The Virtual Paintout - September 2012

Yet again I have indulged my love for painting shop windows with muted objects behind the vast sheets of glass and their weird reflections. I make no excuse for this but I do add to the technical difficulty with this obsessive response to the Virtual Paintout every time I do it, but I suppose it wouldn't be a challenge for me otherwise. I had hoped to do two, but just ran out of time. Below my work is a screen capture of the Google Streetview I used as my reference. I cropped the top left hand corner of the shopfront and used that for the composition.

"Storefront Window - Kobmargergade Street - Copenhagen

Oil on Board - 12" x 12"

Google Street View - With kind permission from Google

The Virtual Paintout - May 2012 Challenge

I had no intentions of participating in any challenges this year as I am working on bigger and 'slower' works which are more personal to me but I still check into the Virtual Paintout blog, and when I saw this month's city was Jerusalem, I felt a bit left out. I've been to Israel and walked down the Via Dolorosa and believe me it is very, very strange. The Google Street Maps seem to have visited on a sunny, busy day in this chaotic and mysterious part of the Old City of Jerusalem, so different from the day I visited when it was darker, in fact spooky, and far fewer shops were open.

"Corner Via Dolorosa & Beit HaBad - Old City, Jerusalem" 

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 8" x 8" 

History of Art Challenge Blog - July

Well, being a week late for my submission to The History of Art Challenge Blog is not too bad considering I chose a very difficult visual to paint. Why I do this I don't know. Well I do - it's because I fall in love with a photograph, or object or scene, and just want to render it myself or maybe pay some sort of homage to it. I love Byzantine Art and the one thing that shouts out for me from this period, is the use of gold and icons. However, gold is very difficult to portray and I struggled here with the massive gold doors, but managed, in the end, to replicate some of the mystery of the colour. The photograph was sent to me by a friend who found it on the internet, and I cannot find it anywhere so I cannot give it proper attribution even though I would love to. This is an interior of an Eastern Orthodox church, and judging from the interior, it would be very late Byzantine indeed, but the remnants of that long era are still present with the abundance of icons and gold. Very mysterious these churches, but totally enigmatic eye candy for this artist.

"Byzantine Church Interior"

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 13" x 13"

The Virtual Paintout - April 2011 Challenge

I think I'm all "challenged-out" - whatever that means. Lately, well in fact for almost two years now, most of my paintings have been for challenge blogs, fun - yes, but things are changing in my artistic life. I am feeling the need to investigate what has importance for me and this covers many things. Sending work into challenges is fun and I take it seriously in that I try to send in something worthy of the challenge, but I am not pursuing anything personal, conceptual or even technically challenging, and most of the work I am doing is done as quickly as possible to meet deadlines. I love both "The Virtual Paintout" and Sherry Massey's "History of Art Challenge" blogs but I have so little spare time now that I intend to send in work only when I have a free spot in the calendar and after I have done my own personal work. I loved doing this 'Japan' challenge and had two other works to send in as well but just couldn't complete them partly due to time limitations but also my mind was elsewhere painting different pictures and that situation doesn't work for me. I'm not sure what all of this means nor do I have fixed goals right now, but I'm going to take some time out from challenges for a while to see what that extra time gives me to work on other projects. Weird how things morph through time. It's time for me to relax somewhat and see what comes towards me for investigation instead of responding to others' visions, even though I am so grateful for them. Someone as independent as this writer needs to set her own challenges. I'll talk more of this later, I had better post this and send off my challenge for Japan to The Virtual Paintout.

"Wires above Shinjuku, Tokyo" - Gouache on Paper - 9.5" x 9.5"

Click HERE for street scene used.

Greens, and more Greens.

I am not sure about these two works. I enjoyed doing them, but I struggle so profoundly with greens. The photographic references I used come from a challenge blog, Daily Paintworks, and I am not sure whether or not to send them in. The photographs to work from were deceptively simple, and I knew that as soon as I saw them, but I responded to taking out the oils again after a long time and hoped for something better than I have produced here. I have been painting in gouache for a few months now and I notice that I have lost my "touch" with oils. Another annoying part of this process is that I just could not get the colour of the blue sky photographed accurately - it's much deeper. I think I'll just live with these for another day or so, and then probably make some adjustments here and there before taking the plunge and sending them in.

"German Landscape I"
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"

"German Landscape II"
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"

History of Art Challenge Blog - March

This is my first submission to Sherry Massey's "History of Art Challenge" blog. The challenge was to portray, in any medium, a chosen image from Ancient Greece. I chose a very famous statue currently housed in the Louvre, Paris: "Nike of Samothrace", a marble statue from c. 220 - 190 BC, which depicts the winged goddess of victory in full flight. I am woefully untutored in the art history of this time even though I studied it at university. It was an interesting exercise for me as I was enchanted by the pose; the huge triumphant gesture and those delicious folds of drapery. However, to capture those in detail would require a larger sized paper and possible rendering in graphite pencil. Big congratulations to Sherry Massey for starting a challenge blog with an academic angle. I look forward to watching it grow from strength to strength.

"Homage to Nike of Samothrace"
Charcoal & Carbon Pencil on Paper - 16" x 12"

The Virtual Paintout - February Challenge

I haven't been able to spend much time in front of the easel these past few weeks which is irritating when all I want to do is paint. However, I decided to skip any other chores this weekend and give this month's Virtual Paintout a try and take a trip along the roads around Romania to see if anything caught my eye. I found some great scenes in the mountainous regions of North East Romania, and this one especially appealed to me. It's a scene from a crossing, along a main road that runs right through the town of Piatra-Neam. What really caught my eye was the enormous puddle and the enigmatic reflections with the white stripes of the pedestrian crossing suspended across the whole format. Naturally, I added drama with deeper and more exciting colours, but I like the way an ordinary scene can come to life this way. It could be anywhere in the world and even though I like to somehow try and bring in the flavour of the particular city or country of the month's challenge, I just fixed on this one and had fun. This work took me four hours to complete, and there are some changes I would like to make to the composition, but I am leaving it as it is. Enough!

"After the Rain - Piatra-Neam, Romania"
Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 9" x 9"

Click ">HERE for scene painted from Google Maps with their permission.

The Virtual Paintout - January Challenge

It's good to be back on the "challenge" bandwagon again after a long hiatus and "The Virtual Paintout" is my personal favourite to enter each month. I had the usual trip around the city of the month, Boston, and I couldn't find any 'juicy' windows to paint, so I settled on boats of all things. The scene I chose here is not representative of Boston; it could be anywhere. I feel that with most of my past entries for this Challenge, my work has somehow evoked the character or feel of the city or place I am painting, but this grey scene, caught my eye. I think it was the challenge of the greyness of the water, the strip of boats across the centre and the potential to reduce it down to a brighter quasi abstract. I have another boat scene for Boston on the conveyor belt which might appear here in a couple of days, time permitting.

"Boston Boats - Interstate 93 - Boston, Mass., USA"
Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 9.25" x 8.5" (Approx.)

The screenshot from the Google Maps Scene

Click to see the scene directly on Google Maps ">HERE.

Painted from Google Maps with their kind permission.

The Virtual Paintout - November Challenge

I loved the idea of painting Rio de Janeiro and I was hoping to send in three paintings being my usual over-ambitious self, but after flopping on the first one, I decided to take the plunge and do this gorgeous window at Louis Vuitton. I was going to do it in oils but I am so glad I used gouache because it is so much faster and I sent this in at the last minute. I chose a window again, because I just adore painting them. They are often works of art in themselves and the reflections are a major challenge, but massive fun. I've shown the screenshot below my work which gives an idea of what inspired me. And to think I was giving up on challenges. It just goes to show one never knows what will happen.

"Window at Louis Vuitton - Ave. Garcia de Avila, Rio De Janeiro"
Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 11.5" x 11.5" (Approx.)

All scenes painted from Google Streetmaps with permission.

The Virtual Paintout - September Challenge

This month's location for The Virtual Paintout blog challenge was Manhattan Island. With such massive choice in one of my favourite places on the planet, I decided to develop my theme from last month's challenge when I painted a store front window in Charlotteville, Prince Edward Island, which I had thoroughly enjoyed. I couldn't choose between three windows so I went all out and painted all of them, noticing each one was dominated by a primary colour. I love what happens when the photograph loses its registration through the various stages, and this gives the visual its allure, but also its technical challenges. Another challenge was trying to make them look like real windows and this I did (I think) by including the reflections some of which, if you look very carefully, show the blurred outline of the Google car; I think it was the Google car! What I learned from this challenge was these works should be painted on huge formats, at least 8 foot square, preferably more. Maybe one day when I get my huge studio I can develop this as a theme. (Below each painting is a small reference of the window from Google Street Maps).

"Primary RED at Kenneth Cole, Fifth Avenue, New York"
12" x 12" - Oil on Gessoed Board.

"Primary YELLOW at Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue, New York"
12" x 12" - Oil on Gessoed Board.

"Primary BLUE at Sephora, Fifth Avenue, New York"
12" x 12" - Oil on Gessoed Board.

Three Primaries Out To Dry.

No, that's not a political statement, but it might sum up how I feel about politics and the systems around them at the moment. Back to art, it's much more trustworthy.

I haven't posted here for over three weeks and that is hugely frustrating for me, but I have been working and very hard indeed on my paintings. No matter how mediocre the work that is put up on this blog, I am happy because that means that I am being productive. Productive in practicing rather than in producing work good enough to sell. I'll get there. However, I have been ultra busy painting three works for the Virtual Paintout blog challenge this month and they have to be sent in this Thursday. One is finished, and two are in their last phases, drying, before the next layer can be done. This is the very tiresome stage of the process for me and, ironically, the place where I learn the most. I have based this project not only around scenes in Manhattan, but on the primary colours themselves. They are paintings of huge windows on Fifth Avenue. I will describe how I approached this in my next blog post. For this post, I have taken out the colours and they look completely weird, and it's interesting to see which one works the best for me compositionally. I am having some sort of fun here, so ignore this if you like. I've never put up such a bleak, colourless post, but it's fun to see the Google car in the reflections even in these greyish visuals.

The Virtual Paintout - August Challenge

I was rather angry with myself for not submitting a painting to the Virtual Paintout Challenge last month because the delicious location was Hong Kong. Hong Kong has all those incredibly seductive back roads and neon lights, a painter's delight, and I was hoping to find something similar to get to grips with for this month's challenge, but Prince Edward Island in spite of all its pristine beauty, doesn't seem to have a "wrong side of town". Most places do have a more 'interesting' and downtrodden sector of their urban landscape. On my 'tour' of Prince Edward Island I scoured for something a little different from the endless greenery with houses all in a seemingly homogenized vernacular and I eventually settled on a shopfront with complicated reflections and a glowing interior. The screenshot I take from the actual photograph is always a little more diffused than the original scene on Google Maps, obviously, but in one way that adds to the possibilities of painterly fun, but this one was a bit more complicated than I had anticipated so it took longer. I always do that and must stop! Maybe if I painted on a smaller format and was more spontaneous I could save time and send in more than one entry to this best of all blog challenges for artists. Thanks again to Bill Guffey and The Virtual Paintout for this challenge! If you are new to this challenge, I encourage you to go to Bill's blog and see the interview he had with CBC Connect, Canadian Television for a super round-up of this month's challenge. Wonderful and well-deserved publicity and some of the paintings are up as well.

"Shopfront - Queen Street, Charlotteville, PEI, Canada"
Oil on Gessoed Board - 12" x 12"

Scene painted from Google Maps with permission.

Google Map link to this scene.

Screenshot of actual scene.

The Virtual Paintout - June Challenge.

This month's Virtual Paintout challenge was ultra-enjoyable for me - a trip to Hawaii. As usual, I found it difficult to choose a juicy scene to paint from mainly because the whole island is "juicy". In the end, I decided to move away from those swaying palms of the shoreline and find something more urban and dare I say it, mundane? I looked round some of the back alleys for graffiti and found nothing very inspiring or painterly, but with a bit of luck I alighted on a delightful mural outside an art school. Not too difficult to paint, but photographing that glossy black was a bit of a headache. I decided to replicate the linear work of the mural by painting the figure as a 'walking drawing'. Nearly pulled it off. Give yourself a treat and pop over to The Virtual Paintout challenge blog and look at all the marvellous paintings - they're an absolute treat this month!

"Art School Mural" - 12, S. Pauahi Street, Honolulu, Hawaii"
Oil on Gessoed Board - 12" x 12"

Scene painted from Google Maps with permission.

Link to scene is here.

Screen Shot of Actual Scene.

Secret Garden, London.

This is my first submission to the Calypso Moon Artist Movement. Our challenge was to paint our Secret Garden. I live in a very green area of London, alongside beautiful vistas of trees and grassland just a stone’s throw from the Thames River, but, for me, none of it could be classified as ‘secret’. My ‘Secret Gardens’ are the great parks of London, and they are truly ‘Great’. I have my own special corners in these elegant spaces where Londoners come to relax and absorb the beauty and because one can be so anonymous in these masterpieces, a sense of owning a personal spot becomes very real. My secret garden is really ‘secret’ so I am not telling where it is. It is a wonderfully serene corner and I have the feeling that it has been there for a very long time; nothing new, nothing cultivated; just a naturally occurring place of peace. Strangely the vista I have chosen to paint is interesting for its lack of flowers; it’s just a cacophony of greens, layered one on the other with alarming subtlety and complexity.

Depicting the myriad variations of green was something I found tough, but I had set myself the challenge of pulling off this monochromatic scene. Possibly the end result might have been more convincing in oils as I would be able to blend the colours with a bit more subtlety, but I decided to stick with my own personal challenge of learning about 'water colour and gouache' as a medium all over again, and I am finding some marvellous surprises along the way. This work took me six hours.

"Secret Garden, London"
Water Colour & Gouache on Paper - 11.5" x 11.5" (Approx.)

The Virtual Paintout - April Challenge

This is my first submission to the Virtual Paintout Challenge. Choosing a scene to paint from the Google Map of the Canary Islands was, for me, a major part of this challenge. I chose about ten corners of the Canary Islands I thought would force a good painting out of me, but in the end I stayed with a scene I thought would be easy, but it wasn’t. I cannot say I am happy about this work but I pulled something together in the end. I could have gone in a bit closer to get the painting of the palm trees on the side of the house and made a quirky feature out of that, but I have learned valuable lessons from this one. One interesting thing I found out about the Tenerife flag is that it is identical to the flag of Scotland, only it is a darker, navy blue, so I thought I would just add this in as a little folly. A huge thanks to Bill Guffey for putting this challenge together!

"Calle Tequeste - Puerto de la Cruz - Canary Islands, Spain"
Oil on Gessoed Board - 12" x 12" (Approx.)

Scene painted from Google Maps with permission.

A link to the scene I chose from the Google Maps is here.

Determined to Draw

I am determined to draw a little, or a lot, each night this week. So determined was I when I arrived home tonight that I took out most of my charcoal and chalks, erasers, knives, and drawing pads and put them on the table so I would not be able to ignore them. This is a trick I have to play on myself. Although it is untidy and impractical to have all that material lying around, it makes life easier not having to unpack the material each night from my trusty toolbox.

I've decided for my next submission to the current Following the Masters challenge, I am not going to do a painting, I am going to do a charcoal sketch of the artist whose work we are paying homage to - Robert Henri. I have found a good photograph on the internet, so I'll work from that. I just don't know his work at all, and nor do I know the work of the Ashcan School. This makes me realise just how Eurocentric my art knowledge is at present, and even our libraries don't seem to have any decent monographs on his work or of his followers. I love to work from a good reproduction, but this time they are not available, so I'm going to use this challenge to practice my drawing. Not inventive, but totally practical. Some more clarity.

Off we go...

Homage to a Homage

This is my submission to the latest Following the Masters challenge. I have been waiting so long to photograph this work because the light has been so poor lately. However, today, I decided I could not wait any longer as the deadline for submission is tomorrow, so I chose the best photograph out of many and felt it would have to do as 'good enough' for the project.

I chose this Picasso because it was one of the works on show at a magnificent blockbuster exhibition held at the National Gallery in 2009. The format was also roughly the same as a spare canvas I had, so a lot of practicality was involved in choosing this work. It is not my favourite by a long distance, but I loved its quirkiness. This massive show was titled "PICASSO - Challenging the Past". The entire exhibition was based on Picasso's own homages to past masters and the pictures he had painted directly from their masterpieces, e.g. Velasquez' 'Las Meninas' which was for me, the utlimate picture at the show. So my work is a homage to Picasso's homage to Lucas Cranach the Younger! It was a spectacular show and I found it very difficult to leave the exhibition halls. The energy of all his work together was staggering. The original work is actually a linocut and to emulate some of those effects was difficult but I didn't try to push that too hard. In addition, the yellows and ochres were incredibly hard to paint. I had to go over them many times to get them to look solid. I should have thought this through carefully at the beginning but I was so eager to start. It took a lot longer than I anticipated. I kept seeing extra details that I had missed but all in all, it is close enough to my original vision to send it off to Following the Masters. Another interesting part of this challenge was finding the original work by Lucas Cranach the Younger which inspired Picasso to do his linocut. I find all these transitions over time hugely absorbing.

My homage to Picasso

Oil on Canvas - 30" x 25"

The Original Picasso

"Portrait of a Woman after Cranach the Younger"
Colour Linocut - 25" x 13"

The Original of Lucas Cranach the Younger

"Portrait of a Woman" - Oil on Board - 83 x 64 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum - Vienna

Challenge No. 6 - City Rooftops.

This was a stinking hard challenge for me. I struggled with it like mad but ended up saying: "I AM going to make this work!" This is my latest submission for Karin Jurick's latest Different Strokes for Different Folks blog challenge. Karin put up a photograph of a view she had taken from her hotel in San Francisco and my first impression was that it was a beautiful photograph, with such icy, sharp contrasts and brilliant light. Of course this would not be easy to interpret realistically for me in the limited time I have on weekends, so I thought I would just let rip with something more loose and spontaneous.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS' DAY

25 October 2009

"Room With A View"

Oil on Gessoed Board - 12.5" x 12.5"

Nothing to show for August so far.

August has been a weird month creatively. I just haven't been able to finish any works at all. I have started some, left others half way through in the drying process only to come back to them later and discover I don't like any of it and ended up scraping off the entire surface of oil paint. Strange month was August. I also discovered that I was trying to combine finishing my own art projects with the blog challenges for DSFDF and Following the Masters that confusion reigned supreme; too many disparate visions were being dealt with at the same time so I stopped all of them. I also had a huge amount of admin to do around the house; whatever that means, but I think most readers would understand. So, August has been a bleak month so far for finished work. I hope to change that with at least one work, not a blog challenge, but something from my own stable of projects.

I was also hoping to do some small sketches or watercolours in the spaces between paintings, one a day hopefully, but that has not happened. I need a studio to really enable me to do some work each and every day, big or small, oil or watercolour, sketch or painting. So even on a smaller level, I have found getting very simple work finished, an impossibility. Am I being too hard on myself? Maybe doing a charcoal sketch tonight - of anything - might clear the cobwebs.

The truth is, I need a break; something like a year-long sabbatical would do.

My Latest Blog Challenge! No. 5.

In the spirit of adventure I have entered another blog challenge. Recently I discovered another super blog Follow the Masters which challenges artists to respond to various images of the Master Painters. This last challenge was to take any Maxfield Parrish work and interpret it. I have visited art galleries in the USA but confess, that I have never lingered in front of any of his work. This therefore was a double challenge because I only had a web image to work from. Interestingly, the images of his work on Google Images vary so dramatically that it is impossible to work out how far they are removed from the original but I would assume, very far indeed, especially the one I chose which is "The Tempest". I loved the web image I chose because it had huge drama and it looked as if it was one of those over-printed images that was many generations away from the original register. I loved the rock formations and I think they were the real hook to get me started on this work because, on close inspection, they reminded me so much of the abstract expressionist work I used to do at University. However, it was great to get it finished, even though it took me far longer than I anticipated, but that is what these blog challenges are all about; learning.

After Maxfield Parrish's "The Tempest"
Oil on Gesso Board - 12" x 12"

Detail that reminded me of my University days!

The Original Maxfield Parrish "Tempest"