Painting the hedgerows

Mid-may and the verges are spattered with Queen Anne’s Lace and sundry other wild pretties, overlooked by copious clouds of foaming hawthorn, which we must not pick and never, ever bring into the house, for fear of bad luck.

Even the ancient, warty Wrekin is softened with the flush of new green growth.

I have aways loved the sight of a narrow country road cutting through the landscape and forging onwards to an invisible end, softly edged by tumbling greenery, blurring the hard edges so that the road, for all its visual dominance, never entirely wins. And here is my own tumbledown cottage, hiding behind the greenery. If you look carefully, further down the lane you can see the lilac tree by the gate of Jean-and-Brian-next-door, 

This is a motif that comes out in my own work again and again, as I reinterpret and simply the landscape around me, most recently in these miniature hills, an edition of two. It is also a firm control of the messy chaos of wool, taming the fibres into a solidly outlined  object.

And there is the contrast again, in this large still life I painted last Sunday, with the hard plaster wall being softened and almost overwhelmed by the exuberance of the paint, depicting Fumitory and Honesty spilling out and escaping the confines of the white ceramic jug.

Here is a return to my early painting days of thirty years ago. A letting go of control, a ‘let’s see what happens if I do this’ and being content with using just a few loose, broad brushstrokes to do the visual heavy lifting of the background.

I cannot express how exhilarated and exhausted I was, by the time I put my brush down and thought ‘that’s it’.

Birthdays and bears

Well, that's been a bit of a hefty blog break. Busy times. Sometime last month I had a birthday, and as some people may know, I am not a huge fan of birthdays. But there was a beautiful card from Joe, who also ordered a fabulous Clangers cake - and they spelled my name correctly, which is always nice! Yes, I adore the Clangers.

 

He bought me far too many presents, including some CDs of my favourite noisy bands, and a colouring book...which sadly I have not had time to play with yet.

Although I have made time to get on with my own painting.

Last weekend was my two day trip to Oxford, where I held my bear making workshop in the Willows, at Hill End Nature Centre, a truly delightful work space with lots of light and room.

 

I had nine attendees, four of whom were returns from previous workshops and it was lovely to see them again. It was a very busy, friendly session, and if you want an outside view, there is a lovely blog post about it on 'Tales from the Weekday Home'.

It is always nice to get to the end of the day and see the more-or-less finished results.

Apart from that, we have been trying to straighten things out at the cottage. I am still only half unpacked since moving in three and a half years ago.  It was all a bit too much with everything that happened subsequently, and I've been quite happy or rather, resigned, to live like this. But things are changing and this dumping room needed sorting. 

It's actually tidy compared to how it was. We've gone through boxes and boxes of stuff, put various things into lots for auction, charity and attic storage. Sometimes it was particularly painful, but it had to be done as life is starting to settle down and there is a lot more which needs sorting out. One can only live in carnage for so long.

 

Comfort

 I wonder if all the lovely people who left such kind messages and sent sweet emails about our dear little Mouse will ever know just what a blessing they were, in a very dark time? Thank you hardly seems adequate, but - thank you from the bottom of my heart. Being recently moved to a strange area, there were no 'real life' friends to turn to, so every word was balm and helped me feel a little less lonely.

Although our new, temporary home isn't handy for immediate foot wandering - a busy country road runs along the edge of the barn, and it shakes when lorries and tractors thunder by - we drive out as often as we can, to get a sense of place and familiarise ourselves with the area. 

I have always found woods to be especially soothing - the mere whiff of damp leaf mould does more for me than a scented candle. And there are always treasures to find - coral fungus, baby frogs and strange stumps littering the forest floor.

A close look reveals a tiny bracken frond emerging from the old, rotting roots of the mother place. 

With all the wet weather, fungi and toadstools are already emerging. These woods are mostly conifers, making the woods acidic; perfect for stink horns. There were dozens of them in the first 'egg' form, strangely metallic and translucent.

 

 Stink horns are one of my favourite fungi, despite their smell and if you don't know what they look like after the egg stage, I dedicated an entire blog post to them once. 

 

But if you prefer the larger things in life, then on the edge of the woods there is a vast view of Shropshire from Oliver's Point.

Driving out towards the border and views across to the beautiful  Berwyn Mountains in nearby Wales.

While mourning my favourite cat,  I have conquered my 'painting block' which has lasted for about two years. This is another comfort.  The familiarity of painting has always soothed me. And tomorrow, Tuesday,  we go to look at a very promising cottage - unless there is something really wrong with it, or someone else snaffles it, we are daring to hope. 

Paints and palettes.

I haven't really painted since taking up needle felting over two years ago. I was very, very tired of it; one of my earliest memories is of my dad going into a shop, leaving me on the pavement and emerging with a long, thin blue tin box, which he handed to me with a gruff ''there you are girl'. Or words to that effect. It was a box of Reeves artist's watercolours. I was about four years old.

(This is not the first one - I used that one up and he bought me this replacement on a later birthday)

He also gave me crayons, coloured pencils, let me play with his pastels as a treat and generally encouraged me to paint & draw without saying much, just giving me the tools. It was also a good way to keep the house peaceful, which was something he craved (not that I think I was a noisy child). When he died, I made a vow to become an artist for him, and stuck to that promise, even though I was only twelve and trying to keep that vow made life very difficult for me. It took me until fairly recently to realise I didn't really enjoy painting at all; I was just going through the motions.

So I was more than happy to give painting a break - I was bored and even resentful of it, and the only painting I've done since then has been for the odd commercial job. (Drawing however, I do love and never stop). But I was so pleased and surprised to have an enquiry from a needle felt customer as to whether I had any original artwork for sale. Yes, but only the two - 'Luna' and 'Little Clown'. And they bought them at once. Which was lovely, especially for my overdraft. This, combined with the enormous amount of painting I have to do for my two jobs, has brought me back round to the idea of painting again. But - my paints have been dying over the years. Look! The 'condemned' ones with red crosses on are the totally dried up tubes; I've had many of these since the early 1990's.

I went through them and realised I hadn't bought more than one or two tubes of new paint in a decade - the last time was back in 2005, just at the time I started this blog and tried out the (then)new 'Potter's Pink'. Not all of the dried up tubes needed replacing - colours like these pinks are so vibrant I only use them in tiny amounts, not for washes, so I can happily use the dry lumps they have become.

I took the plunge and spent some money. Not only paints, but all the paper I'll need for the final artworks (about 20 A2 sheets), and yet another ceramic palette (I can never have enough).

And another big roll of gummed strip; the sad little remnant there is all that is left of the previous large one, which was used up over five years. That is, I can tell you, a lot of work. I also had to replace my pencils which get used up within weeks at the moment.

This is my other box of paints; my gouaches and some of my new tubes. I bought everything from Jackson's Art online, who are my main suppliers; apart from their prices, I've never had anything but prompt and courteous service from them, and that's all you really want from a company. I indulged myself and bought several new colours from two brands I'd not heard of before.

Shin Han and Maimeri Blu both make affordable water colours, and Shin Han especially had some gorgeous sounding hues, some of which are opaque, a quality I like. There are all kinds of *rules* about water colour painting and I ignore them all. I mix gouache with watercolour, even though it splits. You just keep briskly mixing it together as you work and this often gives me lovely, strange colours. (One of the other *rules* is that you don't mix watercolours - you layer them. However my entire painting style rests on mixing and re-mixing - it works for me). I made a little colour sample to try out the colours I'd not used before. The Shin Han ones came out on top. I've kept this image large, so that if you're interested you can click on it and see what I mean. The 'Shell Pink' and 'Horizon Blue' are two shades that I'm always mixing up, so it's nice to have it ready to hand. I've always thought of the pink as sticking plaster colour. The Shin Han samples are on the left, the Maimeri Blue on the top left, three of them.

I don't think I'll be using the 'Lilac' much, (too purpley) but 'Davy's Grey and 'Horizon Blue' are keepers. The one error was stupidly buying 'Green Earth' from the Maimeri Blu range. Of course, it's what I know as 'Terre Verte'. This brand of paint is also quite gummy, which is typical of a cheaper tange. Not something I mind, but I know some people do. The 'Sandal Red' is basically a geranium shade, but a nice one. Here it is with Sennelier's Rose Dore (very red) and Winsor & Newton's Geranium Lake (pale) gouache. But still very tasty.

An opaque colour I used to use a lot for mixing is Daler Rowney's 'Nickel Titanate Yellow' . When I ran out I replaced it with a Winsor & Newton version, which really was not the same. It didn't have the chalky, lemony bite of the DR, so I'm glad to have it back.

Another colour I am very fussy over is sepia. It's something I don't use in my commercial work, as it dulls the vibrancy. My publisher once had a prospective book of mine rejected by clients because it was 'too brown'. However I always put a sepia wash in my personal work and it seems to be a selling point, giving it a nostalgic feel. Go figure, as my American friends say. I only have one sepia in my box that I like, and that is an ancient tube of Reeves in lead casing. It has the blackness which marks proper sepia...

...here is is on the right, compared to two others I have (Winsor & Newton Gouache and Old Holland) which are really just brown. Actually my favourite sepia is in the Cotman student range, but naturally I forgot to order that one.

I find it invaluable to keep a record of how I mix colours. This is a big sheet I made about 13 years ago, and I still use it today. Again, I've left it at big size., so you can click on it for more detail There are plenty of examples on it of how I've jumbled Nickel Titanate Yellow with other colours, to produce something I find interesting.

So when I hit my final deadline (please God) at the beginning of June, I might just start painting for pleasure again, now that I've had my little strop and a two year break. Sorry Dad and thanks again for the paint box.

Drakestail

My January job was another reading card story for Macmillan/MacGraw-Hill. It was the reason I was 'away' for a while. Feedback for the roughs arrived on the 8th + artworks to be submitted on the 18th = very short deadline. I know non-illustrators are sometimes interested in the process of a project, and I've been given kind permission to write about this one. I had never heard of Drakestail - and when I did, I pondered how I was going to depict the characters, most of whom magically disappear into the hero's pockets...hmmm.
These reading cards needed to be done in a certain way. They have to clearly show the 'action', so that the children can see exactly what is going on. Therefore the colours should be bright and fun too. I tend to use a lot of neutrals in my palette and avoid primary colours. In fact when I do a 'for myself' artwork, I like to be downright gloomy. ('Atmospheric' if you're being fancy). But with educational work like this, I bump the colours up and enrich them with layers of paint and soft colour pencil. Little - if any - shading, but also keeping a tight control on how many colours are used - less than it appears, in fact, as I do a lot of mixing from a limited palette. So I draw a happy compromise in doing something I am happy to put in my folio and giving the client what they want. All the cards were painted at their actual size of 11inches by 13 inches, which is roughly A3.

Here is the rough for card one. Drakestail is talking to his friend Fox. He is off to see the King to whom he has lent money. As with any printable artwork, there is a good 'bleed' round the edge of the actual picture, and the figures are kept well within the main frame. I love doing natural scenes like this, and can never resist putting in some kind of fungi and little woodland folk. The art directions wanted French countryside, alas, not something I am familiar with, so Google image search comes in handy. Luckily, a lot of it seemed to be similar to the English landscape , and I popped in some round castle-y things and turrets, not to mention a lavender field. We have those over here too, but not as many. In fact, Snowshill Lavender is just up the road, and very pretty it looks too, in the summer.

Luckily there were no changes to this first card and here it is cropped, as it will appear in real life, although of course the full work has the extra bleed. I had an almost-disastrous accident when painting this. Just at the point where I was really enjoying myself and relaxing for once, I clumsily flipped a plastic palette into the air with my brush hand, splattering the piece with liquid scarlet. Like toast which lands butter side down, the paint went largely on the pristine white clouds. I hollered for tissue paper, (cue Andy running into the studio with handfuls of loo roll, like a medic in 'Casualty') and with much cursing, mopping, scraping and disguising, I miraculously salvaged two days work...tight deadline remember, so no starting again. The darker splodges beneath the squirrel on the righthand tree (not seen in the rough) are where I painted over the worst stained parts.

Here is Drakestail chatting to his friend River. Further up the road is another friend, Beehive. Both of these had to have faces suggested on them. Fox is sat in the duck's waistcoat pocket. This was quite tricky to draw, and I had a headache with the bridge. Hours were spent on Google, looking at pictures of bridges over water, to get an idea of how the perspective goes. I really sweated over that, and it's a miracle that it actually works at all...

There were changes to be made to this one - Beehive had to be sent further up the road, with more trees added. And although I had suggested a face in River, it had to be more obvious. I have to confess, I liked doing River the least - I couldn't avoid making it look cartoonish, and I'm not very happy with how it is depicted. But it did the trick, and there was no time for titivating. Although the style seems simple, the method of layering colours is quite time consuming, and many of the big washes have to be left to dry naturally, or they get watermarks. I've learned the hard way that it saves time just leaving work to dry slowly and evenly, rather than ruin it by taking a hairdryer to it and risking blotches.

I had thought that this third card would be the most difficult composition; there was so much which had to be depicted. In a job like this you are given quite precise instructions as to what to draw and you have to include everything...but in the end it was, I think, the most successful picture. I really enjoyed the challenge, and hens are always good to do. I also managed to flagrantly break the rule about keeping the central characters well inside the picture frame - not sure how I got away with that, but it got passed just as it was with no corrections. I was relieved, as the air of chaos and drama is enhanced by Drakestail being 'thrust' into the corner, the hens flying off the page and Fox leaping out of the pocket to his rescue. If I'd had to make them all sit nicely inside, it would have been a weaker piece and lost its 'oomph'.

And here it is, cropped. By now I was on about day 7 of my ten day painting workspace. Starting to panic...

Here is Drakestail resting in the Throne Room, after his many ordeals at the hands of the nasty King. I did not enjoy doing this one at all. In the past I have avoided depicting humans where possible. While I have a good technique for stylising animals, my faces have always been a weak point. But the directions asked for Drakestail to be 'surrounded' by villagers so there was no escape. But something clicked when I drew the guardsman (above in the hen house) and after much scribbling, I found a way of depicting them which sits nicely within my style. Which just goes to show that there is nothing like making you learn something than having to knuckle down and just do it.

Oooh, there were all kinds of alterations to this one. Excited with my newly found 'human' style, I merrily filled the scene with several villagers (well, the directions were for him to be 'surrounded'...) I also didn't have an instant mental image of how the throne room was going to look and there were several false starts before I settled on this one. Somehow the river had to be fitted in, so I put it in a bowl. This had to be changed, (rather too like a chamber pot) and I was instructed to have it running down the steps. So the cat moved under the throne. I hadn't been told to put a cat in, but I like to get one in wherever possible, and they are good space fillers. Worse, three of the villagers were to be 'executed'. My rough came back with little loops drawn on the intended victims; I had never seen this before. On asking, I found that this meant take them out of the picture - if only Life were as simple. I regretted removing the girl with the bouquet, but in this case the Art Director was king - or queen - and the lucky survivors had to be brought within the picture frame. Again, I wasn't really happy with the way River looks, and of all the cards, this to me feels like the most rushed. But the job was finished with hours to spare before scanning them in and emailing them to the other side of the Atlantic. I was simply thankful that I'd got the job done without any major mishaps. I am learning how to please myself AND the client, so that I enjoy what I do, and they like the results. In this particular job I feel I've learned some major lessons.
The last week has been spent painting new work for my Etsy shop, and the change of going back to a free rein has been quite difficult - in with gentle melancholy and atmosphere...out with jolly and bright. I've already had to tear one up.


I will be putting up two large works up for sale soon. They are framed and mounted, and are a whopping A1 size in their frames, edge to edge. As I'm having a clear out (and with a looming tax bill in mind), they are a snip at £150.00 each (US $300.00 ). But they would probably need to be picked up in person from Oxfordshire, to avoid large postal costs.

Today's picture

Today I start the final stage of a new painting. This is the first in the series of designs which hopefully I can sell to a card company. My studio is the smallest room and crammed with books, reference material, shop cutouts, toys, and general Stuff. There is just enough room for me...and Peter Rabbit.

My workspace. Chad is the official studio bear, to the left.

The original idea for 'Party Food' came from a page of doodles. This is often how the best images are started, when you're relaxed and having fun with a pen.

The first informal scribbling. At this stage there is no food.

To make the image more 'commercial' - that is, to fit it into a season or celebration (which is a top consideration for most card companies), I added festive food. This is the last sketch, with jottings to remind me if something needs moving in the actual painting.

Finally, I think about what colours I'll be using. Every year there is a new industry standard collection of colours and the trends for clothing, accessories, cards etc tend towards them. I try to veer towards what I believe are the 'right' kind of colours, but obviously I have my own personal palette and paints that I use frequently. To help me get the right balance, I keep special scrapbooks, full of clippings from magazines and papers. I've got 40 now and they are my most valuable reference tool.

Chad helps me decide which colour scheme to choose.

Now for the scary part...I always use Arches 140lb cold pressed paper - it is smooth, stretches beautifully and will take quite a lot of punishment. After the first light base wash of a yellow tint, I continued with a wash of a lovely new watercolour from Winsor and Newton - a nice dirty rose called 'Potter's Pink'. It is almost like a goauche and I used it for the background wash, with a drop of ox-gall to keep it smooth. But it streaked badly, and I ended up mopping it all up - at first I thought I'd have to write the whole thing off and start again, but then I realised that the sponged/weathered finish (where the paint had stained the paper) was actually rather nice. Now I'm using the same technique in other bits of the work. Here we are halfway through the painting. I'm still nervous at this point, in case I choose the wrong colour.

I am obsessively tidy...the little bit of paper with squares on

is the experimental palette I develop as I go along.