What to do with a cold?

Today I'm huddled up on the sofa with my feather duvet surrounded by big pieces of paper, photos, little bits of paper, sketchbooks, charcoal and pastels. In between sneezes, sniffle and short naps I'm working out drawings for the Isle of Wight paintings.

I blame the cold on living with someone else. When I was living alone I never got sick! Housemate brings home germs from his little minions. (the kids at school, that is)

About glazing

A reader, Diane, emailed me about my "The Steps to Two Trees Island" post last week asking how I got from the first image to the last. Questions about how I glaze come up fairly often so I thought it would be useful to share my reply to her with all of you.

Hi Diane,

Great question! And I get asked about my glazing a lot, so I hope you don't mind if I copy this all into a new blog entry.

Firstly I should be clear about my use of the word "glaze". I consider any technique glazing that applies a thin transparent layer of colour. So a mixture of lots of water/medium and a touch of paint is a glaze. A very dry scumble that just barely brushes some paint on the surface, perhaps just catching the edges of the canvas weave, is also to me a glaze as long as the layer is so thin that the underlying layers are still somewhat visible.

I use acrylic and glaze mainly with water. (I used to paint in oils.) I don't use any mediums, except occasionally as a barrier layer, when previous layers have little binder so I need a medium layer in order to not lift off previous glazes. I generally work 2 ways and alternate between them depending on what is working that day. ;) I either use quite a lot of water with a little bit of paint and do very wet glazes, or I work more in a drybrush way and scumble on paint with a very very dry brush and only a touch of paint on it. Either way you usually don't see much of a change with a layer. For example between the first and last images in the blog there were (this is from memory):

• A couple of glazes (possibly 3 or 4) of cobalt blue
• Sap green glazes
• At least two glazes of raw umber in the dark line areas
• Then a couple glazes of Hooker's green in the dark line areas
• Another glazes of raw umber to soften the Hooker's green

Then I started the over blue:

• Fairly solid, for me, scumbles of a touch of cobalt + zinc white around line areas
• 3-4 scumbles of cobalt + zinc all over

• Then I attacked the sky with a few cobalt blue glazes
• Then probably 5 or 6 glazes of zinc white
• Then back over the zinc white at the top with solid cobalt scumbles
• Then scumbling back over the edge of that cobalt with zinc white again
• Repeat those last 2 steps (I do a lot of back and forth reglazing to soften and lose all edges)
  

• Then I went back into the "land" area with 2-3 dry scumbles of cobalt + zinc

Most of the glazes in this paint were dry scumbles rather than wet thin glazes. Which approach I use really varies and there isn't always one approach that is right.

A lot can depend on:

• the feel of a brand of paint (I glaze with Liquitex cerulean much differently than Daler Rowney cerulean for example, as they have very different textures)
• how much paint is already on the surface (I need canvas weave to dry scumble)
• the temperature of the room (affects drying time)
• the size of the canvas (less room for error the bigger you go - I tend to use more wet glazes than scumbling for because dry scumbles can dry too quickly to soften out quickly enough on large areas)

Sometimes it's just a feeling. One way works better than another for no explicable reason. *grin* Some days I just can't scumble. No idea why, my hands won't do it. Or I'm not coordinated enough to wet glaze and keep it under control. And of course there's the limitation of working with no medium - lifting previous layers. This can easily happen so I have a pretty good sense of how long something needs to dry or if I need to put down a thin barrier layer of medium. Lifting results in "holes" in the consistent haze of colour and if anyone ever hears me swearing in the studio it's usually because I suddenly am getting lifting and have to quickly fix it! Fortunately I've learned how to in most cases. The later it happens in a painting however the more likely I can't fix it with over-layers.

I also work with the brush VERY quickly. Not that the painting are quick, but my brush work is more like scrubbing or sanding than brushing. Very very fast, repetitive swooshing of the dry paint (and pressing quite hard) into the texture of the canvas. With acrylics there's a definitely time limit, and one I can predict pretty exactly now. I don't even use retarder because it drives me nuts if I don't feel the pull of drying paint at exactly the right point in a scumble. A friend of mine says I'm doing the same thing an airbrush artist does, but just making it much harder on myself, haha!

Well, that's a long reply but it means my blog entry for today is sorted. :)

StudioWaves, Drawing and Sketching

Welcome to episode 8!

Sketching and Drawing
An insight into my notebooks and different ways I sketch ideas

Click Here to Listen

Mentioned on this week's show:

• Muji passport sketchbooks
• Moleskine sketchbooks
• Making a Mark (Katherine Tyrrell)
• Terry Watts' paintings
• Anthony Gormley drawings - link to the talk and slides
• Humphrey Ocean drawings
• Dulwich Picture Gallery

"Not podcast day" & Blackgang

I've come to the realisation that Tuesday just isn't a good day to release the podcast. Sorry! I'm a slave to my own routines and since I tend to work over the weekends by Tuesday I'm about ready for a break, and take Wednesday off. Which just means I'm usually working a bit nonstop around the time I'm supposedly meant to edit the podcast.

Of course it's all arbitrary. Tuesday just happens to be the day I posted the first few. So henceforth it will be later in the week! That way I can spend my "weekend" day mid-week editing it, since the podcast is meant to be a bit of fun for me. Oh, and why work weekends? I don't know really but it works for me.

So instead of editing audio what have I been doing today? Pondering the Isle of Wight photos, in particular the Blackgang photos I took over the cliff edge.



I'm giddy with excitement about starting these! So much so that I've decided they need to be huge pieces, to match the place itself. So I'm ordering a set of 120x150cm canvases and really really hope they fit up the stairs and into the studio. (That's 48"x60" for you yanks.) I already think it needs to be a diptych.

The steps to Two Trees Island

First, a confession. I know I took more progress pics of this painting, but I think in my haste I thought I'd downloaded them from the camera and reformatted my disk before going to Isle of Wight. I now realise that I did download them from the camera, but since I wasn't going to post them I deleted them from my working images folder until I was ready to blog about it. So they were lost into byte heaven.

Still, I thought it worth sharing the few images, which give a nice contrast between the first underpainting layer of bright colours:


And the effect after many layers of glazing over the initial colours to harmonise the painting and soften the image:


After just a few more grey and blue glazes over the entire painting I had the final result, not a lot of difference from the previous image but in real life the changes are significant:


Two Trees Island is a real triumph for me. I'm so pleased to have gone from so many working ideas and sketches, through a failed canvas, to an entirely new size and composition. Next time a painting is struggling, or rather next time a idea gets put aside in the reject pile, I must remember that part of the problem might actually be one of scale.

Flick o' paint: Color as Field

I'm so excited, the Smithsonian American Art Museum is having an exhibition of colour field artists: Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975. Only through May 26th!

Of course, I can't make it to Washington DC but rather hope the exhibition will travel to London or Paris. Until then, I was very pleased to see there's a whole series of podcasts that have been produced for the exhibition by the AFA. Fantastic! I know the Tate does this too, and it's a trend I hope more galleries and museums will follow.

We Brits, however, can still catch the Coming of Age of American Art: 1850s-1950s at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, until June 8th. They also have a few podcasts online too!

Feet Up!

Okay, you might think I've run away and stayed on the Isle of Wight! Oooh, how tempted I was! But no, I'm back. Cogitating all the ideas in my head. Having about 175 photos developed. Cleaning the bike. (hahahaha, as if!) Unpacking, doing laundry, catching up. Apparently if I go away for three days southeast London starts to fall apart at the seems. Multiple phone calls from Skylark gallery (all the same message, clearly they're just completely disorganised). Manic last-minute design work needed from me. Urgent request to view paintings, so I got to varnish the day after I got back. A slew of open studios tasks and emails.

Can I just go back to the island now? Please? Thanks.

The trip was wonderful. And a huge shout out to Vintage Vacations who gave me accommodation at "The Shack" to fuel my creativity! I cycled the west side on the first day, from Thorness Bay down to the Needles, then over to Freshwater Bay before heading back. I had a little paddle in the sea at Freshwater, it was so hot out! I wouldn't have made it back if I tried to go along the Military Road; just by numbers the mileage was fine, but it was very hilly mileage.

The second day I cheated. What can I say, my butt hurt. So I cycled up to Cowes and locked up the bike then got an all-day rover ticket and hopped on a bus to Newport! Then took a double-decker bus down to Blackgang, which was certainly the highlight of the trip. Jaw dropping coast there (and all falling into the sea at a phenomenal rate, a local told me it was about 6 feet a decade). I was actually very glad for the bus ticket because most of this stretch of coast is footpath only, so I would have ended up cycling a lot of hillside without views, and having to walk the path anyway for any reward. From Blackgang to Ventnor, there to Sandown, then up to Ryde. (Unfortunately I couldn't quite catch the once an hour bus connection into Bembridge.) I sat on the seafront at Ventnor to put my feet up again and have my lunch.

A few very specific places and images are the first round candidates for paintings. I need to do a lot more sketches, then get the photos and work out some colour studies. But the strata at Alum Bay, the cliffs at Freshwater, the strange concrete sea barriers at Ventnor (sort of tetrahedron with conical points?), Blackgang (which I already think will be a series unto itself), and the sunset over Thorness Bay. Pictures to come during the week...

Somewhere on the isle....

Today I'm somewhere along this route ...

Riding, resting, getting sunburnt, finding coffee and cake, sketching, taking photos, possibly dipping in the sea!

And no doubt will be happy and exhausted by the time I get back to the Shack. Huge huge thanks to Vintage Vacations who are kindly hosting me for two nights in their shack on Thorness Bay.

Check them out! And in case you can't get enough of their wonderful retro goodness they have a blog and an Etsy shop too!