Learning to See Archives
Enjoying Practice For Its Own Sake
I don't usually make new years resolutions. It strikes me as a waste of time since so few of them are kept. At least, that's always been the case with me.
I'm breaking with my non-tradition this year though, and making one that I think is going to be easy to keep. In fact, I've already started doing it so I suppose I'm cheating a little. I'm just resolving to keep doing it for the rest of the year...
Meditations on Line: Dow Composition Practice, Chapter Two
Teaching yourself is very much like setting out on a journey with no idea of the final destination.
It can be an unsettling way to travel, but it has its advantages. For one, it leaves you open to the unexpected.
I'm currently working through the exercises in the book Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow, I have been for the last six months or so. These exercises have had an unexpected and quite profound effect on my thinking about why I make art and how I approach my daily practice. I want to try and share some of that with you in this post...
Regular Composition Practice: The First Post
It's 5:45 AM. I'm sitting cross legged on a cushion on the floor. Most of the world around me is still in bed; there are no cars on the street outside, no noise from the neighbours. Michelle is still asleep. In front of me on the floor is my little table easel with a pot of water, an ink-stone, an ink-stick and a Chinese brush. I have a few sheets of newsprint and tracing paper beside me ready to go.
I'm getting ready to do my daily composition practice...
If you want to get better at something you need to practise regularly. Of course you do. No-one would argue with that. But regular practice alone isn't enough. There are good and bad ways to practise.
My own experience of teaching myself to draw over the last few years has taught me this: Practise ineffectively, and you'll be putting in huge amounts of effort for very little reward. Practise effectively, and you can progress much faster than you would have thought possible with much less effort...
Posted 15 June 2011
That's Not Art, It's Just Copying What You See!
How many times have you heard this?
I know I've come across it a few times, it's a common criticism of what we might broadly call representational work that slavishly copying what you see isn't art. An either/or dichotomy is generally assumed between feeling and accuracy.
Leaving aside the "that's not art" part, it's the "copying what you see" part that really interests me, and is what I'm going to be talking about today with reference to a couple of recent self portrait drawings...
A New Non-Anatomical Approach to Human Form For Artists
I generally write about practical stuff these days, but I'm breaking with tradition a little here to write a short (well, about as short as they ever get for me) post about a new book on figure drawing by Ted Seth Jacobs. I don't have a copy of this book myself, and know only as much about it as can be read on the site devoted to it here. For that reason, this post isn't a personal review or a recommendation, it's more of a heads up...
Talent: Why You Should Stop Believing In It And What Will Happen When You Do
Recently the subject of talent was brought up in the comments of one of the posts.
Whilst I respect the views of the painter friend of mine that left that comment, it really gets my goat when people talk about talent. It just keeps coming up.
If you really want to wind me up, don't insult me or my work, tell me I'm talented. This post is as clear a statement as I know how to make on why I think that belief in talent, innate gifts, whatever you want to call it, is pernicious, defeatist and ultimately damanging to progress. It seems somehow apt that 'You can get it if you really want' by Jimmy Cliff is playing whilst I'm typing this. And I really didn't make that up.
"You must try. Try and try. You'll succeed at last." I'm with you Jimmy...
Posted 23rd December 2011
Composition: Some Possible Approaches to Learning Pictorial Design
Following on from the last post on composition, this post tries to organise a few thoughts on how learning composition can be approached by looking at how it has been dealt with in some well known writing on the subject.
There's also a little more about eye tracking and eye paths through the picture from Yarbus which is really interesting, and a bit of neuroscience regarding how we learn that'll probably send you to sleep. Or not...
12th December 2011
What Makes a Good Composition?
Can composition be learned? And if so, how?
Over the next few posts I'm going to try and answer those questions. It seems to me that a good place to start might be to try to reach some conclusions on what makes a good composition, to try to divine some basic principles of composition that can be learned and practiced...
14th November 2010
Out of My Comfort Zone: Three Portraits from Winter 2009
What happens when you go out of your comfort zone, when you're forced to let go of your usual methods and fly by the seat of your pants? Is it a recipe for certain disaster or are there some valuable lessons to be learned?
By looking at three recent portrait paintings, in this post I try to come to some conclusions about which aspects of my process are working for me and which I might need to rethink.
7th November 2010
Sight Size Self Portrait Sketch
Following on from the last series of posts of the Sargent portrait copy, in this post I apply the process I used for the Sargent copy to my own ugly mug. Who says you can't do self portraits sight size?
There's also a brief discussion of what E.H. Gombrich calls 'the beholder's share' and a discovery about how Bargue approaches darks, lights and half tones.
31st October 2010
Sargent Portrait Copy, Part 4: Light, Value and Form
Part four of my Sargent portrait copy exercise concentrating on form. In this final part of the series I start adding value in the form of light and shadow and finish the drawing - at least as finished as it's going to get.
If you get wound up when some one points out the shortcomings of working from photos you might want to skip this one.
28th February 2010
Sargent Portrait Copy, Part 3: Planes and Form
I've finally got round to posting the third part of the Sargent Portrait Drawing exercise. This part goes into developing the scaffolding from two dimensions to three dimensions, and developing a feeling for the form of the head. Whilst it might look like I'm going for the 'least frequently updated art blog' award, hopefully the length of time between posts won't leave this series too disjointed.
30th September 2009
AIDS Orphans in Kenya - How You Can Help
I hope you'll forgive me for writing a post which isn't about art for a change. This will probably be the first and last time. I want to draw your attention to the plight of AIDS orphans in one of the poorest parts of Kenya, and to the work of a charity I support which is trying to make a difference to their lives - and succeeding.
First, about the children...
16th September 2009
Sargent Portrait Copy, Part 2: Establishing the Main Shapes
In the last post of this series, I'd set up the easel (and then drivelled on at some length as usual), put in my central line and made the first few marks, establishing the main points of the head along the centre line. Now I can start to establish the size and overall shape of the head.
13th September 2009
This is the first in a series of posts which will go through my current approach to copying a portrait drawing. I'm doing it in the form of an exercise, which I hope will be useful to people, and so I'll be going into some detail as I go through it - even more than usual. The limitations of written content on the web as a medium might make for some long-ish explanations, but until I get hold of a webcam or a half decent video camera I'll do the best I can with words and pictures.
5th April 2009
Step by Step Painting Demonstration: Winter Chrysanthemums
It's a little while since I've done one of these step by step posts. This one covers the last painting I did before returning to full time work, and was originally intended to be the first of a series of flower paintings. The series is on hold indefinitely now, but writing this one up has reminded me of some aspects that I was intending to incorporate into the rest of the series, ideas about colour and design. It might be a little more difficult for me to paint flowers now, but revisiting this painting has started to get my creative juices flowing again, just a little. For the first time in a little while I'm starting to feel the call of the easel again.
22nd March 2009
A while ago someone said to me that they thought that a lot of my work was about balance. I thought it was an interesting comment, and an insightful one too. I do think that balance is very important in painting and drawing in a number of ways. The balance of the values is perhaps one of the most important, in fact its been something of an obsession of mine for some time now. Composition is an obvious one. Even if the composition is deliberately unbalanced, it's still about balance.
There are more general ways that the concept of balance is relevant too. Finding a balance between reproducing exactly what we see and the needs of the picture, for example, or the balance between technique and feeling. But today I'm thinking about balance from an entirely different point of view, because this past week I lost mine.
15th March 2009
More Train Drawings - the second Week
Two weeks into the new routine now and I think I might be starting to adjust. My 'practice time' spreadsheet is looking a little healthier this week at nine hours (last week was six) so things are heading in the right direction. Not quite the twenty I'm aiming for still, but I'm accepting now that it's going to take a little while to build up to that. Encouragingly, I wasn't completely wiped out this weekend and managed to get a bit of drawing done today along with setting up a new still life.
8th March 2009
Train Drawings - First Week of the New Routine
Unfortunately I've no time for anything more than a quick update today, but I'd rather get at least something up this week than nothing. Actually, that's been pretty much the story of my first week trying keep my practice going around my new job - a quick bit of drawing here and there, not much but better than nothing.
1st March 2009
Since I've got into the habit of rising early to paint I've come to love the mornings. The world is quiet at 6 AM and the day is still full of promise. Usually I'll be thinking about a painting I've got underway and wondering what part to work on next. Maybe I'll be starting a new one and tingling with the anticipation and excitement that that always brings. It's warm enough now to have the window open first thing and on this particular morning I'm sitting here as usual with a large strong coffee, enjoying the calm and the fresh morning air. The first hint of daylight is starting to creep into the room and I can hear the pidgeons cooing in the trees by the railway line at the bottom of the garden.
I like to hear the trains go by, taking the early commuters into London because they remind me how lucky I've been to be able to spend so many of my working days at an easel. I've spent plenty of time on those commuter trains myself. I know the routine and because I do I make a point of taking a little time every morning to count my blessings.
But today is different...
4th February 2009
More Head Drawings - Planes and Form
The drawings I'm posting today were done about a year ago I think. There's not a huge amount of them, but they were a bridge from the Loomis planes back to copies of old (and not so old) master drawings. But these drawings are certainly not copies in the usual sense. All I was interested in was the form, abstracted, in a sense, from the originals.
29th December 2008
Feeling the Form - Loomis and the Planes of the Head
It's a little while since I've posted any examples of the stuff I get up to apart from still life paintings. This post is picking up a thread that I dropped in April 2007, the Loomis head drawings. Most of the drawings in this post come from the year of no posts, but I'll update the site with what this practice has lead me to now in the next post, and so bring at least this thread back up to the present.
22nd November 2008
Small Pieces in Series - Breaking the Block
I remember when I first came back to regular drawing and painting again in 2005, there's a particular drawing that sticks in my mind, etched into my memory. It was a little self portrait drawing. I remember looking aghast at it when it was done, amazed at it's clumsiness, it's downright awfulness. That drawing in particular brought it home to me that I was going to have to completely retrain myself. I should try and find it again and post it, but it's probably buried somewhere in a vain attempt to forget that such an abomination ever flowed from the end of my pencil.
So I knew I had to start over, but where to start? I had no idea, but I had to make a start somehow, and I came up with the idea of setting myself to work through some short runs of series of drawings and paintings, just to get the pencil, the brush, my hand and my brain moving. That probably turned out to be the single most productive idea I've had.
11th November 2008
I've been giving a lot of thought to processes lately. If the recent results of my own trials and tribulations at the easel are anything to go by, the processes by which a painting is made have a great influence on the eventual result. Well, I suppose that's a pretty obvious thing to say, of course they do. But I'm thinking now not so much about particular techniques, but about mental approach. Or am I? Oh hell, lets just get on with the post and we'll see where we end up.
15th September 2008
Some Thoughts on the Sight Size Technique
Before I start, I should point out that this isn't going to be a 'how-to' post on working sight size. For that, see the step-by-step walk-through of a Bargue copy done sight size and also have a read of sight-size.com. This is more a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of sight size as I see them, replete with my usual meandering and wandering off the point. This is also a rather long post since I've used it as an opportunity to think a few things through for my own benefit. Hopefully some of it will be interesting and/or relevant to you too.
7th September 2008
What a week it's been. I'm exhausted.
A fortnight ago, friend and painter of exceptionally beautiful still lifes and landscapes Julian Merrow-Smith told me I should get my arse into gear and submit something for the Discerning Eye Exhibition. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Blissfully unaware of the chaos and confusion that lay in wait, I decided it was worth a try.
17th August 2008
The Lazy Man's Approach to sight Size
Things have moved on a little with the iron painting so it's time for an update. Today I've got a colour study to post, and a few photos of the set up for the final piece, which has just been started. Already I've run into problems and will have to start it again - par for the course in painting land it seems, at least for me. But more on that in a bit. First, here's the colour study:
10th August 2008
Things have moved on a little with the iron painting so it's time for an update. Today I've got a colour study to post, and a few photos of the set up for the final piece, which has just been started. Already I've run into problems and will have to start it again - par for the course in painting land it seems, at least for me. But more on that in a bit. First, here's the colour study:
18th July 2008
A few days ago (the 14th) my painter friend Erick sent me a message to let me know that it had been a year to the day since my last post. He wanted to know what was happening. The realisation that I hadn't posted for a year was just the kick up the arse I needed to make me get the new site finished. As you can see, it worked and I'm back. Thanks Erick.
15th July 2007
Coffee Pot and Lemon - Tone Studies Six
Having had quite enough of cubes and spheres after the last ten studies I dragged out my old coffee pot and a lemon for a few more. This coffee pot has already featured a few times in the series of tonal still life drawings. It's a good subject for these studies because it presents me with the full range from white across most of it's surface to black on the handle and lid. I have to do some drastic compression to paint it.
3rd July 2007
Munsell Tone Studies - Part Five
Now the starters are out of the way, it's time for the main course.
The original plan with these cubes and spheres was to paint each one in four different lighting conditions. Form light, the first, is three quarters in light, rim light is the opposite, three quarters in shadow. The other two are back light, with all the object in shadow, and front light, with no shadows. Time will tell whether or not I get the whole lot done. I'm half way through the first batch now, here they are.
3rd July 2007
Munsell Tone Studies- Part Four
Having been blessed with a series overcast days last week (which means no direct sunlight coming through the window in the afternoon) I've had the opportunity to move on somewhat with the tone studies.
For this batch I've been adding the odd real object to supplement the cubes and spheres. It's been illuminating.
25th June 2007
The cubes keep coming. I've now answered one or two questions I've had for a while about tone, and raised many more. There have been moments over the last few days at the easel when I've felt that this subject - translating light into paint - is too difficult to grasp. But like Magnus Magnusson, I've started so I'll finish.
The first and most important point I need to make today is that I've realised that I'd got my Munsell scale wrong in the last couple of posts.
18th June 2007
Munsell Cubes - A Tone Exercise (part 2)
This post follows on from last Saturday's, which was the beginning of some simple exercises with cubes painted in the Munsell neutral scale. Simple in that all I've done so far is paint three cubes, but I have a feeling that it was one of the most useful exercises I've done yet with regard to tone.
Having come up with a way of working out the relationships between the tones of the white cube, the most obvious next step was to put all three cubes together in one painting. That will extend the range further, and dramatically increase the number of tones to control. I planned to use the same system as I did for the white cube, but to be honest I was too excited and steamed straight in with what you might call guesses for the tonal relationships. I've never been good with numbers.
16th June 2007
Munsell Cubes - A Tone Exercise
For some time now I've been preoccupied with tone. The more I work with it, the more I become convinced that a well observed balance of tones is the key to creating a feeling of light, and by extension form. Frank Reilly reckoned that tones (well, being from the US he called them values) are 80% of a good picture. Who am I to disagree?
But I've been wrestling with a basic problem in painting for as long as I've been interested in tone: How to deal with the fact that the available value range from light to dark is much more narrow in paint than it is in nature. Today's exercises have finally convinced me that I've got the answer to that problem - or at least, one answer. This post is going to get a bit technical, and there'll be numbers involved. For that I apologise, but there's no avoiding it.
27th May 2007
Old Silver - Sugar Bowl and White Flower
Following on from yesterday's post of the first sketches of the old silver sugar bowl and spoons, I've now done two more sketches of the white flower in the sugar bowl.
The main problem I needed to address with these two sketches was how to make the white flower work in the painting as a white flower, whilst keeping the highlights of the silver as the lightest light by enough of a step up from the flower to make them read as bright, reflected light. The silver won't work if the highlights aren't convincing. Since these sketches are going to be worked up into a bigger painting, there's not much point in me going further with the planning of this painting unless I'm pretty sure I can make the values work.
26th May 2007
Continuing the theme of planning I dealt with in the last post, this post covers the early stages of the planning of a new painting.
The subject of this painting is a collection of old silver objects. I know, silver again. But I like to paint silver, especially old silver. Apart from it being very pretty, it represents quite a difficult challenge in terms of the values. For some time now, I've been concentrating on values, and I expect to do so for some time to come. I think it's important.
20th May 2007
Silver Vase - Planning a Painting
Some years ago I used to paint commercial murals, in theme pubs and the like. I can clearly remember the experience of my first big mural, largely because it was one of the most horrendous working experiences of my life - entirely of my own doing, I might add.
The space I had to fill was roughly twenty metres across, and the mural was to be the centrepiece for a themed cafe being built as part of a big refurb job, a huge warehouse being converted into a night club in Stoke on Trent. I had six weeks to do it, I was one of the last on the job, and holding up the opening was not an option.
7th May 2007
Bargue Plate 5 - Second Schematic
Finally, after ten or eleven hours work across several sessions, I've got this plate to the stage of the second schematic drawing.
At this stage, all the main points which define the drawing have been placed and joined. I can now start to get some idea of how close I'm getting with my copy. So far, it doesn't look too bad, but I'm sure that as I move to the next stage, refining the outline, I'll find lots of mistakes.
7th May 2007
These three drawings were done with about a month between each, and were each an attempt to construct a self portrait drawing using the Loomis approach to head construction.
It's interesting to see how differently they've come out. You certainly wouldn't think that they were all drawings of the same person. At least, I wouldn't. Distant cousins maybe.
30th April 2007
These sketches are a few more examples of heads based on the Loomis book, 'Drawing the head and hands'. All these heads have been constructed using Loomis' ball approach, which I covered in my last post.
I've included a selection here to show how much I struggled with getting a reasonable feeling of the form when I first started working with his book.
I thought it would be useful to cover some of the elements of the book here as I work through it.
14th April 2007
Constructing the head - Andrew Loomis
For the past couple of months I've been working through the beginning stages of "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Andrew Loomis.
There's any number of books out there, all promising to teach you to draw this most difficult of subjects. But since getting hold of a copy of "Creative Illustration" by Loomis, I've come to expect something special from his books. He has a way of boiling things down to their essentials and then presenting them in a clear and concise way. When it comes to teaching drawing, Loomis is the man.
I thought it would be useful to cover some of the elements of the book here as I work through it.
4th April 2007
Bespoke Framing - Two Paintings in Their Sunday Best
Framing. It's a ticklish business.
I hadn't given all that much thought to framing until I had to get these two paintings properly presented recently.
But the experience of getting them framed has shown me that the frame can make or break a picture.
I would never have thought that the type, character, tone and colour of the frame could not just make a difference to the overall impression, but actually affect what you notice in the painting and what your eye skips over. Even affect how the composition works. Scary.
31st March 2007
Old Bottle and Christening Cup
It's odd to be writing up this little sketch now, since it's at least two months since I did it. Quite often, if I don't get a piece of work up pretty soon after it's done I get bored with it and can't be bothered to write it up, it's history.
But I think it's worth posting because it's birth was quite interesting. The set up is exactly the same as the Wedgwood saucer, and in fact it was started at the same time. Only the viewpoint is different, which obviously makes for a very different composition. But this little painting started as an experiment with a new medium.
28th March 2007
Bargue Drawings - Plate Five - First Stage
It feels good to be back at a Bargue drawing again. This plate is going to be a challenge, being the first one to feature full modelling of light and dark, with half tones included. Bargue has supplied two schematic versions of the foot, and I'll be following this progression of building up the drawing.
Now that I feel I've got a reasonable idea of what I'm meant to be doing with these drawings, I'm going to make the write up for this drawing more in depth, covering the method I'm using in more detail. Hopefully the next few posts will serve as a good introduction to copying the Bargue drawings using the sight size technique. At least, as good an introduction as my limited experience will allow me to give.
12th March 2007
Andrew Loomis and the Form Principle
It's all about the light. That's pretty much been my mantra since I started retraining myself just over a year ago. Sometimes we get things right despite our best efforts to the contrary, and I must say I do think that I was right to put so much emphasis on light, right from the start.
Light shows us form, makes patterns of light and shadow and so produces design. It creates mood and expression, it's reflections create the colour we see and without it we can't see anything at all.
12th March 2007
Exercises for 2007 and the Form Principle
Work on a still life has kept me from posting for a while. It's been slow going but the painting should be done soon. I'll post it when it is, along with a few more paintings I haven't found time to put up yet. There's been a fair bit of drawing going on too, which will hopefully be posted soon, but this post is all about what's going to come next.
In my last post I reviewed the different kinds of practice I've done over the past year or so. I also said that the next post was going to describe the series of exercises I'm about to start in order to (hopefully) get to the next stage. So here it is.
21st February 2007
It's been a year and four months since I returned to drawing and painting. For the past few days, I've been doing a little painting and drawing, and a lot of mulling over things.
I've been giving some thought to what I've been doing: What has been useful, and what hasn't. I think it's time now for a reassessment of the way I've been approaching learning to draw and paint, and for a refocusing based on that assessment.
14th January 2007
Recently I've noticed that the days are starting to lengthen again. that's very good news for me, since I prefer to paint by natural light. Today was a bright, clear day, and it didn't get dark until after four. That meant that, after spending the morning doing some corrections on yesterday's painting, I reckoned that it was worth a stab at doing another small one today before the light went. After all, the paint was laid out and ready to go.
13th January 2007
It's interesting how much a different support can effect not only the painting itself, but how it's painted. This latest painting is on an MDF panel, as usual, but this panel is a bit special compared to my usual support. It's all in the priming.
All the paintings I've done so far (apart from the first few) have been done on MDF panels sealed and primed with plain old acrylic "gesso" primer. I've always been quite happy with the acrylic primer - but then I hadn't tried anything else. This panel is sealed and primed with four coats of real gesso - the traditional stuff, made with rabbit skin glue, whiting and a little white pigment.
11th January 2007
I remember reading somewhere years ago that, with physical exercise, it's better to do 20 minutes three days a week than it is to do an hour, all in one go, once a week. The same is true of drawing.
If, like me, you're working on improving your skills part time with a view to turning professional, you have to address the bread and butter problem. The time you can give to practice is limited.
If you suffer from this too, here's a simple idea for you which will allow you to keep your hand (and your eye and your brain) in without demanding too much time or requiring too much mental effort to get going. It does require a certain amount of self discipline, but if you don't have that then you're unlikely to improve in any meaningful way in any case.
3rd January 2007
Secret Mediums and Magic Bullets
Aspiring artists do love their magic bullets. This medium will help you paint like so-and-so. This revolutionary approach will unlock your creativity in only five days (if you order now). Simply apply this magic colour theory and you'll be painting masterpieces before you know it.
The rather more mundane truth is that the road to being a competent painter is a long and sometimes arduous one, a road which most people won't travel very far down before either giving up, or deciding that they have arrived at their destination and need to go no further. But we know different, right? We know that there are no short cuts.
1st January 2007
So here we are with the first painting of 2007. I'm now into the second year of my journey back to being a painter.
This painting is also a first since it's the first time I've used professionally made Maroger medium. I stress professionally made, since I made my own from raw ingredients last summer and the results, whilst serviceable, didn't compare to this version of the notorious Maroger.
27th December 2006
I'm giving the first part of this post over to Mr. Harold Speed. In case you didn't know, the good Mr. Speed was a gentleman painter hailing from good old Blighty, who wrote a rather impressive book called "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials", back in the nineteen-twenties when painters knew the difference between gesso and oil primer, and brushes were "lovingly sucked" after washing to help them keep their shape. No really, they were, Harold says so.
1st December 2006
This is the last of the tonal studies for November, and also the last (for the time being at least) in burnt sienna and ultramarine. I'm starting December with a brand new palette: raw sienna and ultramarine. Now don't get too exited, I know it's a big change, but I must be brave. I think I can handle it.
26th November 2006
I think I'm starting to hit my stride with this series now. This is the fifth painting done only with two colours: burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. Well, three colours if you count flake white too.
The composition for this one comes straight from one of the still life drawings, number 43, the bowl, teaspoon and shells.
originally, this was only going to be a grey study. I'm getting very interested in the range of greys I can produce with my simple two colour palette, and the subtlety that can be expressed with them. From deep warm shadows to cool lights, they can express form and light as well as any full colour palette.
16th November 2006
It's been a little over three weeks since the last update, and you know what that means - lots of new paintings.
The series of tonal studies is gathering pace. One more red and blue still life exercise, followed by a pretty awful full colour painting which came out so bad I did it twice, and seven tonal studies in raw umber and flake white, all hot off the easel and live on the site.
23rd October 2006
Generally speaking, I try to stick to my schedule of practice. But every now and again, something pops up that I really want to paint, and this was one of those times.
Last Thursday there was a French market in town, which turns up irregularly every few months. They have interesting stuff you don't normally see in the shops here. Like little clementines still with the leaves attached.
23rd October 2006
Blue and Red Clementine - Relative Tone Exercise
Attentive visitors will note that this is a repeat of the blue and red tonal exercise I did last weekend with my Adonis cast.
This version of the exercise is slightly more complicated, because this time I have strong local colour to deal with on the clementine. The Adonis cast was already monochrome, so much of the work was done for me. That said, I only really have one bright colour here, the green of the leaves being quite dull, so its really only a small step on. I plan to do one more of these exercises, with a range of strong colours in the subject, then I'll settle into a series of raw umber/white monochrome still lifes.
16th October 2006
Harold Speed - Elementary Tone Exercise
This painting is part of a two part tonal exercise in painting the same subject twice, once in blue, with a wide tonal range, and once in red with a much narrower range. The post linked there deals with that part of the exercise in more depth.
What I want to cover here is the method I used to build up the paintings, which I got from a book by Harold Speed called "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials".
16th October 2006
Blue and Red Adonis - Relative Tone Exercise
This exercise is part of my ongoing practice with tones, which started with the series of 100 still life drawings.
The general idea is to paint the same still life twice, once using only ultramarine (knocked back with a little raw umber) and white, and the second time using only cadmium red light and white.
7th October 2006
I mentioned recently that I've changed the way I think about painting and drawing. I've been wanting to get something up on the site about it, and the blow-by-blow description of today's little still life drawing of a bowl of walnuts is it. I won't repeat the whole thing here, but I will give a quick run down of what's changed and why, and what I intend to do about it. And then I'll probably ramble on aimlessly for a bit, like usual.
2nd October 2006
October is upon us already, September's song is over for another year, and time is still against me. It's not always easy to find the time to run a business, (albeit a small one,) draw four or five hours a day and keep the site updated. Sadly, the site has to suffer before either of the other two can.
It being a week and a half since the last update, the drawings have been piling up, and I've finally managed to get some of them up on the site today: a new self portrait and eight more of the 100 still life drawings series, bringing me to 35 - just over a third of the way through.
There's still two more (awful) self portraits to post, and six of Bargue's ears, I'll get those up when I can. Also, there's been a big change in the way I think about seeing, drawing, and painting, which I'm fairly itching to write about. Coming soon to a blog near you.
19th September 2006
This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, and is a public apology to Mr. Graydon Parrish from a snot-nosed Brit who has been less than complimentary about his excellent book. A few weeks ago, I got a very nice email from Graydon, who collaborated with Gerald Ackerman on the publication of the Bargue Drawing Course book. I wrote a review of the book not long after I first got hold of it, and was pretty critical of it in some aspects. Read the review linked above to see for yourself.
18th September 2006
10th September 2006
Ordinarily, I'm skeptical of self development books and the like. I'm skeptical of any approach which promises to be a "magic bullet" for learning any skill. There are no short cuts, especially when it comes to representational drawing and painting. My experience of returning to drawing and painting after a ten year gap has taught me that. These days, any time anyone tries to tell me different, my bullshit detector goes off the scale.
5th September 2006
I don't know what happened to August, it just disappeared. Well I do know, I got married, which meant a lot of time running around organising things, some time partying, and then some more time recovering. But that doesn't really explain why I did almost no work last month. Regardless, now I'm back, and I've got a bee in my bonnet about tone ('value', for those of you in the US).
1st August 2006
The Danger of Getting Complacent
Just when I think I'm getting somewhere, just when I think that all the practice is paying off and I'm finally getting better, my utter lack of talent and self discipline jumps up and bites me hard on the arse.Ok, maybe that's a little harsh, but I'm deeply annoyed with myself at how badly I messed my latest portrait drawing up.
31st July 2006
28th July 2006
There's been a few things gone up on the site recently though, three more flower paintings, three more noses, and my first self portrait since I came off my line only diet.
15th July 2006
This is just a quick post to say sorry to everyone who's emailed me recently that I haven't replied to yet. It's not that I don't appreciate your emails, I do. The connections I'm making with other painters through this site mean a lot to me. Please don't stop emailing me because I don't get back to you straight away.
9th July 2006
A bit of drawing and a bit of painting this week. There's a yellow rose, which I had to do twice before I got anywhere near, some more cafe sketches and four more noses.
1st July 2006
Or start of July update, depending on your point of view. Although I've been very lax with site updates this month, I've been working away in the back room, mostly painting, although with the odd drawing thrown in too.
There's been another nine paintings since the last update on the 4th of June, bringing me to eleven paintings this month. I'm pretty pleased with that. One of them took 6 days too, so it's not a bad pace. Drawing-wise, things have stayed quiet. I've finished off the series of twenty eyes and finally got back to the cafe today, but apart from that I've just been painting.
4th June 2006
It's been a week of ups and downs at the Foxton atelier. The drawings have slowed, in fact they've stopped. I've just realised today that I haven't done a drawing for over a week, apart from cafe sketching. I should throw myself out of my class. I'm not beating myself up too much though because the paintings are going pretty well at the moment. I'm trying out a few things which, uncharacteristically, seem to be working.
28th May 2006
I've also finished the twenty hand drawings series. I worked out it took me two and a half months to draw them. A bit on the slow side.
22nd May 2006
21st May 2006
Actually they're not all strictly cafe drawings this time, since one was done on the train, one on the tube (Bakerloo line,) and one in the Hammersmith Apollo.
These three drawings were done on a trip into town to see Jose Gonzalez play. It was a nice evening, but I didn't get much done in the way of drawing. Trains, rowdy bars and dark theatres aren't the best places to practice.
20th May 2006
These drawings happened in a little run around the end of April. I was pushing because I had a feeling that something was about to come through, as a result of working just in line, and I wanted to keep going till I got it.
19th May 2006
These paintings are number nine and ten of the ten single objects series. Both of them I enjoyed and I'm pretty happy with them, but mostly I'm interested in what happened in the last one, the bottle. It's my first sight-size painting, and I used a medium with the paint. Both these things together have got me pretty exited, I'm hoping that the next series of paintings will show why.
23rd April 2006
After deciding to draw only with line, I've been doing some more of the features series and self portraits. They've been taking some time to do and are mostly slightly strange in one way or another. The official version is that the drawings have to get worse before they can get better. The unnofficial version is that I'm a bit bemused by them.
A welcome and much needed release has come from a copy of a Sargent portrait drawing and my first trip to the cafe for two weeks.
18th April 2006
17th April 2006
This paint comes highly recommended though. Michael Harding's oil paints are hand made, apparently he taught himself how to make paint when he was at art college, his web site gives the impression he enjoys his work.
12th April 2006
It's brought something home to me this week, and that's how important it is to slow down mentally enough to look at what I'm drawing properly. If there's pressure for time, or I'm trying to rush ahead, I draw badly because I haven't seen what I'm drawing. The Bargue drawings are teaching me patience, the cafe drawings are too, although in a different way. I think I need to make a conscious effort to slow down before I start to draw. I've been thinking about doing Betty Edward's hand drawing exercise before I draw to get me relaxed and into the zone first. I need to slow down to seeing pace.
4th April 2006
29th March 2006
It's all about the light.
18th March 2006
Cafe regulars and the Bargue Drawing Course
Life got in the way again over the last two weeks and I haven't found as much time to draw as I'd like. It would be very nice if I didn't have to earn a living and could just sit around drawing all day.
I did get down to the Cafe Nero again yesterday though, which turned out to be a pretty good trip, maybe because I had my new boots on.
5th March 2006
An onion and some more drawings
A few studies to put up today - the product of the last four days. Six cafe sketches, three eyes, my Van Dyck copy is finished and the first painting for three months - a little onion.
1st March 2006
Although I was feeling a bit dissatisfied with today's trip, (I only managed three drawings,) now I'm home and looking over what I did I'm fairly pleased.
It was very quiet in the cafe today, I must remember that Wednesday is a quiet day, much better to do a mid-week trip on a Thursday since it's market day and the cafe will be busier. Despite that, the three drawings I did do have turned out ok.
26th February 2006
19th February 2006
It never ceases to amaze me how desperately wrong I can get things sometimes.
Back in November 2005, when I started this site, I wrote in my 'about' page how I wanted to get my skills back as quickly as I could, to get back to being a full time painter again. Full of enthusiasm, and fresh from the decision to get back to painting, I wanted to get away from my current business and back to full time painting in as short a time as I possibly could. I thought I could hot-house myself back in record time.
Wrong.
18th February 2006
Again, a very enjoyable couple of hours lying in wait for unsuspecting shoppers. In fact, the vast majority of the time on these trips is spent waiting for a likely subject, trying to find people who are interesting to draw, and don't move about too much. Some people will stay reasonably still for five or ten minutes, others can't keep still for more than a second or two.
10th February 2006
I think I might just be getting somewhere...
9th February 2006 - quick on the draw
A couple of updates for today, I've done my second nose drawing, from life this time, and have just got back from my second cafe sketches trip.
6th February 2006 - what a hooter!
4th February 2006 - eye to eye
Start of a New Series, Twenty Eyes
In my recent reassessment of how I was doing and where I was going wrong I decided that I was going to start some new series of features, eyes, noses and mouths. This is to get me away from self portraits, away from the psychological over-involvement they seem to entail, away from getting too involved with trying to create finished drawings too soon, and to put the enjoyment back into drawing for me.
4th February 2006 - no more coffee, please...
My first cafe sketches expedition! I have to say I really enjoyed myself today. The drawings aren't great, but considering I had between two and five minutes to do each one I'm not unhappy with them.
Hardly anyone noticed I was drawing, apart from an observant little boy ("Daddy, that man's drawing!") and a small party of old folks sitting near me who I noticed craning over to look at my sketchpad when I was getting my second coffee.
2nd February 2006 - getting with the program
After my last self portrait went horribly wrong, I decided it was time for a re-think. I've been drawing and painting again for just a shade over four months now, so this seems like as good a time as any for a reassessment of where I'm headed and how I'm doing.
28th January 2006 - Close but no cigar
Where to start with this one?
I'm deeply, deeply disappointed with this drawing. Mainly because I really thought I had something going on when it was about half way through, I thought it was going to be a real progression, the best one yet by a wide margin, and it isn't.
27th January 2006 - Good drawing day
Four hands and a new self portrait
Today (the 26th) was pretty productive. Four more drawings for the twenty hands series, and the beginning of a new self portrait drawing. It was one of those days when I felt fired up and just had to draw something, even though I had other stuff I was supposed to getting on with.
Not all the drawings were particularly good today, but I did enjoy doing them, and it felt good to make some progress through the current series.
23rd January 2006 - Bad drawing day
Not every drawing can be a good one
Over the weekend I did three more hand drawings, which is pretty good I guess, and made an attempt to do some drawings of Michelle. I left the drawings of Michelle a bit late though I think, It was a busy weekend and I didn't start them until ten o'clock Sunday night, by which time I think I was probably too tired to do a good job of them.
18th January 2006 - up from the depths.
A bad nightmare and a new self portrait
Last night I had the worst nightmare of my entire life. It knocked me for six, and it's still skulking around in the corners of my brain today, I can't seem to shake it off.
Bear with me, this willl relate back to drawing eventually...
17th January 2006 - that's handy.
New Series: Twenty Drawings of Hands
Drawing hands is very good practice. Hands are an odd shape, an intricate collection of muscles and bones, which makes them quite difficult to draw convincingly. This series is about practicing my drawing (and seeing) technique on something less personaly involving than self-portraits.
26th December 2005 - It's all over.
End of project: a self portrait a day until Christmas
I missed five days, so only fifteen drawings and not twenty.
Today I got all the drawings out and put them up on the wall side by side. It's interesting how much the standard varies. Overall I can see an improvement from the first few to the last few, which is good news, but the progression hasn't been a straight line. Quality wise, they zig zag up and down.
21st December 2005 - My Girl.
These were done one after the other last Saturday, the 17th.
The first one took about an hour and a half and is the worst of the three, both from a drawing and a likeness perspective.
The second one took about half an hour, looks a little bit like Michelle and is (for me) the nicest drawing of the three.
Number three took about half an hour too, is the best likeness, but the drawing annoys me, too scrappy. It could easily have been much nicer than it is.
20th December 2005 - Make it so, number one.
Eleventh in the series - a self portrait a day until Christmas.
Five days and no self portrait. Not good, but sometimes life gets in the way. Of course that means that I'll be down to 15 drawings at the end of the project instead of 20, which is disappointing, but it can't be helped. I did some drawings of Michelle last weekend so it's not so bad.
14th December 2005 - Egghead
More Portrait Drawing Proportions
Artists have been doing this drawing for hundreds of years I guess. Most of the proportions of the human head were worked out during the Renaissance, and by and large they appear to be right.
12th December 2005 - How do I measure up?
I've just been reading chapter 10 of 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain', where author Betty Edwards...devotes a lot of space to determining the proportions of the head, drawing (heh) attention to a few which are generally common to all faces, and need to be right in a portrait:
6th December 2005 - New Project
A self portrait a day until Christmas
Even if it's just a 30 minute sketch, I'll do a self portrait a day until Christmas. That'll make, erm, 20 drawings I think. It'll be very good practice.
4th December 2005 - Two Pomegranates
Latest painting is Two Pomegranates.
It's been over a week since I've had a new painting post, it feels good to be putting this one up today.
I'm especially happy because I think this represents a small step forward.
2nd December 2005 - Right Brain Drawing
Look at this picture. What do you see? Abstract shapes or can you see a representation of something you know from the real world? I know what it represents, so it's impossible now for me to see it fresh. I'm guessing you've probably twigged it too.
If you have recognised what this is a picture of, then don't congratulate yourself too much. That's exactly what you don't want to do...
29th November 2005 - Left Brain Right Brain
Drawing is a right-brain activity
Today I bought a book called 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain'. Drawing has been occupying my thoughts more the last few days while I haven't been painting. I stopped in the bookshop and saw this book, and was reminded of something I came across yesterday about right brain and left brain thinking when I was writing about More.
You know, connections...
28th November 2005 - Seeing colour
I was just looking out of the window. It's a nice morning, bright and cold with some high cloud. I was thinking how nice it would be to do a series of quick little studies of the trees at the bottom of the garden, through the winter and into the spring. A nice test of catching different light conditions without having to go out into the bloody cold...
23rd November 2005 - Cantaloupe
Most recent painting is Cantaloupe.
An experiment with washes for reflected light, this painting meant a bit of a departure from the usual method. I also used thinned paint for the floorboards to prevent me from getting overly involved in the details of the wood grain. I'm relying on the faithfullness of the colour (my floorboards really are that orange, in the right light anyway) and the brush strokes to define the wood.
22nd November 2005 - Three Small Plum Tomatoes
Most recent painting is Three Small Plum Tomatoes.
This one is about half the size of the previous paintings, but instead of constricting it was kind of liberating. The size, along with the time limit set by the rapidly fading light, helped me to see this one as just a sketch. That enabled me to work a little more freely and kept me from getting hung up on producing a finished painting.
This is, imho, a good thing, since it means I can work faster, produce more paintings and therefore learn faster, which is what this project is all about.
19th November 2005 - Conker, Orange and Cup
Most recent painting is the Conker, Orange and Cup.
My old friend the conker from Cortona puts in a cameo appearance alongside new blood, the orange and cup. A considerable improvement over the last two efforts, there were a couple of minor method changes with this one.
16th November 2005 - Lemon round 2
Most recent painting is the Lemon and Cloth.
The post might be interesting because it shows the painting at various stages. It means I get to see exactly where I started screwing up, which I suppose is a good thing.
I'm not so convinced its a good thing to be posting it on a web site today though. Here it is anyway in all its lemonness.
15th November 2005 - This one really is a lemon
Most recent painting is the lemon.
This one didn't go so well.
12th November 2005 - Carrots and Squash
Most recent painting is the carrots and squash.
This one is a big departure from the previous four in approach and technique. I got my 'method' together in this painting, so its like the beginning of the journey. I think its a pretty good start.
12th November 2005 - Site launch
I've been away from painting for a long time, about ten years, but really I gave up before that. The feeling has been growing on me for a while that I should get back to it, like an itch I havn't been able to scratch. Now I've started painting again and its like breathing fresh air. I'm going back to the start to learn what I thought I knew in the first place but didn't - how to paint. I'm going to cover everything I didn't learn at art college about materials and techniques, and stretch myself as far as I can go.
This site is a record of my progression, in paintings and drawings.
