Artist in Residence week fast approaches

I am looking forward to my Artist In Residence week at Nature in Art, which is coming up very soon - 2nd to 7th September. It is always a pleasure to visit there for a day, so a week is a real treat. 

At the moment I am busy getting projects ready to do whilst there and a gathering a few bits and bobs to have available to sell. I will be showing some of the work that I have been doing for the exhibition (which will be at this venue September next year) as well as other work such as some examples of what I do as Wildlife Illustrator at Bristol Zoo Gardens.

Nature in Art is a lovely place to visit and they have a great little coffee shop serving lovely lunches and super cakes and puds. If you are in the area, please do pop in and say hello... I shall be in the studio out in the gardens.

Summer School Batik workshop

Time has rushed around and it is fast approaching the time of the Gloucester Arts & Crafts Summer School again. This is the 7th year I have a workshop at this event ... as long, that is, as I get enough students. It is always a nail-biting time waiting to hear if the workshop has been booked by enough people to make it viable for the organisers to run.

I believe there are still some spaces on my course, but I need a few more to reach that magical 'ok to run' number. So if you  or anybody you know, would like to try your hand at batik and have a fun week in my class learning something new or playing with a medium you already know, please contact the organiser.  This link takes you to their website page where you can view details of all the courses available (including mine of course) and the contact details if you should wish to book. 

The designs you do on my workshop/course you keep, of course, and some have gone on to make their designs into something decorative or practical like cushion covers, lamp shades and shoe bags. Alternatively you can turn them into wall hangings or put them in a frame to hang on the wall. 

It is a great week to meet with like minded people interested in art and crafts, with lovely lunches and a great atmosphere. 

If you are considering joining me this year at Summer School to play with batik... I hope to see you soon. 

Here are some photo's from previous workshops showing some of the work done by the students.

First post since March!!

I have been absent from this blog since March... sadly unavoidable as I have had much going on and limited time for keeping blogs regularly updated. I have two other blogs in addition to this one. One for my zoo work and the other for my exhibition project with Elephants For Africa and only the latter has had anything vaguely resembling something like regular attention from me, much as I'd like it to be otherwise. I always hope to post at least once a month, but plans and good intentions are sometimes hard to keep to.

The main news to report is the acquisition of a new work space! I have at last got a proper studio. I will do a post all about this wonderful new era in my work very soon.

I have a workshop coming up.. again I will do another more detailed post on here (hopefully right after I write this!)

And I have entered two pieces into The National Exhibition of Wildlife Art... it is a juried exhibition so I have to wait until the originals are seen in July before I know whether I have successfully got in the show or not.

 

Dabbling in pastels again

It's been a while since I played with my Carbothello pencils properly, so recently I decided to have a dabble. 

I started the lion piece back last October whilst I was Artist In Residence at Nature in Art for a week. It was a 'little filler' whilst I waited for oil paint to dry on another piece I was working on. 

The reference was a badly lit and out of focus image I had of one of Bristol Zoo's Asiatic lion cubs... except they were no longer cubs at the time the photo was taken. They had become juveniles with spiky rough starts to their mane's growth, legs had grown lanky and the head/muzzle had lost that rounded cub look and was elongating to the adult shape. I love this time in a lion's life.. that emerging confidence and energy wrapped up in play. In this case his sibling... another male. Kamran and Ketan.. but I haven't a clue which one this is.  

I had a piece of dark brown pastel paper that I thought would work nicely with the light colours of the young lion. I enhanced the lighting from the original photo and increased the detailing from the out of focus photo. 

Whilst in the 'flow' of working with the Carbothello's (Schwan Stabilo pastel pencils - I prefer their softness and find I do not get 'scratchy' applications) I set myself onto another piece. Again a simple composition. I have seen neither of these animals in the wild, so I do not have the 'knowledge' to paint them in their native habitat. Also these are both captive animals and the muscle tone and coat conditions would be different to a wild counterpart. So why pretend and try and depict them as if they were wild animals. 

Again this ring-tailed lemur is one of the group at Bristol Zoo. The references were taken on a lovely sunny day last year and as ring-tails have a love of doing... this one was sat on a warm stone enjoying the early summer sunshine. 

I had acquired a piece of grey pastel paper that had a rough but fine grade surface, like sandpaper. My mother had it for many years, as she liked to paint and draw, but for some years now she hasn't done any art. So I have 'inherited' all her art materials etc... and this roll of paper was amongst it. I have no idea what this type of paper is called, I'm sure it must have a name... on the back all it has is Hermes P400 HiCab LongLife. I will investigate on my next visit to an art shop. 

A 'ring-tail', I thought, would 'sit' lovely on that soft grey surface and I was curious to see how pastels 'behaved' on such a surface. So I looked through my references and saw the series of images I took on that day of the lemurs soaking up the rays. Just what I was looking for!

I have to say I really enjoyed working on that surface... the pastels could be worked 'deeper' in layers and still look fresh and detailed. I will be getting more of such paper.. or something as close to it as I can. 

Drawing Workshop Summary

Picture the Natural World. 

It was rather disappointing that there were only three people booked for my drawing workshop on Saturday. Both myself and the organisers had hoped for more; we wondered whether being just after Christmas, and the January sales, that it was a case of most people pulling in the purse strings this month and not splashing out on 'non-essentials'. One of the organisers mentioned that doing such events was a new venture for them and maybe they should think more on their marketing of such events. Whatever the reason, the positive to come out of it was that having a small group means I can get round the students more often and if necessary spend more time individually. And I was very grateful to those that did book. They were a lovely little group and it was a real pleasure to meet them.

Bonnie, the Curator of Natural Sciences at Bristol Museum, was one of my contacts/organisers. It was through her that I was able to borrow 6 taxidermy specimens for the workshop. She was to be my assistant for the day, but as the numbers were low and manageable by just me, she joined the three students to take part in the workshop, making the group up to four.

There was a mix of abilities... someone who was just starting to draw, someone who had done A level art but not much since and was looking to be inspired back to drawing more and someone who drew fairly regularly looking to improve.

It was a short day, with so much to cover... starting at 11am and finishing at 4pm, so we cut the lunch break to 30 mins giving as much time as possible to the session. I was showing them four of the things I use when drawing, ways in which to get my drawings started quickly and enable me to get proportions and postioning in before I do any detailing. There are of course many things/ways/techniques I use but from experience I have found these four are some of the most useful to beginners or improvers.

The first part of the day we looked at basic building up of an animal shape and using 2D reference, including the pitfalls of such references. 

Then the second part of the day we looked at using 3D reference and sketching from life with exercises to increase speed, confidence and observation.

Some of those exercises were challenging, yet each of the students applied themselves to the task and could hold their heads high at what they achieved. At the end, to show I wasn't a complete Task Master, there was half an hour of free drawing.

The response from the students seems to have been good, saying that they found it enjoyable and challenging, yet positively so. I hope that they each went away with a little more confidence, inspiration and a few ideas to practice to improve their skills at home. At least one of the students asked Bonnie if they would be doing anymore such workshops with me; so I hope that in future I can do more there perhaps.

The room we were using at the mShed was a good size with lots of light, especially from the floor to ceiling window that looked out over the harbour area of Bristol. 

Drawing Workshop

There's a few spaces left so, it's not too late to book a place on my drawing workshop at the MShed tomorrow. You can turn up and pay tomorrow, but to guarantee a place, it would be best to book.

Please contact the Mshed for more information and to book.
http://mshed.org/whats-on/events/picture-the-natural-world-drawing-workshop/

Artists and Illustrators magazine Feb 2014 issue

Back before Christmas, I was approached by the editor of the A&I magazine, after he saw two images I had posted on my blog 'In The Footsteps of Elephants'. He asked me to write a short article on how and why I chose to paint the two images at the same time. 

The article is now published in the February 2014 issue (which is out in January). Due to some editing for the article to fit the space, an alteration was made in the last paragraph that wasn't run by me for approval and as a result it reads...  '... and provided the chance for a colour to dry on one painting as I worked on the other.' This would actually be wrong in the context of the painting process I was describing in the article as I was working wet into wet over a very short space of time and as such there would be no time for the oil paints to dry.

The following is the wording I sent to the magazine for this article.

Double Trouble. Why would I want to paint these two images at the same time?

I don’t normally work loosely, but this past year I have been occasionally challenging myself to do just that. To stop myself from my love of ‘fiddling’, I work with a time limit (around 4-5 hours) to start and finish a painting. These two studies of an elephant calf, were one such challenge.

I wanted two paintings which could be displayed as a pair, looking ‘the same, but different’. So it seemed natural to paint them together, to keep a sense of continuity happening between them. If I painted them on different days I may lose that, so I did them both on the same day.

I ‘sketched’ in the two calf poses using burnt sienna diluted with Liquin to make it flow easily from a rigger brush (size 0), no preparatory drawing, just straight in with the paint. This gives me a sense of creating ‘freshness and spontaneity’ and it’s worth getting the proportions right at this stage, as trying to correct the form latter in the painting can kill that spontaneity feel.

I had mixed more than enough of each colour on my palette to do both paintings; using the same colours on both helped create a natural connection, along, obviously, with the composition, lighting and setting. Conscious of my self-imposed time limit and desire to avoid detail, I worked fast, wet into wet and having the two canvases side by side on the easel made it easier to keep an eye on how the two ‘sat’ together as they progressed.

Using a round size 5 watercolour brush, along with the rigger, I painted similar elements at a time, such as the grasses, working on one canvas before doing something similar on the other. The time spent doing this varied between a few minutes for blocks of foliage/grasses etc to around an hour for each calf. Switching back and forth like this kept the colour and brush use almost identical, creating that ‘same moment in time’ feel not just in the time and location of the subject, but also on a subconscious level in the actual application of paint.

These two studies are to be part of my fundraising solo exhibition for the work of a small grassroots conservation research charity studying young bull elephants in Botswana – Elephants For Africa. The exhibition will be in 2015 at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire. For updates and information on this event please visit… www.inthefootstepsofelephants.blogspot.co.uk or www.facebook.com/FootstepsOfElephants