Playing Cards

Today I am designing some cards to be printed to sell in my Open Studio. Simple reproductions of some of my paintings and one or two other ideas.

Ah ha! You'll have to come and see, browse around and buy them to know what I come up with!

Busy Busy

My Open Studio (just one day a week - Thursdays) is working well as I'm finding a small trickle of friendly people trotting in to have a look. I just love to know they're interested in what I do. A couple of them summed it up yesterday when they said they 'could never be so creative' but if I were to put them behind a counter to deal with customers and money, such as in the bank etc where they'd worked, they'd be fine. Me - NO! I couldn't EVER cope with a job like THAT! Give me a blank page or canvas and paintbrush instead.

As well as stuffing a cat doorstop I've been finishing paintings for an art exhibition at the town hall, completing the entry forms etc, designing a promotional postcard, painting a couple of pictures to make into Christmas Cards, taking six paintings to a photographer in preparation for getting some giclee prints... putting my St Bernard dog painting for sale online at Affordable British Art and making a few printed signs for my workroom so that visitors can read what I forget to tell them.

E.G.:- Checklist for your visit

Have you seen . . .

Drawings in the mag rack
Photos and prints too
Boxy bags made from jeans
T- shirt bags
Odd bags for useful bits
Books
Play Scripts
Published articles in the Portfolio
and pictures on the walls everywhere

Have you tried . . .
Drawing
Painting
Printing with rubbish
French Knitting?

Have you thought of commissioning ...
a picture
or a print
or something made of textiles
or a special unusual item?

Oh and I've been writing letters and sending them with posters and leaflets to various local B & B venues to alert them to my Open Studio. Something for tourists to do in Stonehaven when they're fed up with the beach and other local attractions or driving to far off stately homes.

Stuffing a Cat

Okay, it doesn't look much like a cat; and I haven't appeared to be doing a lot here for ages but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. This white looking thing is going to be a doorstop made of canvas and it will free up something else (that's currently being used as a doorstop) which I want to use to make a sculpture, because my studio needs something tall and unusual near the window.

Complete Change - for a Rest

Painting this little Schnauzer worked out so well I thought I'd have a go at a big dog . . .

Of course he isn't finished yet and his right ear is a bit big but I like him already. He doesn't bark or bite either.

More Work

This piece isn't quite finished but taking a photo is a good way of checking the tone and seeing the flaws. There's something not quite right with one of the shadows and the headland needs some definition but I know what I'm going to call the painting: "Fetch!"

New Work

For ages I'd been wanting to paint a large version of my much-sought-after picture entitled Still Standing, which was only about 8" x 10". I was astounded at how challenging it was to achieve the same effect on this size 24" x 30"; and it took me ages to get it right, the solidity of the structure and the light on it. This version is called Still Standing Tall.

You can see the mess in my workroom too but that's because I'm so busy. See the next blog entry!

On the Up

This week my endeavours seem to be working for me. I've sold the mountain whiteout painting along with a boxybag, and I've picked up a commission to do another diamond shaped beach painting. Woohoo!

Need to buy some more square canvases and go to the special place for ideas to get the right atmosphere for the beach painting.

That's STYLE

I think there's a lot of twaddle spoken about 'style'. You might think I'm about to add to it and if so that's fine but at least my attitude is inclusive and down to earth.

For an artist who paints from the heart, i.e. not solely for commercial purposes without regard for his or her artistic integrity, every painting is created with the materials that are:

• best for the job
• easiest to hand
• favoured colours
• preferred size

An artist is sure to have a favourite type of paint, not to mention a limited array of paint due to financial constraints, and a usual support such as canvas, board, mdf, paper, card, recycled packaging et al. Lesser materials are used frequently when necessary or when 'caught short'. There is nothing more annoying than finding you've done a masterpiece on the back or side of something that will deteriorate in ten days or is too confidential to be shown elsewhere. Painting and drawing can get you like that, you have to do it and you have to do it now.

So there's the preferred paint, preferred colours, preferred sizes, favourite subjects and ways of weilding the brush or not, as the case may be: these are what make the artist's style.

Personally I avoid using a brush whenever possible and apply the paint in some other way. I use mainly acrylics (heavy body) at the moment but sometimes my method works with gouache and I know I could move on to oils if I had the money and patience. Style? Make of it what you will but I'll paint what I want and continue to surprise people - as well as myself.

All in a Day's Work

A fairly typical day here: pieces cut and pinned ready to make a (self designed) shoulder-bag; a new painting started (still needing some work done on it. The finished products are only shown on the Affordable British Art website or for sale in my studio here); and an experimental life-drawing.

These were all done as well as a long stint of heavy gardening and the usual domestic chores of cooking and cleaning. I even vacuumed upstairs! Oh and I finished sewing my velvet blouse

Exhibition

This is the display of my work at the Inverbervie Art Show ...

Work in Progress - April

I turned this one to monochrome to check the tones were right . . . It's nearly finished but needs a few more final touches.

Er, well quite a few more touches but you get the gist.

So and Sew

Aaargh, where does the time go? I have two paintings at a half-way stage and more than two sewing projects queuing up to be done. Sometimes I have to get one of them out the way before I can get on with the next and I'm wishing I had the energy to stay up all night to do them.

Alas, I know better than to try and do that so I will work my way through the tasks fairly.

Who said I was patient?

A Lovely Start

A Selection

A bit of a disaster

After a public reading of one of my plays, some years ago, I learned that unless it’s done really well, an experimental work of art will seem amateurish rather than unusual, provocative, or avant garde, and the artist ends up feeling an idiot. So my latest painting was never going to work - because the scene in the distance was too small and the wrong shape to look anything but pathetic.

Hence, I decided to paint over it - even after I’d thought up the right title for it – and will shelve the idea for the perfect shaped (and bigger) canvas it deserves.

Now the canvas has a ‘history’ impregnated on its surface so it needs impasto . . . and I have just the right texture and idea to adorn it.

Come back some time to see what emerges. Better still, become a 'follower'.

'Fairytale' Dunnottar Castle

I feel a strong connection with Dunnottar Castle and this is important to me when it comes to creating a painting. My work comes mainly from observation, memory and the feeling I experience whilst there, although I’ll use reference photos and sketches as well. I walk on the coast often and the castle feels almost like ‘home’, being only a mile away.

I’ve painted Dunnottar a few times now but I really wanted to try a large canvas; and 24" x 32" (60cm x 80cms) is my biggest as yet. I also felt it time to edge closer to realism in the way of colour without trying to emulate a photograph.

This painting is going on display at the Inverbervie Art Show in the first week in April, i.e. 4th to 11th

Some pics of my workroom

Before I tidy it up and get organised to display more stuff more neatly or tuck it away to keep it safe, or sell it and start on new works . . .

Searching for God

The recent bout of snow that crippled most of the UK but didn't really hurt us too much here on the coast in Scotland, made me think about some of our walks in the mountains. You don't have to go far or feel very high for what would be a small rain shower in a normal town to fall as snow . . .

This painting was fun to create because it involved swirling plenty of white impasto onto a black (yes black) primed board. The character who walks to the summit is determined to carry on, loving the peace, knowing that God is Love and that the peace he or she finds here - with mountains on the right and a woodland in the distance on the left, all obscured but the snowstorm - is good for the soul.

Work In Progress

Acrylic on acrylic paper, A3

I thought I was going to hate this painting. It started with enjoyment – the wonderful Pthalo green and Pthalo turquoise, a touch of violet and Prussian blue too, used with a credit card: swishing movements mixing it up and squiggling to create the stylised deep sea effect. The concrete sea walls with a gateway for who-knows-what, the simple sky so typical of a hazy dry day – and then I left it to dry and to think about.

Soon it struck that me that this was an entrance. The title played into my mind, “This Way to Land”, and in the distance would be a lighthouse on a slim dark headland. I wanted colour and I could visualise the lifesaver hanging on the wall, and a speck of red on the lighthouse.

PROBLEM: the focal point (lighthouse) was so central – even though it was where I wanted it in relation to the opening in the ‘harbour wall’ and to the distance – that the picture appeared to need to have a third cut off its width to decentralise it!

I stood well back from it and thought long and hard. ‘Resisting realism’ is something I put into my ‘Artist’s Statement’ when there’s enough space and it doesn’t make it too waffled. I want to resist realism but capture the character of a place or situation.

Sea walls are inclined to be clumsy and ugly with strangely hefty items built into them so when it ‘felt right’ to add height in the form of a heavy grey pole to the left, that seemed to work okay.

But I still hated the picture.

It’s at this stage that one wonders why paint at all? One thinks the object is worthless and would screw it up and go buy a dress or a cream cake . . . but I’m not a teenager and I know this stage in a painting too well: it just needs a little something to lift it a cut above the ordinary.

I wanted more red, somewhere near the pole. Or should the pole be thinner? Should there be a rope on it like a flagpole?

I hunted around in my workroom for something red, a piece of cardboard or fabric, to temporarily stick in place to see if it was going to solve my compositional problem. I found just the thing: a scrap of cellophane paper from which I cut a small square and I stuck it to my painting using only its own static! I could try different places to decide whether it was going to be akin to a flag, a light box, a dog litter bin or something else.

The red paper only needed two positions before I knew exactly where the red patch belonged and when I came to paint it in I felt that the outline was quite enough anyway. It looked more realistic.

And then from nowhere came the two birds.

Now I’ve gone and fallen in love with this picture. Soon you'll be able to see and BUY the finished thing on http://www.affordablebritishart.co.uk/ I can’t wait to see it framed and hung in somebody’s lovely house.

Questions to Ask Yourself when Buying Art

# Will it look right in my space, my place?

# Does it make me feel good?

# Will it be a talking point?

# Will this piece make a great focal point?

# Does it feel as if it fits?

# Do I want it in a frame, with or without glass; or a simple canvas?

# Is it big enough? Small enough?

# Do I have a special place crying out for a painting?

If you're confused or unsure about what you want, need some help in deciding . . . I'll be very happy to discuss the pros and cons with you and help in any way. With no obligation of course! Just get in touch.

Bern