Or All Work and No Play…
This time, no amateur philosophizing, no more fooling around.
Introducing the fully illustrated newsletter (which means I can substract nine thousand words and still get away with it).
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Started in the evening, after spending the day reworking another picture. This is the initial slopping about of colour prior to really starting in on detail. There is a very light pencil sketch underneath (somewhere), just to more or less position things. This initial step is a totally crucial undertaking not to be interrupted. It’s also the five minutes during which the picture is either going to be a picture or another go.
In this case, lots of water with the board at an angle to make the colour flow, and no taped edges so as not to have it pool along the bottom. The format was taped off once it had dried and become flat again.
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Next evening, working more or less from back to front, or at least deciding from back to front what goes where… The photo of the unusual skull is from Canada (an as yet largely unexplored territory, thinly populated but rife with all manner of incredible and fabulous creatures).
I enjoy pictures like this, since they can really go anywhere (one hopes in an acceptable direction) and occasionally end up quite different from what you started out doing.
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Left: Finished the creepy individual in the backgound, along with the fetching pile of skulls, and having suddenly decided to move the foreground figure, I took the trouble of redrawing him on a sheet of tracing paper and postioning it until I found the best spot (and angle). Quite often, a degree or two, or a quarter of an inch can spell the difference between a composition that works and one that stutters.
Right: The kind of flotsam that accumulates around my feet when working on a picture – drawers of documents, books, photos… Next time I’ll sweep the floor a little (either in the traditional manner or in Photoshop)before taking the photo. Once a job or a theme are done, there is a good hour’s returning everything to the shelves and drawers. If I ever want to worK as a librarian or archivist, I’ll have had ample training…
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Left: More or less finished picture. Another half a day or so of fiddling will see it done. I loathe having to whisk a picture away immediately, there is always something that could do with a little more work.
Right: The kind of flotsam that accumulates on the table, a gentle sedimentation of coffee cups on the table and caffeine in my system. If I ever want to work waiting on tables, I’ll have had ample training…
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Left: Blocking out some vignettes for the same project. Very simple rough sketches done directly, and then on to colour. It’s enjoyable to work on two separate tables, when the attention wavers on one piece, you can cross the studio and put some colour on another.
Right: Getting ready to start another colour piece. Re-sketching in the dragon from an initial scribble, figuring out more or less where things will go. Paintings like this don’t really need more than a few light lines, since they are more or less invented on the way. The initial sketch is just a reminder of proportion and focus.
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Left: Finished up the vignettes, and have now emptied my entire library of books on Celtic design, hunting down the right motif for a decorative frieze. (That’s why they call it Celtic knotwork: it never does…) I hope I own every decent book on knotwork, if there is one I don’t have I’ll corner it one day. What a fabulous art form.
Right: First colour for the dragon. Once again, this is the time when the phone can ring on the hook until the answering machine kicks in. Though I have a decent idea (usually) what I’m going to do, it’s crucial to get the first colours right, especially when doing flames and smoke.
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The flaming dragon has more or less figured out where he goes. Things like the tail are done by staring at the paper for a while and then painting in one quick – and indelible – stroke rather like calligraphy. After that it has to be shaped and fleshed out, but with a bit of luck, that initial line is the right one. So strange there is no way to plot it out. I often find myself suddenly tracing the very violent line of some crucial curve without warning.
Unfortunately for my artistic peace of mind, a kind soul who visited Ireland sent me a dozen beautiful jpegs of the Cliffs of Moher, so I suddenly decided I should paint some in the background, which means working around the foreground elements, but who can turn one’s nose up at vertiginous cliffs, a stormy sea and Irish fog?
That’s all folks. Back to the drawing board.
SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED
Very strange signature session last Wednesday. Arrived late, as had forgotten exactly where the bookshop was, sat myself down, requested coffee please no sugar and signed and drew and signed and drew and came out of my daze two and a half hours later to whisper to the shop owner that I had to go in half an hour and could only draw three more pictures and would just sign the others. A chorus of groans reminded me that a few dozen people had spent 3 hours in line for the second time only to be turned away, so we convened a third session for everyone in the shop in a month or so. It’s all a total blur. And I’m doing the same next Tuesday in Paris. Still in that Irish fog. Where WAS the edge of that cliff?
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These are the headers of ONE night’s spam filtering on the web site. Other ages left us the Illiad, the Mabinogion and Hamlet. The 21st century will leave a legacy of spam. More information is transmitted from a modern metropolis in a few months than everything contained in libraries throughout the world (in quantity, not quality). I hope aliens ARE listening from space. They’ll turn about and head home for sure. Unless of course they’re looking for pills or a cheap mortgage…
MY HOME AND NATIVE LAND
And last, but far from least:
More news on the book signings in Toronto.
