MIND Aberystwyth

So yesterday (after a break of a few weeks while feeling poorly) I managed to make it back to MIND and do some painting. 

RbaArt Protograph: Watercolour with top surface paper removal

This one was completed using Cotman student quality watercolour paint on watercolour paper. The image was constructed with two layers of wet-on-wet paint.  The second layer after the first layer had dried.  Only six colours were used.  Cerulean Blue, Cobalt blue, Light Red, Paynes Gray, Raw Sienna, and a purple thingy. Sorry about the technical term, but I can't recall the name of the last half pan.  It would have been five colours, but alas the singke blue didn't work alone and another one had to be found. Mind you, there were about forty eight half pans in the tin, so I think that I done well in deciding to limit my palette! 

A stiff palette knife was used to indent the paper when it was wet, and the sharp edge if that particular palette knife was used to lift the paper as it dried.  Finally, a scalpel was used to lift more of the paper to expose bits of the clean white layer underneath after all of the painting was done.

Twilight Colours

I'm fortunate enough to now own and enjoy using a significant range of Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolour paints.  But one of my favourite colours is a tube of Sanguine Red from their Twilight Colours range. 

Photograph: Winsor & Newton Twilight Colours 

The keen eyed amongst you may have noticed that particular colour popping up in my recent A5 sized Elephant image.  Sanguine red has a real vibrancy to it.  I'm also using half pans in the main, and I know that half pans are semi-moist.  So I expected tubed watercolour paint to dry out and be unusable.  But for some reason that's not the case, and dried paint on the palette re-works when water is added with the brush. 

African Elephant

All framed and ready to gift. Watercolour on 12 x 16 inch Arches rough Block using a variety of mark-making techniques.  The frame was off the shelf at Wilko. 

ArtRba Photograph: Elephant in watercolour 

(Don't forget, if the image is cropped, click on the photo for full size) 

Malta and the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year 2016

Well not being part of this years; "Sky Landscape Artist of the Year" (2016) Competition, doesn't stop me whittling up my interpretation of a Maltese landscape.

ArtRba Photograph: Malta, Acrylic on plywood.

(Click on the image if needed to open it up full size)

Whilst this one was finished earlier today and ready to be gifted to a friend; I have several other pieces of art currently on the go. Well, I sort of write 'several', almost tongue in cheek.

There's an A4 ish sized watercolour of Venice, in which I am about 3.5 hours in, when I just had to set it aside and wait until I'm back in that zone.  There's the construction lines for something around A3 size, depicting the Old College and Sky from a close and low viewpoint.  This one will be drawn and painted using Inktense Pencils.  There's another Inktense and Watercolor Image of an African elephant on 14 x 10 paper, but alas like the others this is also unfinished.  There's something around 10 x 8 in watercolour of the Thames and one or two bridges.  Setting this one aside created a problem, as the dried masking fluid tore the expensive paper and damaged the surface.  In the soft pastel range; I have a portrait (yes unfinished) and a landscape which I set aside half way through.  There's also a repaired huge canvas that nothing has been done on, and there's the detailed 'Grand Canal' scene in Inktense that turned from being a 'labour of love' into just labour.  

So 'pushing on' with the Malta image over the last few days has been a rewarding experience.  Using a palette knife can be so liberating.  Better still; the image fits in with some mark making stuff that I've been doing.

Landscaping in Palette Knife

Well, to link in with the theme of the last post.  Which is something that I haven't done for a while.  It's only fair to mention that my feeble attempt at applying for the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year Competition 2016 was a failure.  None of us like rejection, and like many others I felt the full force of the disappointment.

It took courage to decide to enter, and to find amongst my shed load of art, some pieces worthy of consideration.  It took even more courage to fill in the convoluted Application Form.  Only to find out that my chosen image sizes were all wrong for the Online Entry.  It all became a tad stressfull, and I debunked from the process and paid someone to re-photograph the art and thereafter produce it in a file size that lay between the minumim and maximum megabytes permitted.  Before regaining the courage to submit the work and press 'Send'.

I don't regret the Landscape Artist process, because I gave it my best shot.  My unworthy submissions included a watercolour of the wake of a cruise ship leaving Venice, a mixed media scene of Venice with some washing hanging out that was not too disimilar to the scenes that were often painted by Whistler (but I hasten to add, that I'm no Whistler), and a pencil drawing of a sunken boat, that was included to simply show that I could draw. 

What would I enter today, if indeed the Sky Landscape Artist Competition was beginning instead of currently broadcasting weekly on television?  I think that it's a given; that my 'after' Turner, 'Fishermen at Sea' painting (which I completed in acrylic), would be my 'prove that I can paint and draw image'.  The pastel drawing on the watercolour base of a sort of Aberdyfi scene would be a likely contender, along with my charcoal take of John Piper's 1939 sketch of 'the Lower Pirian Falls' on the Hafod Estate in Wales.  Maybe the Inktense Pencil drawing of the coastal light house scene would appear instead of the Aberdyfiesque image.  I don't really know, as it's all choices, and I'm not particularly good at making them.

The thing being; that my failed attempt consisted of a watercolour, a pencil drawing, and a mixed media of mono printing, chalk, and ink.  Whereas a current attempt would consist of an acrylic painting, a charcoal drawing and either a soft pastel over watercolour or an Inktense Pencil drawing.  Now, I don't think that you can get more diverse than that!  And in many ways that diversity sort of sums up where I am with the arty thing at the moment.

If it isn't Inktense Pencils, then it's watercolour.  If it isn't watercolour, then it's watercolour markers.  And if the markers aren't out, well that means that maybe the soft colouring pencils are.  But that doesn't mean that the Acrylics have been put away.  Nope, good old 'Cryla' and its variants get an occasional run out as well.

Here's the current piece being worked up in Palette Knife, using Acrylic on Gesso prepared Plywood.  

ArtRba Photograph: Palette knife on board 

Although the larger areas have been completed, in many ways this image is still in its initial stages.  There's a fair bit of artistry that needs to be applied to the central theme. And as such the amount of work left to do; will far outweigh the time taken to get to this stage.

Art In The City

Or is that ArtRba in the City?

I had a lovely weekend in the City, meeting up with family.  I even managed to get in a painting, which was a huge bonus. 

Here's yesterday's artwork (completed in Duke Street Caffè Nero) after breakfast in the city and then some shopping. It's on Bockingford cold pressed acid free 300 gsm (10 x 7 inch) traditional watercolour paper. Using professional quality Winsor & Newton; Winsor Blue Green Shade (one of my favourite colours), Lemon Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ivory Black, and Yellow Ochre. Albeit the yellow ochre was more about the horizon.

In general terms (unless you're trying to create deliberate angles and cropped sections of a scene, or close in on the action on the high seas) water is self levelling and the horizon should be flat.  Which is fine if you have a ruler or have marked out the backing card of another watercolour block or pad, but is a tad awkward if you've got nothing to use, including no pencil.  At which point I used the end cap (without the water of course) of my watercolour Field Box, and dabbed Yellow Ochre here and there as I moved the cap along inline with the edge of the paper.  I then joined up the dots when I started on the sea part of the painting.  This meant some yellow ochre showing through on the horizon, which I overcame by using yellow ochre in a few places elsewhere on the sea.

Photograph: Cormorant in flight across the bay

All rights reserved RBA Bennett, i.e. ArtRba 

I bough the Bockingford pad from a lovely Art Shop called Pen & Paper in if I recall correctly, the Royal Arcade. I always buy something in there whenever we visit, as it's very important to support specialist high street shops who have to compete against Internet prices.  The thing is; once they're gone, they're gone, and I defy you to obtain the level of knowledge these Art Shop owners have elsewhere. Yes you may occasionally save a few bob, but you don't always guarantee original or even new stuff, and the subtle difference pays for itself. 'How?' I hear you ask.  Well, it's simples, all that knowledge that you squeeze out each visit, is free of charge, which is gobsmackingly cheap compared to the cheapest adult Art Courses at more often than not £100 a pop. 

South Beach, Aberystwyth

And here is today's output with my new Watercolour Field Box!

It's on a Langton Prestige 'Fine Grain' COLD watercolour paper Block.  Using my new travelling Filbert brush that I mentioned in a previous post, and the small travelling brush that comes with the Winsor & Newton Field Box.

Photograph: South Beach, Aberystwyth

(Painted outdoors at the location) 

ArtRba

I used Winsor Blue Green Shade for the sky and the sea, and mixed that with Winsor Yellow for the hills to the left and distance.  Yellow Ochre was used for the harbour wall.  Aliz Crimson mixed with Winsor Blue G/S for the foreground pebbles, with a deeper mix for the ones closer to the shoreline.  The same mix was used as shadow on the harbour wall, the small self contained lighthouse at the end of the wall, the sailing boat and the breaking waves.  Burnt Sienna provided some of the driftwood detail on the pebbles, and some contrast in pebble colour.

This one took about two hours to paint.  A lovely two hours sat in the chair that Mrs B recently bought me and wearing my floppy sun hat that one of my daughters bought me for using when out and about painting.

Interestingly, I kept my sunglasses on and didn't wear my reading glasses for painting.

Venetian Watercolour

This is today's output so far. The art was started while we were on holiday after I gave away a painting that Pauli liked. Drawing the Venetian scene using Yellow Ochre and a Daler Rowney Aquafine 10/0 'Liner' brush took about one and a quarter hours. It is painted on a 14 x 10 inch 'Lana' cold press 300 gsm fine grain watercolour block.  A block has many sheets of watercolour paper gunned down on all four edges so that you paint on the upper sheet and when dry detach that sheet from the block.  It means hassle free watercolour painting, without the need to tape the paper down onto a larger board. 

On this occasion, I'm using Winsor & Newton Artist Quality watercolours:

Winsor Blue Green Shade

Winsor Lemon

Raw Sienna

Yellow Ochre

If you can't see the whole photograph, click on the image and it should open full in your browser.  Blogger often crops photographs unless you resize them (small) in the full Windows online version of the page.  The photograph shows the three distinct stages of this artwork to get where I am now.

I've imaged the boat using a WH Smith watercolour pencil of no distinct labelled colour (when producing cheap pencils, they have to cut down on production costs, so they don't label them).  

The plan when dry is to detail the sea with the Winsor Blue G/S and the boat in green (mixed with the Winsor Blue G/S and the Winsor Lemon) and Blue Black.  The watercolour pencil outline of the boat, should in the main, wash out.  That's the joy of using watercolour pencils to map out the whole or part of a watercolour image.  

The shadowing on the buildings etc., will be my usual mixture of Prussian Blue and Venetian Red. Well, with a scene of Venice, Venetian Red just sort of has to be used, doesn't it? 

Turner 'Fishermen at Sea' artwork update, and my L'Hermione painting

I've had some lovely help with my research to establish the detail in the Turner, Oil on Canvas 'Fishermen at Sea' painting.  The National Library of Wales responded by mentioning that there are reproductions of the image in some published books on Turner.  For example, the image is shown full page and in colour in 'The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner; Plates', by Martin Butlin & Evelyn Joll.  Published for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Tate Gallery by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984.  They even included the Shelf Number.  And those who know me, will know that I hold a Readers Ticket. So, I'm popping along to look at that plate tomorrow or early next week.

Meanwhile, the equally lovely people at the Tate; also sent me a reply.  My point of contact (for which I am extremely grateful) seemed keen to assist me in viewing with greater clarity what was described as "this atmospheric night scene".  The lovely lady included for my interest, the catalogue entry for this 1796 "work which notes a contemporary account commenting that 'the figures, by not being more distinct and determined, suit the obscure perception of the objects, dimly seen through the gloom of night, partially illumined.'  This catalogue entry is from 'Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984'. . ." 

Which of course coincidentally is the same book referred to by the National Library of Wales.  And true to her word, the Tate contact promised to send me "by post a colour photocopy of the accompanying plate which does appear lighter than our online image, and you may be able to see more detail of the second boat."  That image arrived the other day.

Isn't it lovely when two National institutions simply come up trumps, when on both occasions there was no obligation to do so? I'm well chuffed, and with my "Hommage à L' Hermione" now framed and on the wall in my Man Den (see photograph below), it's now time to turn my attention back to my attempt at Turner's "Fishermen at Sea".  Although, unlike the original; mine is acrylic (Cryla, Lefranc, Winsor & Newton) on the awesome Daler Rowney A4 Acrylic Paper.

Photograph: "Hommage à L' Hermione"

Acrylic on Acrylic Paper

Rba 2016, All Rights Reserved 

I really like the catalogue entry; 'the figures, by not being more distinct and determined, suit the obscure perception of the objects, dimly seen through the gloom of night, partially illumined.' 

As the original catalogue entry fits in with comments already received about my attempt in progress.  My friend Mario, called the work 'beautiful', and when I mentioned working up more detail, he was bemused.  Mario explained that the vagueness of the figures added to the impact of the painting.  But of course vagueness of the figures must include an attempt to determine and then replicate how many there are in each boat.  Otherwise it wouldn't be a true attempt at copying (and thereby learning) from the astonishing "Fishermen at Sea" painting.  

If anything, my work to date on the Turner piece, has given me the confidence to paint in acrylic in a distinct manner that for me is not too dissimilar from watercolour, and is certainly a huge step up from my glut of acrylic paintings that have ben completed over the last few weeks.  The "Hommage à L' Hermione" piece being a prime example.

Maybe this approach is something that can be considered by those of you who are aspiring artists or new to a particular media; pick one of your favourite artists and in some way (even if only an abstract of a portion of an image) have a go at repeating the process yourself.  Yes, like me, you will probably get a lot wrong, but in doing so you will probably learn new techniques and gain in confidence.    

Seascape imaged

So this is how the seascape (shown in an earlier Blog Post) eventually ended up looking like when using Winsor and Newton professional quality Watercolours applied onto Sennelier Pastel Paper. The watercolor painting is approximatel 25cm high by 63cm long. It's our intention to mount the Artwork using White Mounting Board and to surround that with an Oak Frame ready to hang above the bed in our Guest Bedroom. 

The restricted space between the Dado Rail and the Bedroom Ceiling in that part of the room; is the reason for the deliberate narrowness of the image. Some of the colours were used for the Watercolour to compliment the color of items bought for the room make-over, now that the room has become vacant. 

As usual, I can't put myself under too much pressure when doing these sort of tasks. So the redecorating has already taken many weeks, instead of a day or two.  I've managed to fill the holes, and today I got around to eventually painting the ceiling.  I now have to build myself up to painting the walls.  We are thinking, take tomorrow out and instead do some art at 'MIND Aberystwyth' and go for a coffee, and then see how I feel on Wednesday.  If not Wednesday then Friday might be a DIY Day.  But Wifey understands that Friday could even turn out to be next week or the week after.  But in between all that DIY and pressure sort of stuff, I shall try to complete a Soft Pastel Drawing image of the same scene and using the same type and size of Pastel Paper. But I am enjoying using watercolours and I am already on the look out for some new Kolinsky Sable Art Brushes. I also intend to buy a sheet of watercolor paper, having today been told the difference between 'hot press' and 'cold press' paper.  I want to paint some butterfly's and I'm also keen to paint eight or ten leafs (in two rows, one above the other) without a background. Don't ask me why, because I simply don't know.  But there you have it, this is where the art direction is going at the moment. And before you know it, the art will probably be placed back inside a box (metaphorical not actual) and I shall move onto something else. Which of course is what we do when we need and use such defensive mechanisms.