New York at Night - Speed Experiment II

I haven't been painting lately - long, very uninteresting story behind that. However, today I decided to get out of the fog and just start up with something 'small'. I have loved the photo that this work is based on for so long I decided to paint it this afternoon before the impetus died. I thought it would be a little too complicated as I haven't painted for so long but it wasn't.  I guess I had stared at it for so long that there were no strange corners.  (It's frightening how quickly one's skills level drops). I somehow breezed through it and, again, even though the paper was slightly too rough to accommodate all the fine brushwork I was aiming for, I am happy with it.

"New York City Blurred II"

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 8.5" x 9" (Approx.)

New York at Night - Speed Experiment

I haven't painted for ages and I'm not bothered about this for some weird reason but today I gave myself an small exercise which is helpful. The objective is to paint any photograph within 30 to 60 minutes as fast as possible and try to get it as close in essence to the photograph. Some of the effects of a blurred night shot in New York were captured but I made the mistake of painting on too small a format. If I had wanted to capture some of the minutiae of the scene I would have to double up in size.

"New York Blurred" 

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 5" x 5.5" (Approx.)

Not Worth A Title

After not having sunshine in London for six months I dropped all plans for much needed housework today, opened my paints and let rip with whatever came to mind. This is the result. Nothing at all special but feeling tired of not enjoying my gouache as the watercolour paper is just too thick. I also wanted to refine the architectural details of the cathedral dome with brown ink but couldn't find either the ink or the pens. I can't even remember whether I threw them away some time ago. The 'portrait' is a face from my imagination sketched out just to use some old black paint left on my watercolour palette. I feel better having splashed my way through these mediocre works, but the constant awareness of just how much practice I need before I produce good work and the knowledge that I just don't have this time is slowly angering me. Never mind - something's gotta give.

"Quick Gouache - St Pauls Cathedral"

"Quick Gouache Sketch"

Trafalgar Square - Warm Up Sketch

In an effort to get out of the slump I am in I decided not to push myself to hard and just do some sketching. I have tons of photographs of iconic London landmarks and today I honed in on a photograph I hadn't taken much notice of previously. I took this a couple of weeks ago at dusk. It was hellishly windy and the light had just turned a weird grey. I hoped to paint some of these in oils, but thought some warm-up sketches to familiarise myself with the scene and its structure would be beneficial. It was a good exercise just to get the objects in position and work on the values and try to get some semblance of the water of the fountain blowing in the wind. I did this in about 35 minutes and although many details have been left out intentionally, I am pleased that I have accurately rendered the values. The details I would like to have put in could only be shown in a bigger format but I loved working with a dry brush again. I do however prefer the tinted version and I'll have to work out why some time.

"Trafalgar Square"
Gouache on Cartridge Paper - 12" x 10"

The tinted version.

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

City Squared 1.

I am hoping to paint some cityscapes shortly but I want to do quite a few sketches of favourite scenes before I start painting. I am finding that sketching the scene before I paint is a very good exercise for me even though it drives me mad as I am so impatient. All I wanted to do here was investigate the values, perspective and composition, and also to see whether the charcoal I have can 'handle' small works. Well it can't really and I couldn't get in the finer details so I stopped trying. I am going to buy a professional brand in a few weeks' time, the kind one sharpens with sandpaper.  That should be fun.  I had hoped to put in more of the details of the cathedral but that just proved impossible.

"St Paul's Cathedral"

 8" x 8.5" (Approx.) Charcoal on Cartridge Paper

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" 

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.

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.

Boston Maybe

After I finished the second phase of my value sketch and felt it was successful enough to post again below, I felt the need to use this positive energy. I used this energy to finish a gouache I was having a few problems with i.e., the other painting I had finished for the Virtual Paintout 'Boston' challenge this month. There are a few things I could do to it but as the paint is on quite heavily, I don't think I'll add anything to it at this late stage. I quite like it for some obscure reason, well not obscure, I like the colours and the 'hot Summer afternoon' feel, but I don't think I'll send this one in. I don't know...I'm going out and I'll decide later.

"Boston in the Summer or Autumn"
Gouache & Pastel on Watercolour Paper - 9" x 9"

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.

Fighting With San Miguel Etc., Etc.

This has been such a weird week. A week where none of my artistic projects had any success and even a planned visit to a major art exhibit tanked. I have five paintings on the go in various stages; three for The Virtual Paintout challenge and two tiny portraits which I am not confident about. All are at the beginning stages, which is where I usually feel like giving up. Nothing seems to happen at this stage, and it takes me a lot of energy to push on. The art exhibit was something I and a colleague were looking forward to - a visit to Tate Modern to see Ai Weiwei's beautiful work in the Turbine Hall. Unfortunately the 100 million pieces of porcelain are giving off dust and that has been deemed a possible health threat so visitors can only view the exhibit from the second floor gallery which, in my opinion, and I think probably that of the artist, takes all the joy and meaning out of the work. Visitors are supposed to walk over these tiny porcelain seeds and muse upon them. What bliss we thought - a superb interlude to a dreary week in the office!! On hearing the news, I threw a mini strop and lost interest, so I came home tonight hoping to move on with my latest Virtual Paintout fiesta. Not.

I decided to do a quick, small oil sketch of a scene I had rejected as I thought playing with the colours would be a good practice run for the three scenes I have chosen. Not. It reminded me of a painting I had done earlier this year of the lane near my home which I keep forgetting to delete from this blog, but keep just to remind myself that I at least tried. Another obstacle was that I was painting on gessoed card and it was so slippery like the Nocturne experience a few days ago. Another obstacle, another lesson.

I am posting this photograph here as a mini diary of sorts, getting stuff out of the system. Maybe at the end of the year I can go back and delete all the junk posts from this blog, but tonight, hey, it's a-staying here.

"Sketch of Street in San Miguel de Allende"
11" x 11" - Oil on Gessoed Card

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.

Art Shop - Re-posted. (Clickable Pics).

In trying to make something of this painting I realised that for the first two months of this year, I have been painting 'against myself'. I haven't been 'in the flow' so to speak, and even though that is true from time to time for everyone alive trying to navigate this mundane plane, I really find that when it comes to painting, my expectations for success are probably too high. To be fair to myself, I am only painting on weekends at the moment, and I cannot get anywhere except in fits and starts.

I took the photograph of this local art shop at night just after the rain and liked it so much that I decided to turn it into a painting. Not wise. Capturing that strange yellow light on the pavement and the effects of the flourescent starbursts against the dark was very difficult. I've left it in this 'sketchy' style as I have decided not to take it any further. I have learned all I can from it. I also couldn't get the canvas as taut as I would have liked and I am fed up with canvas as a ground. I like panels, so I am not going to test canvas any more. I think I am also going to give up painting such large areas of darkness as this has proved to be almost impossible to photograph because of the glare.

"Art Shop"
Oil on Canvas - 14" x 16"

The Inspiration.

Challenge 3. - Madison Avenue, New York City

After not having submitted a painting to the previous 'Diana' challenge on Different Strokes for Different Folks, I was ultra-determined to get this one in by the deadline. I am learning constantly through these challenges as it has been years and years since I have painted seriously and this one gave me a couple of surprises to say the least. I should not have laid down the first colour in acrylics (just to speed things up a little) as it spoiled the surface for the oils. In addition, the surface of the gesso was too rough in the first place, so I couldn't render the fine lines I wanted to, and, most frustratingly of all, the format was far too small for the effects I intended to create. However, this is my first cityscape and even though I didn't have much fun with the skyscrapers, I loved the adventure I had with the cars. What's next?

Madison Avenue -New York

Oil & Acrylic on Gesso Board - 9.25" x 12.5"

Whacky Close-up