Time seems to have gone by so quickly this year. It’s now only just over a week until the Closer to the Art show at Stone Railway Station in Stone, Staffordshire on 25th October. Around ten artists from various disciplines will be exhibiting including sculpture painting, illustration, photography and ceramics. A great opportunity to pick up a unique Christmas gift.
Ade Turner – Closer to the Art
And over the past weeks I’ve been busy painting, framing and generally getting everything ready. That’s me over there, posing for a publicity photo and frankly feeling a little uncomfortable – physically and psychologically! My wife too has been working on some beading and needlecrafts, but more of those in a future post.
This is my first show as an exhibitor, so with no previous experience to fall back on I’m going to be relying on educated guesswork. How much packing do I need? How do I display the work to best advantage? What is the worst thing I could forget to take on the day?
It’s all very exciting, and as with anything new, just a little scary too.
So, here we’re back in what always feels like our second home, Seaton in East Devon and about to start the second week of our holiday.
Sadly, this year, we’re here following a very recent and very close family bereavement. Needless to say our thoughts have been mixed, and of all things our minds haven’t been focussed on making paintings.
However, there have been opportunities to sketch, and I think making the effort has been mentally beneficial for both of us. The weather has been very kind too. So here is a collection of my plein air sketches in watercolour, gouache and pencil. Hope you like them. I’ll update this post with any new sketches after next week.
Plein air sketches from East Devon and Dorset
A series of plein air sketches in pencil, watercolour and gouache from Devon and Dorset.
And so the second year of Drawing August slips away. For me it really has been a challenge. Despite keeping strictly to my self-imposed time limit of 15 minutes per drawing, getting the time at weekends has still been whisker tight. Honestly, I think I’ve acquitted myself OK with my set of pen portraits of work colleagues. Admittedly there are one or two horrors in there, but by and large all have carried something of the sitter. I was tempted to leave some out of the succession, but that would defeat the object. This has been about exploring an area of drawing which is outside my comfort zone. It’s simply not possible to turn out a corker each time; I’m wide of that goal by a very wide country mile at the moment. By and large I have stuck to my guns and produced only pen line drawings, although on Day 16 I went off piste a little with a set of Winsor and Newton watercolour markers. Well they were sitting in their shiny new box beckoning to me; would have been rude not to use them… Before I leave you with a gallery of all thirty one sketches here’s a summary of the key things I’ve learned:
Warm up first. Coming straight from an intense analytical mind set at work and expecting to produce a great sketch in 15 minutes was never going to be the best work practie. You may be able to spot the days when I was most agitated.
Line up other people to model at weekends. I got a little tired of knocking out selfies.
A thicker pen is both more impactful and encourages greater and more immediate expression.
Maybe a little variation wouldn’t have been a bad thing after all. By sticking rigidly to my brief – the drawings have taken on a similar quality and tend to merge one into the other.
Finally, a bonus side effect of Drawing August is that now several of my sitters are very willing for me to continue beyond August, just to keep my hand in. Thanks everyone for being such willing and accommodating sitters. Without you this page would be blank.
The Portraits
My personal favourites are Days 1, 2, 6, 7, 21 and 23, which are yours?
Well I’m certainly getting practice at portraits with this Drawing August Twitter malarkey. And I’m sticking to my guns having chosen a set of three self imposed restrictions, all of which are personally challenging:
portraits only – because I mostly suck at drawing people
pen only – all marks will remain on show
time limit of fifteen minutes maximum – to focus the mind
Day 12
Now, after completing twenty four days of the challenge, I am starting to notice an improvement over my earlier attempts. My line is more confident, and I’m starting to get a memory for the curves which make up a face.
Day 11
Progress however is definitely jerky and not a smooth curve, and I do often make the same mistakes. Even when I can see where I’m going awry I often plough on regardless and regret it later. But at least I know where I’m falling over; things will get better. Wouldn’t be a challenge if it wasn’t difficult!
Day 21Day 23
I’ve also noticed an improvement since I stopped using my fine 005 Pigma micron (the nib split) and jumped up to a 03, a thicker nib. I think the harder, darker mark forces clearer thought and analysis. It seems to have made me work more economically using fewer lines to better effect.
An added bonus is that my colleagues, who have all been so generous in sitting for me, are now less wary of how their faces are going to fare when rendered in pen by me…
With only a few days left I’m looking forward to seeing what my final set of drawings will be like. How about you?
Just over a week into Drawing August and I may be starting to regret my self-imposed choice of subject: pen portraits…
Drawing August is a Twitter challenge in which artists commit to produce a drawing every day during August – any subject and any medium. This is it’s second year, and following my difficulty last year in finding subjects, I made the decision to draw a pen portrait every day. Pure pen, pure line; no wash or any other tonal jiggery-pokery.
My figure drawing is an area which could really do with some work, and so I started in the hope that I would see a noticeable improvement over the month. And I’m determined to Tweet all my results, stinkers as well as roses.
My lovely work colleagues have been very generous in coming forward as models. Fortunately for them, I’m also determined to work to a self-imposed time limit of 15 minutes. No pressure! Weekends are going to be tricky, and I can see a few self portraits creeping in; not narcissism, necessity.
Day 7
So after the first week how’s it going? ‘Mixed’ would be a good description. Every day is different. Some days I’m very confident and sure of my line, others I’m a dithering, uncertain wreck – as in these two drawings.
Day 5
Thinking about it, a big factor has to be state of mind. All these pen portraits are made during lunch break, and switching instantly from an intense work mind-set to a creative space can be a wrench. Sometimes the work bleeds over and I don’t pay as much attention as I should. On a few of the portraits I can see where I’ve resorted to drawing what I think should be there rather than being guided by careful observation.
Day 1
Another factor I’ve noticed is that the portraits of my two male colleagues are far more confident than those of their female counterparts. Some sort of gender split going on? Well, I don’t think so. I have a theory that it has to do with hair.
Day 6
I reckon when I’m confronted by fluffy or flowing long hair I lose track of the structure underneath. As a result all the key bits of a face may be there, but not necessarily all in the right places.
Day 8
Both my male models so far sport minimalistic hair do’s (…) and while I may have blessed them with a couple of extra pounds, largely their likenesses aren’t too bad. And today’s drawing of a female colleague with her hair tied up seems to support my hypothesis. More of her face is visible, the resultant drawing is more confident and more accurate.
An interesting start, now, how many days left in August?
So, with the armature complete on my Hulk vs Spider-Man, it was time to start squidging on the clay. I decided to use grey Super Sculpey Firm, a polymer clay which stays soft until permanently set in a low temperature oven. My Allosauruswas sculpted in regular ‘pink’ Super Sculpey. But I found that it was really too soft. The warmth from my fingers rendered it so soft after working it for a while it was impossible to get any decent detail.
If anyone fancies playing around with polymer clays do be aware that they’re not without health warnings, even though they are marketed heavily at kids. The plasticisers they contain, phthalates, have been linked to an increased risk of some forms of cancer following prolonged exposure. Play carefully.
Sculpting tools
If anyone’s interested here are most of the tools I use, many from Tiranti sculpting supplies. Of these the ‘spoon’ next to the brush is my weapon of choice for most of the sculpting. But frankly, if pressed, I use pretty much anything which looks useful.
In these early stages I planned to simply bulk out both figures equally, but I started with the Hulk to get the weight in there. Blocking in all the big areas roughly and getting their proportions right from the start should pay dividends later – good foundations. I knew those life classes in the eighties would pay off one day.
Hulk and Spider-Man block 1
Sadly, my enthusiastic start suffered a few knocks. I immediately found an unforeseen problem. The clay really didn’t stick very well to Milliput epoxy putty. But after a bit of persistence I got it to work.
Hulk and Spider-Man block 2
Another problem emerged with support for the hands. I’d deliberately left any structure off until I could see exactly where the wrist and fingers would need to end up. Unfortunately not a bright move. I had to do a fair bit of bodging to attach some thin wire onto the forearms with epoxy. Next time I’ll weave the arms out of five strands of finer wire from the get-go so I can branch the fingers wherever needed.
Hulk and Spider-Man block 4Hulk and Spider-Man block 3
It was when I got onto blocking out Spider-man I knew I was in real trouble. The key position of the Hulk’s hand gripping Spidey’s ankle just wasn’t right. The Milliput core wouldn’t accommodate the correct position, it was well in the way. So out came the Dremel and I hacked back the armature with predictable results…
And so it was, inevitably, that something snapped and Spidey fell off. Bugger.
Difficult to believe it’s been a year since I really started to get into the whole social media lark. Well, Twitter anyway. And one of the first things that got me really involved in the virtual artistic community was ‘Drawing August’.
This was an idea conceived in a Twitter chat between printer Jean Stevens and illustrator Dean Lewis. The idea was simple, for participants to make one drawing every day for the month of August. And it really took off.
Genie in two sketches
For me it forced me to draw everyday, a great challenge. Last year I drew whatever happened to be easiest and to hand – my cats came in for some attention. But this year I have ‘a plan’.
By fair means and foul I’ve cajoled about ten of my work mates into posing for me during lunchtime on every work day (I hope). My idea is to produce a timed 15 min pen portrait of each of them for Drawing August. They’ll end up with a portrait, and I’ll no doubt end up with ulcers. My figure drawing could do with some improvement so this should really help me while scaring my colleagues with the results (methinks: I could lose friends here…)
While I won’t have enough people for every day of the challenge, it will add a new twist and focus. Wish me luck!
It’s been one of the hottest weeks I can remember for a long time. My reaction to the sweltering humidity has been to come home, drink and go to sleep. I did try painting but my studio is so sand-meltingly hot it’s truly unbearable. So, in the absence of my usual painty type stuff, here’s another retrospective continuing the creation of my long running Hulk vs Spider-Man sculpt.
After I made the wee maquette you saw in my last post I gathered my materials keen to get busy with the clay. But first, the pose needed a serious armature – a skeleton to stop it being all limp and floppy… (now, now; I can hear you making up your own jokes in the cheap seats…)
A quick sketch established both the scale of the Hulk and Spider-man and the positions of their major joints. This would be my guide when making the armature.
I used three gauges of annealed aluminium wire, the same type used for stop motion animation figures. This accommodating wire has the advantage that it’s had all of the ‘boing’ extracted. You bends it and it stays where you put it with no annoying spring.
Hulk vs Spider-Man wire armature
Each figure had an armature made directly from the scale sketch you can see in the background. The two armatures were wedded to each other at the Hulk’s right hand and Spider-Bloke’s ankle and then bent to roughly the right pose using my little maquette as a guide.
This sculpture will have a lot of weight suspended away from the main centre of gravity so I wanted a hefty base with the figures firmly attached. I laminated two layers of MDF into a rough block, drilled two holes and bolted the Hulk’s feet to it using captive nuts epoxied into the Hulk’s feet – that’ll learn ‘im! The base will only be cut to size and shape once the whole sculpt is complete.
Feeling quite chuffed with myself I showed it to my sculptor chum Andy Bill. Now, he’s an extremely knowledgeable fella and when I asked his opinion on the finished armature he was very clear that he didn’t think it would hold. I don’t think he actually giggled, but maybe he should’ve.
Front of the strengthened armatureRear of the strengthened armature
So I strengthened it by covering it in a layer of Milliput epoxy resin (that’s the green stuff). This both locked it in position and made it really robust; or so I thought…
Thought I’d have a change of pace from blogging about my paintings today. Instead, while I try to chase down and arrest my flagging mojo, I thought I’d continue my occasional post series about the sculpture I’ve been working on as a long term project. Be warned, if you don’t like superheroes turn away now, there may be tights ahead…
Whenever I mention I rather like comic books I tend to get one of two reactions. There’s either a shrug of indifference followed by a rapid change of subject, or a look usually reserved for someone who admits to working as a strangler on a bunny farm…
The reality is, without the lure of Marvel comic books, I probably wouldn’t be painting now. In the late sixties and into the seventies their colourful capers captured my imagination as I tried to draw my own adventures. I have moved on of course, but like it or not the lure of my youth remains.
Which brings me back to the sculpture; no surprise then that when choosing a Marvel hero to sculpt it had to be a classic with sixties pedigree.
I bought my first comic books back in 1966 or 67 – X-men and Thor. Thor featured the Stone Men of Saturn if I remember right, and the X-men, well not so sure, but I do remember a dynamic first splash panel with the team reporting to Professor X in a coffee house. But neither set the juices going for this project.
I’d set myself a couple of pre-conditions for my figure. It had to be both interesting to sculpt and it had to be dynamic rather than a standard ‘hero posing’ stance.
After a lot of mulling over, and even rejecting my all-time favourite Spider-Bloke, I plumped for… the Hulk.
I like the vaguely chubby big-brawler of Jack Kirby’s original, but I’m not keen on the really ripped look of some later interpretations which also found its way into the second Hulk film. My vision would lie somewhere in between.
Now I needed something dynamic for him to do. Leaping? Smashing? Raging to the skies? Meh, all a bit solo. No, a bit of a brawl sounded like much more fun. So, without even trying it seemed I’d actually committed myself to making two figures. Step up Spidey, I knew I couldn’t leave you out!
As an added bonus striking hues of emerald, red and blue would make a Hulk and Spiderman a colourful sculpture, as well as a powerful combination.
I’m dead impatient – I like to jump in and get ideas sorted double quick. So rather than spend time laboriously sketching I grabbed some scrap wire and a wad of Super Sculpey polymer clay and started to play with ideas on a diddy scale (about 2” tall).
And this is what I came up with – “Hulk hurl bugman!”
Hulk vs Spiderman macquette
Yes it may look as rough as a dogs doodah, just blobs really, but I hope you can see where I wanted it to go. This would be my guide and to be honest sorting out this rough was comparatively easy. The hard work was just beginning – translating my idea into a reality which would work.
During the last week of our June holiday the weather settled down, becoming bright, sunny and pleasantly warm. On one gorgeous early evening, the light was magical over the cliffs of Housel Bay looking west towards the Lizard lighthouse in Cornwall. I had to paint it.
Back home I decided to take my watercolour sketch and work it up into a finished painting. While I am pleased with the original, I don’t think it really captured the quality of the light. However just sitting in front of it, painting it en plein air, the scene etched into my mind, and if I shut my eyes I can still take myself back there.
Housel Bay, The Lizard, Cornwall
Besides the sketch I also took a photo the next day for reference. For me it felt important to get the proportions within the painting correct. My original sketch made the cliffs a little too deep.
Scaling up Housel Bay
I gridded up the photo and transferred the basic outline in pencil onto a piece of 60cm by 20 cm MDF. I primed this with Golden 100 acrylic resin to prevent any potential staining from the board seeping up into the paint layer over time. Over this I painted three coats of Winsor and Newton’s white acrylic gesso primer. I didn’t sand this as I wanted the brush marks to contribute to the finished painting.
Drawing Housel Bay
Once the pencil drawing was complete I reinforced the line using Ultramarine Blue. If any portion of the line remained visible in the finished painting it would sink back and not jar.
Under painting
For the under painting I wanted to intensify the warmth. As you can see from the foreground this bordered on cadmium orange in places.
Intermediate Housel Bay
The background cliffs, sea and sky fell into place quite quickly, which is more than can be said for the foreground… Unfortunately I went a bit OTT with the ‘grassiness’. I knew it was both too busy and too light in tone, so I decided to completely over paint it.
Evening at Housel Bay
This was the right decision. I worked with broader strokes from a flat brush to establish the form and the general run of the grasses. Once dry I darkened and unified the foreground using several alternating glazes of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue. This intensified the brightness of the evening light. For me this highlights one of the real advantages of acrylic over oils. In a warm room I managed to lay down several layers of glaze all in the space of an hour. This could have taken days or weeks if I’d been working in oils.
Very pleased with the final result. The exciting thing for me is that this is one of the first paintings I’ve produced ready for Andy Bill’s ‘Closer to the Art 2’ event on October 25th in Stone in Staffordshire. It will be framed and up for sale with several other works. This will be my first appearance at any show. Ooh, scary! Watch this space.
