Another Day

I had another attempt at Anne's face last session.

Naked Man Holding a Cup. A quick silverpoint drawing I did at my last life drawing session. This was done with a biggish piece of stirliing silver onto a light yellow toned gouache paper. I've proven to myself that silverpoint doesn't have to be all painstaking fine lines and cross hatching. I really liked the natural pose. This was just as he was standing naturally during our coffee break. I prefer these poses to the more contrived poses that models are often encouraged to assume in life drawing classes.

A detail of Anne's face after another session.

I've been doing more drawing recently, trying out different mediums, and I thought I would try out the ancient technique of silver point. Siver point is, as the name suggests, simply drawing with a sharpened piece of silver onto paper that has been prepared with a coating of gouache to impart a tooth. For my first atempt I sketched Dale sat knitting whilst watching TV. A rare occasion that finds her sat still!

I have been working on Anne's fluoresent orange plastic crocs and struggling to relate how I see everything to the chair I painted. Perhaps Pearlstein knows something afterall..  I have had to move the chair up in relation to the figure slightly. It's still a constant juggling act at this stage for me, I find. I've begun Anne's face and she is looking rather fierce. I feel the face needs to be smaller perhaps.

Here is the progress so far on the portrait of Anne.  I worked on her clasped hands which are in a strong focal point in the composition.  I'm not happy with them and they will need repainting, however it gives me something to relate everything else to. I also have started to establish the chair itself.  I worked on it when she wasn't there. Just a couple of pillows and her fluorescent orange crocs ..!  I am always conscious of wasting peoples time, just sitting for my benefit. Painting from life always seems such a self indulgent activity in many ways.  I read somewhere that the American figurative painter Phillip Pearlstein insists that his models are sitting there even when he's painting the furniture... but that seems a bit excessive to me.  Sometimes I wonder if you perhaps have to be a bit of a sadist to paint people from life.  Bowls of apples don't make me feel so guilty.

Self Portrait in Fading Light III Oil on Arches paper 212x205mm Self Portrait in Fading Light IV Oil on paper 170x110mm

  Self Portrait in Fading Light II Oil on gessoed Arches paper The light at this time of year really does fade fast in the afternoon and that is my usual painting time.  Working in the half light is interesting because the distracting details get lost and you can concentrate on the forms.

  Self Portrait in Fading Light Oil on gessoed Arches paper 200x165mm Oil paint on paper has a special quality about it that I find quite sensuous. I worked with the paint very thin and used my fingers and a rag to blend the colour and reveal the texture of the paper.  I wanted to try and capture the mysterious quality of the fading lig ht and wasn't too concerned about getting proportions correct.

The first session with paint, just blocking in and adjusting some proportions.

I wanted to try a monoprint using the slow dryng Open Acrylics. I used a rectangle of white perspex as my plate. Being white this made it easier to see what I was doing.  I spent quite a while working on the plate, probably as long as I would on a regular painting. Regular acrylics would not allow you to do this as they dry too quickly. Here is the image I pulled off it, printing on a small ethching press. The image is of course reversed.  I wasn't too happy with it really. I thought it looked better o the perspex plate!  However, regarding it as a learning process I perservered. There is usually a ghost of the image left on the plate after printing, so I reworked the image more loosely this time and produced the two further prints below. They are a bit more lively, but I still wasn't happy with them. I was wiping the plate clean when I thought I'd give it one more chance.  I like this one the best of the lot. 

I have made an initial start on the large portrait of Anne Sitting.  As is usual when painting, your present work will spawn new ideas for further work and exploration.  While I was painting Anne's portrait last year, I realised that a more complete picture with her sitting in the chair would be a truer and more compelling portrait.  She habitually wears many layers of dark clothes and has these lurid orange plastic shoes. The shoes became a problem for me on the last portrait as they kept distracting my eye, and I asked her to wear different ones.  It became something of a joke between us, and we both agreed that for this painting she sh ould wear them. I began our first sitting by making a few preliminary drawings.  Drawing is always a good way to get to know a subject.  It doesn't matter that they are rough or crude; they are not intended to be finished artworks.  They are working drawings and you start to get a feel for where potential p...

I have been stretching a large linen canvas canvas for a new painting of Anne Holiday.  It's the largest canvas I've prepared for some time and I'd forgotten what a difficult and time consuming job it is!  I construct my own stretcher frames using timber that I've had beveled on one side. This is necessary so that the stretcher bars will not touch and show through on the surface of the painting. I cross-brace the frame for strength, otherwise it will warp.  Stretching linen is always difficult. It's harder to stretch than cotton and in spite of what the experts say, in my experience I have found that it fluctuates more with humidty changes than cotton does.  In fact you have to be very carefull not to overstretch it if it is raw unprimed canvas like I am using. Once the linen is primed with acrylic gesso it shrinks and goes tight as a drum, often distorting the frame and even tearing.  I have often read that it is easier to stretch whilst wet, so this time I ...

Recently I was playing around with trying out some monoprinting .  A monoprint or monotype is essentially a simple transfer print from glass,plastic or metal plate. The plate is painted or inked and drawn into and wiped and smudged to produce various resu lts , and then printed onto paper. I used a small press, but it's also possible to simply rub the back of the paper with the back of a spoon,or use a print roller.  The image prints in reverse and you only get one print. Hence "mono" print. However, usually there is still the ghost of the image left on the surface of the plate, and this can then be reworked to produce another print.  It encourages working in series and can be quite addictive!   The use of myself as subject matter was incidental really, and I hardly even looked in the mirror. I just wanted to experiment, and the first ones above were done with etching ink and oil paint onto a copper plate.  Then I tryed using acrylic pain...

Recently I had the opportunity to do some painting from life.  Inna is a young woman from Jeruselum, traveling New Zealand.  She saw my exhibition in New Plymouth and emailed to ask if I knew of any artists requiring a professional model. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss so we ended up working together for about ten days.  As well as being beautiful and charming, I found Inna very intelligent and good company and I learned a lot about Israel and the sensitive political situation there, a subject I'm all too ignorant of. Here are a couple of oil sketchs on paper we did.  I started two larger paintings, however, Inna's time in Taranaki was limited and so they remain uncompleted.  I have got photographs and a few drawings, so I may be able to do some more work on them in the near future. But it's never the same for me, not having the sitter's phisical presence.  I'm coming to the realisation that for me, at least, the interaction with the subje...

A couple of self portraits I did while experimenting with gessoed paper as the support.  It seems to encourage a fresher and more free approach.  I also like the torn edges of the paper.

Anne Oil on linen on MDF 390x445mm Finaly! This is the finished version of the portrait of Anne Holiday. It was a finalist in the 2010 Adam's Portraiture Award. A somewhat dubious honour.

It  was a difficult show to hang with most of the works being such small paintings and I decided to hang them in "clouds".

Here are some snaps of my exhibition opening with fellow artist Anne Holliday, at the Real Tart Gallery, New Plymouth.