This is not so much of a talky bog, as I have already done that with my "News" page, which is just me blathering on as usual. Here are some pictures of some of my recent prints, instead: That's a monoprint of someone flying a kite. There was a family down at the rec flying them, and I love drawing people flying kites, because you get the movement of the wind in the kite, and the movement of the figures leaning back or running along, or whatever, and, all-round it is a lot of fun to draw. These were doubly fun, as they are monoprints, made by putting ink down on the kitchen table and then wiping it away with a school T-shirt that my youngest son has strangely made unwearable. I like the way that these kids weren't slouching about trying to look cool, but were bounding around having a whole lot of real fun. The small one didn't get much of a go, but ran around as if he had the kite even when he didn't. This is the doubly-invisible kite. The penalty. This is a monoprint in a horrible pinkish colour, with a ghastly orangey-gold slopped on top and pencil drawn on the top. I rather like it, but might add some equally foul colours to see if I can make it any worse- a lurid green, perhaps. Woman shopping. Again, that revolting colour, but it looks nicer here. A lot of these are me using up ink, not wanting to waste it before I wash it all up, and they are often the best things! As so often, I am left wondering whether to add more- some blues perhaps, or a bit of purple for a change. Ink, or pastels, maybe. Will it kill the picture or make it better? This is a mother shaking a sandy towel out and pretending not to notice that she is doing so over the head of her daughter, who is attempting to escape. You see all these things happening, I don't need to make them up. This is probably the same mother who, moments before was telling the children not to throw sand... What are we parents like? This is called Race to the Top. It was originally at Chesil Beach. This one is a woodcut. It is one of those ones where the figures aren't anatomically brilliant, and if you really tried to make it like it is, it wouldn't quite make sense, but for me, it works well as a picture. I just like it. The dog would like to point out that he was on a lead, and so it wasn't really fair at all, but as I haven't drawn a lead, nobody is going to believe him. I am doing this in diffferent colours and recutting, but this particular one is staying as it is. This is a detail of another woodcut, which is gradually acquiring more and more layers. Some, like this one, are stopping right here as complete, and others are getting more pebbles and more sea background, and others are then going to have crisp white waves behind the figures. I am looking forward to that bit a lot. This is just to show you how similar and different the prints off the same bit of wood can be. I am probably doing more on this particular one.
I will put the watercolours and pen and inks on facebook when I get a moment, but this is enough for a blog! Thank you for looking! TOm Aug 2016 One of the things most fun to draw is the thing that nobody even thinks worth looking at. One of my favourite books as a kid is The Phantom Tolbooth by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Pfeiffer. The whole thing is brilliant, but I'm thinking of the city called Reality, which is entirely invisible. The story goes that it became that way because people stopped looking. They stopped caring. I love to draw the lovely. It's good to be able to sit somewhere fabulous and draw the beautiful. It's also fun to sit and draw the kind of place that might as well be invisible for all anyone looks at it. It's like that with people too, sometimes. It's very often that those with the loudest voices, who command the greatest attention are the least worth listening to. So it was that, from the luxury of the Top Floor Gallery at the Lighthouse, with the theatre doors the other side of the room, I was leaning on the windowsill drawing the apparent chaos of Poole Bus Station. I wanted to as soon as I saw it out the window. Seeing it from up there was nicer than standing in it, waiting for a bus. I like the way you have these different worlds and you can see them all from up there- the bus drivers and parking conductors striding around on the bottom bit; the customers apparently all squashed into the dark shadow underneath the sticking-out roof. Then there are the seagulls lounging around on the roof above- with a good deal more space, light and comfort than some of the people, and the office windows above the bus station with glimpses of jackets hung up and wonky blinds and notice boards; and in the background other worlds- sections of multi-story carpark and in the distance some tower-blocks or maybe offices and beyond them, blue hills and glimpses of white sea. The seagulls get another world- the sky. I like drawing people, and I like drawing animals, and for me, they tend to be the things that are the highlights of my drawings, rather like a theatre-goer may love the theatre itself as a place, but find the actors and acting the most important thing. When I looked out and saw the swarm of people there and the guys waving their arms directing buses I thought that that was too good a thing not to draw. Just a bit further along, there are traffic lights and that kind of thing at a challenging angle to draw, with people navigating their ways across them, and that too inspired me. One thing I loathe drawing is modern vehicles. I don't find them characterful enough. I think its the large, smooth, blank surfaces. From where I was there was barely a reflection- so you have a great roof with hardly a mark on it. All very dull for me. They demand slick smooth lines and I want to scribble. If I want to draw something in beautiful smooth lines it is a face or a wing, but not a car, thank you. There are people who love drawing cars, so they are the ones for that. So I drew a car park, but only hinted at the cars. And I drew the bus station and the bus spotters and the drivers, but wriggled out of drawing the buses until my last day there, when I made myself draw buses. It seemed only fair to give them a chance. I have ended up with some drawings that are not high on accuracy or straight-lines, proportions or perspective or composition or any of that sort of thing, but they are drawings of the higgledy-piggledy mixed worlds or criss-crossing lines and hurrying figures, and a fair bit of experimentation with materials. Hopefully, they convey the lovely within the ugly. People seemed surprised that I was drawing the bus station and the traffic lights and that kind of thing-probably more so when they saw my beach and sea pictures on the gallery walls. They are all part of life, and each has beauty to them if you take the time to look. Why not draw them? That's what I thought, and the more I looked, the more I saw. Tom, Feb 26th 2016 I meet a lot of people on my drawing trips and exhibiting who confess to being in a rut with their art. Here are some things to do when you get stuck with your art:1. Swap painting from photographs for real life. Even if you are stuck in a room and can't get out, work from some things you can see. Photos are very hard to work from in a lively way. Lots of people worry that their work isn't "loose" enough. Working from life can help.
2. Use new materials: I regularly change materials. It's refreshing. When you come back to oil paint after doing woodcuts, you work in a new way. I am going to try silverpoint and have a go at stone lithography again. Pencil or watercolour are difficult to use well. If your confidence is low, try these more generous materials: White pastel on black paper- use at least A4 or preferably larger, or you will risk getting all fussy with details. White watercolour on black (you will need a paper that will cope with the water). You can buy this in tubes , so you can use it neat in places. Otherwise, a very little water will make it easier to move around. These above two are great, because they are like working from the opposite side- a bit like starting your meal with the pudding (useful in buffets where there is a long queue for the first course). With the watercolour, you have to dilute to make it darker... With both you have the choice of working purely with highlights, or adding in-between tones. Do two pics of the same thing- one with highlights only, one with the in-between bits. If you enjoyed that, try working on a blue or brown paper, and using white and a dark. Great for portraits. You can buy large sheets of Ingres paper in many art shops. Get an old dip pen and some ink (being careful not to spill it, or to kick over your other inks whilst going for the cloth to mop up with- I did that on the carpet in my first student house...) Oilbars, as opposed to oil pastel are brilliant. I love using them. You want something pretty large. You can use them on paper, but it may not last for ever, so bear that in mind. Biro is marvellous to draw with. I like those yellow BIC ones, as they give a fine line. Biro on canvas is fun, but wrecks the biro. The advantages are that they can move fast and freely, and are capable of fine nuances- very delicate or bold marks. The disadvantages are that they are unlikely to be archival, and may not last as long as some inks. Printmaking is inspiring. There is an element of the unknown, and if you are a very controlling artist, with a streak of perfectionism, and a hatred of mess, then printmaking could be the best thing you have tried! There are all kinds. Monoprint is easy and accessible. Photodrypoint is too. Woodcuts and linocuts take a little bit more equipment. 3. Work on a larger scale. If you are using small pieces of paper, it is hard not to get all fiddly. I read recently the good advice to use a larger brush than you are comfy with. This was either in The Artist or Artist and Illustrator magazines, which I bought recently. 4. Draw something that moves. Find a musician or a grandchild or people in a cafe or on the street. Borrow your next-door-neighbours' dog, unless is it vicious and inclined to bite. Take a large sheet of paper and start drawing the figures or animals. They will move, I expect. Draw their new position. Start another. Don't be stressed. Yes, it's annoying when your picture is going nicely and the person or thing legs it. It happens. You will start to draw faster. Stop worrying about detail- patterns and all that. You can add those later if they stay there long enough. Get postures- get the basics and then work on what you want to- maybe hands or the face- maybe a striped coat. Don't forget shadows. They can make a huge difference. You will end up with a page, or better-still pages of drawings; some of which you can use. I will often do the people, and then fill in the background- street, room, etc around them. You can do it the other way round, which is more normal- sometimes doing the background very faintly to begin with, and working the figures in, and then completing the background where it shows through between the figures or pigeons or whatever. If you end up with your pianist having three arms and fifteen fingers, no matter. If you have conveyed the movement, that can be something very special. 5. Try something a bit more 3D- claywork, paper mache, chicken wire, stone carving, woodturning, marquetry, embroidery, glass engraving, carving in wax or soap or wood, mosaic work, sand sculpture, etc. You may find that in one medium you are far more creative and imaginative than in another. It's strange, but it does happen that way. I love exploring- on a small-scale, mind you. I don't get to travel vast distances, and never took the chance to when I might have done, but that's ok. I get to know places and notice things that I would miss if I had motor power and bags of time. One reason that I love it is probably the years I spent indoors, working in classrooms, the store-room at Boots with almost no natural light, in a kitchen with no windows, on the dark ground floor of an old hospital which had had tall buildings built up close all round it. I enjoyed the work, but missed whole days and summers, and it's good to be out, using my senses and breathing fresh air.
One of my typical art things is to go out drawing, and, because I don't want my work to get dull, and hate the thought of getting bored of it myself, I like to go to new places- not all the time, but it's always a pleasure to try out a new path, or find yourself in a bay you have never been in, seeing a view you haven't seen before. It's good, though, to see the new in the old. I have drawn the same bit of Poole Harbour several times now. Of course, colours and clouds and tides and the weather change; so that is always fresh, but the characters within the pictures change too: a couple of years ago I drew trainee sailors and a paddleboarder, and a girl wading out for miles to photograph them. A few weeks ago I went out and oil painted a gang of brent geese and seagulls. I went out again and came back with windsurfers zooming all over the canvas, and yesterday, it was kite-surfers zipping around- the same setting, but new things. Printmaking is like this. A plan for a new woodcut is, in fact, to do that same view, and print it first, and then have a series, with the different characters in the same setting. The colours can change, from dark indigos and storm tones to accompany the freezing winds I drew the kite-surfers in, to the sunshine and blues of the paddle-boarding and paddling days. I like to explore properly too, though. Last week I cycled over Canford Heath, which has the most amazing mix of the wild, the relics of old industry, and the shiny and modern. You go along paths of pale grey sand and ash, peat-brown soil, and places where white and cream flints stick through the paths, and the heather at this time of year is browns and pinks- it isn't in flower, but has that haze of something purpley over the chocolate twigs- and there's the gorse- green and golden. I love it. You get places where your hair is whipped back in icy wind, and those where everything is still, and there is no sound to be heard, but far in the distance. It smells good too. Cycling around with the only sounds the crunch of pebbles under the wheels and the wind blowing through you and the gorse, and the sounds of the birds. It's a bit like swimming in the sea. Then, there are the bleak places where the remnants of old telegraph poles and wires stand, blackened, leaning, darkly rusted and broken- rather like one of the later episodes of The Tripods Trilogy. All very dramatic. Slightly further off are the housing estates and business blocks, and glass and silver buildings that just aren't there on the maps of when I was a kid, and the heath was immense. It still feels like it in parts, but, looking at those old maps, you can just imagine that kind of space and distance. I've been to the heath before, and it's where I saw my first Dartford warbler, pushing a pram up a ridiculous incline. I'm not sure why it was doing that. I saw them again- what bird has a colour-scheme like it? What a magnificent bit of design there is there. From a distance it is just a small, dark bird on top of a bush- but look at the colours. It couldn't be a more perfect fit for the heather- the maroons and pinks and un-named colours. I will have to learn their whistles and try to get one near enough to draw. Buzzards come when you mew at them. This time, I went further- to a new part of the heath- exploring. There's a real thrill to travelling along a path you have never been on. I found a good one off to the side, parked the bike against a silver birch, white as chalk, and got out my pastels and paper. I ended up using colours I didn't even know I had, and had almost never used. A dog called Oliver ran through the boxes, tipping them over, and seized hold of my furry hat and gave it a good shake and a chew, laughing at the cries of his mistress. I moved to sit on the top of a high gate, to do another drawing. A different dog attempted to knock me off with great enjoyment. Then, right in front of me, there slid a red kite. This is another bird- bigger than a buzzard, and I have never seen one so close. It just swung across in front of me, with its amazingly long wings and outstretched fingers- or pinions, I expect, and its long, forked tail. Stunning. I drew it in. So there I was, plagued by birds that were so rare as to be almost mythical when I was growing up. I am an explorer in pictures, I think. I can't see myself stopping at one particular thing and doing it forever. I love doing woodcuts and pen and ink and so on, but this year I mean to do some primitive lithography and try combining woodcut and silkscreen, and doing woodcuts with oil paint onto canvas. Wait and see. One of the psalms says to sing a new song. I love to do that. At home, I read that the kites we fly are named after the bird, so effortlessly does it float around the skies. Now kite-surfing attached to one of them would be the real thing... Tom, April 2015 I have been doing larger woodcuts over the last few weeks. The thing about doing them is that you just don't know what is going to happen next. You have an idea of the colour you want and where you want it, but, until it actually goes on, you can't tell if you will deaden the whole thing, or bring it alive. I love that.
These all began with a cold day drawing down on the beach at Alum Chine, when I stopped the drawing I was working on in order to sketch a lady and the cloud of birds who surrounded her. (She had a bag of food.) I liked my own picture enough to do a small oil painting from it, and then, at Poole Harbour, I found the ideal bit of plywood washed up- mucky and covered in scratches. I took it home, and the next day, began to carve out the wood. By the time I started work today, I had around 9 prints- all different, and I'll explain why in a minute- that I really liked. I wanted to push them further, though. I could have left them there. They were nice- pretty good, but I wanted more than nice. I wanted a little bit of zing to them. So I did another printing of yet more colour. I am rather hit and miss when it comes to using colour. I get stuck between being realistic and just using colour for the joy of it. The other thing; as Tom Woodward, print technician at Falmouth now, will tell you, is that I have the ability to hideously misregister my prints. That means that when I try to put the thing back in the same place to do a different colour, I sometimes miss quite dramatically and you end up with something that would look right only to someone at the tail-end of an all-night rave. The woodcuts I did of the guys and the boat two years ago were entirely different in that I just did a simple, single cutting, which I printed in various colours. I have taken far bigger risks with the latest ones. I said that they were all different, and that is because, as a friend used to say- unity is the thing, not uniformity. It might be handy for labelling them afterwards, and good for me, if I get one into a big exhibition somewhere, to be able to have several the same (you can sell unframed duplicates without having to exhibit them in many places), but overall, I'm not interested. So, I decided to make each print different. I cut it the first time to leave the areas I wanted white. I printed then from that same cutting in sky blue, dark blue, really really dark blue, grey blue and so forth, so they had different starting points. Then, as I cut and printed and recut and printed, I carried on changing the colours, and leaving some of them out entirely for the course of a cutting or two, and with others, printing 2 or 3 colours on top of each other in the same cutting- and not leaving them to dry, either. I also printed some with the ink rolled on very thickly indeed, so that to transfer the ink onto the paper, I only had to lightly run my hand over the surface, and at other times, I had to use a huge amount of force to get every little bit of ink to print- every detail, and embossing the paper at the same time. The former gives wonderful, blotchy areas of colour that let the other colours behind be seen. The latter makes everything clear and sharply-cut. Mixing the two is interesting. The sand, for example, I did in the first way, as it brings the texture out. As things currently stand, I have them ranging from having 4 to 9 different printings of colour on them. The latest bit was to do the beach, forming the shadows from the darker colours below, and depicting a crow, who was alongside the seagulls on the beach, but had not been visible in previous pictures. I knew he was there, but nobody else would have. By doing the lighter sand around him, I gave him shape for the first time. But on different pictures, the beach is a pale,creamy colour, a mix of oranges, blood orange red, and custard yellow. I have printed more colour since the photos below, which I took this morning, but have a look and see what you think. If you like them, let me know. If you want to put your name down for one, get in touch. There's just one thing, though: I might still add just a little bit more colour. As I haven't done this for a bit, I ought to explain that this is mainly because my house has had its internal foundations washed away. Builders, please note, that building on sand is not clever. Drainsmen, please do the job properly. People up the road, kindly do not pour your fat down the sink or the loo, thus causing the main drain to become blocked. Somebody somewhere may, unlikely as it sounds, end up with instant subsidence.
All this nonsense and associated madness of trying to arrange for things to get done has meant little in the way of artwork production, but much in the way of thought. A good winter-time thing. Trees have a quiet time- they get everything down to a minimum for a bit in the winter. Plant your apple trees nowish, unless you've got frost. I wouldn't say that this has been quiet. It has been a time to see some of the everyday things in a new light, and that's a precious thing. If you're sitting down somewhere safe, clean and comfortable to read this, don't despise those things that combine to make that possible. If you aren't, I'm so sorry about that. People who have, please share and choose to notice the ones who don't. Don't choose not to notice the people near and far who do not have a door to shut, a source of clean water, a bed, a working loo, fresh air, heat, a safe place to go, a friend to trust. It is a choice. Drawing is partially about choosing to see. It is so easy not to. Drawing makes you look. Don't despise that opportunity, and if you are blessed with eyes, please use them. A big thank you to those friends who have helped and offered to help and put us up and fed us, and been company in a difficult time. Noticing is a choice. Sharing is a choice. Helping people who do not have a choice is a choice. I'm not sure what I will be doing in the way of pictures over the next while. Wait and see! Tom Dec 2014 My blogs are always too long. This one is going to be short(er). Last week I did some drawings. They were fast drawings. I liked doing that. Some of the people were walking fast, some were totally still. Mostly they were on the move- away from me or towards me. I just drew. I had 3 pencils. When one ran out, I used the next. When the last one ran out, I worked with the first one again- blunt, but still expressive. I don't actually know what to do with them (the pictures). Can you sell a page of mixed sketches like this? Would anybody buy them? Should I cut them up and frame little bits of them? The problem is that making them sellable probably means drawing them onto a nice landscape, but that's a bit like the 50th anniversary Beano sticker book I had when I was a kid, where you could move the characters around the double-page. I enjoyed that, of course, but doing that with these would be missing something. Fortunately, I have printmaking, and on this occasion the re-discovery of photo-drypoint to use. That's not something dead or tepid. That's got something different and fresh to it. The boys have sat down and made some of their own. I'm off to eat a bit of lunch and then do drypoints till I get them from school! Below are some of the close-ups I've filled my pages with, and one of the pages in full. I'll put the drypoints on here when I have a few more!
Tom Marshall Oct 6th 2014 I haven't talked much about story-telling here, but it seems a good moment to do so. September is the start of a story, but most stories don't start at the start- at least not at the start you see. All summer I have been making pictures that have never got onto paper, and telling stories that have only just begun to be written down. The summer holidays, as a single dad, mean that everything is totally different workwise- the ordinary routine stops, and what I do and make and how I go about it changes abruptly. Because of that, the holidays work in a similar way to a kettle- and here, instead of steam, I have ideas trying to burst out of the pan. Not just picture ones, but plain and simple stories too, and it has been great fun.
My boys and I like going for walks- and whilst you don't get as far as fast as when you cycle, you get to travel much closer together, and that means stories. I now have a collection of them bouncing around, asking to be illustrated and made into something more; but, as my brother said- and being in books, he should know- it's not much use until you actually do something with them. The first answer is to tell them and scribble them down helter-skelter- and when you re-tell, the story grows. In English language teaching you get your students to tell an anecdote which improves with telling- at least that's the plan, and it works. They tell it, change partners and re-tell it, and maybe, if you're feeling brave, do so a third time. Art and writing are no different. A quick think of artists tackling the same subject again gives plenty of examples- Breughel and his Towers of Babel, Cezanne and his fruit, Monet and pretty much everything- haystacks, lilly ponds: he wasn't a man to get bored by doing the same subject, was he? So it is with story-telling, as it is with self-portraits. When I come to write the thing down, I change it again, and when I come to tell it again, I can't remember what I wrote, and make it up anew. The guys at the language series Inside Out, who generated that anecdote idea, found that the students telling the story a second time used a wider vocabulary and yet made the whole thing more concise- less repetition and hesitation and all that. A bit like the story of Hokusai and his commission to draw some chap a cockerel. I am getting quite into this, and the boys are begging me to tell them more over breakfast, so this morning, I was making packed lunches, in my usual distracted way, whilst trying to jink a story along, and it was fun. Just as a long tale makes a long journey shorter, so telling a story makes making sandwiches into a marathon, as I can never remember what I'm doing. That in itself adds to the interest, I'm sure. Don't forget Gandalf's cunning in interrupting stories to make them more interesting (read The Hobbit). This led me to thinking about doing them as artist's books. These are hand-made in small numbers, and I have been thinking about woodcuts for the pictures, and letter-press for the writing. Time-wise, doing woodcuts would take massively longer than ink drawings, etc initially, but would let me print 10 or 20 or 100 (no more, thank you) copies. I made one artist's book many years ago, which I really enjoyed making, and really like even now, even though it was all about shoes. Perhaps Mr Weir's elective on making books back at school got me interested in the idea. Nothing needs to be wasted. The other way to go about it is to type up and add drawings- scan them in and that kind of thing, and fool around with print cartridges and all that nonsense, and that just doesn't excite me. I have been working at my bit of boxwood and carving my own letters, which is a little time-consuming but fun.. To get it to work will be the thing, but to have one long, slow job to do alongside the rush of everyday life is quite a healthy thing. Meanwhile, the stories keep flowing, and I like that, and they then inspire the pictures. I now have a whole bag of ideas for pictures- not really in a bag, just in my head- and that's a joy. Tom, Sept 2014 A drypoint is like an etching that you make by scratching, rather than with acid. I preferred to do drypoints, because firstly you avoid using a load of acid, and secondly, apart from the fun of the nasty scraping noises you make, it's just nice to draw in a scratchy way. It's also something you can get on with quickly, and of course you can use almost anything flattish and non-living to print from-
The weather has not really fitted going off drawing on my bike this last little while. Instead I've got on with two things. Whenever I lose focus I like to stop and look at the big things and the little things- and they bring me back. The sea- living where I do- is a blessing. I'm a country person, so I miss real woods and hills and getting away from houses and people and things, but the sky is usually there somewhere, and I have the fortune not to be locked in a cell or cupboard somewhere, or to live in a place with buildings that crowd it out. The big stuff helps you be in place, and how glad I am to know how small I am when I look up at the stars and clouds racing around up there- and stopping to do that makes you breathe in a different way, and get out of the nonsense of sitting in front of a screen.
The other, whilst practically easier to do, is often more difficult in practice for social reasons. Mountains and sea and all that stuff are cool, but stopping on a footpath to look at ants or a bit of speedwell or something is wierd. The sea is handy, as it's a bit more accepted that people look at stuff and just stop there on the beach, but do that on a street and you become a danger to the public, and before you know it, you'll have been whisked away and become the focus of a facebook campaign. But, assuming you manage to get to stop, and you don't get bitten or stung by whatever it is, or flattened by unsuspecting passers by, then you have that moment to stop and wonder, and look and- what's the verb for amaze? Well, you can stop and gaze and be amazed at the detail, the colour, the surface, the personality of that small small thing- beetle or flower of crack in the varnish or whatever. Of course, you can do that simply by looking at your own fingertips, or the fruit you're eating- you might spot something using your apple as a house while you're at it. It's good to wonder- to be awestruck- at the giant and the tiny. I love to be with people who are full of wonder. Well, my work of the last week or so has been the little and the not so little. I've been fooling around with oil paint and oil bar and linseed oil, and it's fun. I have canvases up all over the house now. And the small has been titchy little woodcuts. In putting some of my work on Etsy, I had to choose a category, and one of these was ACEO. Never heard of it. I don't expect to be fashionable or in touch, so that's ok, but it was exciting to discover in a way, a kind of new genre- a new kind of expectation- which is playing-card sized artworks 2.5" by 3.5" (that's inches). I looked on E-bay too, as I've put some of my work on there, and there are ACEOs all over the place, but not many real original woodcuts. I like the way they re-arrange the words to make Giclees and other things sound like original pictures. In my mind, it's a bonus to be able to make the thing on your kitchen table from a log of oak cut up for firewood, and make exactly the number you want to, and experiment with every step. So, I've been printing with my nice Caligo safewash inks, which are water-soluble, and yet linseed oil based- so once dry, they resist water, which can be useful. I've done prints just rolling the ink on as usual, then others with the paper soaked and the wood inked up; or the wood wet, but the paper dry, as if I was a printmaker equivalent of Gideon...and then a bit of re-printing on top, and the excitement of when it registers truly hideously- I was always rubbish at registering my prints (getting a second colour to print in the right place) and it gives interesting, and occasionally eye-watering effects. What is interesting to me is that, whilst ACEOs sound like a gimmick, I'm finding them a fun way to try out new things, and I'm getting some prints out of it that are -in my view- absolutely scrumptious. Don't lose wonder- cultivate it! I began this with a New-Yeary idea- you know the usual looking forward kind of thing, but I'm going back in time instead to the realm of portraits.
Portraits were my lifeline as a teenager, before I met with something better, and they helped me deal with life as it was at breaks and lunhtimes in my school- My friends went off to their stuff and I stayed in the classroom and drew whoever was around. I drew my friends and my enemies. I drew teachers and tables and chairs. I drew hairstyles and uniforms and faces halfway to being grown-up, and as I did, I learnt to draw- in that hard place where you not only have to make your picture a person, but that particular one. I loved it. I sneaked it in in maths and English and science and kept drawing. The pictures below are a few from my 6th form- aged between 17 and 18. You can see how mixed they are in quality and how I went about them- it was a brilliant time for learning new things. This will be a short one :-)
I was reading about The War of the Roses this morning. It seems like there's one there for every artist- maybe every person- a war that is: Whether to accept comfortable routes to "success"- whether in an artist's case to make crowd-pleasing rubbish that will sell easily, and churn out the watery and the mediocre, or whether to go for it. By "crowd-pleasing", don't think I mean that a picture has to be unintelligible or nasty-looking to be good. I don't. I don't even just mean good technically. I suppose I mean done with a lot of yourself in it, versus done without putting your heart into it. It's one reason why a "raw" live performance with dodgy quality in places is sometimes still better to listen to than a very slick studio production made to sell, but dead as can be. Perhaps that's the crucial element: life. I want that in my art. Give me a poke if I start doing dead work, or wrap me up in a warm blanket- that seems to work. That said, life is more than art, and must come a resounding second. That's my hope, actually. I have 2 kids who matter more than being great at painting or that kind of thing, and (who knows?), maybe by being a second thing, I'll manage to avoid making it second-rate. I don't like re-working pictures. In fact, I've hardly ever done it. I like to work straight from whatever it is I'm doing the picture of, so if I'm drawing a tree, I want to be there where it is to draw it. Even though this can be uncomfortable and cold, I prefer to do that than work from photos or memory. The fact is that unless I change to cartoon-style, my memory drawing tends to be pretty rubbish, although it's slowly improving. Today, I was planning to go out to Christchurch (Hampshire, UK, not New Zealand), because as I'm showing some pictures there on Saturday, I thought it might be nice to have one or two pics of the place, or at least the swans and boats- I like doing swans standing about looking awkward and uncomfortable (the young ones), or a bit antagonistic and "I'm going to stand right here, and you can all go round me" (the grown-ups). That will have to wait, as even I, who love drawing in the rain, felt this was a bit cold and damp and miserable for that; add in the usual gale I get battered by if I venture out to Hengistbury Head, and I thought that staying at home and doing something here with a cup of tea at hand might be a better bet. The problem is that, looking through my pictures of things to sell, I didn't have a lot that seemed to me would go down at an Art and Craft Fair- (not that I've shown at one before). I have the big boat pic and various ducks, and a dog, but then after that it's a lot of sketches of this and that- people on trains and kids climbing trees and pigeons and brooms leaning against the wall and not really the kind of things most normal people want to buy- and maybe that's not a bad thing. The other interesting thing is that nearly all my framed work has been ruined by the damp in the house- being hung on cold walls. Mr De-humidifier is helping now, as is the cunning technique of closing the kitchen door when cooking, but it's left me with some sorry-looking pictures that were among my best and most colourful recent things. As well as countering the humidity, I've started using thicker paper, so my newer work should be a bit more robust. But today, I was looking at some of my soggy pictures, and some of those that have got a bit smudged or perhaps share a page with a load of less interesting drawings, and decided that I was going to make something from them. The interesting thing about making a picture from a picture is that you can lose a lot remarkably easily. Doing it as a woodcut is different, as the technique gives it something back. On the whole, though, you lose some of the high-speed, reckelss marks, and the picture loses the energy or sensitivity it had. I did, or at least began quite a few this morning, but sad to say the majority were looking pretty bland until I started mixing my linseed-oil-based but water-soluble etching ink with acrylic drawing ink for the simple reason that I have some colours in the one and some in the other, and because I like to do such barbaric things. It's pretty safe to say that my favourite artist is still Rembrandt, and I got excited recently reading about how he drew with diluted ink using a stick, so I did that, and it does give a certain freedom. I'm a mixer, though, so I used a thing a bit like a dip pen that belonged to my grandpa, who used it in his architecture, and a brush- ok, it was an oil-painting brush- I can't do anything sensible.
The purpose of this is twofold: one, to have something slightly colourful and vibrant and quick-drying to show, and two, to make use of those pictures that have been sitting there not doing very much, but asking to be used. I'm listening. The last few months have held some surprises for me. Last week, I was drawing in Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre, round the back and sides of the stage, as research for a book cover. I then drew in the town centre, and a lady came over to look. I told her I had come in to town to draw the theatre, which turned out to be where she was going that evening, and in short, she asked me to do two pictures of another theatre in town.
The variety of it all gets me- take last week: accounts, drawing in a theatre, drawing on the street, setting up a pole-lathe and doing the first wood turning I've done for over 15 years (great fun!), researching cameras, drawing on Southampton station and looking into submitting for an online exhibition. I've been asked to do a book cover, pictures of a performance, and a tattoo of a map of Wales with a dragon and so forth. I've had all kinds of people looking at my pictures- street cleaners, the police (Did I look that dodgy?), pensioners, pigeons...doing art in public is a kind of performance, and (if it's going well), I enjoy that. The pole-lathe: well that's obviously not going to be much of an earner, although you can do intricate and delicate work on one- tiny chess pieces and wooden rattles with the rings made onto them, and things like that. My book on green woodwork by Mike Abbott tells me that it can go from 0-2000 rpm in moments. The control you have is amazing. I set it up, having done it many years ago and because I was fed up with sitting in front of my screen! Good for 20 minutes if I have to stay at home for something. The local school do a project on furniture, and are interested in my showing them some of the things you can do with wood. I'm not imagining it as a central thing, but it'll be good for me- apart from swimming in the sea, and standing on a hillside in a gale and rockpooling, there are few things as therapeutic. It'll be nice for the boys too, as I've been telling them about wood turning for years! I never expected to find myself doing half of these things. It's exciting doing this journey. I pray it will be a fruitful one in more ways than one. I should have got on with reading the Paypal User Agreement, which is a real delight, but instead, I watched some football (as in the kind with a round ball) on BBC I player. Then I went drawing in the rain. I had to go off and get my council tax forms in, and at the last minute stuffed a sketch book in my bag and a couple of pens. I went home via Poole Park, Poole Harbour and the beach- and it was all grey and beautiful. I say grey, but grey-blue, grey-green, and in-between kinds of colours that might have been friends with the purples and the browns. Lovely. but my pictures weren't. They were just a bit dull- nothing special. I wished I'd got some paints or pastels with me. Perhaps I do better when there's the kind of light that makes good shadows. This wasn't it- the kind of day when everything you start drawing waits 2 minutes and then goes away- and I was thinking that nothing was going to work until it began to gently rain very very finely but thoroughly on me and my paper.
If you don't look at his bad behaviour, but at his football with the ball, Mr Torres had a superb game, and indeed got better and better as he carried on (until he was sent off). He was clearly getting more and more wound up by Mr Vertonghen, and it seems to me that football is pretty much like art in that, or maybe like anything. I wonder whether without the aggro he would have performed. I got the impression that something in him popped and out came a display of brilliance, he was so stirred up. No different from playground football. Someone on the other team cheats (you believe), or hurts one of your team. Yes, you tackle harder, yes you run harder. You concentrate more. You are determined to win. It seems to me that when you have something to fight against- something to work against, you have a new motivation. Give me a nice plain, sensible piece of paper and I may or may not do a good drawing. Let it rain down making it incredibly difficult to work with and I will battle with it. There's no doubt that I often do my best when the materials are difficult. I used to do a lot of carving in plaster- taking materials to their limits was what my foundation tutors said about me. Recently I've fooled around trying to do fine woodcuts on a bit of wood that peeled and crumbled and did its best not to do what I wanted it too. For me, one of the pleasures of making art is the fight. Do a delicate portrait with something truly clumsy, try to make the finest lines you've ever drawn with a chunky bit of charcoal from the beach, have a piece of wood that wants to work along the grain in nice, straight lines?- do the opposite. When somebody whacks you on the nose, give them a chocolate biscuit- a different kind of fighting- painting by opposites. So today, when I probably should have packed up and gone home before I got quite so wet, I say there and drew in pen until the pen told me enough was enough, and then in charcoal- a silly thing to do. At one point the paper was so wet the pen refused to work, so I drew on the dryest parts of my fingertips and then painted with my fingers barbarian style. Great! I loved it! If Mr Torres can avoid sticking his claws into other people's faces, I bet his manager will be hoping his next opponent starts the next game by sending him head over heels. Then we shall see some football. As part of contacting galleries and so on, I've put together an Artist's Statement- click to see it. Not a bad thing to do, nor an easy one. I was looking at advice on writing these, but it said I should write about things like my inspiration and why I do what I do. I'm no conceptual artist and that was a bit of a tricky question, because I don't usually start by planning to do a piece about politics or anything. I'll often paint something because I like how it looks and it doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
I drew a man leaning against a pillar, but what's the point of that? Why draw him? Well he was there and I drew him... I drew some pigeons and two people talking and a woman sitting in a chair and a man doing a crossword and a waitress having lunch- there's a bit of poetry in that, but even if she wasn't a waitress, I'd have drawn her. Why not? They're people, they're doing these things, they're alive. In a figure there's balance, motion, there's the fact that they're thinking something- or dreaming maybe. I don't think you need to make everything complicated. If I was back at college, I think I'd say " I drew him because he was worth drawing- why was he worth drawing? - because he was there, because he was real, because I'm not him, because you could guess how he was feeling by how he was standing; because everything living matters, every moment can be worth something." I might add that I liked the balance in the image, I thought it interesting. I liked the way the waitress was holding her knife and fork and the fact that she was surrounded by tables. I liked it that you couldn't see all the man's face over his newspaper. I liked the shape of the hat the girl who was sitting down was wearing. I liked the way that pigeon was puffed up and marching around. So I drew them. Nothing fancy about it- I just wanted to draw them, and they were worth drawing. Perhaps that's my philosophy, and that's my concept: simple things in life- things you see and hear- people and places and all that kind of thing are precious- why not draw them? As I write this, my first exhibition since starting this is into its last week. What next? I have one commission and one possible book cover, one possible interest in my work, one maybe interested in having my work in a cafe, some stories on the go, and some ideas for projects and individual pictures. Lots of ifs. Then there's a big if. More like an IF. A friend told me I ought to try getting my work into the Mall Galleries in London, as it would fit in there, so I looked up the site and lo and behold they have an open exhibition, with a deadline for online submissions this Thursday. Yikes! The question is whether to try it or not. The work they had last year- looking online- is marvellously good. I like it too. I think my things could work there, but the big difference is that most of the pictures they have there are seriously worked into over days and months by the looks of things, and at the moment, that isn't the kind of thing I'm doing. Of course I could, and I have 3 pictures I would very much like to do that with. However, I can only really put in what I already have, due to the time. Do I risk rejection and the fee of £12 per picture, in the hope that some of my quicker work will be accepted, or not? The thing is that a piece that takes a long time is not necessarily better. Some of my favourites amongst my own works are amongst my fastest and most simple. Here are two close-ups of a page of pigeons I did this last week. They were the hungry, zipping around looking for food kind, not the dozey, layabout sort of bird: helter-skelter drawings, but I like that. Will I put some pictures in? If not this year, then next year for sure.
I read last night about not despising the day of small things. The last few days of exhibiting have been those kinds of days. If you are selling well and everything seems rosy, you might just miss those insignificant moments that make it count. I was chatting to a good guy last week, who was showing his work and feeling pretty glum. Along came a family and the kids started talking about his pictures, which got the parents interested. He told them that his weren't for sale, and had a good few minutes chat with them. As they went, he said "That's made it all worthwhile".
I've had such amazing mini-encounters over these last few weeks- an Italian called Mario, only recently arrived here to work- I could say "Welcome!" to him. There was the Spanish? lifeguard the day before yesterday, who saw me drawing on the beach and asked me to show him it when I was done. There was the artist buying frames like me, who started telling me about local art groups. There have been brief and delicious moments when I've had the chance to say some garbled, but hopefully friendly words in another tongue, and even the special chance to do some translating for a brilliant Hungarian artist. A couple of weeks ago there was a Turkish graffitti artist. Then there was a tattooist from London. Today I met a lady from Sweden and her friend; and had some good chats with the other artists- and those meetings- however short- make days special. Links are seeds. Growing things is a passion for me. There's so much that is so beautiful wild and cultivated. Perhaps there are relationships you have that are like gardens- comfortable, perhaps fruitful- somewhere to spend time in and maybe make special. Perhaps too, there are those that are like wild hillsides- full of fresh air blowing from somewhere new, and with something there unknown and waiting to be discovered. Hmm. Is this what comes of reading the Moomin books to my boys, and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase to myself?! Let the good seeds grow into something er- good, no matter how small they start out- and help me to remember that on those small-thing days! Well, I had a week and a day of sitting in the exhbibition gathering impatience and inspiration to get out and work like mad, and on Friday and today I did just that, shooting off to Poole Harbour and thereabouts to do something different. First the exhibition. As usual, I wish I'd published my draft. I must be too perfectionist or just cautious, as experience has led me to be. No Twitter for me, I think. I far too easily put my foot in it as it is. The exhibition, yes- the first bit since I finished at university 14 years ago. Quite an experience- sold my first pictures since coming back to art- phew!- and have had a pretty interesting time altogether. Great to meet the other artists there, and that includes those having a look round, and generally good to be out meeting different people- thank you to those who stopped by for a chat and an encouraging word! A good chance to look at my own work too. Strange to find that my recent stuff isn't very colourful, but maybe that's because I'm trying to put up the things I think are better, and because to get more colours in the woodcuts is going to take a bit longer, and I've been flapping around trying to get a good wedge of new pictures for the show. Maybe it's a relection of the journeys my life has taken recently. Light and dark. If you've ever read any of Tove Jansson's Moomin books, you'll know a character called Snufkin, who composes songs but waits for them to come and develop before trying to form them into something solid. I have various ideas like that. One of the most exciting to come is a drawing of my road on blue bin day. Catch it just after the school run with all the recycling bins out ready for collection- a beautiful blue, with the tower at the top of the hill with its blue bits, and the sky blue too behind it. Monochrome Tom is definitely interested in colour. I've been scribbling away all week with calligraphy pens- a long story, but you get a choice of lines of thickness, and amongst other reasons, something more convenient and scribblier than pots of ink seemed the right choice for now. I found it quite engrossing. It's so nice to get down and draw people. So now to colour. Pastels seemed a good idea: colour, and fast too. The first one I did is a bit iffy, I think- or did when I made it- maybe I'll like it on further acquaintance. I don't think I've tried to do a colour pastel for more than 10 years- drawing with them- yes, but trying to capture rich blues of skies and the wierd colour that the water in the harbour was on Friday- that'll take time to get back into. The people who were going to be the chocolate in the picture decided to go and sit down behind some marram grass, and so I thought- rather doubtfully- that I might just have a go with a calligraphy pen and some white. I was using a creamy coloured paper. Now, I added a bit of red. Should I add more. I could go for blue- light, refreshing blue- but I decided to stop. I love it as it is. I might kill it with blue or make it dull. Pleased with that, and rather surprised, I went further today. This time dark brown paper to start with and some people flopping about in the water- pen and white chalk, but then blue and then another blue... and some green...uh-oh, better bring in something else- a bit of grey-blue, now some olive... Light and dark are easier. Colour is another kettle of fish altogether, but maybe because I'm also trying to get the form right too, and battling with unruly pastels that didn't want to do the kind of thing I expected them to. That was fun. So I let the colour in. The colour was a risk, and I ruined a couple of promising pictures, but the last few are getting somewhere, and I'm really pleased with how they've gone. I think I might bring them into the exhibition tomorrow to shock my fellow-exhibitors... I then did this picture from the same spot. More cautious with the colour, and although the photo doesn't look anything special, I really like it. Thank you to the girl who decided to wander around taking photos of the paddleboarders and added something to the picture. If you don't know the place, you can walk out and out for a very long way without it going higher than your waist. So here I am, back in the world of colour and loving it. This started in pen and then white chalk, and then I added one blue and then another. Only the three central-ish figures were done in pen- the others just came along later. This is the hottest I remember a beach being, and I had to stick my shoes on when I walked back, as my feet were burning. It's been a top day, printing up woodcuts and making my first forays into colour again, after a good few years. I have realised that instead of having too many chairs, my house has too few. I had prints drying on every available surface this afternoon. Out came the clothes pegs- the washing had already dried- and now there are prints hanging up around the place- in the corridor, in the living room, in my room... My two boys approved. One day, I will make one of those things with marbles in that you hang drying papers from, but for now, it's clothes pegs, and an altogether more interesting abode.
Well, that's what I wrote on Thursday last week, but I wasn't convinced it was worth blogging. I wish I had now. I happened to notice one of those rack things for drying paintings and prints on at my youngest son's school this Monday. I vaguely asked the teaching assistant whether they were ever likely to throw any out. There was no particular reason to think anything of the kind and I felt a fool just asking. How good it is to be the right kind of fool. Yes, there were several out there by the skip- due to go off to the rubbish dump- and I was free to help myself. So I did- staggering home with them- 3 of them all smelling of powder paint. Why throw them out? Probably for the same reason libraries chuck out the most fantastic old books and replace them with the bright and glossy, and often mediocre. Maybe to make space for more computers. Hmm. Now that's what I call good timing! Despite that, I'm still going to keep prints up on the walls. It feels good! Petitions: Save the bees, Stop Nike using Uzbek slave labour, Save- take your pick of whatever it might be- from the latest government plan. It's great to think that you can make a difference in this way. It also makes you think what else you could be doing, and it's making me wonder whether I should be making my art more political- at least in trying to change things. Pictures of people flying kites and playing guitars, and dogs lolloping around and families messing around on the beach aren't enough, are they? Maybe I need to start drawing cotton pickers chained together picking T-shirts off the bushes- but maybe not.
I read a book by Rookmaaker called Art Needs No Justification, and I agree with him. If you do some kind of art, perhaps you're comfy with whatever it is that you do. You do botanical illustration and get on with it. Why not? If you're like me, you'll also have thought long and hard about what it means to be able to make things that people will look at. What do you make? What subjects am I going to use, if any? I do pictures of people, animals, plants, things I find interesting, places, stories, dreams. I draw things I see, and things I imagine. I put the two together, but not necessarily with an aim in mind: I want my picture to be about this. That might help you pass a course, but I certainly don't work like that most of the time. Not having a car, my boys and I do a fair bit of walking, and as a long walk goes along well with a story or two, they'll often ask me to tell a story. Now, I might tell them about something that happened to someone I know, or a tale I've recently heard. Very often though, we'll make one up as we walk along. Two days ago we had one chap accidently setting a gang of pirates in concrete. Pictures are often like that. They grow. Tolkien talked about how The Lord of the RIngs "grew in the telling". I saw a clip recently where a potter explained that art is always beautiful. I think not. Art isn't only one thing. Maybe in ceramics it's different. Who was that artist who did that hideous, terrifying picture of the cruxifiction? Matthias Grünewald: Good art, but outstandingly ugly- but it had a reason for it- ugliness wasn't an end in itself. It's truer and heathier than the pretty pictures of it you get. If you were to produce a political piece to make people take notice of a nasty policy the governement was cooking up, it might not be a pretty picture. It's hard to say. I find storms and even the most miserable grey skies can be amazingly beautiful. I just don't think beauty is always the aim, and nor is a particular statement. I will sit and draw something because I think it looks so fabulous, but I might draw something horrible in order to say something worth saying. It's something I'm going to be wrestling with, and maybe something new will sprout from it, but maybe in all the yelling and the manipulation of what goes on there is a place for a family messing around on a beach, someone doodling on a guitar, a kite weaving its way across the clouds, and a lollopy dog. I finally plucked up the courage and bought myself a nice pot of printing ink. As I'm working from home, and the kids want to have a go too, I thought I'd invest in some water-based etching ink- Caligo. I only bought a pot of black to start with, but the bits of wood I've been slicing away at are becoming printing blocks, and this week I've printed three of them up. I'm pleased. It's a good feeling seeing the black rolling onto the wood and the marks you've made beginning to make sense- a bit like hand-developing a photograph, and watching the image appearing on the paper. Lovely.
That done, I thought I'd use up the rest of the ink I'd rolled out in doing a few monoprints, and see if it's any good for that. That turned out well too, and then came that guided accident- or maybe it wasn't really- it was more like playing and seeing what happened. I'd done one monoprint of a local street scene, and had a wet sponge there handy. So I thought I'd see if I could get some grey by painting the picture here and there- great- but a bit darkly dramatic- like a Pat Marriot illustration- so I put it in the bath and showered it. Mmm. Ok, I had to scrub the bath out, but it was a very interesting effect on the paper- not a brilliant bit of drawing, but with the potential there to do something interesting with... and the bath did come clean, so it looks like I've bought the right ink. Have now ordered some colours... I haven't been able to get out drawing for the last couple of weeks, except on Friday, when I started doing a wildly coloured watercolour of the man at the beach who's always sweeping the sand up. If it's some kind of ancient Greek punishment, it isn't working, as he does it with a big grin on his face, and he probably would if only given a toothbrush to use. Anyway, I like the image but he moved the wheelbarrow and that was the end of that.
I shifted along and did a biro seascape instead, and although I've ended up with a few half-dogs, it's come out ok. The interesting thing about doing pictures somewhere like a street or the beach, where people are striding along the promenade, is that you have the most time to draw whoever is furthest away from you, if they're not walking away, of course. That can mean you have the figures in the distance all nice and complete, and the large ones right in the foreground all squiggled and rushed. I'm not very good at saying "Excuse me, you've got an interesting-shaped head- could you let me draw it for a minute?", or "It's really nice how you walk with your knees pointing inwards, would you mind going a bit more slowly...?" I'm now trying to put together a very quick video of a scribbly drawing. Having heard myself rabbit on about this and that, I'm half-wondering whether to make it a silent movie.... Two guys who weren't entirely sober came to chat today as I was drawing. One of them sat and watched me draw, making polite comments. Directness then overcame him- "Do you smoke drugs?" he asked. "No." I said, "It's not my cup of tea- a cup of tea is more my cup of tea"- (notice how brilliant I am at witty replies...) He looked a bit surprised, and then said kindly to me "Oh well, each to their own." He became even more enthusiastic as I came near to the end of the picture. "I bet you've got lots of things that aren't like this... I bet you've got some really good pictures at home." That's still making me laugh now, but a real highlight was drawing a guy in a checked shirt playing the guitar and singing, and managing to do a rare thing and combine musicality with volume. It was good stuff. I almost never think of putting music on when I'm working, though most of the time I'm humming along to myself something or other, but it's good to draw to a good sound, and this was energetic stuff. I went over to say thanks as he was packing up, and he introduced himself as Drew Allen. (drewallen.co.uk ). If you want something for your ears as you're drawing, have a listen. |