Family Portraits, or Selfie Sunday

Lou decided, after watching the celeb-paint-off-challenge portrait thingy on telly, that what she and I really needed to do was to gather up a kitchen full of art materials, and to spend the afternoon staring anxiously at ourselves in mirrors. For some incomprehensible reason, I agreed. Lou grabbed the acrylics and a table easel, I dusted off my oils and the bockety leg-sliding full-size easel, and with our propped up mirrors in precarious place we set off on what turned out to be an entire afternoon’s self-portrait painting session. 

This was the sunniest, warmest, most glorious day of the year so far, and we spent it all indoors, utterly focused in rapt concentration, staring intently at every minute detail of our reflected faces. Which is all very well when you are a smooth fresh-skinned 20 year old, not so very well when you are a teensy (ahem) bit more mature and have spent quite a number of years successfully avoiding the fact that you are ever so slightly getting older. Whoever decided that there are only 7 signs of aging clearly has no idea whatsoever.

Wrinkles aside, painting a selfie turned out to be enormously interesting and enjoyable. I had no real idea of where to start so I kind of jumped too randomly from loosely painting large flat area to laboriously fiddling with little details, but gradually a semi recognisable face appeared.  Although it is by no means an exact likeness ( I am adamantly not admitting to being that haggard and worried), neither is it a million miles from resembling the middle aged woman fixedly glowering at herself in the mirror.  

Lou was excellent; she had never painted a portrait before nor has she much experience with acrylics, but she just dove on in there. I was deadly impressed with the boldness and surety of her approach. She blocked out her whole face in big tonal shapes, and then just put in enough detail to make it right, but not fussy.  I think her portrait is wonderfully striking – and much though I’d love to grab a little bit of credit for any teaching or motherly inspiration, I can’t actually, she’s just a natural.

While Lou and I had our mini artist’s colony up and running in the kitchen, Paul was in the garage also working on a self-portrait, one of a series he has been doing lately. Is this normal? Is this how other families spend Easter Sunday? Hmm, I suspect not. This face below is as yet unfinished, I believe will have paint, an aerial, possibly candles; yup, not normal at all!

Top tip for urban sketching: live somewhere urban!

Here goes with the blindingly obvious:  in order to be an ‘urban sketcher’, some ‘urban’ would be very useful. We however live in a small rural village, where the architectural style varies from red brick with tile, to, well, tile with red brick.  My burnt sienna sees a lot of action. I thought perhaps that a view over Guildford might offer something new subject wise, so I made some sandwiches and proposed a picnic up a hill. We got there to find that architecturally there was little on offer; yet more tile roofs interspersed among some dead winter trees wasn’t exactly inspiring. But we had a bit of rare spring sunshine, good sandwiches, a beer, a contented dog, and the Sunday paper and once I got around to giving the view a try, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable.  Whether it qualifies as urban sketching is another matter.

Another day another trip into Guildford. This is a view of the back of Quarry Street, which I have always liked, as it is such a motley collection of styles, shapes, materials and colours.  Some of the buildings date back to the sixteenth century, and were presumably quite modest originally.  Over time they have been re-modelled and extended, hence the current wonderful clutter of additions, accretions and addendum that must span centuries; legible history to the more architecturally literate. Which is all very well and good, but it is quite a befuddling jumble to draw!

I don't know if the new buildings sprouting up around Guildford University will be quite so characterful or interesting, but at least the building site provided me with a bit of new subject matter.  I have started carrying a small wax birthday cake candle in my pencil case, thinking it would be useful for keeping white areas masked while painting.  I had birch trees in mind originally, but actually when faced with trying to indicate the forest of scaffolding around the buildings, it turned out to be very useful indeed. I'm terribly cross with myself for ending up with the crane in the page crease! 

Bravery in Brooklands

I'm still a complete and utter wimpy coward when it comes to sketching when there are people about; it is  ridiculously restrictive being so stupidly self conscious. But there you go, what can you do; until someone finally gets around  to inventing that invisibly cloak I'm scuppered. Luckily for me, I have two brave sketching daughters and a totally unbothered unabashed arty sister, and when any of them are around, I love the chance to pack up the paints and head out with them.

The above mentioned sister and I were all set for enthusiastic outdoor stuff, but the morning was really foul, so we did a quick detour to Brooklands Museum instead. It had the merit of being indoors, but the  downside of being full of scarily complex machinery.

A wonky warm--up sketch did not fill me with enthusiasm and I really wanted to slink off home. But Sal ( the sister) had settled in for a long pencil examination of an impressively shiny car bonnet, I had to do something; I sat facing this thing and prepared to be flummoxed. 

I squinted, sighed, carped and cursed, but eventually something sort of appeared - yeah it's  a bit blobby, but it looks like a car, even dare I say it, like the car I was sat before, so that'll do me. 

Sal was still battling with reflections when I finished, so I sat on the floor by some motorbikes, in a great position to listen in to everyone's conversations while feigning deep concentration. Half-term kids were asking half--term Granddads questions. I must have heard at least four different explanations of who Lawrence of Arabia was, and I'm not entirely sure any of them were quite accurate.  'Famous chap who had a motorbike' was one chap's attempt, I suppose you can't really argue with that.

None of these is Lawrences bike, that was a Brough Superior - it was beside me, utterly gorgeous, but way too shiny to attempt to sketch, unless you are a fearless arty sister.