Landscapes of the Skin - and blessings

This is my favourite nude.

She was painted along with all those others while I was still in college. I think this drawing really encapsulates for me the theme I call "Landscapes of the Skin" I don't think the concept needs much explaining when you look at the line of 'hills and valleys silhouetted against a dark sky'.

Sometimes things just work out for you in every way which is of course terribly satisfying. I like very much the fact that the lines of her body are rhythmic and repeating. I also feel quite proud that although the lines are definitely feminine they are not too soft and have a certain angularity to them which therefore makes her a bit more interesting and edgy and not simply accommodating.

Another thing i like very much about the composition of this drawing is the fact that I have drawn a horizontal figure on a portrait format - and it works.

You know the more I look at it the more I think it would make a really good print too - nice balance of dark and light and all that.

Oh dear I am getting carried away with myself - "Self praise is no praise" as someone once said to me - probably my mother.

I have to admit to feeling quite pleased with myself at the moment though - i hope that does not sound boastful, but it is really not meant that way. I only mean that I have been working really hard and really working through an awful lot of ideas. Getting them down and painting them up and hoarding those ideas for further development. So important when there are so many times that the creative juices run completely dry and I wander round the house thinking myself such a failure. But with paintings and ideas in the bag, so to speak, i have something that I can pull out in those times of famine and tell myself that I am not such a failure after all.

And that is my sermon for the day - When things get bad, cast your mind back to some of the successes you had in your life and remind yourself of those, rather than dwelling on the failures. Or as Pongo said to Missis (or was it the other way round) in 'The Hundred and One Dalmatians" or was it "The Starlight Barking" (I think there are a couple of books I need to reread!), he said "Remember to count you blessings"

So on that note i will now go for a walk, learn some Spanish and count my blessings at the same time. Now that's what i call multitasking!

Talking up a Storm

I am really warming up to my subject now. It is fascinating how familiar you get with the curl of a particular lip or crease of an eyelid.

In addition I am enjoying the laying on of paint to create the volumes and forms of the flesh and bone structures.

i do like watercolour - it is definitely the most wonderful paint to use, stroking it on boldly in layers to build up colour depth or sometimes more timidly in little stipples or even removing colour when it goes on in the wrong place or creates the wrong colour - but that of course is not so easy to do as the colour does not always come away successfully and you are left with a shadow.

Of course, as you remember, the 'happy accident' sometimes creates an effect that is better than you could have planned in the first place.

Though I admit. Really the desired use of watercolour requires confident and first time placement of the colour in order to keep it pure. That will still take a bit more practice.

The theme:

Of course the Stavanger summer has descended into an Irish one! Each weekend seems to be rainier than the last and my tan has almost faded back to the milky pale complexion which i arrived here with last year. I think that those clouds are playing on my mind. Waking up to grey mornings really does not improve my mood - especially when it is Monday. Every weekend I want to go for a nice relaxing bike ride, but every weekend the opportunity fades pretty quickly.

So you can gather it is raining again today and now the clouds have even found their way into my paintings. Still clouds can be pretty cool - very atmospheric.

And here is Victor in full flight giving a lecture on something. He doesn't normally point when he talks but i thought the finger pointing made it more emphatic and when you are talking up storm clouds like that you need to be quite forceful.

Thinking of Toadstools

It has been a good week.

I have just finished my second drawing/painting in my 'Many Faces of Vic' series.

I feel very satisfied - it is always good to produce stuff in a measurable way.

It was when I was cycling in the forest and I saw some wonderful Autumn mushrooms underneath the trees. It made me think about Vic thinking about mushrooms or in this instance I thought toadstools would be more fun. So this is my muse with toadstools on his mind. I am certain though that he does not think about Funghi as often as I do.

But this image came to mind and now i put it before you. I think this is a bit better than the Jester as I did not go quite so heavy on the pen and ink part which made the jester rather scary!

Another week is done. It is Friday. We will go for a couple of drinks and Pizza at the Martinique and then come home and probably fall asleep on the couch and in armchairs. After a week of hard work I think that this is perfectly acceptable. We will have the weekend now to recharge the batteries. No plans, just going to potter, although I believe that football season starts tomorrow so that might guide us to some degree.

Have a nice weekend!

Jester

Jeepers Creepers!

I have just spent two hours battling with my printer!

What a waste of time and yet what a necessary evil. My head is absolutely splitting now with the effort and I am now desperately behind in my day's work.

It all started when I wanted to print out the next in my 'Many Faces of Vic' series.

This is the first drawing/painting which I completed yesterday. This morning when out on my bike ride I got a couple of new ideas which I decided I would draw up first thing to get the new ideas down.

I worked them up on the computer first - to get the elements put together and sitting right and then I went to print. Very red and yellow and definitely lacking in Blue. So I did a test print. No cyan coming through at all. So I did one clean and then another and then a deep clean. You know the way it works, over and over I cleaned and printed. I changed the cartridge and had to replace two others that were empty by that time. I don't know why I am moaning on really, everyone has printer problems. I guess I just needed to vent!

So now I am calm again - the problem is sorted, I think and hope. But I have at least got my prints with cyan included :-)

This Jester is a bit of fun. I had not meant it to be such a caricature, but Vic's many expressions do so lend themselves to exaggeration and fun. I hope that the next two will not be quite so cartoon like, but i suppose we will have to see.

So you see - I decided not to put the jester's hat onto the relief sculpture which I made previously but have made a completely new picture instead. I think this is better. It simplifies the image. The many Vics with some strange snake-like hat would have been very complex, however, I have not ruled it out entirely. For now though I have made this jester with his strange organic and lively hat. I think Vic, the Jester, seems to almost afraid of it and to be honest I think if I were to wear one like it, I too would be very afraid.

Still I like the darkness of this drawing - How often are our comedians in fact manic on stage and miserable and fearful behind the scenes. Two sides of one coin.

In conclusion it only remains for me to say that this is in no way a reflection of the character of the real Vic. and in any event he does not have a hat like this, at least, I don't think so......

Brown Nude

Oh Hello there!

Another nude.

I think there is something a bit wrong with her knee, but I like the line of her stomach and breast and I like the volumes created with the scratching and hatching of paint and chalks.

I gave this to my friend Mary One (she got her spake in first!) as a present for her thirtieth birthday. In fact i gave her a token that entitled her to come to my house and pick one out of any of the paintings or drawings off my walls or out of my attic. So she picked this one herself.

It is always hard to try and imagine which drawing someone else will like - taste is so personal. As it happens this is certainly one I might have picked myself. So I am glad that she also liked it.

I enjoyed drawing this. I liked the way of working quite quickly, splodging on paint and then working feverishly back into the darker colour with the white chalk to raise the highlights. Drawing on a brown ground helps to make the highlights stand out also.

I am going to boast a little bit here by the way - i drew this while in college and one of my tutors said that it reminded him of a Picasso drawing! Well, How's that! High praise indeed. I know what he meant - it does have a certain character of the type of drawings that Picasso did at a certain time of his life but I also realise that there is absolutely no comparison in Picasso's ability to draw compared to mine. He wouldn't have a wrong knee anywhere unless he was drawing one of his dismembered women - which, of course, was done on purpose.

To be honest you should be able to draw properly before you start to muck about with your subject, however i usually just start mucking about first, because i want to. I still have a bit more practice to do really - get those 10,000 bad drawings out of me!

By the way - and i know that this is an Irish obsession - the weather has unsettled again. I will never get a job in the Meteorology Office!

PS

by the way - if you click on the picture you can blow it up larger - if you have not discovered this already. Useful if you want to study the individual faces

The Many Faces of Vic

Luckily my Victor has a very good sense of humor - As you can see he also has a pretty rubbery face!

This relief was made by way of an experiment and a bit of fun. I wanted to practice my portraiture and facial expressions in relief sculpture - which is very important by the way.

For those people who know Vic they might be able to recognise bits of this. I myself think that some of the portraits do capture a resemblance and most of them do capture the strange facial expressions which he is capable of achieving.

A friend of mine called by when I had just begun the sculpture and when she saw the photos I was working from she actually thought that some of those did not look like Vic either. I suppose photos are like that - they don't always capture the essential likeness of the person either. With that in mind I concentrated more upon the various expressions and face pulling that he made, instead of worrying too much about getting a good likeness. The two work together anyway - so the better sculptures do capture a better likeness I would venture to say.

I think that I have had some success with this piece. Most of the strange, twisted expressions are well observed and capture some sort of feeling (madness springs to mind! x). As I have already said I think there are some moments of likeness too, so it has been a very worthwhile exercise. Some of the very smallest faces were very difficult. It was easier to get detail and likeness in the larger faces, so that is good to know. I imagine though working very large you would also encounter problems making all parts hang together without distortion. So I think there is probably a comfortable optimum size to work with. Good learning!

This plaque is approximately 20cm in Diameter, so you can visualise the sizes I was working with.

When I worked i worked my way around the plaque, roughing out the forms first and then slowly building the faces up and finally fine tuning them. This helped to keep an even balance of finishment across the whole surface and design.

I did think it might be nice to put some strange amorphous jester's hat onto the heads, but it would take a bit of working out and I might save that for another time as i have rather a lot of other stuff to do at present - and this was after all just an exercise, so for now Vic must remain hatless. I can see this plaque turning up in some quirky little corner in our new home!