Pigment’s better than pixels or print.

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art, artist, arts, brush strokes, canvas, Christian artist, east sussex, excited, linen, Michelle, oil painting, oil paintings, paint, painter, painting, pink bag, portrait, shiny

Recently I was reading a post by the very talented Elena Caravela (http://elenacaravela.wordpress.com/) and she mentioned what a pain it had been to photograph an oil painting she had been working on, if at this point you are hoping for a step-by-step guide on “how to photograph oil paintings”, well I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint, sorry. That’s an area of expertise that I haven’t mastered either. Anyway it got me thinking about why this is.

You see oil paintings seem to possess a magical ability to only truly come alive when they’re actually seen in the flesh (paint). I can’t explain why, it’s not that the 3D qualities of the paint can only be seen with the naked eye – although the secret to the mystery probably is found in the eye – it’s something else, something wonderful that happens when you’re in it’s presence.

I expect what it is, is that the human eye is such a miraculous piece of design engineering, that in conjunction with the brain, it is able to scan every angle, absorb every subtle difference in hue, chroma and saturation, zoom in and out rapidly and at will from multiple angles, it can blur areas while focusing on others and almost literally visually feel the painting. Cameras by contrast are a very, very poor substitute*.

And yet with science aside, there is something else about actually standing in front of a picture that is incredibly rewarding to the viewer. As an artist I find this both wonderful and a complete pain! It’s wonderful for the viewer, a complete pain for the artist trying to promote his or her work via the internet or in print.

Personally, I often photograph my work on my phone as I’m working on it, but this is a very dangerous thing to do. Dangerous because if I don’t keep reminding myself that the work is better in the flesh, seeing the work as a photo’ can make me feel that it is complete rubbish and trigger thoughts along the lines of, “really, I don’t know why I bother”!

But – yes I know I’ve just started a paragraph with both an “and” and a “but”, but I don’t care, my thinking like my grammar is poorly punctuated – when you stand in front of a painting it takes on a life of it’s own. It’s as if it notices it’s being looked at and suddenly does its best to put on a show for the viewer. A painting is an experience, not an image to be collected on a computer etc. You can’t tell anything about the scale of a painting on a screen, or the texture, or smell, or presence as it absorbs and reflects light, that’s why owning a picture is so much better than just seeing it in a book.

That said, I can’t own some of my favourites, not unless I put on a stripy jersey and a mask and manage to work out how to foil the security of the world’s finest galleries. So I – like most of us – have to be content to admire them in a book.

So, after a few hundred words extolling the virtues of seeing pictures in the flesh and explaining how much better they are in the flesh, here’s Michelle (Mrs. Me). She’d just bought a shiny new bag and was very excited in a very girlie way about the shiny pinkness of the bag in question. I’ll try my best to look at it on the canvas and not on the screen…

Oil on linen.

*Interestingly, did you know that visible light represents approximately only about 1 inch on an electromagnetic scale that would stretch over 2,000 miles! When you look at it that way, it makes you wonder about just how much we can’t see! Imagine if your eyes could see all the other electromagnetic waves and how they interact with our surroundings. Wow!

Forget-me-nots

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forget me nots, iphone, iPhoneography, myosotis

Photographed yesterday on an iPhone3Gs, filtered with Snapseed and Pic Grunger

Struggling with work and a brief interlude.

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art, artist, brush strokes, canvas, caravan, iPhoneography, London Bridge, Nick Archer, oil painting, paint, painter, photography, picture, Thames, The Monument, The Shard, Threadneedle Street

Haven’t posted for a while, as I’m still struggling with a portrait that I’m working on, so I thought I’d quickly post a couple of phone shots taken on a gallery trip to London the other day.

My friend Nick Archer is having a show at 60 Threadneedle Street in London at the moment, so we got invited up for the preview showing. Anyway, not only was it a great opportunity to spend time with Michelle and see Nick’s work, it was also lovely to see a part of London that we wouldn’t ordinarily visit. I mean, unless you work in the financial sector of the city, London Bridge and Threadneedle Street are a bit off the beaten track. In fact it’s a track only usually beaten by hand made shoes and the odd lost tourist.

But the City has a lot to offer. Poking out between the roofs of the financial sector is gilt top of Monument, a Roman Doric column to commemorate the Great Fire in 1666 and next to The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (The Bank of England) is the impressive building of The Royal Exchange founded by Elizabeth the first and even equipped with a statue of the Duke of Wellington to boot (sorry, bad pun).

On arrival, we came out of London Bridge station with Michelle saying “Where’s The Shard? You’d think it’d be hard to miss”. It was looming behind us like an enormous monolith of glass and steel, but that’s the problem with big cities, the buildings are so large that it’s easy to miss even something as big as The Shard.

Anyway, here are the couple of tourist snaps I shot from the bridge and some of Nick’s work:

View from London Bridge.

The last one is my favourite, but at 152cm square and £16,000 I might have to make the sacrifice and let someone else buy it.

If you want to see more of his work, he’s at: http://nicholasarcher.com/NicholasArcher.html

Zoe and Rags.

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art, artist, brush strokes, canvas, Christian artist, dog, linen, oil painting, paint, painter, painting, picture, portrait, portraiture, special girl, special moment, surprise birthday, veil of secrecy

It’s always a little limiting when you get a commission to paint a captured moment from a supplied photograph, but this was a special moment and a special girl. So I thought I’d share this one now that it’s veil of secrecy has been lifted.

‘Zoe and Rags’ was for a surprise birthday present and all had to be kept under wraps until it was handed over. I couldn’t even ring or text the client! However, somehow it all went smoothly and I now have permission to show the painting.

So here she is, Zoe and her dog Rags:

This is the only snap I have and it was taken on a phone, so apologies for the quality. The dog is suffering from reflected light a little, he’s darker in real life.

Spring has arrived with a vengeance

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brimstone butterfly, Buzzard, Celendine, Cuckoo, east sussex, invasive weed, iPhoneography, landscape, nature, outdoors, Pheasant, photography, picture, Primrose, Spring, sussex countryside, Wood Anemone, wood anemones

Art has had to be temporarily suspended in my life recently. You see I’ve spent the last couple of weeks building a cupboard in my studio area and even thinking about art has been difficult. I don’t know about you, but I find it almost impossible to get my mind focused on two tasks at once. If I’m in building mode, I can’t paint. If I’m in painting mode, then the prospect of having to switch to building mode makes me groan inwardly.

Building mode me has now virtually completed the cupboards and even managed a mantelpiece/fire-surround too. It’s been a sort of build a cupboard and get a free fireplace deal. Well I figured in for a penny, in for a pound and this way I don’t have to switch to builder mode again any time soon in order to build the mantelpiece, because it’s built!

However, now I have to get my mind focused on being creative again. Honestly it feels like the mental equivalent of turning a huge ship before it hits the rocks, or pulling up an old aircraft from a steep dive. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but getting back in the proverbial “zone” seems… tricky.

Today though was a sunny day and I was working outdoors in the countryside and few places in the world are more beautiful than the Sussex countryside in Springtime. Buzzards were circling the fields looking for mice and voles, male pheasants were arguing over who gets the girl and a cuckoo was calling in the distance while a yellow Brimstone butterfly floated lazily past me. So as the Primroses were out too, I snapped a couple of shots on my phone.

Wood Anemones and Celendine

Primroses

Celendine. Hard to dislike this one even though it’s a really invasive weed. On a sunny day like today I could forgive its megalomaniac tendencies.

The only blot on today’s idyllic events is the major sunburn I’m now nursing on the back of my neck! Too much of a good thing obviously.

Wild and woody.

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art, Classic vibe, close up, D3100, DSLR, east sussex, electric guitar, f hole, Fender, fender squire, guitar, mahogany, Nikon, photography, picture, Squire, telecaster, thinline

My youngest son has just bought his first new electric guitar and it’s a doozy, a Fender Squire classic vibe telecaster thinline… to be precise. Anyway it is a thing of beauty and seems to love having its photo’ taken.

A crisis of confidence.

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art, artist, arts, brush strokes, bubble gum, canvas, Christian artist, east sussex, Edgar Degas, girl, Mademoiselle Hélène Rouart, oil paint, oil painting, paint, painter, picture, pink, portrait

I know you shouldn’t compare yourself to someone else, down that road lies disappointment and inferiority, but, if you’re asking yourself if you’re any good, then comparison is inevitable. Happily in my case that comparison is evoking more of a challenge to exceed my current abilities, but comparison could just as easily lead to what used to be called melancholia… the blues.

“A boy who practices painting too much may be overcome by melancholy. He should learn to play string instruments and thus be distracted to cheer his blood” – Albrecht Dürer

I mean, look at young Edgar Degas. If you look at some of the detail in his paintings – detail that I’d sweat buckets over – it’s terrible! Hands that on close inspection are nothing but a few raw, loose brush strokes that at a distance look depressingly sublime. That sort of skill could easily lead you to what Dürer calls melancholia indeed.

Just look at this: (Mademoiselle Hélène Rouart)

I couldn’t sleep at night if I left a hand looking like that, but Degas could. He could see the image as a whole without sweating the tiny details. In fact if he had sweated the tiny details his images would have lost much of their vibrancy. That said, he did get looser in technique as he matured and was much tighter stylistically in his youth. Old age obviously agreed with him.

One of the problems I have is that I’m somewhat isolated from my peers, not part of an artistic community. My family see my work, but they see it at every stage of development, so by the time I’ve finished a piece they’ve seen it for days/weeks and I’m lucky if I get a “uh huh, nice”. I often feel similarly.

My wife Michelle has suggested I cover it up, so that when it’s finished I can unveil the painting with a “ta dah!” Accompanied no doubt by rapturous applause, the popping of champagne corks and gasps of wonder from my assembled family, perhaps even a shed tear and an exclamation of “my goodness, such beauty!”.

However this isn’t the present reality and I have to wrestle with my doubts myself. What seems a little disturbing, is that the more I paint the greater the self doubt and it would seem I’m not alone. Many of my art heroes seem to have suffered the same affliction and it makes me wonder if there is a link to creativity and depression. I mean, if I’m gonna end up like poor Vincent I might need a less strenuous career like professional cage fighter or primary school teacher, and people say art is relaxing.

For now I’m taking all this as a challenge, a provocation to step things up a gear, to continue to go where no me has ever gone before. After all, with each project I undertake I learn something new. The current project is no exception, it’s taught me a lot and considering I’ve probably only done less than perhaps ten oil paintings in total ever, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Unless Degas’ first ten paintings were masterpieces of course…

If Robert Hughes (Australian born art critic) was correct then we’ve all got reason to hope. For he said:

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

Anyway, here she is – Lily. This one is painted mostly from reference photographs, but I’m thinking that to get more depth I’m going to perhaps start working from live models.

Photo’s from the shed.

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50mm, art, chisel, Christian artist, curls, DSLR, east sussex, English, home, Nikon, outdoors, photography, picture, shed, watering can, winter, wood

Winter seems to have come back for a visit today. It’s cold and damp and unwelcome, but it did give me a reason to hide in the shed from the cold and take a few shots. I’m still trying to understand the new camera, it has a lot more functions than my phone! But we’re slowly becoming friends and I think it may have even forgiven me for dropping it by now.

My eldest son Joe has been building a folding guitar for a school exam project and whilst helping him the other day I thought the shed might make a good place to play with the Nikon. Anyway here are a few shots of that quintessentially English of buildings, the garden shed.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Pussy Willow (Salix caprea)

Tags

iPhoneography, Salix caprea, Willow, winter

DSLR meets performing iPhone.

Tags

blue, DSLR, iphone, light, light painting, long exposure., Nikon, painting

Thought I’d quickly share this one as… well, I thought it was pretty cool.

Basically I added one of those duff iPhone apps that does nothing but illuminate your screen with a selections of colours in the pretense of it being a “torch”. It’s not very torchy, but it does work pretty well to paint light with.

All I did was rest the DSLR on a solid surface, set it for a longish exposure, suppressed the flash and got my son to wave my iPhone (3Gs)  around in front on the camera with the screen set (in this case) to pale blue.

Anyway, we had fun: