art

Berkhamsted Art Exhibition (Mark II)

Wow… where did all my posts go?
The ones about those four wonderful days of pastel-society-cum-local-artists-workshops in the summer? The ones about all the portrait swap sessions I’ve held at my house, the lifedrawing days, and those St Albans Art Soc workshops that badger me reluctantly out of my comfort zone(s)?

… Oh yeah. I didn’t write them yet.

It does appear that I mostly post about local exhibitions, after being galvanised into action by the nudge of guilt and duty, usually in the form of emails from the relevant art society saying ‘please promote our exhibition(!!)’.

Speaking of which…

Please come along to Berkhamsted Art Society’s Winter exhibition at Berkhamsted Civic Centre, 101 High Street, HP4 3HD!

Entry is free, and the exhibition is open Friday 13th December 11am to 8pm, and Saturday 14th December 9am to 5pm. There is also a fashion show running from 2.30pm on Saturday.

Please note – the exhibition is only open for two days this time, so don’t miss out…

berko-poster-screencap-for-uploading-onto-my-website_fin.jpg

… anyway, these posts are all well and good – after all, my work is in these exhibitions too (see featured image ;p) – but they aren’t quite what I envisaged when starting my posts.

So, here’s a quick snapshot of me at the moment, worshipping at the altar of the retouch varnish1 in preparation for lugging work into the exhibition tomorrow…

Varnishing point

 

1

NB in the vein of retouch varnish, guidelines recommend that it is applied in a dust free environment, to avoid dirt settling on the freshly-stickified surface of one’s painting. Guidelines also recommend that varnishing is undertaken in a very well ventilated area, to avoid gassing onesself.

Anyone knowing of somewhere which is both DUST FREE and WELL VENTILATED… please do let me know…

Harpenden Arts Club Exhibition

Having scrambled (barely) to the top of my painting, framing-and-varnishing deadlines, the fruits of which are parading along the banner at the top of this page…
… except for those which have been cropped into oblivion by the ‘featured image’ aspect ratio. Let’s try that again:

My piccies banner_small sharp

Ahem, please come along to the 2019 Harpenden Arts Club Autumn exhibition from Friday to Sunday this week at Southdown Public Hall, Southdown Road, Harpenden, AL5 1PD… with further info available on the HAC website.

Exact dates and times of the exhibition are shown on this conveniently placed poster!

HAC Exhibition 2019

Aldenham Art Festival

… I’m getting better at this. A post about an exhibition before it’s more than halfway through! Moreover, a post within an hour of another post1!

So yes; come to the two remaining days of Aldenham Art Festival2. Entry is by donation to the church it is held in, open on:

  • Saturday 11am – 4pm
  • Sunday 12 noon – 4:30pm

… at St John the Baptist Church, Church Lane, Aldenham, WD25 8BE (near Radlett, Bushey and Watford).

I hear there are homemade cakes and refreshments available – an addition to what is certainly a lot of gorgeous artwork to marvel at ^_o…

1

Short timeframe of posting explains why the featured flyer has been hastily edited in Paint.net to remove an artistic thumb and reinstate some of the address.

2

Short timeframe of the exhibition explains the haste of posting.

Open Studios – the onward journey…

Well, the first week is over…
I was footling about on the first day, convinced I was to receive no visitors (on due reflection, perhaps trying to hold my Private View on a Saturday night was a non-starter), and heard a knock on the door…

And there were people galore!

As it turned out, my cousin had spotted Open Studios approaching and thoughtfully prodded several family members into coming – not only said cousin but my aunt and uncle (a painter himself), plus one surprise neighbour with her own interest in art 1. They all turned up on my doorstep within half an hour of each other…

… and we held our own impromptu Private View, which made my dayPleasedAsPunch_LH 2.

 

I’m also pleased to report we all ate the shortbread and passionfruit cake threatened in the previous post… and survived!

To make it look as if I actually work in my studio, I have strategically placed unfinished paintings all around the room

The following day someone from St Albans Art Society also visited, and very flatteringly quizzed me all about my work 3.

And yesterday, which was another very pleasant surprise, the lady who produces the local Park Street newsletter came to visit… with formal interview to follow ^_o…

I’m still pretty sure my house is still too far from any pass-by traffic to get many visitors (although we’ll see if there is any increase in footfall next week when nearby artist Sarah How is also opening her studio), so I’ll probably be changing my approach next year.

However, I’m hardly one to talk… I’ve not yet even planned my visits to the other local artists myself >_<…

1

Mosaics, intriguingly… I wonder if she’s involved with the local marquetry group…

2

We discovered (when on the obligatory 3-hour tour of all artwork in the house) by dint of hey-I-recognise-that-still-life, that my uncle and I have the same occasional painting tutor, Caroline Bays…
… this also means we both paint well enough to accurately identify objects in our still lifes. A mutual win!

3

His own speciality is in maintaining very intricate and informative sketchbooks – something of a diary, something of a scientific journal, and illustrated throughout with very beautiful line-and-watercolour sketches.

The Daily Painting Challenge

OK.
So.
In a discussion with an artist friend, we decided it would be good for us to try and do a painting every day for a month (from 8th May to 8th June… yes, yes I know that was over a month ago now…).

After achieving my target, by dint of creatively redefining both ‘daily’ and ‘painting’1, I thought I’d better get round to posting them (in completely random order) before I forgot entirely2.

Several of the below were sketched while holidaying in Scotland, so many thanks to my hosts for generously lending their collection of shiny objects to the cause…

1

i.e. By dint of applying the following cheats:

  • Deciding completing a painting every *other* day would be more my style. Wouldn’t want to overdo it, would I?
  • Redefining ‘painting’ as ‘whatever I felt like’.
  • Adding on an extra day to my deadline, because I spent the entirity of two of them travelling between home and Scotland. Hm, really I should have added two on… missed a trick there.
  • And finally, counting the picture I *finished* on the day I started the challenge. Sadly, the Mouse did not in fact take only a day to complete.

2

As has apparently happened with the ‘Springtime Sketches’ posts.

Berkhamsted Art Exhibition

Just a quick post to plug the local Berkhamsted Art Society Exhibition1, which is running until 5pm this Saturday (18th May2). It is a beautiful exhibition of local artists held in Berkhamsted Civic Centre, open daily from 9am to 5pm.

I was very surprised during my stewarding slot to discover how few visitors the exhibition was getting – considering the attractive venue, the location bang in the centre of Berkhamsted (barely ten minutes walk3 from the nearest railway station), the free tea, coffee and biscuits on offer, and of course the quality of the artwork on display4.

So – do please come and have a look if you’re in the area over the next few days!

190516 Berkhamsted Map

1
Or, as I have affectionately heard it phrased, Berko.

2
And not in fact the 8th of May, which was the date I so cunningly wrote on some blameless visitor’s receipt today…

3
Or – as I discovered dashing for the train home – 4.5 minutes flat-out running with a heavy backpack.

4
Not just mine ;p.

Springtime Sketching (interlude)

… and what has the mouse to do with springtime?

Not a lot1. It just happened to be drawn in the spring, as part of a couple of postcard designs to go to Bricket Wood Art Club2).

Anyway, more seasonal pastel studies are below, with only minor photoshopping3, for your delectation and delight – or at least a distraction until I get organised enough to do a proper post4.

All spring sketches small

Alas, the glorious candyfloss blossoms are now mostly over – but at least I drew some of them this year…

1
Unless you count the tendency of rats to frequent our garden in pursuit of food put out for the young birds.

2
…which has recently suffered a very sad loss. I should probably not go into details here, but will ask whether a general announcement should go up on the website at some point.

3
Memo to self – download Gimp from Gimp.org. I like trusty Paint.net, but I could do with more functionality (and better auto-levelling algorithms >_<).

4
Best estimate: around midsummer at the current rate!

Springtime Sketching (Part 1)

On my way to celebrate Easter with my family, in between checking how badly the chocolate Easter eggs had melted1 and conversations about bubonic plague2, I began a recounting of all the different weekend workshops I’d been on in spring. It turns out there were quite a few…

Windy workshop

I made great efforts to attend my first Chertsey Artists lifedrawing session of the season:
WindyWorkshop

I chose a green background colour, the same as the one used for this lifedrawing, but it wasn’t quite as successful this time round; the previous attempt’s darker, more reflective-skinned model and directional orange lighting just look more dramatic.190424 The extended limited palette

I also managed to use too many colours in the drawing (as usual); perhaps next time I’ll pick a paper colour and a few pastels in advance of the session, and stick to them. Mind you, I say that every time…

Portrait of transport woe

Following the lifedrawing session, the next weekend I’d booked into a portrait class, again in Chertsey.

Now, I had a plan in mind for this portrait – in fact I’d been on at the tutor to tell me when this particular model was attending, and I would go to THAT session with THIS COLOUR board4 and THESE oil pastels, come what may…

Fortunately the gale-force winds had gone down by the time of the portrait class. Less fortunately, so had the trains, extending a 2-something hour journey to 3.5, partly via replacement bus.
ReplacementBus

However, once I had straggled in and sufficient coffee had been imbibed to combat  sleep-deprivation, it was a very relaxing, enjoyable session… the results of which are shown below (and many thanks to the other attendees for letting me post a photo of their work!)

Full Workshop

Guess which one is mine… (hint: the title is ‘Feeling Blue’)

Water water everywhere

OK, I lied – this one wasn’t on the weekend at all.
However, I was determined to be there, because one of my very favourite HAC artists, Sarah Poppleton, was giving tips on how to paint water…

SMALL workshop picture

Look. Loook. Loooooooooook…

Thanks also go to Sarah for letting me use a photo of herself and her artwork ^^.

One key point of the workshop was that drawing from observation was absolutely vital, which is a pity since I’m terrible at organising myself enough to go out and sketch from life – but there were still a couple of very useful tips for portraying water:

    • In reflections, dark objects will be less dark; light/bright objects will be less light/bright… overall, the contrast will be diminished compared to the original image being reflected.
    • The angle shown in a reflection may not be exactly the same as the angle you see the original image from – particularly true the closer you are to the image (and its reflection).
    • Sometimes you can see through the surface of the water to things beneath its surface. The further away you are from the water you’re observing, the greater the angle light has reflected through to reach your eyes, and the less it penetrates through the water’s surface… so there tends to be a gradation away from seeing through the water to seeing only reflections, the further the water is from the observer.
    • As a general point of atmospheric perspective (not just the case with water): darker, warmer colours tend to be in the foreground, and bluer, cooler one further away.
    • Sparkling water – pure white paint looks unconvincing; using a few different pale, warm colours, with only a very few dots of pure white, looks much better. Additionally, using a warm underpainting colour for the sparkles will really make them shine in the finished image.
    • Ruffled water scatters light more than a smooth surface, so reflections are much less perfect and often duller.
    • Waves – look for lines of movement (i.e. where the waves are rolling from and to) so the overall pattern makes sense.

1
In a break from tradition, the bank holiday weather was in fact seasonably clement.

2
Don’t ask.

3
If by ‘great efforts’ one means ‘being up and about before 10am’ and ‘walking through a moderate breeze with an art folder’.

4
In fact the blue background was created by mixing blue acrylic paint and pumice, alá the mountboard pastel grounds in this post.

February Update (part 2)

So, I asked my partner to look at my website and tell me what my posts needed. He looked. He pondered. He wracked his brains. And the answer was… clickable footnotes1. I should probably gen up on my html anyway, since I’ve apparently volunteered to take on Bricket Wood Art Club website. In addition to helping out with St Albans Art Society website and Treasurey stuff. Hmm. Well, I’m sure that was sensible and I will in no way end up overloaded.

Anyway, on with the update:

Pastel grounds.
In light of the expense of Pastelmat and other addictively velvety papers, which eat through pastels and money with equal gusto, a fellow artist from St Albans invited me to experiment with creating new and exciting DIY pastel grounds2. In between cups of coffee, we employed a washing-up sponge and some gimungous interior decoration paintbrushes to apply:

    • Roughly equal parts cheapo acrylic paint, white acrylic gesso and ground pumice to pale-coloured mountboard (no idea what grade the pumice it was but it looked very fine to me)3.
    • Liquitex clear gesso to black and red mountboard (memo to self: next time *don’t* slather it on by the bucketload; velvety surfaces are good for pastels; small mountains of paint, less so).

I’d like to give the DIY grounds a mark-out-of-ten, but… I haven’t actually started applying pastel to them yet. Give me another year and I may get round to it… Anyway, in addition to providing all the mountboard and Liquitex, my friend also loaned me a rather spiffy white seashell for my next still life, as shown below (mainly because it’s more interesting than posting images of blank mountboard):

ShellFIN

Pretty in Pink (2019)
Pastel & coloured pencil
18 x 23cm

Card designs
The end of February (yes, OK, I know it’s mid-March already) signals the end of the usual slew of Christmas/New Year/why-is-everyone-born-between-November-and-February-birthday cards and, this year, some sadder things.

Slightlymassivecardbanner3

Keith Hornblower’s workshop
St Albans Art Society ran this workshop on 23rd February. I love Keith’s work, and so jumped on the bandwagon even though watercolour boat-themed landscapes are… quite far out of my comfort zone. However, despite a rocky beginning, and taking forever to complete my painting as usual, I very much enjoyed the workshop and (goodness!) am even moderately pleased with the result. Points of note:

    • A big thank you to the lady who kindly gave me her photo (shown below next to the final painting) to work from, without which I would have been a bit stuck. Next time I will bring my own reference material JUST IN CASE4.
    • Also grateful to Keith’s suggestion about moving the middle boat to improve the composition. And the fact that he never changes the water he washes his brushes in either. Hah! I feel so vindicated…
    • Of course, all of my watercolour tubes have dried up. Again. I don’t generally consider this a problem because watercolours remain soluble5. However, since I was using a very large paintbrush and tiny, dried-up pigment containers, I couldn’t get very strong darks – hence the lack of contrast in the painting below. Oops…

FIN Keith Workshop

Chris Christoforou’s talk on ‘How to Sell Your Work’
I’m glad I made it to this one… quite apart from being entertaining, there was a lot of advice I’d not heard before in the mix, particularly geared towards trying to arrange and physically show your work, and then make a living off it.

    • Firstly, he advised specialising your style and subjects to a few key areas – because if you’re too diverse you won’t easily become known as a go-to person for a certain type of work.
    • Conversely, the range of products you offer – framed work, small sketches, greetings cards, prints and paraphenalia such as T-shirts (good advertising) – should be as wide as you can make it to try and cater to as broad a range of wallets as possible.
    • He also commented that – if you’re aiming to live off your art – you ultimately have to price your work against for the total overhead of ‘time spent living at home’ until the picture is complete. Good point. I’ve been charging sub-minimum hourly wage for the time directly spent painting my pictures because… it’s hard enough getting that to sell. But how much does one spend over a 12-month period? For a painting that takes a month to complete, it needs to sell for over £1,000 for most artists just to break even6.
    • So, if you’re making a living on your art, tailoring your subjects to wealthy clients7 with oodles of disposable income is a good idea. Suggestions included birds of prey, dogs, koi carp; exotic big cats; potentially portraits, maybe even flowers… music to my ears. However, getting good source photos for some of these without violating copyright can be tricky.
    • The next step is finding an event – country fairs can be a good – that might both a) show your work and b) contain lots of wealthy clients.

One of Chris’s comments – after a couple of throwaway lines about nearly getting eaten by some of the big cats he paints in a few of the catalogue of exotic countries he’s exhibited in over the years – was that we should aim to sell ourselves as much as our artwork, because artists are never boring. And there I was, thinking to myself about how I can’t drive, never fly; how I spend half my time baking8 and watching DVDs, and the other half asleep.

Ah well, we can’t all be eaten by big cats…

LIONS

1
Ta-dah!

2
May be less exciting than advertised.

3
In my role as experienced hypochondriac I actually went and looked up how hazardous pumice dust. Not very, apparently, although inhaling the dust is still a bad idea.

4
The tutor accidentally prepares for the wrong workshop and has no reference material to hand out. Not that this would ever happen, right?

5
Unlike my poor neglected tubs of student-grade acrylics which are slowly dying off one by one. Or perhaps that should read ‘drying off’.

6
Assuming roughly £12,000 yearly expenditure. And in my case, how much of that yearly expenditure is spent on desserts from the Pudding Stop? I shudder to think…

7
Apparently judging by one’s shoes is a good way to tell. Although – I’m not 100% sure I’d be able to identify a designer shoe, given my own choice of footware…

SHOES

8
Mmmm… sticky toffee pudding…