Art in the Forest no. 2 & 3

Another two workshops have been and gone. A full house today for some lino cutting after snow, toothache and broozed ribs got in the way of fun for some the week before. We started off each workshop with a little more drawing looking for line and shapes to represent form and light and produce a pleasing pattern. We moved away from vegetables and used a selection of photos as reference material. Princess Neptune made an appearance in indian ink, as did Dennis and a few other familiar characters. During the lino session we revisited some of our earlier studies and developed them a stage further into a more graphic, monotone composition.

A little Dennis shaped demo

The lino cuts themselves were as lovely as the prints taken from them

More of our work and sources of inspiration on Pinterest (when I get 5 mins to upload them!) 

Drypoint Etching

Yesterday I learnt something new and exciting – drypoint etching. I’ve always loved etchings but have been put off by the acids and materials used, but with drypoint there are no chemicals – just oil based inks and an acrylic plate. I must admit to being exhausted on Saturday morning after a busy week away, and a coffee or two was required to get me going. I picked up a fellow artist and set off on a 60 mile trek south to spend the day in a lovely converted church. The workshop was run by talented artist Louise Worthy who gave us a step by step demonstration, delicious lemon drizzle cake and lots of encouragement. We composed a little picture in pencil first then transferred it to our acylic plate with a 6 inch nail and sandpaper. Whilst the printing paper soaked in water, we squidged ink onto the plate, rubbed it in and then rubbed it off until it was ready for the final stage in the printing press. Each time the printing blankets rolled back and the prints were pulled from the acrylic plates there was an audible “ooh” , “arrh” , and squeal of excitement/surprise as another delightful little masterpiece emerged! I took inspiration from one of Louise’s photography magazines and did two plates – a farmhouse and a boat. It was quite hard work scratching into the acylic and controlling the 6 inch nail. Unlike linoprinting, which is like working in negative, the etched marks hold the ink and print a dark line. I soon worked out that to get a successful print required a balanced composition and good notan, with areas of dark and light. Achieving this however is another matter – it is very easy to over scratch or leave on too much ink, or over-rub and take off too much! Great fun and I could easily get hooked (if I could afford a printing press!)

ooh, arrh!

lots of little masterpieces

Little boat - 1 of 4

Little house - 1 of 4

Remember Wovember

The spell of Princess Neptune  has taken effect - it’s official, I’ve got a thing about sheep. I did drop a big hint back in February  and there has definitely been a clue or two in my recent blog posts. I think it was there all along, but has recently begun to be more difficult to hide. When I think about it, the best piece of art homework I did at school was a very detailed study of a sheepskin rug – I drew every little curl and twist in the woolly fireside fleece. The very first gift I bought for my Henry (before he was my husband) was a ceramic sheep by Tessa Foulkes (he was a bit confused if I remember, little did he know where it would lead) and my first oil painting was of some Welsh sheep. I’m not sure what it is – the warm woolly fleece, the knobbly knees, their little faces – probably a combination of all three. I started knitting in 2006 after I walked into a Chester wool shop one lunchtime and became mesmerised by the tightly packed shelves of beautiful colours and that smell! I was having a particularly tough time at work, and said to Henry that “I no longer want to be a manager, I want to work in a wool shop – everyone is so happy in there!”. OK darling, he said. Well, I carried on for a few more years and just nipped in to the wool shop for a lanolin-sniff and a skein-squeeze when things were really heavy at work. We would both go to the Woolfest in Cumbria for a serious fix!

These last few weeks have been a journey of discovery – I am not alone - there are quite a few folk out there who share my sheepish behaviour and I’ve found a whole on-line community of happy people passionate about sheep and wool. I’ve also discovered that this month is Wovember, a celebration of real wool from real sheep . In the spirit of Wovember I have embarked on a large sheepy composition, the largest pastel painting I’ve ever attempted. I very chuffed with the end result after 12 woolly faces, 20 knobbly knees and an awful lot of bleating!

The Gang - not sure what to call it - just a few finishing touches to do yet

the initial drawing - ready for transfer onto the pastel paper

my reference photo ( taken near Latheron, Caithness) & the "notan" study 

work in progress - lots of knobbly knees to go

The Thief of Time

The funky foursome are finished and the design for the hotel sign is done, but there has been some procrastination (isn’t that something Pooh had trouble with? – well it appears to be a common artist’s trait as well). I’ve bought new materials, reorganised my pastel box, painted my toenails and done a lot of dreaming! But in all honesty, I have been very busy “thinking” whilst procrastinating over the next painting. It’s my desire to master a personal style, knowing that if I just paint without thinking about it I’ll play safe and get myself bogged down in detail. I’ve done a fair amount of analysis – collating paintings I admire, studying the colours and styles and appraising my own work. During this journey, I have come across hundreds of paintings and artists – but there are only 3 that I have obsessed about. By that I mean researched, bought the book and lost hours on the laptop: Mervyn Peake, Kyffin Williams and Eyvind Earle. Apart from the fact that they all have first names that are difficult to spell, they all used strong notan and produce drawings and paintings where colour is secondary to line and form. My series of chickens has probably stopped at 2, and whilst my hunt for the perfect Horny Hamish continues I shall try to convert my thoughts into some landscape paintings.

I couldn’t find the Pooh quote on procrastination, so I thought I’d leave you with this one….

" When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."  A. A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh.

A note on Notan

This week’s obsession has been notan. A word that I’ve come across only recently, but a style that is prominent in a lot of my work. My diary sketches are just one example. Notan is black & white, or a composition with a harmonious balance of dark and light values. Successful notan is more about design – designing the spaces on your canvas. As a landscape architect I'm trained to design space in the landscape, and subconsciously I probably transfer the same principles onto 2D compositions. In the days before CAD (computer aided design) the layout and drawing of plans using only a black Rotaring pen was good grounding for notan, especially if you only had a black and white printer and were hopeless at Pantone pens like me. I have realised that if I start and finish a painting in colour, I ignore “design” in terms of value, whereas perhaps my monotone work is more successful. I’ve collected a few notan images on a Pinterest board and have been looking through eyes with notan filters all week! I’m also been helping my parents have a declutter, and have unearthered more examples of my very early notan tendencies, including wine labels I made for my late grandfather’s homemade wine, and here are some more from this century...

Exercises in Pastels

With a window in my commissions I set aside some time to experiment with some landscape painting in pastels. I recently purchased a new book which suggested a few exercises to trial different types of under-painting. Under-painting is not something I’ve done before – I usually get straight on with the detail from the start, as I did for a recent painting of the croft house we live in. I wasn’t entirely happy with it – I felt it was a bit dark and pastels were laid on rather thick. The book suggests working on a scene you had already painted so I selected the croft house. I’ve done 6 of the 9 exercises so far.

white paper

black paper

warm colour paper – like burnt sienna

cool  colour paper– like paynes grey

a notan under-painting

an under-painting in burnt sienna and French ultramarine

an under-painting using the local colour in the scene

an under-painting using the complimentaries to the local colour

an expressive under-painting in whatever colour

I used Art Spectrum paper which has a nice sandy tooth, but I didn’t have any white so I tinted the first sheet with some white gouache, which was horrible to work on! Under-painting can be done in smudged pastel, wetted pastel, water colour or even very dilute oils. My adverse reaction to gouache at the start made me lean towards the dry pastel for the others – a decision made less difficult by the timely arrival of a new set of Conte Carres! I selected the same few Sennelier soft pastels as the overlay so that all I was changing was the background colours. All 6 were executed quite quickly and I didn’t really take to any of them, but I did find that I achieved more accurate tonal values when I worked on top of a notan under-painting. I managed to get pastel dust everywhere and all over my face as usual - so a good time was had. I feel like I've spent the afternoon at the gym and I'm be eager to do the remaining three.....