Exhibition 2019

Exhibition 2019

I have been busy trying to finish as many portraits of Gypsies as I can.

It has been a difficult year but I have managed to have seven oil on canvases in this year’s exhibition. 

I have introduced myself as the artist to everyone who took an interest so I could explain why I had painted these portraits and why I feel that I have a mission to fight against prejudice. You would be surprised at the interesting people I have talked to. One was an American pastor but I didn’t tell him that I was a Buddhist! 

A lot of people love the portrait of the deerhound and wanted to buy it so I explained that I work on commission. I may have a commission coming. 

One man walked in and said “That’s Walter” (behind the dog) before he saw the label. You can imagine how pleased I was that I had got that good a likeness. He knows Walter’s friend Sue so I was able to arrange that someone can pick up the portrait on Sunday and give it to her. Walter died a few months after I took the reference photos. 

The furthest portrait is a “work in progress” of the deerhound’s owner so it was a nice talking point. I told people that the dog was gazing into the boy’s eyes. 

I have another portrait that I would like to finish enough tonight to add it to the exhibition as another work in progress. If I can get the second boy’s face painted and leave their clothes as the underpainting, it will look fine. 

Doing a Portrait Over

Doing a Portrait Over

This is cropped from a double portrait. I thought that I had finished it last year and I was about to send it to the (other) sitter. But I didn’t like the gentleman’s expression. It didn’t capture his lively sense of humour and wisdom. So I worked over it with a new expression that does. 

He isn’t quite finished. I need to finish his clothes. 

Meanwhile his portrait is so much better than it was, that I have to rework his fellow sitter because she looked ghost like by comparison!

Must get back to the easel!

Walter’s Scarf.

Walter’s Scarf

Last year, I thought that I had finished the portrait of Walter, but then I was told that he always wore his scarf. The reference photo had a scarf but it was all twisted round one side, so I had just painted over it. 

I need a new reference photo to be able to paint the folds of a scarf correctly so I asked a male friend who is the same age as Walter to model for me. 

The next thing that I had to do was scrape off the old paint. I couldn’t scrape it right back to the canvas but I got it back enough to see the texture of the canvas. 

Now I have done the first phase of the correction by applying some oil paint for an undercoat. 

When I look closely at a painting that I thought was “finished” some time ago I immediately find things that need to be improved. So I spent some time today adding some shadow to his hat after I had photographed his undercoated scarf and sweater. 

And as for his neck; I am sure that I can make that better especially as it got scraped along with the scarf so repair is definitely called for. 

Technique v Paint Brand

Technique v Paint Brand

I have been having trouble with the portrait I have been painting because it is of an man with pronounced smile lines and dimples and the portrait is small on the canvas so there is no room for error. 

I am painting the portrait in water mixable oil paint on canvas with a very small brush. 

When I first tried water mixable oil paint I bought some Duo Aqua Oil by Holbein and I liked them very much but I wasn’t painting anything small and detailed. I had also bought a few tubes of Cobra paint by Royal Talens just to compare the colours. It is amazing how different burnt sienna can be from different manufacturers. I didn’t like the Cobra paint so much but ...

When I paint large areas with Duo Aqua paint, it is fine, but when I am trying to get a fine smile line in just the right place it catches on the tops of the weave of the canvas and I can’t get it in between the threads without using too much paint. 

After struggling for a few days, I thought about trying the Cobra paints that I had bought. Amazingly the brush marks went just where I wanted them. So I looked at the colours that I had and made a list of the ones I needed and sent an order for them. Yesterday I cleaned my palette and laid out the new Cobra ones. 

The colours in the photo from left to right are titanium white, light oxide red, burnt sienna, raw umber and burnt umber. These are the colours that I use to paint flesh. 

I love Terra Rosa colour that Duo Aqua makes which is the only thing that I miss. Light oxide red is a close match so I will learn to live without it when necessary. I can still use the Duo Aqua paint for less detailed portraits. 

This week’s painting

This week’s painting. 

I was just thinking about what I have done this week. It has been a week of disruptions as usual but I did get on with the portrait of Bentley. However as I have been modifying the sheen on his head I don’t think it will show well in a photo. I also worked on a graphite pencil drawing of Jasper when he was a cute little puppy. It is nice to be able to work on a pencil drawing on these dark evenings when it is hard to judge colour. 

Then I remembered. I have been covering canvases in glitter. I am doing it for Father Christmas. He visits Appleby-in-Westmorland every year on the last Saturday in November so he can find out what the children want for Christmas and he gives them some sweets to take home. 

I didn’t see him last year but I heard that some of his visitors were disappointed by his grotto. So I wondered if I could help. Some years ago I bought 2 triple hinged canvases. They are big. They are 1.5 metres high and the full width adds up to 1.5 metres wide. I had an idea that I could use them, so I bought a lot of red and silver glitter and some blue glitter acrylic paint. 

I tried the blue glitter paint. It was pretty but I souped it up with lots of silver glitter and used it to paint the top halves of the canvases. I used 2 coats. Then I turned the whole thing over and mixed the red glitter in PVA adhesive and blobbed it on the bottom half. I gave that a second coat too. Once it was all dry I gave the whole thing a coat of acrylic gloss varnish. I hope the varnish keeps the glitter where it belongs because I worry that the glitter flakes may get in the river and the fish may eat them thinking that they are food. 

The canvas has been handed over to a man with a big car who can take it to Santa’s Grotto for me.

I still have to paint the second triple canvas with Sparkles this weekend. 

Do you think Father Christmas will like it?

Boots the Deerhound 2

Boots the Deerhound 2

I have been working a lot on some small pencil drawings of animals, but I got some work done on Boots too. I am enjoying working with pastel and pastel pencils. 

I mentioned in last week’s blog that when I used to paint exclusively in pastel about 20 years ago, pastel pencils weren’t good enough for my technique. But there have been such great innovations in art since then, that I took a chance and bought a full set of Derwent’s pastel pencils and I was very pleased with them. I think that one of the reasons that they are working well on this painting is because of the primer. It is gritty enough to catch the pigment. 

One of the best things about pastel back in the days when I was bringing up my 2 sons, was how you can just walk away and leave it while you deal with the next domestic emergency! Now I am living with dogs and cats I still have domestic emergencies. Moreover, it is so nice just to be able to pick up a pastel or pencil and make marks on the canvas without having to set out my palette and brushes. 

I have been working on the left hand side so I don’t know if the changes in the painting are noticeable. I am happier about the grass and the fluffiness of Boots’ fur against it. I have been blending the darker areas too. It will look more interesting when I have worked on his head. I am getting there. 

I am going to spray it with fixative so I can go over the details with oil paint. So in the end I suppose that I should call it mixed media. 

Workbench Finished

Workbench Finished

Today I screwed the second wall table to the wall in my workroom/spare bedroom. 

I was using a wallpaper pasting table which is still in the room - the black thing by the window. It was a temporary solution. I couldn’t open the trapdoor to the attic and pull down the ladder without heaving the pasting table onto the sofa bed. So clutter piled up. 

I looked for a wall table that would fold down behind the loft ladder, and bought two. 

I used the pasting table to help me make and put up the table near the window. It wasn’t totally successful. You can see in the photo above that there is a gap where it is attached to the wall. Luckily it seems to be strong. But for the nearer table I decided I was going to add glue to make sure. 

I had to close up the wallpaper pasting table for lack of space so I racked my brains for a way of supporting the next table while I screwed it to the wall. I thought “What would Dad have done?” and I remembered the old kitchen stools that I kept because I used to use them for a sawhorse. Luckily they weren’t in the attic. I needed to stack some books on them to get them to the right height but I made it work. 

My Dad was the kind of father who teaches their disabled 4 year old daughter how to point a wall. He was a bricklayer. 

I don’t have my easel in this room. It faces South and I like a North light for painting. But it is out of the way (usually) of cats and dogs so I can dust and feel able to do those jobs that I call setting up without getting hairs stuck on my work. I can prime and gesso the canvas and put in the structural lines before I take it downstairs and put it on the easel. 

I often add the structural lines to the reference photo in Photoshop and print it on plain paper, then I rub 9B crayon on the back of the paper and transfer it by drawing the structural lines keeping them straight with a ruler. It isn’t the same as squaring up. I do it to keep the angles right. I used to measure angles the regular artist’s way by holding up a paintbrush, but when I got post polio syndrome I couldn’t hold my head or my hand steady any more, so I developed a more technical method to keep noses straight!

My easel is in my front room facing the North. I have now got everything that I need to help me sit at the easel and paint. I have my new saddle stool that helps me balance and stops me getting backache. I have have the canvas rotating attachment so I can turn the painting to the right angle to make the strokes of paint easy to line up correctly. I have a brush holder with an assortment of different brushes and a brush cleaning system that is tucked away on the window sill behind the antique block plane that my father taught me to use many years ago. I am near the front door for when visitors or delivery people knock. 

And on the other wall I have my picture shelves where oil paint layers can dry. 

Don’t forget the dog bed and the chair for the dogs to keep out of the way while I am painting. They are very good while I am painting. The rest of the time I am expected to throw squeaky balls. 

Arthur

Arthur 

I have finished Arthur except for tidying up the left edge. Because I am painting on canvas, I am taking the paint over the edge so I don't have to frame it. The portrait is resting on that edge while the other three edges dry. I am using quick dry medium but I still have to wait a couple of days for it to dry well.

It is interesting to see a photo of a painting because something often pops out that doesn’t show in the painting. I notice that in this photo, his eye on the right is a bit too light, so I have darkened it since. 

There are a number of ways to get a new look at a painting to see what is wrong with it. An easy one is to look at it upside down. It isn't always convenient to turn a painting upside down of course, but it is easy to look at it in a mirror. I keep a hand mirror nearby. 

My usual fault is getting angles wrong.  The mirror shows if I have got things lined up right. But it isn't perfect for portraits because faces are not symmetrical. If you draw a line through the eyes and another through the mouth, they are not parallel. Everybody has one eye higher than the other. It isn’t usually noticeable and it is common to tidy up portraits and make them symmetrical. I wasn’t satisfied with that. I challenged myself to depict the asymmetry in such a way that the portrait looked more like the person and not as if I had messed up and done a bad drawing.

I mentioned my disability in my last post about buying the saddle stool. One of my problems is that I have no awareness of the angle of my head, which means it is impossible for me to measure angles by holding up a pencil. So I square up my reference photos and my canvas or paper to match. But I don’t square up evenly. I start by taking a line through the eyes, then I draw parallel lines wherever I fancy putting one. It is easy to do on image apps with layers because I just duplicate the layers and move the lines where I think they would be useful. Then I turn a line 90 degrees and add perpendicular lines in the same way. 

If I didn’t have an app that will do it, I could do it with a set square. 

Talking of the saddle stool, it is working out better than I expected. I am no longer in pain when I sit, and I can walk when I stand up. 

Gypsy Portraits Changing Expectations Exhibition.

Gypsy Portraits Changing Expectations Exhibition 

Appleby is crowded with visitors to the Appleby Horse Fair, and horses of all shapes and sizes. If you drive this way be very careful. I heard today that a small child running from between caravans got run over, and has a broken leg. We don’t want any more injuries. Children will always get excited and not look where they are going. 

My exhibition is set up and attracting positive attention from locals and visitors. 

This is a visual post. Here are more photos of the portraits. 

Boots

Boots

Boots is a beautiful Deerhound. I am painting him in water mixable oils on canvas using Payne’s Grey and white, warmed with a hint of sepia. 

I am not sure about the shape of Boots’ eye. In my reference photo his eye is bleached out by reflected light. In fact at one time I was wondering if he had a visible eye at all. This is one of those times that I am very glad that I have dogs who often cooperate to help me work out canine anatomy. Bryn is a cross bred Wolfhound so I am going to ask her to hold her head in the right position.

This time next week my exhibition "Gypsy Portraits, Changing Expectations" will be on view at St Lawrence’s Church, Appleby-in-Westmorland during this year’s Appleby Horse Fair.  

I am still busy finishing portraits. So I will get back to the easel now. 

Waiting for Varnish

Waiting for Varnish

I have completed another three portraits in the last couple of days. 

I have taken them upstairs for them to dry sufficiently to varnish them. I am using Exhibition Varnish. They can have their permanent coat of varnish after six months on top of the exhibition varnish.

The photo shows the portraits upside down, because I painted the bottoms last and the paint may come off on the shelf. I know that is obvious, but when I was studying at University I was told that if you don’t write the obvious things you lose marks. 

When it is safe to put them in my scanner I will take quality scans of them. 

Meanwhile I have two more portraits that are very nearly finished. In fact I meant to finish the lady in sunglasses today but I was working on her rather late last night and when I saw what I had done, I scraped it off! I had given her a dirty face. 

I am not going to make the mistake of working on any faces tonight but I think it will be safe for me to paint some sky backgrounds. 

360 degree Rotating Canvas Attachment.

360 degree Rotating Canvas Attachment

I have bought a 360 degree rotating attachment for my easel which you can see above. It took me a while to work out how to attach my reference photos close to the portrait. I was looking in all those places that one puts one’s household bits and pieces for hooks and things, and I found some Command Strips for hanging pictures. That inspired me to use them to hold a piece of plywood in place. I can clip my reference photos to it. You can see it works well. 

I think Jet wanted to get into the photo. He likes sitting on my painting table. The challenge is to keep his tail out of the wet paint. 

I knew for some time about this attachment for an easel so a canvas can be rotated. But I didn’t know if it would fit my easel. I have a rotating drawing board cum table easel that I have set up in my bedroom and I have been using it for years for drawing and painting in acrylics. However it won’t hold a canvas and there’s nowhere to set it up downstairs. 

Once my exhibition is over I have an acrylic portrait of a dog to finish. It is particularly useful to have a rotating easel for painting an animal’s fur because of hair being linear. It will be nice to paint Bentley downstairs. 

Brighteyes is nearly finished. His clothes look blotchy because it is the undercoat, and I concentrated on covering the canvas quickly. Now he is going back onto the picture shelves to dry. I have a dehumidifier working to speed it up. 

Lady in Sunglasses 2

Lady in Sunglasses 2

The Lady in Sunglasses is beginning to show her lovely friendly character. 

You may be thinking that I have indicated her eyes, but I can’t see her eyes at all in the reference photograph. I can only see myself and my camera reflected on the lenses and I am not going to paint that.

No, she hasn’t got a big earlobe. That will become her earring. 

I am still working on 10 portraits at once. I paint a bit more on three or four paintings a day. I have to rest my hand on the canvas because my arm and hand are weak due to polio. That is why I paint from the top left to the bottom right so I don’t smear the oil paint - except when I do it on purpose of course. If I need to go back over a higher part of the painting, I have to leave it to dry for a day or two. 

Meanwhile, I am ready to set up my next 10 portraits. There is a portrait of a deerhound calling to me ...

Lack of Work in Progress

Lack of Work in Progress

I have made progress. Really! But I am expecting visitors and I have been painting ceilings and woodwork when I would rather have been painting this beautiful rosy-cheeked baby boy.

Yesterday I worked on his forehead, outlined his eyes and got his ear nicely established.

I have discovered that ”brown ochre” in Talens Rembrandt oil paints makes a perfect soft rosy colour when mixed with lots of white. I am adding a hint of light oxide red in the rosiest areas. I know I need to blend the cheeks and chin! 

Today was boring. I was back to washing floors and tidying up to get ready for my visitors. But I achieved one useful thing. I had downloaded an iPad app that was supposed to scan photos nicely. I wasn’t happy with it because I discovered that it depended on a subscription service. I have trouble with that kind of thing. I get a long time lag for anything cloud-based. I am not talking about just minutes. I deleted it.

So I searched for another photo scanner iPad/iPhone app and found one that I could test for free. It worked well (see above) so I paid for the unlimited scans version. It is called Unfade. It finds the edges of the painting and squares it up so I can take a quick photo. The full version repairs faded photos which is how it gets its name, but I don’t need that. 

Latest update on Gypsy Portraits Project.

Portrait of Gucci 

I finished the Portrait of Gucci before Christmas and eventually worked out how to scan the canvas. I cut a piece of thick black paper to prevent the scanner light getting through the gaps in the canvas threads and reflecting off the back of the lid. It worked!

It would have been easier to paint if I'd chosen a different pose for the portrait, but I love this laughing expression. 

Since I finished Gucci, I have decided that, because oil paint takes days to dry (and it sticks to my hands better than it sticks to the canvas) I decided that I have to paint a lot of portraits at once. At the moment I am working on ten paintings. I can’t say portraits because a couple of them have more than one individual.

I have been buying more paints. When I painted in pastel my basic brand was Talens Rembrandt. I added pastels by Schminke and Sennelier, but mainly I relied on the Rembrandt pastels for my pastel portraits. Oil paints are a new medium for me. I was surprised to discover that the colour names are not standard, and when I reach for a tube of Red Oxide to give a small child glowing cheeks, the colour was not what I was expecting! So I have added tubes of Talens Rembrandt oil paints to my palette. The oils don’t match the pastels exactly but I have a better idea of what it will do.

I know that a lot of people mix their colours from a limited number of colours but I am happier to mix a toning earth colour with white then add touches of other colours to get it as close to my subject as possible. 

When I lived in London my main choice for skin colour was gold ochre, but in Appleby it is burnt sienna. Perhaps it was living in London that gave people a yellowish complexion and in Appleby everyone has a much healthier glow!

Gypsy Portraits Project - Progress Report

Gypsy Portraits Project- Progress Report

Portraits of Gucci and Arthur

I have been struggling to get on with the portraits for this project. I have been falling too often. I dislocated my knee at one point, which stopped me from sitting at my easel. It took a while before I could do anything but sit on the sofa with my leg up straight. 

I am completely recovered from that problem and I am getting on with the portraits much faster. I am working on a number at once. A lot of painting in oils is waiting for the paint to dry. It is particularly important for me, because I have post-polio syndrome and my right hand is weak. I can paint with no problem. My only limitation is that I have to rest my hand on the canvas, so if the paint is wet it smudges, and I get an interestingly coloured hand.

I am most advanced with the portrait of Gucci, the dog. You can see what a beautiful nature she has. 

I am having to learn how to paint grass! It doesn’t usually come into portraits. 

Yesterday I searched online for a video of how to paint grass so I picked up a few tips. But I photographed the painting this morning before I put the tips into practice. 

I changed the colours from the video. I have an undercoat of flicks of shadow green by Holbein Duo Aqua Oil. It is looking promising. I used the colour to paint the bottom of the canvas so now it is upside down on the top picture shelf. I like the Duo Aqua paints. Gucci is mainly painted in Duo Aqua using a lot of Paynes Grey and white with raw umber to warm up the sunlit areas. I used some Schminke Mussini caput mortuum for the shadows on her tongue with Schminke Medium W Gel to make it water soluble. I also used a little bit of Schminke Mussini Pozzuoli earth to modify the Duo Aqua alizarin crimson. 

I currently have six portraits on the go. Another one that was dry enough today to rest my hand on was “Arthur”. This time I took the photograph after I had worked on it. It’s back on the picture shelves now, to dry. Today I also sketched baby Billy but it is a faint sketch and wouldn’t show if I photographed it. 

Meanwhile here is Arthur on the easel:

Pre-judging

Pre-judging

At the weekend I wrote a long complex post to introduce the reason why I started the Gypsy Portraits Project. It was to use my talent for painting portraits to combat prejudice and Gypsies and Travellers meet prejudice. Gypsies come to Appleby-in-Westmorland every June for the annual Horse Fair, so I took a lot of photos in June this year and I am going to have an exhibition of the portraits next June during the Horse Fair. 

The reason the post was not published is that I was writing it on my iPad and it froze so I lost everything I had written! 

On Sunday, two Jehovah's witnesses came to the door and I told them about my passionate feelings against prejudice. We had a really nice dialogue on the subject and I told them the story of my cat who I rescued nearly 2 years ago. So I think that if I write that story it will explain my feelings about pre-judging. 

The cat was crying at the front doors in my road but nobody would take him in because they said he was aggressive. He attacked the resident cats and dogs and while he liked to have his head rubbed, if his body was touched he would scratch and bite. 

So I took him in. I already had 2 dogs and 2 cats so I struggled to keep them apart. But I persevered and soon realised that the reason he was "vicious" was that he was badly injured. Perhaps he had been hit by a car, because he clearly had liver damage. 

With food and shelter he healed quickly. I couldn't take him to the vet until I could handle him, but as soon as he had recovered enough he went to be microchipped and castrated. 

I called him Jet after a dog we had who had a lovely kind nature. I hoped that it would rub off. I don't know if it made any difference but he is the loveliest cat now. He is so courteous towards my other cats and he loves the dogs. He is still sensitive to being touched on his body so I am very gentle with him and don't pick him up. 

Misjudging Jet is not the only reason I find he is a powerful example of prejudice. He is a black cat and a few people seem to confuse the colour of his fur with racism. When someone says of a cat "I'm not racist", I think that is odd. 

Meanwhile I had been struggling to sit at the easel and paint. But I am fully recovered from my dislocated kneecap now. I had to take off some time to clean the house. It was so dirty after 6 weeks of not being able to do anything except sit on the sofa. 

So I am back to painting. I have been experimenting with different colours and brands of oil paint. For example, I had assumed that if I bought burnt umber, it would be the same colour no matter which brand it was. It isn't true. 

When I used to paint portraits in pastel, my basic brand was Talens Rembrandt, and they make Rembrandt oils which are not water-mixable but the colours are very close to what I am used to. I have found a great solution to mixing a wide range of skin colours. I have discovered a wonderful product made by Schminke, which is a gel that you can mix with oil paint to make it water-mixable. Schminke also make beautiful pastels so I think that I will add some of their oils to my palette. 

I am relieved to be able to get on with the portraits at last. And I am confident that with the new paint I will catch up the backlog. 

Here is how I am doing with the portrait of Mrs Lucas. I am reworking her skin colour. The standard way to paint in oils is to start dark and add the lighter colour on top, but I chose to paint light to dark in pastels to keep the colours clean and I am staying with the method that I am used to. I am also enjoying painting on canvas so the texture shows. 

I have to add some delicate shading to soften Mrs Lucas's eyes and I haven't even started on correcting the colour of her mouth, chin, and throat. It won't take long. I'm on a roll. 

Studio Changes

 

Studio Changes

I have been very busy fussing with changes to my studio for the last few months. 

There are two reasons. The most important reason is that I am starting a new project. I am painting a series of portraits in oil on canvas. I will have a solo exhibition of them in June 2018.

The second reason is that I have had a nasty rash on my leg that meant I have had to sit with my leg propped up on a stool since last October. Because of that I haven't been able to use my usual painting table where I paint while sitting on a gas lift bar stool. (I couldn't find a footstool high enough 😉) So I have been painting and drawing small portraits on the kitchen table. But I have commissions for some big portraits and I have my project. I will say more about that in my next post. 

The result was that I spent a lot time online looking at easels that would let me sit with my leg up. I bought a table easel that would hold a bigger canvas but I couldn't get on with it, and l didn't like the idea of painting in oils on the kitchen table. 

So I set up my old easel in the lounge and it was very crowded. This week, I decided that it is no longer a lounge. It is a studio where I entertain guests. I rearranged the furniture. There was a plan chest under the window which I moved to the other wall where there was an easy chair. The chair has been moved to the kitchen (in the way of the oven). The easel is now in the perfect place where it gets the north light. 

The photo shows my new setup with the portrait I am working on. It is my first attempt at an oil painting. I am using water mixable oils. There are a few different brands. The first ones I bought were Duo Aqua Oil and I like them very much except I have been struggling to get the skin colours that used to be so easy in pastels. I bought a few Cobra oil paints to see if that burnt umber was the colour I remembered. It wasn't. The Cobra paints are more oily and don't suit me so well. 

I checked and you can mix normal oils with water mixable ones so I have bought some but it will be ages before they arrive. 

Meanwhile I have managed to mix a nice skin colour with burnt sienna and Quinacridone Gold and lots of white. I thought the Gold was too powerful to be useful but a tiny bit takes the pasty pink out of the burnt sienna.

I have also been experimenting with different brushes. I like KUM Memory Point brushes for my gouache paintings and I bought some in different shapes and sizes to try.

The water mixable paints dry faster than normal oils and it is a good idea to have a palette with a tight lid like for acrylics. I don't imagine that the kind with a reservoir and a semi permeable membrane would work right but you might like to try. Let me know. 

While I was about all this paint shopping, I bought a Daylight bulb for my worklight which is turned on in the photo. It has been a damp dismal day. 

Postscript: my leg is getting much better now.