble with that; I even liked one of his paintings; sadly it was just the one - he seemed less concerned with painting a 'scene' in the one I liked; a study of trees and shrubbery: it's the big landscapes, the repetitive nature of which I find dark, on the one hand, and unconvincing on the other, that put me off.

I've answered the comment, for anyone who'd like to trawl back to August 2010 to take a look, making the point that it's not the man but the school of painting that has flowed from his tv series back in the 80s that's the trouble.

There are Certified Bob Ross Instructors out there who seem oblivious to the actual world around them, and teach an unvarying method, which produces dingy, dark paintings of the sort you might see on the wall in gilt frames in the darker corners of rather old-fashioned hotels.  They're dingy because of the method of their construction - and there is a strictly limited range of subjects, consisting invariably of  mountains, lakes, forests, culled from the master's own works.  It's a sealed, closed world, of same-y subjects.

My commenter/correspondent says that painting is an enjoyable hobby, and by extension I take it he or she thinks that it need have no link to anything real; it can be just what you enjoy doing...  I can understand that, and this is why painting-by-numbers was popular once upon a time (still is, for all I know).  But make it your world, not someone else's, if that's what painting means to you.  The Bob Ross school teaches nothing but a method - 'anyone can paint', they say (not that they're alone in that).  And true, anyone can.  But a) I don't quite grasp why you'd want your paintings to look like someone else's, right down to the way the sea hits a beach, and b) I'm not a hobby painter - I don't do it because it's enjoyable, though probably wouldn't do it if it wasn't: I do it to learn more about painting.  And I'm not going to learn that from the Bob Ross school - unless there are tutors out there who are very much better than the majority and allow their students to do something original rather than copy a pattern.  

I shall take another long holiday from Bob Ross now, and get back to other matters - whenever the light is good enough for me to take a decent photograph of what I've been painting.

In the meantime, have a hedgehog, and a Happy New Year.