Pear, satsuma and scarf

I was going to do this in acrylics on primed paper but I had run out of the larger pieces of primed paper so decided it was time to return to canvas.

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 1, tinted charcoal on canvas, February 2014.

Palette, 26th February 2014 for Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf.

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 2, tinted charcoal and acrylics on canvas, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 3, tinted charcoal and acrylics on canvas, February 2014.

I’m not sure if the orange fruit is a type of satsuma, tangerine, or mandarin – they just call it “Easy peeler” in the supermarket – but I liked the alliteration of ‘satsuma’ and ‘scarf.’ It’s useful to photograph it at the different stages because it looks different when seen from the distance of a photograph, and can be easier to see what I’ve missed when my nose is inches from the canvas, and what I need to do next. It looks rather dull with the red added but there are more colours to go on, and the pear is only washed in with some undercolour at this stage in the photo above.

Up to this point, I was mostly listening (and singing along) to Arctic Monkeys (mostly tracks from the AM album) and David Bowie (some tracks from The Next Day, especially Love is Lost, and two versions of Hallo Spaceboy). I fast-forwarded through The Doves.

Between the last photo above and the second picture below, I was mostly listening to Iggy Pop. I’m not at all sure that this one is working. The pink was more translucent than I expected. I had to go over it about three times. I have more work to do on the pear, satsuma and plate…

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 4, acrylics on canvas, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 5, acrylics on canvas, February 2014.

A day later…

There has been a lot more work on this than is probably evident. I think it might be finished, and I don’t think it has worked… I will review it in daylight – and work out what to put in my next still life.

Janet E Davis, Still life – pear, satsuma and scarf stage 6, acrylics on canvas, February 2014.

 

Daffodil on recycled sari scarf

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (stage 1), tinted charcoal on primed paper, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (stage 2), tinted charcoal and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (stage 3), tinted charcoal and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (stage 4), tinted charcoal and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (stage 5), tinted charcoal and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

Janet E Davis, Daffodil and recycled sari scarf (final), tinted charcoal and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

Still not sure if this one works, but that’s partly because it’s a bit different to the way I have usually painted.

This is another one in acrylics on a primed, textured paper. The colours are not accurate in the first three early stages snaps. I remain unenthusiastic about acrylics yet but I need to use them more to get a feel for them. I am glad that they are less smelly than when I first used acrylics in my teens.

I might try acrylics on canvas next.

Old unfinished railway paintings 1

I love travelling by trains.*

Janet E Davis, Railways – Paddington Station 1 (unfinished), oils on canvas, 2008.

Janet E Davis, Railways – York Station 1 (unfinished) oils on canvas, 2008.

These two unfinished small oil paintings are from 2008, I think. They weren’t working, and I was probably quite ill when I was painting them, struggling a bit to make steady brushstrokes.

I could see trains from my very first bedroom: steam trains chugging between Lime Street Station and the southern areas of Liverpool. I’m not the least bit train-spotter-y about trains but a steam locomotive still makes me smile, and I enjoy occasional visits to the National Railway Museum.

I’ve travelled on the East Coast Mainline quite a lot for longer than I care to admit. It was the majority of my route between college and my parents’ home when I was an undergraduate. It was my gateway to work trips to the North when I was based in London, and my route to meetings when my workplace relocated to the North East. I particularly like Intercity trips when the seat is comfortable and fellow passengers are nice.

So far, I’ve used the East Coast Mainline most frequently during a period when my workplace was based in York. I spent a lot of time waiting on platforms at York. I wonder if the other long distance commuters ever noticed that I was no longer there? If they did, maybe they just were glad that there was one less to compete against for a seat.

I haven’t travelled on a train for ages and miss them so much. I think I have probably lost video I used to take through train windows when my laptop crashed. I have never worked at how to use the train travel videos in an artwork (it’s low quality, impressionistic video) but knew that it would become obvious one day. I would love to be an artist-in-residence on British railways.

If I ever have money to spare again, I might go on railway journeys just to gather material for making art.

*except when they’re overcrowded, full of very drunk people, smelly, or break down/are otherwise delayed for a long time.

Still lives – edging back to painting

Janet E Davis, Still life with lemon and rock, tinted charcoal, oil pastel and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014. Stage 4.

Janet E Davis, Still life with lemon and rock, tinted charcoal, oil pastel and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014. Stage 3.

Janet E Davis, Still life with lemon and rock, tinted charcoal, oil pastel and acrylics on primed paper, February 2014.

I decided to try sidling up to the process of painting, to lull myself into a false sense of security by starting with drawing. I hadn’t painted since late January or early February 2009. I was very ill at the time. I have been reluctant to go back into my painting space.

It was invaded by a large swarm of wasps in late summer 2009 which had been nesting under the floor. I still find their desiccated corpses in boxes and files, tucked between packets of photographs, or nestling between tubes of paint. Then a year or so later, some furniture and a lot of stuff got dumped in there when two and a half other rooms had to be emptied for building work and I can’t shift the furniture back out again by myself. So my painting space is very cramped these days, which hasn’t encouraged me. The rest of why I haven’t painted since 2009 is in: Artist’s block on one of my other blogs.

So, I started with life drawing when I could afford some sessions. In autumn 2013, I plucked up courage to go to free art classes at the Hatton Art Gallery. I started drawing afterwards at home now and then. I’m still trying to push myself into drawing at least three times a week.

After we did a still life with pastels in the Hatton Gallery, I was determined to try my oil pastels that had been sitting unused in their pristine box for over a year. Eventually, I set up a still life, added some fresh tunes to my iPod Shuffles, put the earphones in and opened the box of colour, aiming to cover a sheet of paper in an evening. The first two are below.

Janet E Davis, Lemon and half a papaya on a silk scarf, oil pastels on paper, 2014.

Janet E Davis, Lemon on vintage teaplate on red and green scarf, oil pastels on paper, 2014.

Then I decided that it was time to open the also pristine box of acrylic paints (trial size) that I had bought at the same time as the pastels. I haven’t painted in acrylics for years, and last time painted pictures with them in my early 20s. I’ve never been an acrylics fan, but they do dry fast. I decided to take photos of it at several stages (at the top of this post). I might wreck it before finishing it, but I don’t think there is a huge amount of work to do on it. I have paused because I have a problem with the pink that I need to complete it. The box of acrylics doesn’t include a pink or a bluish red. I tried initially using white oil pastel layered over a deep pink oil pastel but that isn’t going to work so I will have to commit myself to buying the colour I need in acrylic paint. I still don’t think I like acrylics, but the quick drying time is an advantage.

I’m not sure this is painting. I feel as if I’m still sidling up to painting – but I am thinking about what to put in the next still life now. Any ideas?

Update

Janet E Davis, Still life with lemon and rock, acrylics & oil pastel on sized paper, February 2014.

Final stage of the painting completed Sunday 9th February 2014 and photograph of the almost final version (I tidied up some red areas and the red piece of rock after this).

Postscript

I emailed photos of these pictures to my mother. “I’m worried that the acid from the lemon damaged that lovely scarf,” she said on the phone. I reassured her that no scarves were harmed in the creating of these still life pictures. On the picture with no plate, I’d nestled the fruit carefully on cling film so no juice leaked onto the scarf.

Hatton Gallery drawing session 6

Janet E Davis, drawing of Lanugo (2013) after Antony Crossfield, pencil on paper, 2014.

The sixth drawing session at the Hatton Gallery, our first after the long Christmas break, was about doing delicate, detailed drawing. Ironically, a couple of days earlier, I had been saying to friends that I was unsure that I could still do finely detailed drawings.

I was nervous about the prospect of trying this. We spent some time looking at some of the drawings in the exhibition that were more detailed Hazel, our tutor, suggested that we could draw a shell (there was a box of them from which to choose), a print of a picture in the collection, or from one of the more detailed drawings in the exhibition around us (the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2013 show – note: there is a downloadable copy of the catalogue which is well worth a look).

I immediately decided against drawing from the prints. I considered the shells, but realised that I have my own collection of shells at home that I could draw any time. So then I just had to narrow down the choice of Jerwood Drawing Prize works down to one from which I could draw something recognisable within the remaining half hour or so.

I contemplated a small part of a big architectural subject for a while (Minho Kwon’s The Neo Tower of Babel) but deciding it involved too many straight lines. I decided upon the picture that probably disturbed me most and represented a major challenge, especially in the time available: Lanugo by Antony Crossfield, graphite on paper, 2013. There was no time to copy all of it since there were a lot of details in it. The form of the figure was enough of a challenge with a lot of foreshortening in the legs. At one point, I was beginning to despair that I would ever get even vaguely close to the pose but I was determined to try. Hazel made a couple of very useful suggestions about how to look at the shapes to get the foreshortening.

I think I was the last one to pack up in that session. I looked round and discovered all my fellow students had vanished. It would never normally occur to me to draw from someone else’s drawing these days but it was a very useful exercise. I realised that I found it a lot more difficult to draw a figure from a drawing that if I had drawn directly from a model. There is an extra layer when trying to understand someone else’s analysis and synthesis of the human figure. I am glad that I tackled this challenge, and gained more appreciation for Antony Crossfield’s work, although it made me wish even more that I had the opportunity to draw directly from people (life or portraits).