I was recently asked if I would like to do the Master Class article for the June issue (out now) of the Artists & Illustrators magazine. This particular issue is a Wildlife Art Special with contributions from a number of prominent and famous wildlife artists, so I am particularly pleased and proud that the editor asked me to do the "main" feature for this section of the magazine. My painting even made it to the front cover, albeit in the small circle under Wildlife Art Special... but tis there all the same.
When I got the email from the editor I was just starting a new elephant painting, a commission, and I had already been taking step by step photo's of the progress with the idea of doing a stage by stage piece on this blog. So it seemed the natural thing was to carry on, but have the magazine in mind also when taking the photo's. The only thing was.. could I finish the painting, sort the 70 plus photo's I took AND write the article in time! I had only a couple of weeks and to my surprise and delight, I managed it.... just!
The magazine version looks at how to paint an animal in a landscape and being a little "typing happy" I found it hard to keep my words down to the maximum they required.
Despite, or because, of the challenge I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and am very pleased with how the magazine has presented the article. So, now that the magazine is out I can now post another version of a step by step of the painting - this time looking at how I created depth in the piece and I shall probably whitter away to my hearts content. So hopefully I will be posting that very soon.
At long last my very good friend, Julie Askew, has now got a blog page. If you've not seen Julie's work before, please follow the link and discover her amazing talent... I highly recommend a look.Apart from being one of my closest friends; it was Julie that introduced me to teaching art on ships, something for which I shall always be grateful to her for. In 2002 and 2003 she took me along as her assistant whilst she worked as art tutor/presenter on two 3 week and two 5 week 'sections' of the world cruises with P&O. As a result of those trips (and the two I did as a tutor myself in 2008 and 2009), I have seen much more of this planet than I ever dreamed I would get to see. Such fantastic experiences and memories that I shall treasure always.
It's been a while since my last post and so I thought as it's the first day of the new year and indeed, the new decade, I thought I ought to get typing. To all my regular visitors, those that pop in occasionally and the 'one-timers', thank you for stopping by over the past year. I must strive to try and post more over the coming months, a new year's resolution perhaps; I got a little lax towards the end of 2009. I have no cruise trip, working or otherwise, to look forward to this year but with fingers crossed and wind in the right direction along with a little organisation from me, I have at least one exciting project I'd really like to get off the ground on. So I will keep you posted on whether or not that is likely to happen and then if it does, the progress of it all.Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, if you celebrate it, and that your New Year celebrations haven't resulted in too much need for recovery or have dampened your spirits too much today. Here's to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010 for us all.Many thanksSu
In October I took the elephant painting to a digital printer in Clevedon, SkyBlue Digital, to get limited edition gicleés done of it. Because of the painting’s dimensions I didn’t want to reduce the image too much from its 36”x11” size as I fear it would lose it’s impact; so the first proof will be at a slightly reduced size. Once I see that, I can decide whether I would prefer it to be full size or not. The process has started and I have now seen two different proofs over the last few weeks and have decided the slightly smaller size is fine, but some colour changes needed to be made and some shadowing from paint ridges ‘knocked back’. My fourth visit to the printer’s has resulted in another wait for another colour proof. Whilst the other anomalies have been corrected, the one of the colour of light on the elephants remains. I’m hoping the printer can get it from the whitish colour, at present, closer to the warm yellow of the original oil painting. I am being a bit pedantic about this as it’s an important aspect of the painting in that it sets the time of day and the lighter colour makes the painting look too light and changes the mood of the piece.
Hopefully my next visit will be the last, except for when I return to collect the finished batch of prints.
20 – 24 July 2009This was my second time as one of the tutors at the ‘Arts & Crafts Summer School’ held at Beaufort Community School in Gloucester, England by the Gloucester Arts & Crafts Group. Over the week a mix of 2, 3 and 5 day workshops are held covering all sorts of art and craft skills such as calligraphy, botanical art, pastels, oils, chair making, mosaics, glass engraving, beadwork and willow weaving to name but a few.
Once again I had a 5-day batik workshop to run and although I only had 4 students booked for my workshop it worked well as each student therefore had plenty of room to work in and around the waxpots. Three of the ladies, Del, Hazel and Jenny, were with me last year; it was lovely to see them again and as we now know each other that bit better it was great having them feel that they knew me well enough for a bit of fun and banter. Carol was new, so whilst I could pretty much leave the other ladies to forge ahead with their exploration of batik, this meant I was on hand to help her as much as she needed as well as do a couple of projects myself in between.
We started the week on Day One with basic skills of using the wax, brushes, tjantings (batik pens) and the silk paints. Those who had previously done batik with me had the option of cracking straight on with their own projects or refreshing themselves with the step-by-step basic exercises.
They opted for the latter and said they found it very useful as there were some important or useful tips/techniques that they had forgotten.
On Day Two I took Carol step-by-step through a pansy head design, whilst the others started their own projects. Carol was finding it tricky getting her head around the technique (as do most who are new to the medium); throughout the week she battled on bravely and produced some lovely pieces to take home. She did very well and I hope she enjoyed her first foray into batik, her last piece in particular showed great promise should she wish to do more.It’s not unusual to find the medium hard to understand and think your way around at first; I have found that the ratio is about half and half between those that seem to pick it up straight away and those that need time (like a few days) to work it out. It can be difficult to understand the technique and process, particularly when approaching a piece of work more involved than a couple of colour and wax applications. An understanding of colour mixing helps enormously and being able to think of a picture in reverse and in ‘layers’ when ‘painting’ helps too. I find a 5-day workshop is great for those new to batik as it gives them time to get to grips with the medium and learn to understand the process and then when the penny drops they are ‘away’ and can have real fun with it. Doing shorter workshops of one day or even two days is pretty full on and there’s far too much to take in and get your head around if you are finding it tricky. Once the penny does drop it’s like an ‘Eureka!’ moment, and I love to see that happen and then see what the student produces after that.Day Three, Four and Five the ladies concentrated on their own projects taking inspiration from images they found in books or their own photographs. Here's some of their work from the week.
Del, Hazel and Jenny were very productive, as I expected them to be having done batik before and it was great to see them getting more adventurous and experimental with their batiks. Salt was used quite a bit this year as they played with the differing effects you can get with both fine and coarse grain salt crystals.
Whilst everyone was busy and not requiring my immediate attention I did a couple of little projects to show them the sort of things you can do with batik to make them into something more than a picture to frame. I pinned two pansy head batiks to a cushion (perhaps I should sew them into a proper cushion cover!), did a chameleon batik on a cotton bag and made a ‘wrap round’ for a lampshade. I wanted to give them ideas and think beyond the square of cotton they were working on. Hazel took up the challenge of a bag with a lily head and I hope seeds of ideas have been planted for possible future use into all of their minds.
This is my latest painting, I have provisionally entitled it 'Waiting for the stragglers'.
Oils on canvas on board - 36" x 11" (92mm x 28mm)
They unhurriedly made their way towards us, all was quiet in the morning sunshine. A few birds could be heard and the occasional insect buzzed by, but hardly a sound came from the elephants. As they got closer, and with all in the vehicle in hushed awe and wonder, you could just hear the footfalls and sound of skin rubbing against skin as they walked. The littlest ones trotting to keep up at times with the huge languid strides of the adult females. It was truly magical. The only alien sound to ruin it were the whirs and clicks of our cameras, but that was inevitable as we were all trying to get as many photo's as we could.At the time, as I recorded the video, I was thinking.. one day I'm going to paint this. And finally I have. I started the painting last year and as I have not been able to paint it continuously, it's been done in dribs and drabs. It's good to finally get it finished. With any luck I shall get prints done of the painting and I would like to sell the original piece so that I can put a good portion of the money towards my Africa fund, to enable me to get out there and paint more elephants for the Elephants for Africa Trust.
I returned to working at the zoo after my annual break of three months (in which I concentrate on my own art work/tutoring etc) at the beginning of April.
A new exhibit called Explorer’s Creek has opened in the centre of the zoo that incorporates a ‘splash’ play area for toddlers and two walk through aviaries… indoor and outdoor. Although these two aviaries incorporated species we had before, there were some new ones to do and on top of that the identification signage was to be presented in a different style. So my first job back was to work on the computer re-jigging the bird signage template to fit the new style. I also had some new species to paint, none of which I was able to see in ‘person’ as they were not going to be on the zoo premises until just prior to the exhibit opening. They included sunbittern, java sparrow, common sharma and rainbow lorikeet.
Not all was straightforward; I had several reference queries I had to sort out prior to painting and having just internet searches to rely on inevitably threw up a range of questions relating to plumage(adult/juv, breeding/non-breeding) and markings depending on race and sub-species. I spent sometime to-ing and fro-ing in communication with keepers trying to pin details down. Had I been able to see the birds for myself, all my questions would have been answered very quickly. But, hey ho, that’s the way it goes sometimes. All good fun when the time scale is tight.After the manic four weeks of the new exhibit prep I then went on to paint a lobster (European)… this guy turned out to be the most difficult critter I have done yet at the zoo. It took me at least a dozen attempts to draw all the intricate bits and pieces around his head and mouth-parts in the correct proportions. This species was on show, a big old boy called Mr Snappy. Trouble was he had a dark hideaway and I either saw the front end of him or the rear… hardly ever saw him as a whole. So I arranged with the keepers a ‘photo session’ for when he was fed on a day of the week when I was at the zoo. Then I had to be quick with the camera as he tended to dash out grab the food and retreat to munch away happily in his den.
The zoo is heavily involved with the annual event in Bristol called the Bristol Festival of Nature. The Education Dept at the zoo hosts a tent and for this year I had a little job to do for them… I had to paint a mobile phone. Gotta be the strangest ‘species’ I have done in my work for the zoo yet!!I had a wooden cutout, 30 inches by about 14 inches (76cms x36 cms) on which to do a straight copy of a mobile phone image they had. I used emulsion paints and a work colleague used the vinyl cutter machine to create the letters and numbers to go on the keys and screen. Finally several layers of varnish were put on and it was done.
I like my job... I never know what I’m gonna paint from one week to the next.Then I had a six-banded armadillo to paint… the zoo has a pair on show in Twilight World… and getting photo’s in there was pretty impossible, but I did enjoy going in with them for a short time, donned in a natty white quarantine suit, wellies and gloves. One came over and nudged me a few times on the leg as I crouched down to try and get photo’s from their angle. I ended up using Archie, the armadillo they use in the Amazing Animal demonstrations. He’s still being ‘trained’ (the show animals only display natural behaviours… no party tricks or such like) so he was a little unpredictable still… would he stay munching his tid-bits long enough for me to photo and take a good look at him? Thankfully yes.
I’m now working on the revamping of the Aquarium identification signage. All these signs are backlit and we used to be able to produce the signs for the lightboxes in house… but now in the digital age the old photographic process we used is no longer viable so we now have to use an outside print company. I have rescanned and photoshop adjusted all of the fish, invertebrate and coral images, which was a few weeks of intense eye work on the computer. Now, having re-jigged the Aquarium ID template to suit the new format, I am inputting pictures and text creating new ID signs ready to be sent to the printer.So far this year I have done very little illustration… most of my time, it seems has been on the computer. I have a stack of illustrations sat waiting for me to finish the Aquarium stuff... marbled teal, a new mantid, a splendid leaf frog to name but a few. And who knows what the rest of the year will bring.
