Thank you Rowena!

The Gift
My beloved mother-in-law, Rowena, gave me an exquisite little moleskin notebook for Christmas last year. It's A5 200gsm, CP, 25% cotton rag. It fits in my bag, my pocket and I can even hold it securely in just one hand. I love it, and her, dearly.

I've been a coward about using it up till now because the paper is just so divine and I couldn't bare to waste it on bad drawings (and pencil sketches get smudged so quickly in my bag). I finally got myself a good, pigment ink calligraphy pen and now I just cannot resist the feeling of the chiselled nib on rough, sized paper and the sight of pure black ink crisply sullying the rich white surface. It feels... decadent :D

The Other Gift
13 years ago I met Rowena's eldest son, I married him 5 years later. I have been trying to draw my husband's face since our first kiss. I've never succeeded.

There is something exceptionally hard about drawing people who are close to you. I struggle to bring my mother's face into my mind with any accuracy. I think we place excessive emphasis on certain features when we know someone well and we don't "see" the spaces and shapes between those features anymore. We can't objectively judge the shapes and values that make up the face.

The New Gift
Finally though, FINALLY, I have drawn an accurate, if mildly unflattering, portrait of my beloved husband! I am finally a portrait artist in my own eyes :D

I caught Clive while he was working on his laptop and therefore oblivious to me and my workmanish stare. He seems happy with it too, although he did ask me "Do I really look that angry?" He really does, at least when he's coding. It usually means he's happy. ;-)

On Display

Newly mounted and packaged, en route to the Knysna Gallery

Paulo's perfect framing :D

As I move back into the world of art galleries and exhibitions I'm being forced to comply with some conventions: signing my work, compiling strong portfolios and framing. Galleries just won't take a new artist unless the pieces are "right" for that gallery and decently framed; so I'm slowly working through all my finished pieces and getting them "gallery ready".

Garish vs. Eye-catching

As you may have noticed by now, my work often tends to be a bit in-your-face. I like to think of my style as "bold" or "daring" but it can be garish and overwhelming if  let myself get carried away. 

This has lead to problems when it comes to framing and displaying my paintings: I had one particularly strong painting of an Islamic burqua in a Cape Town gallery a few years ago and the gallery owner ended up hiding in the back room because it just took over every wall she put it on. She loved the painting, everyone did, but it was just impossible to display alongside other artworks. If I can find a photo of the painting, I'll blog about  it properly (and soon).

I'm working on refining my technique somewhat to make better use of focal points within each piece, rather than trying to make the enire piece into a focal point. I've had to seriously review some of my old pieces and consign a few to the "archive" shelf. Those that are still interesting to me may need a bit of touching up, even heavy reworking.

Not that I dismiss my older pieces or cringe from bold painting, par contre, I've just realised that not every piece needs to be utterly overwhelming and sometimes the strength of the work can lie in its subtlety.

All Professional & Stuff!
Since moving to Sedgefield, just about every artist I've spoken to has told me to take my work to a framer named Paolo. Given the overwhelming pressure from all quarters, I finally took 5 of my best watercolours to him.

What a difference! The pieces were quite good to start with but seeing them all perfectly mounted, sitting there so prettily in the Knysna Gallery, made me feel like a real artist for the first time in years!

I've just taken a whole lot more work to Paolo to mount and frame. The painting of the fishing boat above was one of the first oils I got back from him. In'nit pretty? ;)

Winter of discontent

Male Torso Study - Chalk pastel on paper

This is one of the few recent pieces that I managed to get onto my computer  before everything went pear-shaped. It's a work in progress and I'm not very happy with the light and shadow on the neck and face so I'll fiddle with it a bit and see what happens.

It has been a VERY long time since my last post and I apologise.

My excuses are as follows:

1. Moving house hurts :(
2. Stupid local internet providers (Klear Internet Solutions) are arrogant, incompetent jerks! Uploading images is near impossible and even logging in to my blogger account is slow and painful. *grrr*
3. My phone no longer talks to my PC. This means that all the luverly photographs on my phone have to stay there until I can get a memory card.
4. My camera went missing, then the batteries went missing. I've finally located both, at the same time! :D
5. My HP scanner/printer died a miserable death.
6. Firefox hates me so I've finally (much to Clive's delight) moved to Chrome.
7. I'm very lazy.

All that aside, I've been working like crazy on my new studio, portraiture and watercolours. I am pleased to announce that I have produced several portraits that bear no resemblance to Picasso's later work (although they bear little resemblance to the people I was trying to paint either). 

I will upload and post as much as I can in the next while to make up for my unintentional sabbatical.

Boats, Wood, Canvas, etc...

My lovely cousin asked me a very interesting question on Facebook and I thought I'd post my answer here. The prices and shop names I mention may not be valid internationally but the general technical info remains the same no matter where you're from. I've even included my latest oil sketch (incomplete) to back up my claims on the validity of Masonite as an alternative to canvas - at least for informal pictures and sketches.

(Most of this info holds true for all mediums but some applies only to oil paint)

Question:

I want to paint again. Do you know where I can get good but cheap canvases in CT [Cape Town]?

Answer:

I've heard rumors of a place in Observatory that sells amazing art supplies for factory prices but I didn't get a chance to check it out before I left so not sure where it is :(

The cheapest option though is actually to go to a hardware store and buy pieces of "Masonite". I just bought a bunch of 40cm x 40cm boards for R8 each. You'll want to put on a few coats of white acrylic (student or craft quality will do) before you start painting as it's dark brown and too absorbent in its default state.

The board has a similar texture to canvas on one side and a very smooth surface on the other so you can choose what you like. Sand the smooth side a bit before you prime or the paint will just come off again.... See more

I've seen Masonite boards used by artists in quite a few galleries and they should hold up well for about 50 years if you prime them properly.

Cheap canvas these days is REALLY cheap (as in 'nasty') but you can get all the smaller sizes from CNA. You'll have to re-prime them with acrylic if you're using oils as the primer that's used on them is way too porous and icky. Most of them are made in China and I don't think the 5-year-old kids who work in the factories there know much about pigment vehicles and sizing....

Anyway, you're looking at between R30 and R70 for CNA canvas boards, slightly more for stretched and mounted canvas.

I have no idea what canvas costs in the rest of the world but I'd welcome info or comments.

In My Experience...

I've tried stretching my own canvases and had some success and some miserable failures so here's a word of warning: NEVER try to paint anything decent on calico, nylon or acrylic fibers or un-primed anything!

Calico and other fine cottons are way too soft, weak and many have actual holes between the threads so your primer goes through to the other side and builds up unevenly in little beaded blobs. Also, it cracks and warps and even tears if you so much as look at it wrong.

Non-natural, or non-plant-based fibers are hopelessly unpredictable. Some will stretch when damp while others will shrink. The thread configuration of some fabrics, such as denim or satin can pull the fabric along the diagonal over time if conditions are not absolutely optimal. Unless you're a fabric painter, never, ever, ever even look at anything that's designed to stretch!

Lastly: Anything un-primed is a waste of your precious paint. Oil paints and solvents can severely damage most fabrics, making them brittle or even rotten over time. If you're painting on wood, paper or board, your oil will sink through the surface, leaving you with dull, flaky, chalky pigment that loses integrity and color in no time. In short, your painting will fall apart.

The other danger with un-primed surfaces is that any chemical, resin, solvent or stain that is present in the surface will end up coming through your paint and damaging the image. This is especially true of knots in wood as they usually contain large amounts of resin which is released as soon as oil or turps gets near it.

Priming 

Priming is traditionally done by soaking the canvas, or surface with rabbit-skin glue (eeeew) and then painting several thin layers of gesso over that, sanding lightly in between. New technology allows us to use acrylics which, as long as they have a reasonable quality vehicle (the binder or glue that holds the paint together), should last at least as long as the best prepared traditional surface.

Of course, the best practice would be to prime both sides of any canvas, linen or board to ensure even waterproofing and structural integrity.

Wow! I do waffle on, don't I?

Lumpiness

Sedgefield is not as flat as Google says it is. It also has a highly trained legion of ninja-mosquitoes; and spiders; and suicidal cyclists.

To be fair, I was warned about the spiders, the rest came as a rather unpleasant surprise – especially the mosquitoes (which I react to very badly). Eventually I succumbed to the human default of killing the little things and I have finally had a few full nights of sleep. I’m still covered in enormous red bumps though.

My studio was overrun with spiders and mosquitoes to the point where all I could do was set up the basic structure. Sitting still for long enough to paint was to invite anaphylaxis or anaemia :(

Fortunately it seems that most carbon based life forms feel a certain aversion to mineral turpentine so as soon as I get some decently noxious fumes going I should be fine ;D

I did manage to join a group of locals for a life-drawing session at the Sedgefield Classic Cars yard in town. (“Town” meaning the 1km stretch of the N2 highway that runs through the town and has shops along the side). I arrived late though so, although I met some great people, there’s not much to show for the experience. I was given paper and loaned a good pencil and eraser by a generous member but I failed to return them and now I can’t for the life of me remember who I’m supposed to return the borrowed items to. (Yes, I just ended on a preposition :P)

The landscapes in this area are unutterably beautiful. There are steep hills and lush valleys, picturesque farmland and golden beaches. There are huge brown moths with mirrored spots - like flakes of sliver-leaf  reflecting my face in pieces.

I’ve actually developed a problem with driving here, especially in the hours around dawn and dusk. If I look away from the road and actually see the hills and forests I’m driving through, I get very unfocused and I become a road hazard. It’s reached the point where Clive will tell me “don’t look left” so that I can avoid looking at the scenery and probably interacting with it at high speeds.