Peering and squinting

A good way to start the day, removing spam from the Painters Online website.  I often wonder what spammers get out of it - their posts last maybe a few hours, and are then whipped away.   But I suppose that few hours of free advertising is all they need.

Today, I find out if I have a cataract in my right eye, or am just continuing to experience the steady deterioration in the sight in it which has accelerated since I had a detached retina replaced years ago.  Can't say I'm looking forward to an operation, but I would like to be able to see what I'm doing, and be able to read again without shutting the near-useless eye and holding the page to my snout.

Wonderful getting older, really it is.  There are so many advantages!  Give me a month or two and I'll think of one of them.

Acrylics

A few recent paintings, 10" by 8", acrylics on Loxley canvas board.

Did I do that?

Phone back on, nuisance calls resumed - in fact it's been back for a week, I wouldn't wish to give the impression that EE was dilatory.  Or that they didn't care - I've had 4 calls from different employees since the fault was rectified, seeking assurance that all is well.  This did strike me as a little strange for a communications company, given you'd have thought they might have shared the information received with each other, but there we are.

We must not repine.

Just finished a small acrylic, 8" by 10" - wasn't sure what I thought of it, so I deliberately left it to dry out while I got on with something else and steadfastly refused to look at it.  On my return, it was almost as if someone else had painted it ..... by deliberately ignoring it, I was able to put a distance between it and myself and I'm not at all sure this hasn't enabled me to form a better judgement of it.  We'll see how it looks tomorrow, all the same.  I shan't post a photo of it before then - I might hate it in the morning........

Telephone not working

If you were about to telephone me - don't, please.  There's a line fault following the storm, and every time the phone rings it cuts out the broadband.  And I can't hear anything anyway.

I've reported it to EE/Orange, but it takes them a day and an age to work out there might actually be an external fault and to contact the engineers.

Email me as usual - with any luck, they'll get through.....

Keir Hardie

Scrolling down, you'll find the work in progress of this gentleman (the oil version).

This is just about the final version, glazing added.

I don't suppose he's very commercial, but if anyone is interested - make me an offer (for anything on the blog, if it comes to that).

Isle of Wight Landscapes

A quick note - www.isleofwightlandscapes.net is now updated, uploaded, up and running, and will be updated frequently in future.

Thanks to Barry Fitzgerald for all his help - uploading was nightmareish, but with some help from 3iX, the web-provider, he got there in the end.  I have to say "he" got there, because I was just hovering in the background making keening noises for much of the time.

What a performance.

But it's up there now - all revised, squeaky and shiny.

James Keir Hardie

While waiting a) to upload my revised website, b) for the paint to dry on my oil study of JKH, I did an acrylic - somewhat loosely based on him, working on old, small, monochrome photographs taken over a 40 year period isn't easy - using the same build up from monochrome to glazed final result.  I've put it on the Gallery at Painters Online (www.paintersonline.co.uk) as well.

In this one, he's looking straight at you - I got the impression he was trying to tell me something unflattering.........

Isle of Wight Landscapes - Watch this space

Fingers crossed as I write this....

For months now, my website has been bedevilled by a problem on the Gallery page - images horribly pixellated and unviewable.  I couldn't work out what was wrong, and in the end I just left www.isleofwightlandscapes.net to fend for itself, and even thought about taking it offline altogether.

A visit today from my old friend Barry Fitzgerald, a professional photographer working out of Tralee in Ireland, will I hope have resolved the problem - and he worked out why it had happened, so it shouldn't go wrong again (it really WASN'T simple).

It's been a long day, and I'm now off to bed: but tomorrow I shall upload the latest version of the site: this always taxes my memory and eyesight and I regularly get the codes/password wrong.  But all things being equal, I am very hopeful that the issue will have been resolved, and I shall be able to start actually using the site again - I had just been staying away in a sort of neurotic sulk....

And all I'll have to do then is publicize it widely so that more people visit it and savour its delights....

Still, a start's a start, eh...?

Work in Progress - Keir Hardie

Casting about for something to paint, I thought I'd like to try a portrait sketch; it can only be that because its subject has been dead for just over 100 years now.  But I've not painted a portrait of any kind for years, and thought it was time I did.

It's a WIP - Work in Progress - and because I'm using oil paint (on oil painting paper) it won't be finished for a while given the method I've chosen: and I've chosen that so that I can show an old but (I'm hoping) good method of achieving it.

I started out with the most basic possible pencil sketch, strengthened with a"turpsy" (ie, solvent-rich) mix of Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine oil; then sharpened up the drawing a bit from my source photographs - Hardie changed quite a lot over the years, and looked far older than his 60 years when he died: so we're only going to get a sort of composite painting out of this (I suppose that's going to read a bit like an excuse, but it's basically an iconic look I've after with this, so if it does, it does!).

Having blocked in some of the  background and shadows, I employed that old approach I mentioned - rather than going in with full colour, I refined the image a bit more with a mixture of Terre Verte, a very traditional colour historically used for this purpose, and lead white - I still have some Flake White left, which is what I used.  It's less oily and much faster drying than Titanium White, and can be applied more thinly.  There's a long story to be told about the advantages of lead white, but this isn't maybe the time to tell it.

Now this layer has to dry right out, which will take time: and when it has, I'll apply thin, transparent glazes of colour over the top.  You needn't fear you'll obscure the detail - you'd only do that if you used very opaque colour, and Titanium White.

There will probably be some Titanium White eventually, but the aim is to keep it to the minimum - and maybe I'll be better advised to use another lead white instead.

For the moment, the painting looks as if I've turned poor old Keir, as if he hadn't enough to contend with, into the Incredible Hulk, because Terre Verte is a green, with a very low tinting strength: it will cool warmer colours applied on top - and it's one of the ways that the old painters indicated gentle shifts in colour and tone in their portraits.  Probably obviously, the finished product won't be as good as a genuine old portrait - because I'm not going to take the time over it that they would have done, and anyway I'm using paper; but my desire is to give others an idea; and of course it's good practice for me; it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Building up a portrait in this way - you can do the same with landscapes if you want, but you probably wouldn't use Terre Verte as your base colour; it wouldn't hurt if you did, but it might end up with a rather cool painting; an earth red would be more usual; and you can employ acrylics if you prefer quicker results - gives a very distinctive look; it's not an Impressionist treatment, but now and then maybe it's good to remember that not everything has to be.

Black Sky

Oil on canvas covered board - many layered painting in oil exploiting tonal contrast - as much as can be achieved without going too far over the top into Abstract work, which on the whole I avoid.  Scratching-out, scumbling, glazing, and - well obviously! - a rat.

Flood Plain - finished

My first completed painting of 2016 - employing Mars colours (synthetic iron oxides) - the Orange, Red, Yellow, and Violet Deep.

There's also a bit of Yellow Lake, Scarlet Lake,  Pthalo Green, Cobalt Blue, Cerulean Blue, plus a little Cremnitz White, and Titanium White.  Oil on Ampersand board, 11" by 16",  Ampersand boards haven't been available in this country for long - they're high archival quality surfaces, resistant to warping, and suitable for oil and acrylic, or even for watercolour.

I was unconvinced that they'd suit me at first, but having tried just the one, and only with oil paint so far, I'm very keen to try more in oil and acrylic.

If interested in buying this one - £150 will secure it, unframed.  

Back in Action - and some sad news

On the plus side, I have at last finished an oil painting - my first in 2016.  I can't post a good photograph of it yet, for the simple reason that I haven't got one - given my flat is on the dark side, I can't get a good photo within it without using the flash, which of course distorts colour and causes a shine to appear on the surface which obscures any detail.  So, I need to take it outside to photograph it, and if I do that it'll either fly away in the wind or get soaked (as will I).

Even so, I'll post what I have got - and put the better photo up later: given I've painted nothing since before Christmas, I thought I'd better prove that I actually HAVE finished something.  It's called Flood Plain, which title is intended to be somewhat ironic....

It's an oil on Ampersand board, a surface I've never tried before and quite a novel experience - the surface is absorbent, though not so much so that it sucks the oil out of the paint; so although it's totally smooth, it still has enough tooth to hold the paint.  This is 11" by 16".  The panels are a little expensive by comparison with standard canvas board, but they're worth it - it may not be obvious from the reproduction here that they are, but - they are.

The sad news is the death of an internet friend of mine, who gave me a lot of encouragement and advice, and was a marvellous painter - one of the best in my opinion working in Britain in the last 25 years.  Ken Bushe, who lived and worked in Broughty Ferry in Dundee, died of cancer on Monday January 25th.  Just type his name into Google, and I think you'll be amazed by the quality of his work.  Ken loved skies above all else - sky and cloud formations, sunsets, sunrise, rain clouds, snow, fog.  He painted wonderful land- and sea-scapes too, but skies gave him a freedom which he exploited on a grand scale.  He knew a lot about clouds!  He studied them, he sought pictures of clouds from all over the world - but he would paint only from what he saw in front of him: his pictures were usually finished in the studio from colour notes and sketches, but were always based on his own observation of the magnificent skies over the River Tay, especially.

I sent him a few cloud photographs, out of interest - I knew he wouldn't paint from them though.  We never met face to face - he didn't often come South, I believe, and I hardly ever venture North.  But we talked a lot about paint, its qualities, availability, what could be done with it, the brands.  He was active in the successful campaign to keep Cadmium paints in production when they were under threat, and was scathing about those who felt artists' paints posed anything like the threat to the environment that industrial use might.  He won that fight, but lost the battle against this awful disease - please consider a donation to Cancer Research in his memory; and make sure you look at his wonderful work.

I tell a lie....

I do, I do......  I did paint over Christmas: just one, for the annual Christmas card.  Acrylic on watercolour paper, of Charlie the dog showing how very, very excited she was by the whole festive experience.

She did perk up a bit though when given a bit of gravy from the landlord's pheasant over her canine kibble........ otherwise, she does Totally Indifferent really well.

Still alive....

A leisurely Christmas period - cooked, read, drank, watched films, but painted nothing and drew only a little.  The conventional wisdom states that one should paint every day - but I find that a rest from art work now and then is important; to reflect on what you're doing, or not doing; and to gain a different perspective.  I'm not fond of just churning work out - it's also said that waiting for inspiration is the mark of the amateur.  Perhaps it is.  On the other hand, I don't live by painting - I'd starve if I did.  So, if I don't actually wait for inspiration, I do wait for a subject that engages my interest.

At 65, I should care whether I'm regarded as an amateur or not..... (as in: I don't).

So my creative impulses over Christmas and New Year went into cooking pheasant, brisket of beef, and a rather splendid steak and mushroom pie.

But now what?  The new year has dawned - damply - and I need to work out what exactly I'm going to do.  Certainly, I look forward to participating in the work of the National Association of Painters in Acrylic.  I'll continue, for as long as he wants me, to contribute to Mr Pratim Das's online Coloured Canvas magazine.  I will try to re-cast my e-book Oil Paint Basics, available only on the Amazon Kindle Store at present, into a form which I hope will be publishable in paperback.  I will continue to hope than an article I sent to Leisure Painter magazine months ago will actually get published, as the editor assured me it would -- getting a little tired of seeing the same old faces and the same old stuff in magazines, to be quite frank....

I shall probably continue with such of an interest as I currently take in the Labour Party - more in hope than anything else.  But I'm abandoning Twitter, not that I was ever a frequent tweeter - because it's such a cess-pit.  Sharing things there is one thing; don't mind doing that.  But the number of politicians who have dropped themselves right in it up to the neck and slightly beyond is incredible - incredible that they should be so stupid as to think they can say anything worthwhile in a sentence or two, or anything that won't get them into trouble because they're bound to be misunderstood.  Facebook too is going to take a back seat - the social media might better be described as the anti-social media so far as I'm concerned.  (There was a last straw with Facebook, but in characteristic kindness on my part, I shan't reveal what it was since that would also reveal who was at the centre of it.)

I will try to wean myself away from the Guardian's Comment is Free pages, on which I appear all too often, as Wightpaint: it's not worth the effort: the Guardian needs a complete clear-out of its political staff (and its arts staff, but then its coverage there has always been abysmal).   And there are one or two medical issues to attend to............ as you'd expect.

Which only really leaves painting, unless I'm to loll around all day doing nothing.  Hmmm.  It's a thought.....

Politics is best left to the young.  They'll make a mess of it, that's the trouble....................  and they think you can do politics via Facebook.   Bless 'em.

Ah well.  Happy New Year.....

My friend and colleague

Since I last posted, Kenn Pearson, for whom I acted as election agent in the 1987 General Election, has passed away at the age of 75, having been in serious ill-health for some years.

I noticed today that Mr Abdul Mateen, of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, who stood against Kenn in his Council ward, has paid tribute to him in the County Press, the island's local newspaper.  I wonder how many former candidates would do that - but then, Kenn could unite friend and opponent: he didn't make enemies; he was too nice a man.

I found a drawing I made of Kenn which must date to round about the time he stood as Labour candidate for the island - I don't remember why I did it; perhaps it was intended for a leaflet, though we went for photographs in the end.  Perhaps the reason why will be obvious but, for better or worse, here it is.