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.
Easing into Christmas slowly....
A few months of various health problems, my usual painkillers being unavailable - which I found quite oddly disorienting - then I wandered into a persistent infection.
And I've turned 72 - so I suppose none of that is especially surprising. However: I have completed a very late Christmas card, herewith, and have several drawings to be turned into paintings.
At last, having retired from most of my offices in the Labour Party - not an entirely happy decision, but I was getting too frazzled with it all - I have read more books than you could shake a stick at, if that struck you as being a good idea, in the last few months.
If I can finally shake the remains of this infection off, I might even do a bit of work in the New Year......
Well now - I've painted two new oils in just one week: this is following the tremendous heat of August, when I really couldn't paint (or hardly breathe) at all, plus a number of other things that got in the way.
From here on, I'll be taking advantage of my new found freedom from external obligations to post, I hope, at least two paintings per month.
The first is Leaving the Nature Reserve, St Lawrence, Isle of Wight:
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The second is Tennyson's Monument, Tennyson Down, Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight. Both 16" by 12", all reasonable offers (think ca. £100 unframed) considered.
Freedom, Freiheit, Libertad, Liberté!
I have at last retired as Secretary of the Isle of Wight Labour Party. Four years in the last stint, 20 years in total. I don't regret it - it was a privilege; I enjoyed a lot of it; but it gobbled up too many years, too much time, and I could never stop thinking about it.... This really is a job, irrespective of the party involved, that should be fully salaried -- to some extent at least, a Parliamentary democracy needs functioning political parties: and they need to be properly run - and you think just anyone can do that? You err - yes you do; ooh err....
Seventy-plus year olds often do these jobs: because younger people don't have the time, given there's no money in it. Talk about getting the politics you deserve.....
I know I'm going to keep thinking about it for a while, but it's others' job now. So - more time for painting. And I look to everyone I know to keep me up to the mark. Provided I can have a few weeks' rest first. We are not as young as we were, here at the Batcave.
Oh, and I've managed to lock myself out of Facebook again - I may get back in; I may not bother. I just know everyone would want to know that....
Managed to photograph this 12" by 14" oil at last - had to take it with the flash in the end, hence there's some glare.
Cremnitz White, Cobalt Blue, Mars Orange, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow - plus a bit of Ultramarine, I think.
EIGHTEEN inches by fourteen, you'd have thought the scale of it would have told me if my ability to read the notes on the back of the board hadn't.......
This, I emphasize, is a sketch - rapidly done in oil, when I was preparing to paint an acrylic version of Mr Corbyn.
I would have hugely preferred to paint him from life - painting portraits from photographs is a mug's game which is almost impossible to get right. But this was technically interesting to me, in that I used Cremnitz White, a lead carbonate which made a massive difference in being able to mould the shapes of (sorry Jezza!) ageing flesh.
I'll show the acrylic portrait eventually, but I feel now that I ought to repeat the bigger portrait in oil - again with lead white, because Titanium (a very useful, opaque, clean white though it is) just doesn't hold a candle to lead white in painting flesh tones.
The latest acrylic - which I put on the Facebook page with the wrong dimensions, and can't see how to correct it in the boosted post.
But - it's 16" by 12". And available for sale, as is some of the previous work shown on this blog-page. Do not hesitate to inquire ... I shall respond with indecent haste.
So much time lost in the service of my voluntary job - so little energy available to supplement it.
Really - why spend time on non-arty things? I just can't keep up with it - I'm too bleedin' old!
Most of my arty stuff will be displayed on Facebook for the time being - Robert Jones, Isle of Wight Landscapes. Not all of the landscapes ARE Isle of Wight, but most of them will be.
I'm sorry not to have kept my various pages up to date, but - that's depression for you. It's just horrible - never let anyone tell you different!
Portraits, already!
I very, very rarely paint portraits, but have been asked to paint one of Jeremy Corbyn, ex-leader of the Labour Party and currently suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party as a result of seeming to forget he owed a touch of loyalty to the new leader.
So I have mixed feelings about the lad, but nonetheless - we're having a go.
I work agonizingly slowly, especially on a portrait, but here is the initial lay-in. The challenge here, apart from the obviously wrong shape of the nose, is to avoid making him look as though he's just celebrated his 110th birthday.
My mum, pictured here, looked forward to my 70th birthday, bud didn't make it by 4 months, dying at 94. She said she couldn't believe I was nearly 70. And I can't believe she's gone. I shall miss you forever, Nellie Dean - known as 'Dean' for most of her life. I can't believe you've left us, and I'll never believe you have.
And I am 70 now - Dean would have been 95 this week.
Just realized this blog was ten years old, back in June.
It's never been highly interactive - I know precious few follow it, though some do when I say something controversial, e.g. in criticism of poor old Bob Ross - who is as sacred to some as Jeremy Corbyn is to some in the Labour Party: beyond criticism, or one's being very unfair, and in league with the 'haters' and detractors if one does.
To them, I do have to say (no I don't: but I will) grow up...... we all have feet of clay, including your idols.
Both are very nice men - but Bob Ross wasn't a great, or even very good, artist; and Jeremy Corbyn wasn't a great, or even very good, party leader. Wasn't their fault: they tried, they contributed, they made an honest stab at what they wanted to do. But let us not elevate ordinary people to sainthood, because no one can meet that test.
And so here we are, ten years on - years in which I've lost people dear to me; managed to hang on to some despite the ravages of illness and time; gone back to a job I gave up long ago, because a) there was a vacancy, b) I trust no one else to do it. I've concentrated on watercolour, acrylic, and oil painting. I have dabbled in gouache (please, don't call it 'gauche': it isn't 'gauche' - that means either left, in yer actual French, or clumsy: and you do try not be gauche with gouache), I've written an e-book (which needs updating), I've found a source of lead white paint, which is so important for anyone serious about painting in oil, I've discovered the real Bible of oil painting in Virgil Elliott's "Traditional Oil Painting", and I've become a member of the National Association of Painters in Acrylic.
And I shall shortly turn - if spared! - 70. Just a pity that there's a 16 year old in my head, who keeps wondering what happened to his body. I have not made my fortune. I don't really care about that. I have become an old age pensioner, and I don't really care about that, either. In fact, I've stopped bothering about trivial things. I paint because I enjoy painting,and discovering new things: and there's always something new to be discovered, not because I wish for fame or fortune (and just as well: neither seem within reach), but because I just see things I want to represent, while there's still time.
We now have Brexit, and Covid-19 - these are not trivial; both are self-inflicted. We didn't have them ten years ago. But ten years hence, we shan't have them, either. We'll have other crises. The one that bothers me most is the threat to the global environment; not the threat to human existence - I'd like to think that my great niece and great nephew have a future, but think the human species has inflicted so much cruel damage on the world in its relentless search for advantage that our disappearance as a species would be no tragedy; perhaps my descendants will survive when others won't, and re-shape the world. Someone has to, though it's a harsh responsibility with which to burden them.
I wonder if this blog will still be here in another ten years' time, or - on which that's rather contingent - whether I shall still be here either. Well, who knows? If nothing really dies on the internet, I shan't die either. Now - isn't that a comfort? Isn't it? Well of course it is! You know it is!
This is an oil on birchwood panel of Thorness Bay on the Isle of Wight, loosely translated from a friend's photograph and kept simple - or as simple as I could.
I've rarely painted on wood - by comparison with paintings on canvas board, canvas, MDF, hardboard - and it was an interesting experience at this scale; because when I have painted on wood, it was usually on cigar-box lids, at around a quarter the size of this one.
I have a few more, and will see if I get on with them. On the whole, my favourite oil painting surface at the moment is the Ampersand panel - of which I do not have a supply just now.... On my Next Purchase list, though.
