ArtyFax Gallery

I was researching collaging for my Squidoo lens Making ACEO's one of a series of four on ACEO's and I became knocked out by some of the imagery that I was seeing. I decided that I had to explore the possibilities of this popular art form. My first attempt was called 'We Remember Them All'. The three photos in the piece are actually three uncles who were respectively in the navy, army and air force, from a collection of family photographs that I have just discovered from my mothers attic. They had passed to my sister and then to her son who wanted help in identifying the subjects. I did not even know of the existence of this collection until last week. So the two circumstances were quite coincidental. Anyway, the aceo:-

Howdy,

I have been having great fun looking back over my sketch books for this blog and my series of posts on where do I get ideas for paintings. This is now number 8 in the series which started off being called 'Musings on creativity'. -just decided wilst writing this that I ought to put in a few ideas which led to abtsract paintings/drawings, mmmm that opens up a can of worms.

Anyway, for today the subject is trees. I like trees. I like nature in all its many forms but trees are head and shoulders above all else; and not just in a literal sense. I even have a collection of bonsai (grand name for a few runty seedling ) which I have started off from new seedlings which I used to bring back with me from my walks with my pet pooch when he was with us. he died a few years ago now aged 16 and he has never been replaced, how could we? But I digress. Trees.

I include here three watercolour sketches of studies which I have a special feeling for - from the many within the pages of my sketch books. Two are from just after I started painting nearly 15 years ago and both have been framed and hung on the wall at home at various times. The latest was actually sold on Ebay in the ACEO format (see it in my new video on youtube ). Here are the three sketches :-

Time for another step down memory lane............ I am quite enjoying this little series, giving me chance to look back at my sketchbooks. This series of sketches was perpetrated on a short holiday in the lake district. My wife and I were actually stopping in Windemere and I found time for these on our day trips around the area.

These are all very, very quick sketches because my wife was with me and I really was only attempting to get a feeling for the places I was painting to go with the photographs that I was taking. I do not recall the names of the places, for some reason I did not make my usual notes. They are all watercolour on cartridge paper so you may be able to detect the paper cockling on some images. The strength of the colour is unusual for me in this type of sketch. I do like the bright greens in the centre ground. For me painting is all about colour.

A new season is upon us with the start of June. Got me thinking about the palette that I have been using. Beginners often ask what colour is the sky, which yellow should I use, what red is that?

Well we know that although these sound like silly questions (?) since we can theoretically make any colour from the primaries at our disposal, the primaries are not pure colours and to easily get the feel of a season, it is sensible to alter the palette as the year progresses. My own interest is watercolour and I intend to show three quick sketches painted with just three varying colours in the palette.

Using COBALT BLUE / CADMIUM RED / CADMIUM YELLOW

Hi again another series of sketches and paintings for you, this time of a beach scene in Wales at Aberporth. Iwas on holiday with my family and drew this first sketch to show my youngest son (about 10 at the time how to do a simple, quick sketch). I originally did it in pencil not meaning to do anything with it but back home I applied a few washes of watercolour.

this first watercolour painting seems a little insipid and I have definitely lost the atmosphere as I remembered it. This put me off for some time but coming back to it at a later date I tried again.

Today, I am taking a very simple painting as an example, what's that ? Yes I know they are all very simple, that's the secret of my style.

The first two pictures show me playing around with a simple roaside scene from my imagination. There were probably a number of thumbnails before these first monochrome watercolours, but unfortunately I do not have the sketches. It is obviously a country scene and shows basically nothing more than a cottage, trees and the road. I have tried two different direction for the light to ascertain its effect on the overall impact and feeling. They were done using payne's grey watercolour.

seems to me to be a fairly sunny and calm day, it is straight from my imagination which is probably why there are so few items.

much more threatening sky and the direction of the light is now from the left.

I seem to have moved slightly away from the original idea for this first colour sketch, by making the tree on the right appear in full leaf, but have chosen to paint this as in the first example. I do not think that it is quite correct in terms of it's shadows. Overall, not really satisfied.

The Final painting:

This is now far truer to the original sketch. I have returned to the dead/dying tree. The photo seems a little overexposed so the background in cente-right is washed out unfortunately. However all the original bits and pieces are still there, perhaps a couple more bits of greenery. I liked this painting but perhaps a few more shadows in the foreground would have helped. From memory it was about 16 X 12 inches, a big painting for such a simple scene but one which I think works quite well. I am pleased to report that I managed to sell this watercolour painting on Ebay.

You know - I might just try and complete a painting from the second sketch above. I still think the threatening clouds would be interesting.

These titles are getting samey, but It is all in a good cause!

The paintings that I am going to discuss  here were the result of another workshop at my local art club (The Knowle Art Group). This time another of the members was leading a session on aerial perspective. We cover all types of subjects from particular subjects to techniques and skills.

This particular member had bought in some photographs from a holiday in France taken at different times of the day, which exemplified the colour changes beautifully. I was, as they say, inspired to paint a series of watercolour sketches which unfortunately I no longer have but this led to two paintings in acrylic on box canvas (about 10X8 inch) which created the mood of sunset and sunrise. Both of thee paintings have subsequently been sold.

The first, I called Morning mist. The cold, blue hues evoking the sense of this time of day. Note the recession which I hope you will agree I have captured by changing the tonal values.

The second, called Evening Sunset, uses the same technique but with warm colours to reflect a different time of day. Again I hope you feel that I have captured the feeling successfully.

I have only ever done a few paintings in acrylic so these should have sparked more but so far nothing doing. I did however buy a number of canvasses which are waiting to be used.............

Today I am going to take another painting as the subject of this post. It is a pastel painting, something I like messing with - the operative word - because of the intimate nature of the medium. I like holding the chalks in my fingers and rubbing the resultant marks with my fingers / hands to get the desired effects.

I was leading a workshop on the use of abstract effects in landscape painting for my local art group (the knowle art group ) and I had taken as one of my starters the works by Cezanne depicting Mont St Victoire, examples shown here in oil at the web museum, Paris.

I started very simply with just four chalks, inviting my audience to do the same. The size of the support was in all the following paintings roughly A4 size. These four were chosen to give contrasts in both colour and tone. I began by broadly blocking in the distant mountain mass, and laying on top of that some shadow effects. For the foreground, I used small stokes randomly to simulate texture and to give a pleasing effect.

For a second attempt, I paid more attention to the mountains, to get a more realistic affect. I also changed the colours of the chalks to give an overall lighter tonal key. I had not entered a middle ground in either sketch.

Unfortunately this image is somewhat over exposed, but will serve the purpose here. I have now used all the colours, paid more attention to the sky and made the forgound marks smaller. It is something that is getting to a point where I can see an end point. However, there is still little interest in the foreground.

It was at this point that the workshop ended. Most of the participants had produced something along these lines but in a number of different media favoured by the individuals. Everybody enjoyed the freedom of the painting session and of the painting (as a verb).

Back home in my studio, I decided to keep this process going. Again carefully selecting a small handfull of colours, now with some to give highlights, I repeated the process wit a little added interest in the foreground.

adding even more colours, and more interest in the foreground, and changing the shape of the mountain mass.

And finally, using the magic of the computer to see if changing the tonal key helped at all. I think it did, but never actually took that next step.

It is interesting to note that I did actually sell both pastel paintings which resulted from this workshop theme.

Where do I get ideas for my paintings?

In a recent post I described how I often sketch/doodle from my imagination and that they can be turned into finished works. Another source is the subject itself.

1) I most often take landscape as my subject matter, the  sketch was quickly drawn and painted on a damp day looking over Langdale. Blea Tarn is just about visible in the foreground and  Pike O'Stickle is on the right hand side. A stimulating subject for any artist. Whilst my wife relaxed in the car, I spent 20-30 minutes completing this sketch.

2) This water colour sketch was completed back home in the studio. It was originally painted with quite a low level of contrast and after adding more washes and not being satisfied I got out a black mapping pen and added some quite dark areas. It never did really work for me though.

3) Wanting to get some real contrast into the painting, I decided that to try my acrylics  - unusual for me - and I painted this on a box canvas. I really liked the way that this turned out. I actually sold this on Ebay, a lady bought this for her husband who knew the area well and in her feedback she reported that he knew the car park where I had made the original sketch. I was as pleased as punch about that.

For me, accuracy is not usually my main concern, in fact I am known in my local art group for my abstract paintings. However when some one recognises a place from a painting it still rings a bell.

I will do more of this sort of expose in future posts, but for now I want to show you a painting that was completed on location. I was with my local art group on one of our evening trips in the summer about two years ago. We were at a canal basin and evryone set down to paint the lockkeepers cottages or narrowboats which were moored nearby. My eye was taken by the view across the basin. The trees were still in full leaf but the reeds were turning a definite shade of orange. I simply had to paint the scene. The red in the sky was added for effect, but blow me down if after I had finished and the evening drew on it did actually look like I had painted it. As we were all partaking of a welcome coffee from flasks bought by the secretary a passer-by showed interest and I showed him my painting. He asked what it was called and I had to say that as yet it did not have a title. He christened it "Autumn Flames", and the name has stuck.

The last thought for this post is that it is sometimes a useful exercise to try something new to get the creative juices flowing. The following was a collage from old magazine photos. I did not have any clear idea of what I wanted to do but it just came together nicely, I thought:

Well I hope that this has given you a little food for thought, I will as I said give a few more examples in future posts.

Hi here I am yet again apologising for taking a long time to get back. I had hoped to be able to post something here regularly and often but perhaps I have too many balls in the air at the moment and can't decide which ones to drop.

I have also got a blog going on ebay - MY World, which differs from this current blog in that I am trying to voice my ideas and strategies for my ebay shop. Both are important to me so I guess I will have to be content with postings that are regular but a little less often than I would like.

I have also mentioned my Squidoo presence on the subject of ACEO paintings.

So, to the subject for today....

WHERE DO I FIND IDEAS FOR MY PAINTINGS?

I keep a number of sketch books on the go, I have a file of old photos and clippings from newspapers and magazines and I have a number of artist's biographies which help to put me in a creative frame of mind. I am also constantly looking at art in galleries, on-line, in books and anywhere that I can. It helps to build up a sort of pictorial vocabulary.

Sometimes, in quiet moments I will doodle and sketch a simple idea which can lead to a painting (often these days it will be an aceo) not always a coloured-in version of the sketch but a development of the idea. I include here a number of these. From a pen/pencil sketch from my imagination to a "finished painting".

The Big Country (aceo sold on ebay)

Red cliffs (aceo sold on ebay)

A bend in the road ( still on offer as of this date)

Winter tree (still on offer as of this date)

In a later post I will include some paintings from real life sketches and describe their development from sketches to initial attempts to final full-colour works.