BP Portrait Award 2016

Well, there is good news and some not so good news.

Firstly, one of my paintings has been selected for the 2016 BP Portrait Award exhibition, initially at the National Portrait Gallery in London, then touring. Which is, of course, astonishingly good news.

The not so good news is that I'm going to be winding down this blog - I've really been struggling to post here, what with the day job as well as the painting, and I've decided pretty much to stop trying.

Instead you can find me on facebook for works in progress and so on, or (occasionally) on twitter as well as the webpage and there is a newsletter to sign up for, which will have invites for exhibitions.

Hopefully will still see you guys around - it's been fun!

Painting Frocks (And Some Jackets)

Thurs 4th Feb

On thursday I began to tackle A Century Of Style , an exhibition I'd been to a couple of weeks ago at Kelvingrove. I was very taken by the exhibition, especially the mirror used so we could see right round the clothes, and thought they's be a good basis fr exploring space and composition as well as colour.

Two Frocks

Three Frocks

Masculine Red

These three paintings are the result and I am fairly pleased with them, but am aware they are a beginning - this is very much a theme I will be returning to later.

Inspired by Mackintosh

So the challenge of the day was to make work inspired/based on a particular artist - I chose Mackintosh, since he is such a local hero and his work is quite different from mine, loads of sharp edges and geometry as opposed to soft organic curves.

Relatively pleased with the results, learned a fair bit and the second painting's viewpoint is something I will develop into bigger paintings later on.

The Little Dancer

Degas is one of my art heroes and I knew as soon as I started this challenge I'd be including this little lady. I intend to do a whole series eventually, hopefully with her in various museums around the world, but to start with here she is in the Musee D'orsay.

(Rather enjoyed painted the little paintings in the background of the first paintings, and the man in the second - he really did have his feet in a very similar position to the statue! )

The Threshold, Kelvingrove Museum

The Threshold

Really happy with this one, based on The Threshold by Mary Buchanan at Kelvingrove Gallery.
It is painted on a board prepared earlier with a layer of cadmium red, and the darks were put in first with an inch brush. Then went in the light tones, with most detail for the sculpture. The result is a very warm painting with glimpses of fiery red - which suits the theme.

Colour Crazy

After painting The Red Wall I thought I'd continue the colour theme - I'm on a mission to use all the colours!

The Red Wall

Yesterday was a good day. The main aim of both these paintings was to explore mark making more and think about colour. Happy with the results!

Why Museums?

Why museums? Lots of reasons, not least that I have loads of photographs from The British Museum and The Louvre from when I was there in November. At that point I was thinking a lot about backgrounds and composition as well as wanting to learn more about how different people have imaginatively portrayed the human figure.

These are all things I want to explore and experiment with during the hundred days, along with thinking more about colur and mark making. Other advantages are that there are plenty of museums within easy travel distance for me to get new reference material (particularly looking forward to The Burrell Collection) and that there is a very wide range of possible subject matter, allowing me to explore a sorts of colour combinations and compositions.

However, there are limitations - working only from photographs, not controlling the light or the arrangement of objects. In some ways though these are freedoms - building a database of photos to work from is time consuming but can be done when otherwise tired and means that getting started in the studio is fairly painless. Not having control over the subject matter's arrangement or lighting means I have to concentrate more on composition and colour.

But the main reason is that I just really like being in museums. The only other type of place I maybe like as much (apart from the studio) are bookshops. Take me to a beautiful, awe inspiring landscape and I'm pretty bored. Take me to a museum, and I could be there for days - looking at the exhibits, drawing the exhibits, watching the people, having a glass of something and cake . . . they are like a little world apart, parallel to normal life, each one different and yet the same as all the others. Heaven!

Animals

Seems to be an animal theme today. Sadly the photo's are just too rubbish to share individually.

Getting Into The Swing

For the last couple of days I've been doing non-art stuff mainly so it was nice to get into the studio again today.

This is the first day I've not had to think about my materials too much and could therefore concentrate more on colour and mark making - there is always more to learn but progress is being made - and I'm now up to 11 paintings, which should give me a bit of leeway.

Classic Bahookie

So today I got to experiment with my new brushes and the Michael Harding medium.

First I painted the four lioness ladies, using the soft brushes on a board to which I had applied a layer of burnt sienna.

The paint flowed much better than previously and I was fairly happy with the result. But I was itching to try the medium.

And this is the result - much more painterly and flowing, generally just managed to control the paint better. Using the dark background that I'd prepared a few days ago also let me really concentrate on the lights. Definitely and improvement!

Day 3 - Shopping!

Today I went shopping, for soft brushes and medium. Some Sap Green and Manganese may have jumped into my basket as well - which is nice as I have recently added both colours to my basic palette, expanding it from seven colours to nine.

Tomorrow I'll give them a spin (and possibly liquin as well - in smaller sizes it is only available in childproof containers, which unfortunately are also Jane proof. However my studio-mate Louise Scott has promised to lend me a little bit).

So look for an update tomorrow!

Pericles

Day 2 and I am experimenting with my materials, after having problems yesterday.

Initially I tried again with the same methods and although I quite like the resulting painting (furthest left) it was a bit of a pain to paint.

So next time, the first thing I changed was putting a layer of burnt sienna down and then wiping it off, in the hope that this will make my painting surface less grabby. This worked beautifully for Pericles, which is painted on linen. Then I used dark paint thinned with turps to lay down a drawing and then used paper towel and turps to lighten areas. Next I tried actually painting and soon ran into trouble. Changing to a soft brush made all the difference though and I was able to lay down a fairly solid area. However, the biggest soft brush I have is only about a cm across, so clearly I need to go shopping.

The lack of a big brush showed up even more in my next painting, The Egyptian Duo. This one is on gessoed board and I really struggled getting the paint to flow in any reasonable way. This is a shame as it is fairly easy to get boards in small sizes and generally for my other work I prefer them.

This afternoon I'm going to put a layer of paint onto a few of these boards and let them dry. Hopefully that'll help, along with bigger brushes!

2016 - The Year To Come

The start of a new year, time for new beginnings, and I know that non-art commitments are going to keep me very busy for the next six months at least.

So I have decided that painting at least one little painting every day I can make it to the studio will keep things ticking over. It will also let me experiment quicker with my materials, with methods, with composition, paint application and colour - in short, with pretty much every aspect of picture making.

So I have promised myself to paint a hundred paintings over the next hundred days. Most of these will be small oil studies although I will count bigger paintings and possibly drawings, depending on what I am working on as the time goes on. Each work only gets counted once, though, even if I spend more than one day on it. To start with the little studies will be museum interiors - like the lady dancing above, who is from the British Museum. This is because I have been thinking a lot about composition and depth recently, as well as looking at how different people have portrayed the human form previously. But who knows what I'll be painting by the end of the time!

Anyway, I will be posting them (good and bad) here, facebook and at @glasgwjane on twitter. All encouragement very welcome!

The Year That Was - 2015

Time to look back before moving forward - what have I achieved this year?

It has been strange and often frustrating. In May I had an operation on my hand which although successful has left me in a fair bit of pain and limited severely my ability to paint for the best part of six months. This lead me to working in graphite and focusing on the planning stages. It meant I had time to meet lots of new people, who came to the studio to pose. In the end I had over twenty thousand reference photographs of models, which is pretty amazing and gives me a lot of freedom to make new paintings.

Using the graphite, especially liquid pencil, has freed up my mark making and let me be more experimental, since each drawing only takes a few hours. Being more selective about which images become paintings has led to a higher rate of finished work - something that became very useful when I started painting again in October, with only a couple of months to paint enough paintings for all the christmas shows.

Some of these shows were in new places - The RSA, The lovely Smithy Gallery, Leiper Fine Art and The Fotheringham Gallery - others were in old favourites such as the Glasgow Art Club and Art Exposure Gallery. My favourite show though was probably Alice at 150 in Mansfield Park Gallery - there was so much creativity in the exhibition it was a real honour to be involved.

So overall despite the difficulties I feel that I'm in a really good place for the coming year - and more on that tomorrow!

Christmas Shows

The last few weeks have been very buy ones, getting paintings finished nd then photographed/framed and into galleries in time for their christmas shows. But all that's done so I really aught to let you all know where they have gone.

First to open is Mansfield Park Gallery's 150 Years With Alice, which had it's private viewing last sunday. The show is wonderful, with a nice range of work around the Alice theme, including Fran Hanley's charming multi media works.

This friday (the 27th) there are three openings. The first, and the one I'm attending, is the RSA Open on the mound in Edinburgh. I'm delighted to be showing with them for the first time and am really looking forward to seeing all the work tomorrow night in such grand surroundings.

Also in fairly grand surroundings is the Glasgow Art Cub on Bath Street, whose winter show I helped hang on tuesday. It all looks great and the re-opening of the main halls means more artists are putting in work than has been the case for a few years. There has also been a few really great new members elected recently that will be showing their work here for the first time. Also there is a small works show, including one of my drawings, in the reception/bar area - so nice to see so much work up in one place!

Art Exposure Gallery at 516 Great Western Road are also having their christmas opening that night, from half five generally. Again there will be a big variety of work and a very warm welcome - I wish I had a jet pack or something to travel between all three shows!

Saturday afternoon is the next opening, at RGI Kelly Gallery . This is a postcard exhibition with most works under £300 and unframed - I'll be trying to go along to catch a bargain.

And finally there will be The Smithy Gallery , opening on Sunday the 6th of December. Again this is a group show and knowing the quality of artist's that exhibit here I'm looking forward to seeing all the paintings up on the walls.

Hopefully I'll see some of you at at least one of these shows!

WIP 23rd September

Finally a painting week - 5 probably done paintings and three more started.

Some studio tidying/clearing as well, as it is Open Studios on the 3rd and 4th October. It's really nice to have some space again and to get some new finished works up on the wall.

As you can see two of the new paintings are the 12 x 16 inch size - and one is my first big paper mask painting. Can't wait to see what these look like finished, as they look pretty strong already. The other one doesn't have as clear tonal differences and I'm more nervous about it but the plan is for there to be some subtle painting things going on, to counteract the dramatic subject matter. Next week you should be able to see how I've progressed - I might completely change my mind.

WIP 16th Sept 2016

Another mainly drawing week - as you can see I've been doing more 12x16 inch drawings as I really like this format and am planning a little series - out of the 14 drawings I can see me painting about eight of them, to join the two paintings I've already done. (you can get a glimpse of those in progress back at the start of August ). I've also started planning some bigger paintings, but feel I'm still very much in the beginning stages of this - and I feel that I'm going to need some time and experimenting to get this right. So for the time being I'll mainly be sticking to smaller things, under a couple a feet.

Oh, and I've started tidying in preparation for the open studios at Hanson St on the 3rd and 4th of October - would love to see some of you there!

WIP 9th September

A bit of a drawing week this one, partly because I didn't have a lot of studio time and partly as I wanted to explore the 12x16 inch format more. One of the changes that I'm planning is working with a more limited range of sizes and this one seems to fit a single figure quite well. Not all of these drawings will become paintings as some ideas are just better than others - the top right in particular I think should be a smashing painting, although I prefer the ones on the left as drawings.

So I had a day painting, in which I may have finished the top two and have made progress on the other two - if they have dried enough they will get more done tomorrow, with the little cat probably being finished then. The other one I suspect will take some time - not least because the aluminium is new to me and I'm still not decided if I'll leave part of the surface bare or not. Any opinions?

WIP 2nd Sept 2015

Mainly painting again this week - started four new paintings and done more work on six others, from changing the background to fully finishing. Eight of these should get finished over the next week and then I'll move on to finishing the five still lifes that have been in progress since before May. It will be a relief both to finish the uncompleted works and to get a batch of new paintings up on the walls.

Although I'm itching to get started on some bigger paintings based on the drawings I've done so far that might have to wait a few weeks until after the Open Studios at Hanson Street in the first weekend in October. Up until then I'll mainly be limiting myself to smaller works - I've been having ideas about a new series of works, all 12x16 inches. The plan presently is to spend Saturday doing drawings in preparation for these, so we'll see how it goes.