Another 2 Hours!

As promised, the results of trying to put together a couple of small (for me) paintings for our limited space exhibition later this month. Lots of things on and so not a lot of time, so another 2 promised 2 hour sessions to see what I could put together. Here are the results. Now I feel justified in making up my allotted number with a couple of large paintings to advertise my August exhibition.

                                        'Anemone Japonica' Watercolour on Fabriano Extra White
                                                                        22cm x 32cm

                                     'Cherries and Grapes'. Watercolour on Fabriano Extra White
                                                                18cm x 27cm

I keep telling myself that I now have enough paintings for all the projects I have in hand and I can take a rest and do a bit of cleaning or something, but there is that compulsion to always do 'just one more' so I will not say 'that's it folks' because I am sure it will not be!

2 hours on a Saturday Afternoon

I have enough paintings stacked in the attic for the exhibition in Wells Cathedral in August, but we have a club exhibition approaching, which will be held in our painting venue. There will not be a lot of space, and my paintings are generally in frames 20" x 16" or 26" x 20" so they are relatively large. Also I do not really want to eat into my stock for Wells.
I have been working for the past 3 weeks and have done no paintings, so the need to deal with the withdrawal symptoms and the need to find 4 or 5 smaller paintings for this local exhibition, made me make time on Saturday afternoon to try to produce something which would fit a 12" x 16" frame max.Not something I am very good at!
A garden full of early roses seemed a good starting point, and I set to, without any pressure, and the usual ....its only a piece of paper....... if it doesn't work.

What a nice surprise, when 2 hours later, I was able to think 'That will do!'

Now all I need to do is produce a couple more and the problem will be solved. I will show you the others if they turn out well enough, but here is the first.

                                            'Alexandra Rose'  approx 12" x 9"  watercolour on
                                             Fabriano xtra White

Developing A Style

At Art Club this week we were asked to produce a painting of white china on a black ground, any style, any medium. At the end of the session, all the paintings were put up for our usual group chat and appreciation session. We have found that we can all learn lots by looking at each others work, asking questions about technique and composition, and because it is a really positive exercise, even the weakest members are happy to take part.

As one of the organisers of the group, it has often fallen to me to lead this session and sometimes suggest discussion points. When I have done this, I have nearly always been able to put a name to a painting for at least two thirds of the group. The beginner's work is sometimes a bit more tricky as they have not yet developed a distinct approach to their art.

I hesitate to use the word style as I am not sure that even the more established painters amongst us always paint in the same way.

This was highlighted today as the confines of the white china and black ground seemed to do away with all the usually recognisable paintings, and I would not have known whose painting belonged to whom, except that I finished a little early and had a wander around all of the group.

So, what I am asking is this......At the level at which a club like ours paints, are we really developing a style of our own or are we simply working in a way which reflects the work of artists we admire. Had they never put paint brush to paper, how might we have developed? Are we capable of painting in a really individual way which would be easily recognised as 'ours'.

I am sure that for all the years I have been painting, there are lots of different ways in which I produce paintings depending on the subject, the medium and my mood. I say thank goodness for that. it keeps me fresh, encourages me to try new things and stops me trying so hard to paint in a certain style that I lose my way completely.



I have put together half a dozen paintings of the same basic subject. Are they recognisable as mine?  Am I developing a style of my own, or am I just striving to produce work based on those artists I admire.

I actually do not care. I do not think anything except my health would stop me painting, even if I never sold another painting!

Developing A Style

At Art Club this week we were asked to produce a painting of white china on a black ground, any style, any medium. At the end of the session, all the paintings were put up for our usual group chat and appreciation session. We have found that we can all learn lots by looking at each others work, asking questions about technique and composition, and because it is a really positive exercise, even the weakest members are happy to take part.

As one of the organisers of the group, it has often fallen to me to lead this session and sometimes suggest discussion points. When I have done this, I have nearly always been able to put a name to a painting for at least two thirds of the group. The beginner's work is sometimes a bit more tricky as they have not yet developed a distinct approach to their art.

I hesitate to use the word style as I am not sure that even the more established painters amongst us always paint in the same way.

This was highlighted today as the confines of the white china and black ground seemed to do away with all the usually recognisable paintings, and I would not have known whose painting belonged to whom, except that I finished a little early and had a wander around all of the group.

So, what I am asking is this......At the level at which a club like ours paints, are we really developing a style of our own or are we simply working in a way which reflects the work of artists we admire. Had they never put paint brush to paper, how might we have developed? Are we capable of painting in a really individual way which would be easily recognised as 'ours'.

I am sure that for all the years I have been painting, there are lots of different ways in which I produce paintings depending on the subject, the medium and my mood. I say thank goodness for that. it keeps me fresh, encourages me to try new things and stops me trying so hard to paint in a certain style that I lose my way completely.



I have put together half a dozen paintings of the same basic subject. Are they recognisable as mine?  Am I developing a style of my own, or am I just striving to produce work based on those artists I admire.

I actually do not care. I do not think anything except my health would stop me painting, even if I never sold another painting!

Developing a style

At Art group this week we were asked to produce a painting.....'White China On Black.' Any size, any medium. Not something that proved to be easy, especially as the ground for most of the members work was not really meant for wet media, and lots of us tried to use acrylic inks!  As usual, at the end of the session we put the paintings up against the wall, and had a look at what we had produced. Members enjoy seeing what others have produced, and we all believe we learn from looking at each others work. There is such a supportive atmosphere, that even the weaker members of the group are happy to take part.
At these sessions, as one of the organisers of the group, I often start the ball rolling and have become so accustomed to looking at members paintings, that I can recognise 75% of them from their style of painting. The weaker members are a bit more tricky as they have not really developed a style of their own yet.
This week, however, it was much more difficult and the only reason I knew one painting from another was that I had finished a little early and taken a stroll around the room.
I do not know if it was the very limited subject or the unusual process of painting directly onto a black background, but there seemed to be no recognisable styles present. Everyone seemed outside of their comfort zone to some degree or other.

This got me thinking of the much used phrase of.......'developing a style of ones own'. Do we really do that or do we in fact, mostly try to emulate the work of well known artists that we admire, and so are generally just working towards their style? Maybe only the exceptionally talented can actually be so innovative that the resultant style can truly be called their own.
True, there are artists whose work I really admire, and a style of painting that I would like to see in  my work, but that does not mean a style of my own. What I am trying to do is produce paintings that contain to a small degree, something of their individual style.

All this is very theoretical, and really doesn't matter that much except as an interesting concept, and whoever or whatever I tend towards, and whether I have any sort of 'style', whilst health and enthusiasm continues I will continue to paint in my way!
As an exercise I have collected together a few of my paintings of the same basic subject to see if one would suggest that they all were done by the same artist. See what you think.

                                                                             Poppies Galore

Self Belief!

I have a beautiful display of reticulated iris beginning to burst forth in the garden, so I have been keeping my eye on them ready to do a painting. I am generally ok with specimen flower painting, but wanted to have a go at something a bit more complex, with lots of blooms growing together, in the style of the foxgloves, agapanthus, tulips etc that I have posted previously.
In order to get my head around it, I was perusing a couple of inspirational books of what the editors chose as some of the worlds best flower painters (The Best of Flower Paintings Vols 1 and 2, edited by Kathryn Kipp and Rachel Wolf respectively, published by Cassell- Northern Light Books) .Partly reading the info and partly looking at the paintings in a fairly random fashion, I was appalled to read that one artist, Airi Foote, had been curtly informed by a tutor that she had no talent! So discouraged by this remark, she gave up painting, and turned instead to gardening. She eventually decided that talent or no talent, she was going to try again and to hell with what anyone thought. She ends up in a book about  the worlds best flower painters. Although her painting is not really spectacular for me, it did make me think about how much these experts, so say, really know, how subjective enjoyment of visual images is, and how careful we have to be when talking about other peoples work.My Art Teacher at school was much more kindly and informed my parents at an annual assessment meeting, that I had trouble knowing which end of the paintbrush to use! Thank goodness that did not put me off.
 What I did like about the painting, and what caught my eye in the first place, was the combination of colours used in the leaves and background. Not colours I regularly use, so I thought, give them a go.

                                            White Roses by Airi Foote  11'' x 14''

She talks about using a combination of such colours as Permanent Rose, Winsor Violet and under painting with Aureolin Yellow to give it a glow.
I dug through my mountain of photos from my garden, and found something in a similar style to her source material and using my favourite Fabriano Extra White did the basic drawing.

This is one of my favourite roses that regularly do well in my clay soil, so I have used them quite frequently for paintings and have been pleased with the outcomes. I tried to paint with a mixture of her suggested colours and some of my favourite ones including quinacridone violet, quinacridone rust and transparent orange iron oxide, all of which are from the M Graham and Co range. These paints have a lovely texture, moist and easy to put into empty pans, where they do not dry out to any degree, and they have a lovely glow to them. They can be quite staining, so cannot easily be lifted if used in the concentrated form, but I love them.
I did try to keep away from too much traditional green in the leaves and I tried to keep my background lighter than I might normally paint around white flowers and the result is ok.

In hindsight, I would have changed the composition slightly and had a couple of the flowers overlapping to make the painting hang together better, but nothing I can do about that now,what is done is done!

                                           'White Roses' Watercolour on Fabriano Extra White
                                           paper. 9'' x 13''

I hope that the use of Airi's work from this book comes under the heading of 'Review' and conforms to the 'brief passages' that any reviewer is allowed to use.

Which comes first?

'Rhododendrons'

  Watercolour on Fabriano Extra White 300gms  48x33cms



One of the questions I get asked most about my work is which do I do first; the subject or the background. I have to say, in all honesty, that there is no hard and fast rule and I can paint a piece of work either way.

When I was starting this painting, I did give it some thought and realised that it was not as random as I might think, and there are factors which influence the way I proceed.

My backgrounds are deliberately very loose and produced with a great deal of water and wet-in-wet painting. I do it this way to help counteract the formality of the subject which can be painted quite tightly ( not something I necessarily want to achieve, but that's just the way they come out). They are therefore quite spontaneous, and do not take too long to add to the work, but they can be quite hit and miss. So, the rule of thumb tends to be the more complex the flowers, the more likely I am to do the background first. I do not want to spend hours painting the flowers and then to mess up the background. Simple flowers are painted first and the background added afterwards to give them some contrast.  White flowers often have their backgrounds painted first as this helps to define their shapes within the picture.
Having said all that, these complex rhododendrons, almost white should have had the background done first, but contrary to all I have just said, I did in fact paint the flowers first. I cannot give a reason for this, it is just the way it progressed.
I am really glad I did it this way. I did a detailed drawing taken form a couple of snaps of the flowers in my garden, making sure that the sun was in the right direction in both photos.

I painted the two main blooms, and realised that the composition was unbalanced, so to rectify this, I added, from another snap I had, a large bud to the right hand top corner. (The leaf coming from this bud towards the right could have been a little better placed as it tends to skim the top of the upper right trumpet.)

My reason for pointing this out is that had I painted the background first, I would not have been able to make these adjustments and the painting would have been that much weaker.

Another point in favour of painting the background last, is that I do like to include some of the flower colours in the background to link the two elements together, but it also helps to give the impression of other blooms behind the main elements.

So there we have it. 'Rhododendrons' ....flowers first, background last.