This blog is supposed to be about me finishing a watercolour after four months. But then my blog host put this teasing question on my admin page . I can answer the question with this painting. After four months of doodling I thought I was done. You could say, I was secure that enough was enough. But the minute the finished photograph was taken I knew that security was never going to work for this string bag of windfall apples. The leaves are not bold enough, the leaves are going on an adventure. The leaves are going bolder. Flakes of gold leaf are going to make the leaves sparkle.
April
There was never a plan to paint windfall apples in a string bag. I just wanted something to paint in a meditative way while talking at an artists social gathering.
May
First coloured orbs appeared.
June
Then the string bag.
The arrival of the string bag somehow turned the orbs into bruised and imperfect apples.
July
And that should have been that, but the leaves are all wrong so the August gathering of art natterers will see me possibly adventuring too far with this picture. It could go well . It may not.
In my search for creative adventure I could be…
Gilding the Lily.
Saturday pondering, it is often a surprise to me how a blog will end and sometimes even the beginning takes me unawares.
During my morning dog walk I popped into an exhibition at Royal William Yard (RWY). It is Shark Month at Ocean Studios. There are loads of lovely Sharky images, but on a bright morning this one was the only one not glazed and not suffering from loads of reflections. The website of the artist is below.
In the cafe there was also a really cute collection of bits and pieces left at low tide near to RWY.
I particularly liked these little bits with text on.
As I regularly poke about at low tide I was quite jealous, I never find anything with words on.
But then on my walk home I had a moment!
The tide had delivered me a cracked and grubby plectrum. With words on it.
A freebie advertising gears for Mountain bikes.
Here’s the moral dilemma of the day. Do I donate to the communal exhibition of tidal finds? Or does a grubby plectrum start my own collection of mudlarking treasures with text on.?
I have completely failed to mention my Kindle book reading. Which this year is my non-fiction holiday read. I am a good deal further into it than this picture suggests. I had excellent history teachers at my school and wish I could have studied it beyond O level but I wish that about lots of subjects. I have never wished for different History teachers until now. Shalina Patel serves up history so intriguingly she would most certainly get an apple from me everyday.
The Hotel Shelf book has been chosen. It will almost certainly be the flight home book.
I picked up a fabulous life quote from my current read, soon to be set free to roam wherever with all the other Hotel shelf paperbacks the world over.
” We can’t all live in perfect harmony with our integrity “
I will be taking that sentence home with me.
Necessity is the mother or father of invention. Overnight I remembered my dad sharpening pencils with glass paper ( sandpaper) . An Emery board has done a very good job. No pencil crisis any more.
In hotel bookshelf faux science I would say that the majority of guests here are German and they read a better standard of books than the British guests. There are some shockingly bad cover art examples in either language. Predominantly ‘Romance’ novels that my mother was very dismissive of when I was younger. She called them pulpy kidney books, as if describing some terrible medical malady that would befall anyone reading such stuff. Not for her and her second wave feminist friends, except…
When it was time to clear my parents home following their deaths I found a surprise stash of exactly that type of novel in the back of her wardrobe. She didn’t sink to Mills and Boon but the subject matter was predominantly historical and medical romance.
At death her kidneys were in fine form so maybe she never crossed a line or maybe she imagined pulpy kidneys.
Book 4 of the holiday reading pile includes a lot of rape. Hardly surprising as the core of the narrative is the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War 2. In this book , so far , none of the main characters are involved. The brutality of the Japanese Occupation is the background to the narrative. I can revel in knowing the location well and slotting history into well-known locations is always fascinating.
In other news two new-to -me, Greek words have cropped up this week . Thanks to my fellow bookworms.
It was too tempting not to include a book and buttocks in a beach sketch . Surrounded, as I am, by buttocks both beautiful and not.
All that buttock sketching has revealed an error on my packing. No pencil sharpener!!
The second word is Ekphrasis.
Vivid description, oh how I wish I had the words. I may no longer have a useful pencil but I do still have my paints and a camera to enable a vivid end to the holiday.
The first book from the hotel shelf has been picked up, lets see how that goes.
I don’t paint people much, which is strange as I find people fascinating. I don’t think I have any more planned exhibitions for 2024, so I could set myself a summer project. The few people I can pull out of the digital or even real-world portfolio are all thinking about something.
Maybe that is my thing, I hadn’t realised. Even a pair of dancers are not truly engaged with one another or the viewer. Lost in their individual worlds despite being physically dependent on one another.
Even my recent cold water swimmer is lost within the tiles of the shower.
The more I look the more pensive people I find. Storm Agnes, raging but full of thought.
There is even a portrait of me in our hallway , pondering.
Seems that pondering is a creative theme. I had no idea!
P s In the interests of research I went in search of a painting that has been stored here for many years.
My first portrait from my Foundation degree, hiding in lofts, attics and barns for 25 years or so.
In one of life’s uncanny twists, I discovered recently that my DNA is 10% Viking. But that is not particularly important to this ponder. I seem to have always liked people in my paintings to be deep in thought. A point worth pondering I think
You would think a day of painting, that I had planned and looked forward to, would be made even more possible by another day of disgusting weather.
But then the ‘ tasks’ seduced me, and before paint could be laid on paper I started a minor tidy up which led to a major tidy up of the art cupboard.
Which led to 2 hours of trying to coax a dead printer back to life. Unsuccessfully. Which led to me losing my phone , in the spice drawer of all places . Found after 2 hours of maniacal back tracking with false memories of when I last used it. Consequently not a drop of paint touched paper yesterday.
But on a positive, the black tulips look wonderful in the rain and the art cupboard is fabulous. The printer remains deceased.
Coincidentally I dressed today in homage to a black tulip. Art bag and DM’s feeling the tulip love.
Concatenation is a wonderful thing. Post proper job I have dabbled in admin and writing for Arts organisations and now in a strange twist of concatenation as a non-tennis player I do admin for a tennis club.
Not ‘just’ a tennis club but a coastal garden and Clubhouse that is available to host community events.
One such community is Rhizome Artists who meet once a week in the clubhouse. Rhizome are Exhibiting locally and the venue of the exhibition has a cafe that does great coffee and cake so a visit was the obvious thing to do.
So coffee, and cake but not concatenation were my anticipated outcomes of the visit.
Early on I met Tim who was taking some standard photographs of the whole exhibition. We had a small natter and he left. I enjoyed my coffee and cake and a lovely wide-ranging conversation with my gentleman companion. We then spent a lot of time enjoying the art, some of which is in the pictures below.
Kathleen arrives in these parts tomorrow. Only the second time since naming began that Britain has achieved a 16th-named storm. I only became fully engaged with storms when I took up regular sea swimming or ‘ bobbing’ as it is known in these parts. Living on a small peninsular has made me ‘tuned in’ to the weather in a way that I have never quite been before. I have recently, in the last couple of years taken to painting the sensation of the storm. This year I have been concentrating on printing so have missed out on all the storms since Agnes, in early October.
Storm Agnes- Private Collection
Until a storm arrives I never really know if it will take human form or be an abstract force.
But whichever sort of storm it is, my grubby ‘weather’ tin of colours is available.
Which brings me to today’s random question.
What job would you do for free?
Maybe I could be a storm P.R/ Artist. Give them some character before they arrive, elevate their good points and downplay their obnoxious behaviours. In fantasy land I could be flown to meet them when they first hit British land. Do a quick sketch in the way that notorious criminals are sketched in court*
Then rather than only being identified only by their trail of destruction, a storm could also present a more benign face to the world. People might be more motivated to forgive a storm that empties their dustbin in the street if the storm could be considered elegant or well-dressed. Quirky even.
* In British courts no photography is permitted. Special Court artists are employed by news agencies to depict the main characters in a trial for illustrating the events in court in print, television or digital media.There are four professional courtroom sketch artists in total: Priscilla Coleman, Siân Frances, Julia Quenzler and Elizabeth Cook. All four artists are self-taught.
A marvelous art blog exists called Making a Mark. Below is their article about Court Artists.
Isn’t it deliciously mad that such a career exists. Being a storm artist seems almost normal in comparison. But how long would I do it for free?
Maybe a nanosecond or forever, art is like that. There is nothing like the moment when somebody buys a piece or original art. In my head I flip and cartwheel like an Olympic gymnast. It is not the reason I create but goodness me it is a wonderful feeling when it happens.Storm artist, free until someone pays me!
I realise my * is in the wrong place, my blog my rules.
For anyone who loves great art writing, this Facebook page is the Make a Mark resource I discovered today.
Spring really is dragging its heels a bit. Sundays tease us with some sun but then the rain and the greige return. I am lucky that every day I get to visit an art exhibition first thing in the morning. I get to appreciate the dank beauty of a West Country winter by checking out Clare Rogers Dartmoor trees; whilst being grumpy about the misery of a dank spring.
I’ve even made casseroles and meat pies this week like a woman trying to perk up January.
There is a point to my wet weather moaning. I deliberately took a different route home yesterday to maximise walking in less exposed, weather whipped paths . I came to these building works boards and actually read the notice attatched.
Suddenly my grey old day was filled with Razzle Dazzle.
Dazzle paint was developed by the artist Norman Wilkinson and used on ships in the First and Second World Wars to confuse the eyes of the enemy.
Dazzle isn’t camouflage: it was realised very early on that it would be impossible to give a ship one paint scheme that would hide it in all the environments it would sail through. Instead, the geometric shapes made it difficult to visually assess the class, distance, position and movement of ships, thereby making it difficult to Thus the term “Dazzle” or “Razzle Dazzle” was used to target. describe the paint schemes. The marine artist Norman Wilkinson came up with the theory that the appearance of a ship could be altered by painting it in high contrast colours. Angular lines were used to make the work of a range finder difficult.
The dazzle schemes played with light and dark, the concept of countershading being used: parts of the ship that would naturally be shaded- under guns and overhangs – were painted bright white so as to hide the shape of the shadow. The same principle was used in reverse for parts that were usually cast in light. Tops of gun barrels would be painted in darker shades than the bottoms. White was usually used for masts because white would blend in with the sky in many situations. The decks of ships were also painted, to disguise it when the ship was listing heavily. All parts of ships tended to be painted, from funnels to guns to boats.
Dazzle-painted ships constituted the world’s largest public art and design display ever assembled. It’s legacy lives on and around the world Dazzle has been applied to buildings, cars, clothes and shoes, and continues to influence art, design and fashion. Investigations continue as to how Dazzle can be adapted for practical uses in non-military settings.
All fascinating stuff and thrillingly I get to use a new word in my next sentence. Thanks Google.
Norman Wilkinson with Dazzle in hand.
Norman Wilkinson was not just a camoufleur.
He also designed travel posters, which I love
All in all a rainy day with unexpected purpose.
Clare Rogers is exhibiting at Ocean Studios until and including Easter Sunday.
My procrastination took an interesting turn today. With a list of art admin to achieve I decided to start a painting entirely unconnected with the upcoming exhibition. Another riff on the theme of the contemporary green man.
This one has sunglasses instead of the traditional socketless eyes. His face is bathed with dappled sunlight as he emerges from his greenery. Which then had a good dose of bracken added.
Which will need to be greened down a bit tomorrow and his teeth painted in. Still avoiding the actual tasks of the day I gave him a digital tweak using a pop filter.
Thank goodness paint does need to dry! In those gaps I managed most of the jobs scheduled for today . For all those men who requested a bald representation of male fertility. Here he is.
theoldmortuary.design 