Paying Attention

I have been listening to a lot of artist's podcasts - too many, there are a million of them out there! But a couple of phrases have stuck in my head from other nuggets of wisdom I've heard recently. (I will credit them here if I can find my bitty notes, but both have recurred in a few interviews.) 

One, regarding subject matter, is "Pay Attention To What You Pay Attention to" (sounds obvious doesn't it?) and the other is "Work in Series". I think both of these will help with frustration at myself for continuing to have such a diverse range of styles, medium and subjects. I dread the question, "So, what do you paint?" and should really have a ready reply by now!

Something that keeps stopping me in my tracks with a longing to capture them, are the groups or pairs of (usually) women in local streets, chatting, sitting or walking around - wearing bright colours, with umbrellas, children on backs or otherwise attached; mostly in summer when shadows are strong or people are out and about later in the day. Such a warm, convivial feature of Johannesburg, I've painted and sketched these scenes often but haven't found THE way to do them that isn't a rather slavish copy of a photo, but more finished than an urban sketch. I did two versions of this group - dressed all in white in this case, walking home from church through the leafy green streets of Emmarentia - trying to keep to strong, simple shapes, the results not what I'm after yet... are they ever though? 

Monday Madness

I've finally finished my painting of the Radium Beer Hall (can you spot where I got the title for this post?) that I was about to embark on in a previous post last year - although I keep seeing things I want to fiddle with... I spent hours on that guy's face on the right and it still looks like a fuzzy jellybaby, and in two minds about the ghostly figure standing on the bar counter (Mary Fitzgerald, a trade union activist who actually did rally her troops from the very same counter, albeit in another establishment).

Tim Quirke, our excellent teacher, has taken us step by step through a process of planning, drawing, leading the eye, thinking of this aspect and that artist, painting 'up' areas and leaving others understated. I kept taking pictures as I progressed - a little dangerous as sometimes you want to go back to a stage you've irretrievably wrecked - but a record for future reference. It has been painstaking at times, and thoroughly engrossing and free-flowing at others, but I've certainly learnt a lot and hope to put it all into practice in my own painting, or at least keep some of it in mind. Why didn't I find all these teachers when I started painting in oils 22 years ago? It would have saved a lot of trash-able canvases, maybe...though most artists have those no matter how much education they've had, from what I hear.

Radium Beer Hall & Grill

Strange to be sitting in a pub at 10 am on a Monday morning, but that's where I found myself this week, sketching in preparation for another painting in the classes I'm taking (same ones as in the Kalahari bookshop, which is still in progress, and which I should be working on right now.)

This is the Radium Beer Hall, the oldest surviving bar and grill in Johannesburg. It started as a tearoom in 1929 and doubled as a shebeen which, illegally at the time, sold "white man's" liquor to black customers. The very old bar counter was rescued from the demolition of the Ferreirastown Hotel, on which feisty trade union activist "Pick Handle Mary" Fitzgerald apparently stood to spur on striking miners. A fascinating history and great pubby atmosphere - sadly the area around it has become run down and dodgy, but I hope to go back to sketch more of the customers and musicians at one of their regular live music sessions.

 I did a couple of quick watercolour sketches of a couple at the next table - I think the guy is a manager, or works there - he was on the phone a lot and told me he was very, very busy when he came to have a look at my sketch. The girl looked deeply unhappy and the conversation became more and more heated between them, all in French so - probably just as well - I didn't understand a word. As customers started arriving for lunch the argument quietened down. I'm considering putting them in my painting, how times have changed since Pick Handle Mary was around!

Kalahari Bookshop

The Kalahari Bookshop in Orange Grove is a cavern of delights for anyone who would take the time to sift through its groaning shelves, boxes and bookcases to find their particular brand of fascination (or if you're in a hurry, ask the knowledgeable owner Richard for help). I gladly accepted an invitation, along with a few friends, to join artist Tim Quirke in this tucked-away shop's day off - a Monday - to draw in this stacked to the ceiling space. 

Tim was working on a painting, and chatting to us about his methods and approach while the rest of us sketched, as we do, recording the moment in this nostalgic corner of Johannesburg. It was really hard to keep my mind on my sketch when titles that lined my childhood bookshelves kept catching my eye and drawing me to them with squeals of recognition.

After a morning chatting about art, by lunchtime we'd agreed to return over the next few Mondays to continue drawing and painting and learning from Tim the much he has to teach us. So that's what I've been doing over the last three weeks, instead of straightening the house after the weekend, laundry and keeping up with emails and blogging (and Inktober, more of which later), it's been pure indulgence in the world of tone, pattern and observation, which of course is all good!

The sketches below are studies of shape, flow, volume, light and dark, pattern, trying to make sense of the jigsaw of shapes. Hand-toned paper helps to convey something of the feel of the shop and its vintage, well-loved contents as a base for painting on later. While in theory I know of this approach to composition - notan, grouping of lights and darks to form passages - I'm very happy to feel I'm at last starting to figure out, with guidance, how to do it in a real situation...something that's mostly escaped me up to now.

To add to the alchemy, Richard's assistant Arthur kindly sits for us - he could possibly have stepped straight out of one of the books towering over us.
Next on this final (I think!) version, more light and dark passages following the studies above it, and some colour - I'll keep you posted, eventually!

Exhibition of student's work

Hi - sorry about another long absence - I've been paddling as fast and as diligently as I can to help make this exhibition happen this weekend. Somehow or other I got to be coordinator-in-chief in spite of the almost catatonic state I get into when in administrative pressure roles.
Amazingly enough, I think we're on track and all will appear as planned on Saturday. It is, as you can see, an exhibition of student's work done in, or as a result of Greg Kerr's painting courses and has lots of interesting, unusual and provocative pieces. The image on the invitation is by Tracy Witelson, artist and art teacher, and assistant to Greg when he is teaching in Johannesburg, from The Dinner Party programme that I participated in 2013. I'll have two or three paintings on from this year's Objets Trouvès course (which I still have to show the end results of here, sometime).

If anyone who sees this is in Joburg this weekend, please come along, I'd love to meet you!

Portraits in Red Wine

Merlot to be exact - and it wasn't a waste, in case you're worried, just a few dregs left in a bottle after an excellent dinner. There's a food, wine and design fair coming up in November and a call went out for artists to submit portraits done in red wine (as artists do after dinner) for a possible commission. On Saturday, happily for me, my daughter decided to have a birthday braai in our garden with a few friends. The perfect chance to try this with some willing - if not too cooperative in sitting still and keeping quiet - models (spot two who didn't keep their mouths still for 30 seconds!)
It's a compelling medium - more fluid, less controllable than watercolour and pools fairly randomly to make darker tones. Some of the paper was old and had lost its sizing so soaked up the wine leaving blotchy textures, with lots of drips, drizzles and runs... lots of fun, especially when sipping your medium by mistake (or not) made everything a lot looser and carefree!

Objets Trouvès 3 W.I.P.

Back in class in May with our 12 colour exercises (see previous post) for inspiration, and having chosen another subject - which had to include both geometric and organic forms, with photographs of it to work from - we were let loose with acrylic paint on three of four big canvases (600x600mm).

We did have some restrictions on each format - on one we were to draw our geometric forms with aids such as rulers with an acrylic line of changing hues, and then washes or glazes of pure hues, pulling back with a cloth to reveal shapes and textures (pic 2).
On another we made shapes and textures by any means other than brushstrokes - printing with textured surfaces, rolling on colour with cloth or plastic, splashing, spraying or slapping (pic 1) and transferring some of this wet mélange onto the third canvas, where colour, shape and texture was further achieved through stencils and transfers (pic 3) This last one changed completely from the way it appears here, but I forgot to take more photos until much later in the process.

So this was mostly a lot of liberating fun and playtime, especially for someone like me who tends to get pernickety about rendering things (that comes later!) I had chosen a very simple image - the bird bath in our garden with some brickwork and foliage behind and reflected in it - and was getting worried that I would be spending the rest of the year painting my bird bath.... I still am but with so many surprises and interventions in store, it's hardly recognisable - but I'll get to that eventually.

Objets Trouvès 2

I was thinking that I should focus this blog on urban sketching and not be such a scattered Jill-of-all-arts - but then I have these big gaps where it looks like nothing's happening, when it is. And I need to record it because I will forget!

 I've been busy with another of Greg Kerr's year long painting courses, this year called Objets Trouvès. Four weeks spread over the year, with plenty of homework in between (just remembered that I did in fact do a post about some of the preparation before we started back in January). To track back to what seems like an age ago in the progression of the course... we had to do a bit more slog - find an insect... I 'found' (thanks to my photographer nephew who had been given it by Pretoria university for a shoot) a nice big dung beetle, long deceased and easier on aging eyes than the little goggas that drop belly up on my windowsills... photograph it, construct it out of wire and photograph that - ready for the first session. Amazing how you can begin to feel fondness for such a creature when you study it so intently!

In class and already well acquainted with our bugs, we used our material to produce four big (40x55cm) charcoal drawings, each with an aim in mind - a history (or palimpsest - lovely word); architecture, tone and texture; spatiality and surface detail and; monumentality, complexity, personality. To put it in a nutshell - it took long hours of concentration, teacher inspiration and application!

Then... I'm rushing along here to catch up... back at home and keeping the creative force surging, we had to pick two or more of these drawings, photocopy or print (hold the toner) them onto watercolour paper to produce 12 formats on which we did different colour exercises in various mediums - watercolour, gouache, wax resist and encaustic, acrylic alla prima and glazes - to explore terms such as hue, value, tint, tone, chroma, complementary and adjacent hues...etc etc.

I have to admit that I got annoyed at myself around this point because... I know this stuff, I've been doing it forever (and forever seems to be running out). WHY don't I do this by myself in my own time, without the impetus and discipline of a class and an encouraging teacher...why don't I grow up and be a 'real' artist?
Well, now heading towards the fourth and final session, I think I've figured it out - there are big gaps in my art education, and they are being filled by this most excellent tuition - I'll keep you posted, will try not to take so long about it next time!

Anniversary Special

                     

Bruce and I astonishingly reached 35 years of marriage last week, and celebrated by taking a trip -♫♪♩♬ just the two of us ♫♪♩♬ - to the little town of Clarens in the eastern Free State, just 4 hours drive from Joburg. It's a place I've always wanted to visit, being renowned for its scenic beauty and its bounteous artistic community. No wonder artists gravitate there, the surrounding countryside is breathtakingly magnificent and I certainly felt the pull of becoming a landscape painter. From the car window I did attempt one quick sketch of some of the enormous sky, which looked like a supremely adept artist had wielded a giant paintbrush of infinite blues across it. How inadequate were my little bag of materials and dabbings.

       

 It was, however, our anniversary, so I couldn't spend our time sketching while my beloved amused himself, but did a couple of hurried scribbles here and there, mostly for my own memory banks (if I don't sketch it, how will I ever remember it?)

We hiked, and drove, and explored the nearby Golden Gate national park where I tried to capture some shy baboons. Not as used to cars as some troops we've seen, they lolloped off as soon as they sensed they were being watched. I could watch and draw them all day, such characters, so full of human characteristics!

Another few opportunities snatched while we sampled the Clarens Craft beer, a cup of tea in a café (the Artist's Café of course!),

one of three delicious dinners we had in different restaurants in town... this table appeared to be of brothers and their spouses who eat out a lot together - hardly a word was exchanged! And the couple on the left only had eyes for each other...

and some local residents from the car while Bruce did something useful and necessary. So very much more to draw and paint - one would have to move there to really have a chance to do a fraction of it. But a wonderful trip in every way, not least of all spending dedicated time alone with my very special man! 

End of the Dinner Party

 I've just come to the end of this year's Greg Kerr (website currently under construction) painting course, "The Dinner Party", which once again has been a fascinating, informative and unpredictable ride through the world of painting, art and artists, as well as really fun, sociable interludes throughout the year.

It started with researching and making Valentine cards for 5 artists, plus yourself, as preparation for the course. During the first week we painted place settings for each one in acrylic, glazed and embellished later if needed in oils. As prep for the following session we had to make and photograph clay models of the artists at a dinner table, in a setting, which we drew up carefully and painted in class onto one canvas and freely painted onto a second, using oil glazing methods.

In September, we were introduced to a process called Decalcomania, where we covered our place-setting paintings with plastic, repainted the images thickly in primary and secondary colours in acrylic, and then quickly transferred to a new canvas of the same size, repeated as many times as was necessary for a rich textured surface. This process produced unexpected and random results; blobs, blotches, textures, misregisterings, all of which were part of the grand plan.

On these printed images we were to cool down and warm up chosen areas (Mavis and Fred in Greg's unique terminology!) to make them recede or come forward, and then go through a list of possible interventions to challenge us, develop a dialogue with the work, and create an interesting patina and history - including more decalcomania, patterning, glazing, shadows, wet-in-wet and dry brush painting.

The entire project has upended my 'normal' way of doing things - which I welcome wholeheartedly, bored as I often get with my faithful renderings of things and people - but challenging and perplexing it certainly is...and am still busy with, so no final results to show you as yet, but here are some pictures of the process so far.

Dinner Party Work-in-Progress

After an intense four days of painting on two 1200x800mm canvases last week, there is still a way to go on both of them. Here's what's happened since the clay figures I made... the six figures were arranged around a table and put in a setting. I put plain cardboard walls around them after failing to make a convincing stage set and afraid the whole thing would crash down and further destroy my crumbling people, then lit the scene in various ways to take as many interesting photos as possible (the possibilities were endless!) I digitally cut some of my figure arrangements out and pasted them onto photo backgrounds, finally settling on one of a ruined cathedral in Lisbon that my husband took when I was busy with the Urban Sketchers Symposium last year, and he and our son were sight-seeing. We were to draw up this design onto one canvas and leave the other blank.

On Monday morning our painting group gathered excitedly, nervously, or both - we knew we were in for a week of hard work and plenty of surprises. Greg informed us that we would be painting two large paintings in the four days, immediately creating a sense of urgency/disbelief/panic. The drawn up canvas was to be glazed with primary colours, randomly in sections, then glazed again with the primaries to create secondary colours. While that was drying, the other canvas was covered with a glaze in a colour of our choice, lifting out areas freehand where we wanted lighter or back to a previous colour, using our photos. Both methods similiar to what we did last year in the Dark Cloud workshops. The glazing and lifting  on both paintings continued, building tones and secondary, tertiary and strangely indescribable other colours.

They're not finished yet - mine are extremely weird, not your average portrait group but so interesting to me in subject, process and unexpected results - I will forge on with them and see where we end up. I wish I could show you all the paintings that were produced, each so different and with their own unique qualities, a real credit to the teaching to produce such a range of individual responses to the project.

Clay people

My poor neglected sketch blog - not much sketching going on!

I've been making clay figures for the next stage of the painting course, and getting thoroughly carried away with little fingers and roses, cherries and violins. Each figure again representing one of the artists at my Dinner Party, I've made all six now, set them around the table and am busy staging, lighting and photographing them for the painting sessions next week. I've loved making them - perhaps I should have been a sculptor, though my proportions are off, we have very big heads at this dinner!
This is how they started off, as wire armatures. I would like to have fired and kept them, but they have all started cracking badly and probably full of air pockets, might explode in a kiln.

The Gatecrasher

Thank you everybody for your comments on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - I can't take any credit for the concept, I would never have thought of all those connections without prompting and guidance from my highly creative and innovative teacher. Here's the answer to the gatecrasher riddle for those who are still wondering... Salvador Dali, no less, who would normally I imagine, completely dominate a dinner party, so I had to keep him firmly and discreetly in his place. At the top is a rendition of his Lobster telephone, then a tiger from his 'Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumble Bee round a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening' (how's that for a title!) in which the elephant in the spoon on the right also features, then the face from his painting Sleep. In the salt and pepper set, very hard to see - the Persistence of Memory, and finally his face of 'Mae West Which Can be Used as an Apartment' installation, another catchy little title.