A Spot of Sunshine

I've started painting this because I need it on my wall somewhere. I love it already with the way it's drawing me in to its heat (white hot!) and throwing out a few ripples of molten sunshine.

Not far to go now with a few adjustments to the blending. I've painted it in oils: fabulously dense pigment.

I think we all need a spot of sun on our walls.

Sunshine and Open Studio

Photos on here have been sparse recently but too many grey days have not thwarted my creative endeavours, just changed the activities to suit the light. When painting, I use an ordinary high wattage, low energy (if that makes sense) light bulb plus a similar thing in a 'Daylight' bulb. The two together seem to make the right light.

I've created a focal point for the winter months and have started advertising a Special Open Studio event on Sunday 21st February, 10am - 6pm when people can drop in any time and see my work and hopefully buy something.

I've been preparing Giclee prints of some of my larger pictures so that they are smaller and can be framed in the conventional way to match customers' existing collections of pictures on their walls. I've got many pastel drawings/paintings (never know which to call them) and have even started doing some small canvas wall-plaques which are very lightweight and hang like a tapestry from a piece of bamboo.

Today we have brilliant sunshine, blue skies and blinding white snow underfoot, again! I might try taking some photos of my pictures but there could be too much light with glare and reflection. The challenges for an artist are never-ending.

Sketching ideas and resisting realism

I do love walking in the countryside and along the coast, and I take many photos along the way and sketch the feel of some of the places from memory and imagination afterwards - sometimes straight after, sometimes months afterwards. It's the feel of the place that is important in my paintings and I don't really want to create a pristine replica of what I saw and what everybody else can see (if only they'd walk too).

We were given a Digital Photo Frame for Christmas and it sits quietly in the lounge flicking through photos that are far more interesting than what's on telly. So here's an idea - and it can be adapted for use with an ordinary 'slide show' on a computer. Set the slides to change every ten seconds or maybe 15, whatever suits you, and sit with your smallest sketchpad and a soft pencil, making rapid drawings of the compositions that appeal to you or which most stand out.

If you have the slides on a continual repeat then you can return to any drawings that need a bit of a reminder about colour or composition. For the above painting (at the underpainting stage shown above) I had written notes on the drawing to remind myself of the sharp contrast between sky and trees, and the importance of the angles of the fence posts in the foreground.

You'll soon see the finished painting on Affordable British Art : I think it will be called 'Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles', after a poem by W.H Auden.

The rapid-fire drawings mean that you produce lots and it really loosens you up so that realism is outweighed by the feeling in the scene.

Skye Bridge, Expressionist Style

This picture gave me a lot of trouble and I have changed it now; but there are some elements that I have lost and which I need to restore! The trouble with having lots of ideas and working on them all at different times within a few days is that you begin to lose vision on the main aim in a piece of work. The focus in this one got lost (it looks better here than it does since I've worked on it) so now I know where I'm going with it and will hopefully put it right.
 

Life is Moving On

I've done several paintings and drawings since my last post but haven't had time to put them on the blog...

However, I've taken some photos and if - big IF - my computer machinery obliges then you'll soon see what I've been up to whilst the world outside froze.

Meanwhile, it would be most helpful if anyone reading this would click on the following link and sign a petition for an arts centre and green gardens in central Aberdeen, where rich businessmen with more money than artistic merit and sensitivity are bidding to build concrete money-making monstrosities that seem to take away all signs of greenery and mature trees. Please help! Online petition - Save the new Contemporary Art Centre in Union Terrace Gardens

All White Now

After redecorating my studio in white from top to bottom, it was a pleasure to go along to the local Carol Concert and see my Candle Wallhanging put to good use in the church.

The piece was 'the prize' in a free draw I ran during NEOS 09, my Open Studio event in September, and the young lad who won it decided to give it to the church. It matched their other Christmas decorations beautifully and was very tastefully hung as you can see. The concert was fabulous and we were made very welcome.

Now I am busy painting and drawing again and have put some pastel work for sale on my gallery. It isn't taking long to fill the white walls with colourful pictures!

Capturing an Atmosphere

I started this painting this morning and I'm happy with it already. Not that it's finished, of course it isn't; but this is definitely going to be a case where less is more.

Working upstairs in the cold, bundled up in layers of clothing and restricted in space to move around the easel (and use its flat-table facility) made me think about my dad.

The only space he could paint in, at one time in his life (there were worse, but this one I saw with my own eyes) was a dark garage in a row of six others. It was completely full of paintings - his life's work, as there was no room in the small house with us kids and an elderly aunt who he cared for as well - and his easel and stool were shoved up against the up-and-over door which had to be half-up to allow light in when he was painting. It didn't matter what the weather, snow, ice, rain, fog, he painted for as long as possible every day. Cyril Hamersma worked his socks off.

There will be a smattering of a bridge, cottages in the distance and who knows what before this painting is finished. But it's starting to feel right already.

Happy Accidents

Bursting to paint but with practicalities holding me back, I've been making some small pastel studies from the photos I've taken in Skye.

Whilst waiting for the fixative to dry I went upstairs to print something on the computer and thought I'd bring down with me this troublesome picture which "isn't really me", although it would be if it was much bigger and more dramatic... What could I do with it? The plan was to take a photo and ask a good friend for impartial advice.

My pastels were still scattered on the floor so it felt right to try something which I'd earlier tried using a dark piece of cloth .... Nothing to lose as I could always wash it off again.

The result completely transformed the picture, giving it an atmosphere and moodiness that it deserves. Instead of washing it off, I've sprayed it with fixative to preserve it. The weird thing is that - so far anyway - the fixative has turned the blue to violet.

Here is a sample from it. There's more to be done to the picture before it's finished but it has definitely turned a corner and the purple is - well - a happy accident!

Emotional Work

Let there be no doubt about it: the true artist paints from the heart and with deep, genuine passion. Funny thing to say? Maybe, but after an enforced break from my creative life, caused by travel and other lovely things, the urge to paint returned to me with a vengeance.

It’s an artist’s job to experiment. What’s the use of churning out numerous similar pictures? If I wanted to work on a production line I’d do that (and get a proper job’s wage too) but I cannot, I follow my heart, my instincts, and paint what I need to paint.

This means that everything I create is unique, often vastly different from what I made last week; it’s individual, thought-out, personal, and born of an idea from a stage of living. What matters to the recipient of each painting is the emotional connection they make with it. What does it make you think of? There is something in that painting that appeals to you, that matters to you, that makes you feel right.

Experiment

Remember I told you about an experiment I was trying?
I'd seen a demo by a very experienced watercolour painter who was hailing the beauty of acrylics. I'd been aghast to watch her use exactly the same methods with this medium (acrylics) as for her usual watercolours! So I decided to try it myself. I painted some flower shapes on the white-primed canvas, with a (yellow-stained) rubber solution.

Then, when it was dry, I painted the background with an assortment of rich crimsons and cadmiums - this bit I enjoyed!

Then I rubbed away the rubber solution to reveal the flower shapes, but didn't like the three blobs below so began to put some marks where I felt there might be rocks ...

I didn't get much further than this when I decided it really wasn't 'me' and certainly wasn't the direction I
wanted my painting to take.

So this one is put down to experience and won't be visited again.

Pastels

I've been experimenting with pastels and, after an initial frustration with a small (A4) sheet of white paper, I took the bull by the horns and splashed out a small fortune on a pad of good 'pastel paper' in different shades, A3 size. This "Snowy Headland" was created on an indigo background.

9 Skies

When I opened out the huge canvas with all the different skies painted on it, the sight was quite breathtaking. I wanted to hang it up outside! There were some visitors here at the time and they pointed to the skies they liked best, then changed their minds ... it was great fun.

For the moment it will be tucked away but at a later date I might try adding the silhouettes they cry out for - a bird here, a steeple there - but for the moment I'm happy to have just experimented and be able to use the results in skies for my paintings in the here and now.

A Memorable Quote

"God works through the artist to open His children's eyes" ~ Cyril Hamersma

Sky 5

Skies are delicate, subtle, gentle, translucent, iridescent. Acrylic paint does cope with them but a heavy, gritty support to paint on really is not conducive to conveying the soft brilliance that moves above us all the time.



This sky was never going to be what I wanted it to be but it was a useful experience to create it. I decided to stop here rather than add more paint as we can all see what sort of sky I'm after.

Sky 4

I had a headache yesterday UNTIL I did some painting and within minutes it had gone away, as if washed out of my bloodstream.



This sky was urgent and necessary, to restore my faith in my painting after yesterday's naive output (and other work hampered by many interruptions). It hasn't completely worked as a sky but was a very useful experiment.

I also started another experiment on a small canvas which I might show you when all the stages are photographed.

New visitors might like to note that if you follow my blog and comment (say hello!) I will send you a free e-book entitled "I Wish I Could Be Artistic". It's very liberating and good fun.

Sky 3 - Some you Win....

...some you lose. Sky 3 isn't much to look at but it was magnificent in the sky! Clear blue, very simple; with a pale grey, pink-lined cloud hovering gently like a balloon.



It was my day off and I was so lucky with the weather. I drove down the coast to visit some of the other artists' Open Studios. I knew I couldn't do justice for this simple sky but experimented on the rough canvas surface with some pastels followed by fixative, then acrylic paint.

Looks like it was done by a three year year old but that's nothing to be ashamed of!

Sky 2

NEOS visitors are arriving in a steady flow so that I'm able to talk to them individually, which is good. I'm also getting plenty of breaks in between, giving me time to get on with painting and today's sky was a lovely, messy experiment. The lady who turned up while my hands were still mucky from this one said, "Oh that's lovely," - meaning the painting, not my messy hands.




Although the photos don't look too good, this exercise is a great experience in experimenting to find effects that I might use more seriously on 'proper' paintings at a later date.

Paint a Sky a Day

I've run out of canvases & boards and run out of space until I sell a few paintings so my project for the nine days here in the studio for NEOS is to paint a Sky a Day. It was recommended by the 19th Century artist Sir Alfred East Sir Alfred East and I'm doing it in 9 separate rectangles on a mural-sized canvas screen I made ( a while ago) to hang from the staircase. Every work of art is an experiment and each of these will be no exception!



The constraints I felt immediately are: working on non-stretched canvas means the creases will dictate some of the texture; it's hard work covering it as it's more absorbent (less well primed than professional canvases); cumbersome to handle and even more prone to the problems I have in my room with the light - too much or too little.

And I thought this would be a GENTLE challenge.

Signs and invitations

It uses a different part of the brain to have to think about signs and advertising instead of actually creating artwork, although both are creative skills. My stronger half, i.e.,my husband, put his mind to my Open Studio challenge and has created a sign to go outside the house. I can put posters and pictures on it to entice people in, and change the display as often as I like. It is waterproofed and can be put in place each day and taken down again but is firm enough to withstand all weathers.

Look out for my sign! I am No. 179 in the NEOS (North East Open Studios) brochure where you'll find my opening times.

Dancing with Colour

I am delighted to have a new follower who is so likeminded she could be my sister - doh! she IS my sister. I am proud to refer you to Impasto Studio and, especially if you're an artist, pick up her hints on working with paint. Like me, she learned a lot from the wise and prolific Hamersma.

Fran Hillman is a talented and committed artist in her own right and is the co-author/artist at www.thetreasuretree.co.uk , an interactive, animated teaching resource. Great fun for adults too! (And beautiful.)