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. 

Tractor ! Digger! Dog!

Just like when the kids were young and excitedly spotting trains, tractors and lorries from their car seats, I now find myself often going 'look - digger!' Big machinery always looks tempting to try and draw, with good interesting shapes and often wonderful strong colours. Unfortunately, it is also often surrounded by building sites full of rather intimidating looking builders, and I'm way too much of a coward to plonk myself down in front of them.

Luckily there has been a bit of drainage and conservation work going on up on the common lately, and it stops at the weekends, so the machines are left parked out there alone. I found this one on my birthday - we spotted it on our early dog walk, and then I went back later with my sophisticated woodland sketching kit - i.e. a plastic bag to sit on. This was early Feb, and it was an absolutely lovely lovely morning. I sat there ever so contentedly in the unexpected sunshine, smiling like an eejit, sat in a bog.

A couple of days later I spotted this little tractor - if that is what it is - it is like the lovechild between a Nissan Micra and a Massey Ferguson. I had Max with me, but I was near no tree, so I had to attach him to my foot. A bored sighing dog who is keeping an eye out for rabbits concentrates the mind no end - this was done super quickly.

This bit of rusting machinery has been out on the common for as long as we have been living here, so it must be there 20 years at least, maybe far more. Rust notwithstanding, it is a sturdy heavy thing, whatever it is. I imagine it will be out there for may more years to come.

Also out on the common, or beside it anyway, is this cute little green barn - I love the colour of it. This was also done with the dog sitting beside me. At one stage he had an enthusiastic barking fit at something or another, knocking over my water and trampling on my paints in the process - As a sketching companion he has some shortcomings. 

What colour is mayonnaise?

Saturday  mornings float my boat;  I love having an extra large extra long breakfast, with an extra huge pot of tea, I love eating that breakfast while browsing through the paper, and possibly doing the Sudoku, and I love that not long after the whole extended breakfast affair - it's nearly time for lunch!

Lunch usually consists of a good chewy baguette sandwich with decent ham, home made mayo, toms, leaves and mustard; we stray away from this occasionally, but always find our way back pretty quickly. I'm usually sort of okay with my colour mixing, but I ended up staring at the jar of mayo for a ridiculously long time trying to figure out how to make, well, a creamy bland colour.

The curry ingredients came from the Thai shop in Guildford - they have some fabulous looking odd veg in there, most of which I'm entirely clueless about so I chicken out of buying them. I  hadn't bought yard long beans before - kinda longer beans are hardly an adventurous step into the unknown though!

Some days I'm just really itching to sketch-  there seems to be something a bit addictive about it. This is why I ended up sitting over a bubbling pot of  bean and harissa soup - squinting and drooling simultaneously. Good soup!

And then sometimes, I get the urge to sketch, but figure I'll skip the drooling part of the process, and just draw the kitchen. 

Scenes at the Museum

I don't know how, but I had somehow forgotten what an utterly wonderful place the Victoria and Albert is; it is just awesome room after awesome room.( (And I am using the word awesome here in original 'fills you with awe' sort of way, not in twangy American ubiquitous sort of way). And not only is there an astonishing abundance of subject material, there are many people sitting around drawing this astonishing abundance, so I could just, you  know, sort of blend in. Which worked fine in theory.

I began in one of the cast rooms, where, among so so so many other magnificent items, including some whoppingly enormous pillars, there were casts of some relief sculptures with the cutest little figures ever. The casts are from a Spanish monastery, Santo Domingo de Silos, and these little chaps are below a crucifixion/ tomb scene. I am assuming they are Roman soldiers who are either sleeping or have collapsed, but they are really beautifully stylized and I love the composition.

I drew these in a relatively sheltered spot, but I wasn't happy painting there as haven't figured out the painting while standing bit yet. I moved to the corridor with sculptures and found a very comfy bench where I painted these chaps in.  Then I was tootling away on the sketch below when a (very nice it has to be said) woman told me I shouldn't be painting there! oops! I could see her point actually, at this stage I had my water bottle perched on a heater, and the paints balanced precariously  on my lap - probably not idea museum behavior.

This fine fellow is apparently the 'celebrated quack doctor Joshua Ward', who, if I have to be honesst, is a little finer in real life, I have made him a bit squat.

So my plans for drawing and painting were rather quashed - yes, I could have drawn, but I love to get the watercolours out, so it was a bit disappointing. I did this one in the cafe, I assumed the painting ban wouldn't be in force there, but it was a very hurried job, just in case. I was taken by the way the poor statue had to stand there guarding her modesty all day while gawpers ate all around her. 

After a bit more very enjoyable wandering, I head off across the road to look at the exterior. The plan was to sketch the wonderful door arches, but I started at the top and then sort of ran out of space! 

It was utterly freezing ( note the fingerless gloves) and  I spilled my water, so it was time to pack up and head home. Great day out though. 

In need of some colour

We walk the commons around us every morning, and although I absolutely know we are lucky with our access to the countryside around us, and although I absolutely adore being out there - God but it's dull these days. Bleached-brown dead leaves, rust-brown collapsed bracken, grey-brown scrawny heather, and dun-brown bare trees- brown, brown,brown, brown. I'm heartily sick of it.

I felt a desperate need for some colour!

And lo and behold - colour!  in bramble leaves of all things. They are quite gorgeous once you start keeping an eye out for them - there are some lovely rich tones in there.

I started watching out for some more little touches of colour, but with limited success: the wild rose hips were on their very shriveled last legs;  the crab apples were beginning to rot.

All that concentrated peering means I am noticing little colour shifts in places I haven't before. 

It also means I look like an utter mad woman, wandering about, staring into ditches, filling my pockets with mouldy crabs. If I came across me out there, I'd avoid me.