The Twins in Spring

Acrylic, 18" x 14",  on canvas board.  Palette: Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow; Cadmium Lemon; Lemon Yellow; Yellow Ochre; Burnt Sienna; Crimson Alizarine; Ultramarine; Cobalt Blue; Cerulean Blue; Chromium Oxide Green.  

Castle Keep

 A view of Carisbrooke Castle's Keep - surroundings adjusted to reflect the space I left myself on a 12" x 12" canvas board, and painted with acylic, using two painting knives.  

It's so different from my normal stuff that I don't quite know what I think of it yet, but it was fun to do, which is the main point for me nowadays - selling has receded in interest; and anyway, not everyone is going to like knife painting.  If you enjoy glazing, scumbling, painting in layers over layers, though, it's well worth a try: whether you fall in love with your results or just appreciate the experience. 

Old Sally, world's best dog, in her advanced old age

 It is believed among those of us in a position to know, that Sally, who died in 1979, was around 19 years old.  As she was an Alsatian cross (crossed with what isn't clear) this is inherently unlikely.  However - I remember as a relatively small boy collecting her from the Godshill, Isle of Wight, RSPCA shelter for mistreated dogs; and sadly, I also remember, and wish I could forget, the last day of her life so many years later.

No dog is perfect - Sally had a cunning side; but her cunning was impressive - the way she snuck a gammon joint out of a cupboard, and sauntered out of the door with it before we'd noticed; the way she and her daughter (another long story there: she managed to slide back a bolt on our back door to let her boyfriend in) waited until burglars got through our kitchen window without alerting them to her presence: and then making them wish they'd chosen another career: mother, the blood!  

Both dogs then went back to sleep until the morning: a job well done.

If she wasn't perfect - she came nearer to it than any dog I've ever known.  She protected my young brother - if threatened, he'd only to call her name and she'd be there, of which he took full advantage.  She would grab hands and guide them away - push into any potential aggressor: 'you're not touching my little boy!'.

You can't but miss a dog like that, and all these years later, I still do.  

The Haven, blackthorn's out

 My first version of this was very like a picture postcard, the rustic view, the obligatory spot of red - I hated it.  I'm not very happy with it now, either, but at least it's a touch earthier.

Oil paint, Cremnitz White, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine; Mars Orange, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange (Hue), Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre - and possibly a few other colours in small quantities.  I didn't care for the surface - a birch panel, ca. 12" by 17"; too smooth, even with several coats of roughly applied acrylic primer; but the real problem here is the subject - the area is run-down, and not very interesting!

Still - someone might like it, eh...?  Paintings I'm deeply un-keen on at the time can grow on me later; sometimes much later: this just isn't my usual thing, and perhaps that's my problem with it.  Do comment and let me know what you think. 

The Old Lifeboat Station, Winter

 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.

It's based on Totland Bay, but I've taken a few liberties.  

 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......

Two oils - Always trying to improve!

 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:

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....

 February 18th 2022 

Entrance and Exit - my first watercolour of 2022

The Other Side of the Bay

 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.......

Oil sketch of Jeremy Corbyn

 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.

Life and Death, Up on the Downs

 

Oil on birch panel, around 40cm by 32 - this is the development of the work in progress I posted earlier.  

The Path Less Trodden

 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.