Iris & transience

I wait all year for these irises to appear. I brought them from my late parents' garden. Their joint enterprise; my father grew them & then, my mother would paint them.

Each May, I take many photos, but it's never the same as drawing or painting from real life. Yesterday, I grasped the moment, sat in the sunshine & recorded their beauty as best I could.

This morning they were gone, their remains like shrivelled, wilted paper left on the stem.

Leonardo at Bristol

There are not many displays of under a dozen exhibits that I would drive over 40 miles to see, but I made an exception for the latest exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
On show until 10th June, 'Ten Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci' is the main attraction & for good reason.

This exhibition, although light on exhibits, contains examples of all of Leonardo's major areas of work. He thought of himself as a scientist first & an artist second. Two of the examples are meticulous anatomical drawings, one of arms & the other of bones of the foot. Others include designs for clothing & sculpture.

I loved this drawing of Leda (below) & was fascinated by the techniques used. Leonardo had made an under drawing of black chalk & then a fine drawing of ink was made on top of this. It was amazing to see the marks made by his hand over 500 years ago.

This was my personal favourite, Scenes from the End of the World. Click on the photo to see clouds raining fire & skeletons rising up from the ground- an interesting subject for the leading scientist of the age!

I came away inspired to find out more about Leonardo & become more prolific as an artist!

 The drawings are part of the Royal Collection & are being exhibited as a Diamond Jubilee Celebration.

Light & the Great British Seaside

Summer is getting off to a slow start here in the UK. However, yesterday & today have been full of sharp, bright light & searing blue skies that, whilst there's still a nip in the air, whisper the promise of hot summer days to come.

I'm currently teaching an online drawing class & as part of the preparation, wanted to take some photographs of pebbles. I already have pebbles in my garden collected on previous excursions to the coast, but what I didn't have was the right type of light.

I decided that I owed it to my students to give them photographs of pebbles taken in situ on a beach in coastal light.  The nearest place, I could get to easily, was Clevedon on the south west coast. Technically speaking, Clevedon is at that point where river & ocean meet. The water contains silt washed down the river by recent heavy rain, & yet, it's tidal, has small pebbled beaches & a beautiful Victorian pier.

On the drive there, I was thinking about the fact that artists seem to be drawn to the light of the western coast & why this should be. For example, the St Ives artists in Cornwall & St David's in Wales is also a congregating point for artists. Is this just true in Britain or does this happen in other places too, artists creating communities to take advantage of the western light. Do you know of any others?

Cotton Threads- Whitworth Art Gallery

During a recent visit to Manchester I visited the exhibition 'Cotton Threads' showing at the city's Whitworth Art Gallery. For me, one of the highlights was Liz Rideal's multimedia installation 'Drop Sari'.

The piece consisted of four lengths of fabric, which were moving slowly in a gentle breeze, onto which a series of film & images were projected. The images included fabric designs & sequences depicting the cotton manufacturing process in India.

This is the information about the piece given by the gallery:

Examining 'The Textile Manufactures of India', sample books of Indian textiles assembled in 1866 to demonstrate to British manufacturers Indian preferences for their clothing, was the catalyst for Liz Rideal's work in this exhibition and provided the opening animation sequence of the 'Drop Sari' film. Her work transforms familiar and commonplace objects into strange and seductive imagery, with drapery frequently performing as the subject of a piece.

Homemade paint

Since I wrote the post about Seraphine, I have made two attempts to make my own paints.

The photo above shows red onion skins bubbling in a pan. The water became a deep ruby colour & I was so excited to try using it.

My experiment, even after two dips in the mixture, did not live up to the deep red it promised & gave a very disappointing result. It had the appearance of a manilla envelope!

For my second brew, I boiled up skin from the less exotic brown onion. This turned the water a golden amber colour & held a depth of colour that the first concotion had lacked. I used this first homemade paint for the eyes of the cat below.

The drawing is the first sketch for a character from a novel that I am basing some work on. I used a British Blue for the model & was quite pleased with the resulting eye colour.

Sketchbook Project

I met my friend, cococita, a talented photographer, through an online course. She has a keen eye for colour & composition. When she asked, I was only too pleased to give some feedback on a sketchbook she had made. The work was part of  The Sketchbook Project 2012 .

Participants were asked to select a theme for their sketchbook. The one chosen was 'The first ever ...' and the sketchbook is entitled 'The Beauty of Simplicity'.

The sketchbook incorporates a number of different themes: accessories/clothes, pattern/graphics, bottles/pots & flowers. They are connected by the clean linear nature of the drawing & balanced presentation

I noticed the vase of white tulips in one of the photos with the sketchbook drawing of them and liked the way the shadows fell on the page, echoing the shapes. 

The artist seems to be interested in the relationship between objects & the space they take up.

I love the outline drawings of the vases & the way that real objects have beenplaced on top of & then photographed- the interplay between the real object & a representation of it. The work of the British artist, Ben Nicholson , explores similar themes. Some of his work was concerned with outlines & overlapping shapes of bottles & pots.

The work shows a keen eye for design & balance. 'The Beauty of Simplicity' was also an interesting title & was reflected it well in the pages. I really like the use of  collage combined with drawing (this is something I am also exploring in my own work) & enjoyed this aspect of the work. 

To view the entire sketchbook click here, here and here.

This sketchbook was produced as part of The Sketchbook Project http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

Registration is now open for the 2013 Sketchbook Project by clicking here.

Seraphine Louis

 View the updated version of this page by clicking here.

What would you do if you lived in a time or location where art materials were not readily available? I have spent some time considering this question & my solutions included burning wood to make charcoal, creating sculptures from natural/found materials & using natural substances to make my own pigments. One artist took this idea to the extreme.

Seraphine Louis was a French domestic and, unbeknown to many of her employers, a committed & driven artist. Due to her impoverished life, she could not afford to buy commercially produced materials. Her ingenious solution was to gather everyday substances, such as wine, soot & oil & transform them into vivid pigments which she used to depict her natural surroundings.

Yolande Moreau plays Seraphine in Martin Provost's 2008 film of the same title. This charming & gentle film reveals the artist's delight in the beauty of her natural surroundings. She is depicted as both grounded by her life of domestic work yet somewhat detached from the society in which she lives by her compulsion to paint.

The film centres on the relationship between Seraphine & Willhelm Uhde. Uhde was both an  art dealer & collector who had exhibited Picasso as early as 1908. He organised the first exhibition of naive art in Paris, which included work by Rousseau alongside those of Seraphine Louis & others.

Seraphine believed that the angels were commanding her to paint. One day she said that the angels had gone and she never painted again. Seraphine developed mental health difficulties & ended her days in an institution.

The film deservedly won seven French academy awards when it was released in 2008.

If you would like to find out more info about the film, the image above is a link to the film on Amazon.

Discovering Watercolour is an exciting new course for those wanting to explore this vibrant & inspiring medium - click here for more info.