A hefty prod

Much as I enjoy painting, I need a pretty hefty prod to get me started. Perhaps the problem is that I need convincing that there is any point in my painting at all.  Perhaps it is partly that, when I do get started, it is more of a technical exercise rather than the fulfilment of some arty vision.
Perhaps the real problem is that I haven’t a clue what I am doing other than making marks with paint on canvas or board and hoping that the end product might just amount to a passable illusion of  the person or object being painted. It is as simple, and as difficult, as that.

Sometimes the hefty prod arrives quite unexpectedly, as it did a few days ago when I found this little oil sketch that has been hiding in one of the many mysterious cardboard boxes in our garage. I had forgotten that I had painted it. Like the very few others that have been anywhere near promising, it was a little sketch (4 x 3 inches) that I had produced in about 20 minutes or so, that is, quickly.
This discovery was the hefty prod that set me thinking about a fresh start on one of the four paintings that are, supposedly, “in progress” at the moment. Well, I can’t just sit down at the easel and start straight in. First, I need to re-examine the painting, which has been facing the wall since I ceased work on it a couple of weeks ago. So, in a rare, patient, frame of mind, I sit, clipboard with paper on knee and pencil in hand, a few feet from the painting so that I do not see too much minor detail. It is a portrait and I am still at the stage where I am trying to get an accurate tonal drawing. So I am trying to see what is wrong with it and listing each defect in turn and what I think needs to be done. For reasons that I haven’t thought much about just yet, I have to do this assessment quite separately from any attempt to apply paint. A day, or maybe a week, later I will find another suitable time to make a bit more progress. The task of working out where and why the paint is needed has been done and now I can concentrate on mixing and applying paint. 
I like painting but I need to do it in easy stages and keep it simple. Perhaps that should tell me something!

New links

From time to time I delete a few links from this blog and insert new ones. Neither additions nor deletions are necessarily permanent. The idea is to limit the total number of links while still guiding my visitors to “new” blogs and websites that have caught my attention for one reason or another, if only temporarily.
I have been shuffling the links again recently and have added the following:

Karin Wells Studio - interesting content and not all of it art and painting.
Carolee S. Clark - a painter with an attractive style.
Twitter – needs no introduction.
Nick Robinson’s Newslog - a good source of commentary on UK politics.
The Cycling Lawyer - for expert commentary on the legal issues relevant to cyclists.
Cycle Social - a site with a difference for cyclists of all kinds, sporting, road, commuting, leisure, slow, whatever. The site is relatively new but growing steadily and looking forward to a relaunch early in the New Year. It has enormous potential for cyclists and local clubs who have the inagination and initiative to use it.  I signed up (free) and put myself on the “Members Map” and look forward to meeting (and cycling with) other local members.

Another painting

 As regular visitors to this blog will have discovered by now, I do not finish a painting very often. This one was painted a few years ago and I came across it recently while unpacking yet another box in our garage. At present I am writing a rather long post, which is likely to be published here in two or three parts, telling the story of the Golden Retriever who was an amazing addition to our family some years ago. So I decided to show this painting by way of an introduction to that story.

The picture was painted on oil painting paper (7 x 9 in.) using Winsor and Newton Artisan water-mixable oils, my favourite medium. After some months it had been varnished with Rowney Acrylic soluble gloss varnish. When I unpacked it the other day it seemed very grubby but, thanks to the varnish,  it was easy to clean it without causing damage. The varnish is soluble in white spirit but not in water. So I quickly wetted the whole painting with plain water, using a two-inch paint brush, then wiped the whole thing with folded kitchen tissues, easily removing both dirt and most of the water leaving the painting as good as new.

Electric light for painting

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying out some daylight-balanced energy-saving bulbs to see whether they would solve my long-standing problems when  trying to paint by artificial light. I had purchased some 20 watt and 32 watt bulbs from Androv Medical, these being equivalent to 90 watt and 130 watt respectively, in the old type of bulbs.
I replaced the main bulbs in our living and dining rooms with the Androv 20 watt bulbs. In my painting room a 32 watt bulb became the main light. Another 32 watt bulb was put in a portable floodlamp which is used to light still life arrangements or paintings to be photographed.
In the interests of truth and accuracy I must report that the 32 watt bulbs did not last long as main room lights in my painting room. I have no idea why they didn’t last. No other bulbs have “blown” in that light fitting during the 15 months that we have lived here and the 20 watt bulb which has taken their place has performed normally for the past few weeks, as have the two 20 watt bulbs downstairs.
Androv Medical have been exceptionally good about the “blown” bulbs, replacing all of them without question and even giving me extra when I decided to settle for 20 watt bulbs all round.
And how about the suitability of these bulbs for painting? Well, I am pleased to say that they work well for me. They won’t turn me into a painter overnight but they have enabled me to overcome one particularly irritating obstacle.

A painting at last

From time to time I have been known to mutter darkly about the hopelessness of trying to paint, in the small room that I call my “den”, during what are laughingly known as daylight hours in this part of the planet, especially in the winter. I have experienced a great deal of difficulty seeing colours correctly and then matching them in oil paint, and have found those aspects of painting completely impossible  by artificial light. As a result of all this I have made hardly any effort to paint during the past three or four months.
I have tried ordinary daylight bulbs as sold in art and craft shops but to no avail. A couple of years ago we started to install the new-fangled energy saving bulbs throughout our house and I began to wonder then whether I would ever find, or afford for that matter, energy-saving lighting which was also balanced for noon daylight.

A couple of weeks ago I ran a search on Google and found what seemed to be the ideal solution. Androv Medical produce a range of bulbs which include what they describe as full spectrum ionisong bulbs, which are also low energy bulbs and for which they claim a long life. Full details can be found on their website. All I will say here is that I fitted two 20 watt bulbs (equivalent to 90 watt each in old type bulbs) in our living/dining room and two 32 watt (equivalent to 130 watt old bulbs) in my “den” where I paint. Of the latter, one is in the main ceiling light and the other in a modified floodlight on its own tall stand that can be used to light objects being painted. So now I have not only ample light but also light equivalent to noon daylight (6,000K). Our bulbs fit the standard B22 bayonet fittings (they are also available for screw fittings)  and being low energy they are also saving both my money and the planet. 

 

Yesterday I put the lights to the test. I wanted to avoid dawdling over the painting but, instead, to finish it, no matter what, by bedtime, having started it in the late afternoon. Many an earlier painting, unfinished by bedtime, has waited days and weeks for the time, suitable opportunity, right frame of mind or whatever and was never finished. This year I intend to finish more paintings, even if they are not very good. Usually, my motivation to paint any particular subject is a bit shortlived, so unless I finish the painting quickly I am in danger of losing interest in it.
This was only the first trial but the bulbs have been a big success. Not only have they enabled me to paint, starting in otherwise dull daylight and finishing (after interruptions for a meal and a couple of TV shows) around 11pm, but they also produce great light by which to take photographs with my digital camera. They are not exactly cheap but if they last anywhere near as long as expected, their cost will have been negligible.

Painters’ blogs

For some time I have been wanting to add more painters’ blogs or websites to my blogroll.  I must have looked at hundreds of blogs during the past several weeks but without finding many that really impressed me. Obviously it is my fault. I am much too hard to please. Most of the painters who failed to impress could run rings around me where painting is concerned but the type of work they were doing, or simply their style, failed to strike a chord for me. 

Even so, in the past few days I have found some  very fine painters and the new links are in place already. Have a look at them and, as always, your comments will be very welcome.

During my searches I came across a picture that made me chuckle. It is on the PuppyPlay website and it is just the sort of thing our dog might have done a few years ago.

A fresh start? We’ll see.

To post or not to post? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to woffle on interminably about nothing of any consequence or whether to wait until there is a story to tell, however brief, and preferably with pictures.

During the past couple of months I haven’t been anywhere and, worse still, I haven’t done anything that I imagine would be particularly interesting to readers of this blog. So I did not post for a few weeks though I continued to tour all my links at least every few days.

Autumn 08 was pretty miserable so far as I was concerned. It was a rather grey period in more senses that one as the days became shorter and colder. I have rarely caught colds in the past but made up for this in mid-September when I caught a cold which lasted longer than usual and then, with a few days off between each, was succeeded by all it’s cousins right through until early December. I might have kept cycling through the coughs, sneezes and runny noses and even despite the persistent tiredness but I have yet to figure out how to keep the legs going when the lungs just don’t want to know. So cycling was off the agenda and with it the exercise that was keeping the weight under some sort of control and, of course, the opportunity to see new parts of the neighbourhood, take pictures, and bore everybody silly by posting about it.

The vandal attacks on my car (about which I posted here and here) occurred during this period and did nothing for my sense of humour but I am hoping that they were isolated incidents rather than the beginning of a trend.

I gave up trying to paint when good daylight became a bit scarce some weeks before Christmas. I simply cannot cope with colour mixing in anything other than good daylight so it was better to stop completely and wait for conditions to improve, than to struggle on and become discouraged. I did manage a recognisable (but unfinished) self-portrait before I stopped painting. Mind you, it made me look rather angry (maybe I was!) and if my actual colours were anything like those in the portrait I don’t think the wonders of modern medicine could do much for me. That is not how I want to paint portraits.

Other interests have occupied the spaces vacated by cycling and painting and they might get a mention in this blog before long. For example, in the family history I have reviewed and re-organised most of the information gathered so far to help identify those lines of enquiry that need more work. Regular visitors may recall that I bought myself a guitar a few months ago and it has since kept me busy for many hours trying to see the logic (if any) in the standard guitar tuning and also trying to memorise a few scales and easily executed chords (“executed” being quite often a remarkably apt decsription judging by the sound) and even a few simple tunes.

And I have started reading books again or, to be more exact, buying and reading books that I have not seen before. My theme at the moment is animals, how they see and respond to the world and to us and what makes them tick. I have just finished reading “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Temple Grandin is a respected authority on animal bahaviour in the USA. She also suffers from autism, which has given her particular insights into animal behaviour because, like autistic people, animals see the world through pictures and in much greater detail than we so-called “normal” folks. To my way of thinking this is one of those exceptional, landmark books in the same league as “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. It should be read by anyone with an interest in animals (it was available from Amazon when I looked recently). 

The book that I am reading at present  is “Learning Their Language” by Marta Williams. It is about intuitive communication with animals and nature and I am keeping an open mind on this one while finding it fascinating.

It is fun being retired and able to do pretty much as I please, while wondering how I ever found the time to go to work. However, all this self-indulgent hobby activity is all very well but I feel the need to do something (with part of my time anyway) that will have a useful end product. As yet I do not know what that wil be but I am working on it.

Still battling the bugs

I am one of those lucky people who has rarely suffered more than a modest cold but for over two weeks I have been largely out of action thanks to the usual mysterious autumnal infection. I have done no cycling yet because during the good weather of the past few days I have wanted to catch up on garden jobs while it has been pleasant to work out there.

Neither have I posted anything new for Doodle-a-Day though I have not been entirely idle on this front since my daughter said that I could bend the rules and paint rather than sketch. Sadly my recent efforts have been consigned to the wastebin.  They were experimental, using acrylics (because they dry faster than oils) to see whether I could paint anything by electric light that might be vaguely recognisable the next day in the daylight. The results were inconclusive but mildly encouraging.

Of course the big news is that my wife has started blogging, aided and abetted by my daughter so I am outnumbered again!

I have added a few blogs to the blogroll and there are more to follow shortly. Among the additions are David Malan, whose work I admire greatly, Lavanna for her fresh and interesting approach to painting, and Quiang-Huang whose very individual style is fascinating – if you click on pictures in his blog you will see enlargements showing every brushstroke. I have also reinstated the blog belonging to Jandi Small, which was deleted earlier in error.

In the cycling context I have reinstated Cycling Info which has plenty of interesting cycling information in addition to its racing content. Not that I have anythiong against the sporting aspects of cycling but it is not a primary interest – though I have to admit that it comes close when Team GB are showing the rest of the world how it should be done!

I have also renamed and promoted my “favourite” blogs to the top of the blogroll column, where they might get a bit more attention. They were a bit lost down below all the art and cycling categories. I have renamed them “A list” – but this particular page design has a rather random way of handling upper case letters so the effect hasn’t really worked. The latest addition to this list is Bring Me Sunshine.

The other news about this blog is that its 4,000th  viewer visited today, which is all very satisfying. It is also largely thanks to my regular visitors who are so welcome and to whom I am very grateful.

Good intentions…

I had every intention of putting several hours into painting over the weekend, even sacrificing an outing or two on the bike to make the necessary time. Well, I tried. I tried on Saturday but I can’t say that those ducks in my previous post were a resounding success. I tried again on Sunday but just couldn’t settle to the task.

Today I found out why: It’s that time of year again when the grandchildren are back at school, coughs and colds are spreading like wildfire and grandparents are not immune. While my wife has been coughing in a most determined fashion for a couple of days already, it was not until this afternoon that I became aware of a thick head, a runny nose and a sore throat. By that time we had already completed one local errand in the car and, after lunch, I had taken the bike back to “my” bike shop, a few miles across Cardiff,  for its somewhat overdue first service.

Today it took only a few minutes to put the roof bars/bike rack assembly back on the car and the bike rode exceedingly steadily across Cardiff to its appointment with Damian Harris in Whitchurch, Cardiff. This was pleasing as I needed confidence in the rack, which had cost so little on Ebay that I had bought three of them so as to carry my daughter’s and son-in-law’s bikes as well should the need arise. This was not as rash as it seems but more a matter of grabbing the opportunity – finding such equipment specifically designed to fit my 20-year-old BMW has been almost a lost cause for some years.

Needless to say, while at Damian’s shop I managed to tick off a few more items on my shopping list, spare innertubes, a bike pump and another lock. Now I can be more confident about securing the entire bike, including the Brooks saddle, when visiting the local shops.

So I achieved something useful today and I might be able to bring the bike home again tomorrow.

By this evening I was tired and in no mood to concentrate on my Doodle-a-Day or on painting. I was looking on the web for more information about painting, and especially about transparent versus opaque colours, when I came across Bill Martin’s Guide to Oil Painting, which I had not seen before. This seemed to me to be a useful source of information for beginners though the information does refer to conventional oils. I use water-mixable oils in which fewer colours are available (though there are more than enough) and I would not recommend hog brushes (which don’t like prolonged exposure to water) but prefer synthetics. That is another story. The point here is that there is a particularly good page on Bill Martin’s site on the subject of colour matching. It is good because it condenses widely available information and manages to present it in a way that is memorable (and if you knew anything about my memory, you would know that that is quite an achievement).

Doodle-a-Day: Fruit

This was drawn with a water-soluble sketching pencil on oil painting paper with a canvas textured surface.  I think the paper is too rough for pencils but it was worth a try. This sketch took 35 minutes. Although it doesn’t look much, I know, as only I can know, whether it amounts to progress in my effort to improve my drawing ability.