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.

A Salute to Ai Weiwei

I have been promising myself for months to go and visit the Ai Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" exhibition at Tate Modern, and even though I work close to the gallery, I found it difficult to get there and back in a lunch time. So after work tonight I went determined to experience this very unusual work for myself. Let me say from the start I found it very beautiful. We are no longer allowed to walk on it because of the dust it generates, but even with that restriction it was very special to look at. Sadder still is the story of Ai Weiwei who was put under house arrest by the Chinese government shortly after the commencement of this exhbition and now I hear that his studio was destroyed on 11 January 2011. His bravery amazes me. His Wikipedia article can be found here if you are interested. How I would love to have been able to roll around in that sea of porcelain seeds, just for the sheer hell of it!

On the way to Tate Modern. The Tate is the large building

on the left with the 'light-box' on its roof.

The dome of the majestic St Paul's Cathedral in the distance.

View from the high balcony looking down at Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds.

Walking under the high balcony towards the exhibition.

My favourite taken with a timed shot. The height of the seeds is about six inches.

A slightly out of focus close-up

View from the far end showing the height of the Turbine Hall.

Video recording room where visitors can video record their

responses to the exhibition which are then relayed to Ai Weiwei.

Near the exit. The view down the ramp towards the exhibition.

If you walk under the balcony you reach the exhibition.

This is such a dramatic vista even though it's dark.

Twitter Art Exhibition, Moss, Norway

These photographs below appeared on a Flickr Stream yesterday showing how the Twitter Art Exhibition was mounted. This was set up by the artist, David Sandum, to raise funds for a children's library in Moss, Norway. David Sandum asked for 140 artists, all of whom had Twitter pages, to send in their works, postcard size, to be sold for a small amount in the region of $20 and over 250 artists sent in work, myself included. (The "140" represents the amount of characters that are allowed in each "tweet" on a Twitter Page). It was super to see my Asparagus Painting up on the wall at last. It is absolutely super to see this huge effort of David's come to life. Wishing you a great success David! Now, I'm off for a day of painting, after all, it's "Le Weekend"!

Update - 10 January 2011 - My painting "Asparagus for Norway" has been SOLD.

My "Asparagus for Norway" postcard at top left.

Another wall of the Exhibition.

If any of you are interested, the full Flickr folder on the opening night is given below:

Flickr Album of Opening Night of Twitter Art Exhibition in Moss, Norway.

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.

Twitter Exhibition in Moss, Norway - SOLD

A few weeks ago, one of my Twitter artist friends, David Sandum, decided to stage an exhibition in Moss, Norway, to raise money for a children's library. Via Twitter he invited everyone with a Twitter account to send in a postcard sized painting on paper to be sold off to raise funds for this library. I thought this was a super idea and sent in the painting below. I based it on the photograph I used for one of my favourite asparagus paintings in July earlier this year. (Holy mackerel...was it that long ago?!) I had started out with a painting of a tube of oil paint standing on its 'head' but that didn't work out with gouache for some reason or another, hence the asparagus' emerging again. It is more simplified than the oil painting, but it was fun to paint and include the colours of the beautiful Norwegian flag. I haven't been painting for ages due to time constraints, but now that I have absolutely no deadlines to meet, or paintings to send into a challenge, I am going to paint and draw completely for myself. I look forward to seeing what crops up in my work as I also feel a new creative energy rising. I'll let everyone know if this painting sells. They are going for about $20 so there's hope that someone might want this. I hope so anyway.

"Asparagus for Norway"
Watercolour and Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 6.5" x 5.5" (Approx)

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

Value Sketches for Portrait

I have been busy today. After posting the sketch for the Nocturne painting earlier I was determined to move some creative energy. I have two small canvases with a turquoise ground which I want to use for small portraits. I found two beautiful photographs in a glossy monograph on portraits and my works will be based on these. The format of the canvas is tiny - 5" x 5" - and, in prepration, I decided to do some value sketches in exactly the same size. It's been a day of values hasn't it? Many lessons in this session. Firstly, the tiny size cramped any possible rendering of the subtle gradations in the half-tones, and secondly, it was going to be more complicated than I first thought. I thought I would post these sketches here so I can get used to them. I also processed the sketch with a blue tint just to see how the values translate against colour. The light I was drawing in wasn't so good, nor was the photography, but I don't have the correct lighting or camera for drawings. I hope to start on the painting tomorrow.

Preliminary Portrait Sketch
5" x 5" - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

Preliminary Portrait Sketch - Blue Tint
5" x 5" - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

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.

Quick Sketch.

I really needed to scribble this morning. I was hoping to get much more done in the way of sketching but in the middle of all of this, I felt I could only relax if I got through some domestic stuff and left this until I was more relaxed and focused. I have hopes of doing a self portrait for a blog challenge this month, and as I haven't painted or sketched faces for ages, I thought a warm up was essential. This is an understatement. I need major practice runs before I can pull of a reasonable portrait let alone a self portrait. I am putting this up because it makes me feel better. I'm very good at kidding myself this is work. This was done from a photograph.

Pencil on Cartridge Paper

8" x 8" (Approx)