How to underpaint a Roman wall....and why you never never forget your flask!

After a very busy few months, it was back into the studio today to continue with my current 2 pieces, my pa of the Balkerne Gate and St Botolphs's, both in Colchester.  Having got half way to the studio before realising I had left my sketchbook at home with the work I would need to continue with the St Botolph's piece, the decision was made for me to concentrate on Balkerne gate for today.

In my previous posts you will see the work I have done so far on this piece, today was about the underpainting on the gate.

I decided to use the same Indian Red as I had used in the underpainting for the sky.

 It's a very warm teracotta colour, that I'm using to highlight it's Roman origins.  The brincks in the wall are still visibly red in colour but have changed colour due to erosion, time and pollution.
By hinting at the brickwork detail, although this will be painted over at a later stage, it will aloow me to follow some of the lines when I do the overpainting.

With some colour added to the floor it was time to bring in dome tomes to help give it definition and depth.  Black at this stage would be too severe so instead I began to mix Steel Blue, into the Indian Red.  This was the colour I had used for the sky, so Iwas almost painting the direct reversal for the foreground as I had for the background
I wasn't sure if this would give it too much of a purple hue, but i was pleased with the results.

I began working in the darker tones gradually as I didn't want to overwhelm the balance of the piece.
at this point it would have been good to stand back with a cuppa whilst I decided on my next move.  Only I realised not only had I forgotten my sketchbook but also my flask.  Now this was a crisis as far as i was concerned....I cannot remeber the last time I painted without a cup of tea or coffee and I can say it is not an experience I wish to repeat.  It is practically improssible to be creative without a hot beverage!!

Without much choice I had to power through.  I decoded to add some highlights, but not with white as this would be too much of a washout for the colours.  I wanted to keep it warm so began the hunt around my space for yellow.  it wasn't quite the shade i was looking for....in fact i'm not sure what shade it was, but it was the only one I had *note to self, stop on the way home to purchase a better shade of yellow*.

When mixed with the Indian Red it actually worked quite well (but I still stopped ont he way home anyway!)

By using an the blue to give the structural defination, this will help me to add much more depth with the overpainting later and not lose the larger areas of tone when I add a lot more of the brickwork detail later.

So I left the studio today, pleased with how it's developing.  Next week i need to remember to take my sketchbook so that I can make a start on the St Botolph's piece and will NEVER AGAIN forget to take my falsk to the studio - schoolgirl error, Eve....schoolgirl error!

Decisions.....decisions......

In my last post I shared that for the first time in a really long while, I'm going to be working on 2 paintings at the same time.

  Now...this isn't life-changing, it won't rip apart the fabric of time and space, but it is quite a change in process for me.  I usually like to give one painting a time my full and undivided attention.  For some strange reason I really want to get another piece underway so thought, whatever- go with.

And so I charged around the ruins, taking photographs of every corner, wall, and doorway.  It was a beautiful, bright and crisp November afternoon and the winter sun helped to create some effective shadows across the walls.

It was very atmospheric.  From the remains of beautifully crafted doors and windows I really got a sense of the place it must have been before the Reformation.  

Even after taking its final battering during the Civil War, there is still plenty left to conjure visions of its former glory.  Ordinarily, I would know within minutes, which part to paint, but seriously....I really have no idea.  

Over the next couple of weeks I will make some sketches to see if a particular part speaks to me.  

I am sure it will, but one thing is certain, after spending some quiet contemplative moments in such a beautiful place...

I can't wait to start this painting - I hope I can do it justice.

Come back in a few days for the first sketch!

St Botolph's in the making

So, this weekend I have changed the way in which I work.  Ordinarily I work on one painting at a time. Logistically this makes sense as my studio space is not much bigger than a first class stamp, but I also tend to do this as I like to focus on one piece at a time to give it my full attention.  That changed this weekend, when for the first time since being a student, I have embarked on a 2nd work which I will work on at the same time as finishing my painting of the Roman Gateway in Colchester (or the West Gate/Balkerne Gate, see previous posts).

I have started the research for the piece the subject of which will be another of Colchester's great historical features, St Botolphs Priory, or rather it's ruins.

Next weekend I will take myself into town to take some of my own photo's and make some preliminary sketches, which I will include on here - there are a lot on the internet if you would like to see what it looks like, but I'm not including any here as I don't want to infringe any copyrights!

My research this weekend has taken me by way of when it was built, who was St. Botolph and getting some images of the Saint that I could include in the work.  Also some Latin Bible text, as my work will look at it's destruction during the reformation and subsequent damage during the Civil War.  Now, the remains of the priory are a rather dramatic and stoic feature behind the shopping area of Colchester.  Often shoppers can be seen sat having quiet moments of reflection amidst the bustle of the town.  It seems that some sites keep an air of their past even in the present.  

If there is anyone reading this local or otherwise who can give me insight into this sites past, or their own personal view of the place then I'd be very happy to hear from you as I would like to work it into my painting.

See it's progress over the next few months here......

Corner cutting and drawing in the dark

With canvas procured I went off to the studio today with a spring in my step and Paloma Faith blasting out of the car.  After a lot of planning and research I could get underway.  I have to admit I envisage this work to be on a larger scale, however the constraints of boot size and with no access to a larger vehicle, I had to go with a size that I could get to and from my studio space.

So without anymore delay I'm staring at the slightly overwhelming sight of a blank canvas.  It doesn't matter how many times in my life I have started a new piece, I always find the sight of a blank canvas daunting. BUT, that soon disappeared as this was the first chance for me to give my new toy a whirl.  I've bought a tracer, and before you start thinking "cheat!", I'm using it to project my own drawings onto larger canvases.  I am corner cutting yes, however it saves a lot of time and frustration measuring and scaling up and I am happy to use technology as a part of the process.

So the next question was composition; in my preparatory sketch of the Roman gate it was landscape, but I wanted the painting to be portrait.  So how much to include.....

Apologies for the quality of the pictures above, but I was taking them on my camera phone in the dark!  After a lot of walking from one side of my studio (now when I say walking, my studio space is rather bijou, so it is more like taking 2 steps!) to the other, tilting my head one way, then the other and talking to myself an AWFUL lot, I decided to go with the composition on the right.  I thought it more dynamic and envisaged the whole composition working better.  I preferred the proportions of sky to gateway and floor here.  If you have read my previous posts you will know that I am creating a layered landscape.  I will not only be painting but also collaging and including images from Colchester's rather colourful past.  Rather than painting just a snapshot of a place in a particular moment in time, I will be getting under it's skin; almost like an archaeologist scraping away layers of time.  I'm a geek and proud, so this work taps into my love of history and research.  See....geek!!!!

With my composition decided upon, then started my next challenge....find a pencil!  How does an artists' studio not have a pencil in it?! I really have no idea what happened to them all.  I finally managed to locate a "Birdworld" pencil that had obviously been bought for me at some point...probably as a joke I can't really remember, but it was sharp and that was all that mattered.  I started with the outline;

......and then eureka!! Whilst stopping for a quick chocolate break I found 2 graphite sticks...hurrah!!  I then began working the darker shades into the surface and giving it extra detail.  I'm working in the dark with the projector and can't really see a thing, so there's no way I can paint like that.  I needed to get as much detail into the drawing as possible to be a guide for the layers of paint that will follow.

I kept the mark making quick and loose as when I come to paint, although working from my original sketch (see previous posts) I want to still have freedom.  With too much information it will constrain the brush strokes and the painting will loose it's energy.

So after 20 or so minutes, working into the image and adding more to the left hand side, making the gateway disappear off to the left hand side of the canvas, I had enough information in the drawing to be to begin drawing on my next studio session.  Here's where I left it and will post the works progress here once the painting is underway so stay tuned.

I've been bad!

I cannot believe my last post on here was May!  I know, I know the most successful blogs are those which are updated regularly.  It has been an incredibly busy few months and I still have to buy a canvas to start the piece that has been in the pipeline for months now!

I've also started as a blogger with UK Arts directory so keep in touch with me over there at http://ukartsdirectory.com/category/blog/eve-brinkley-whittington/  I'm doing a regular stint looking at the up's and down's of becoming a professional artist, it's a little less personal than my blog here, bit more discursive but i'm really enjoying working with the team, they're a great bunch who work to promote all of the creative industries here in the UK.

A trip to Istanbul has given me a lot of ideas for a new series of works, I haven't even finished my Essex series yet and with York in the pipeline as well i need to get busy with the paintbrushes.

Open Studio season is also upon us, so if you are local to Essex (the one in the UK not America) and you're not busy on the weekend of the 5th/6th Sept then come and join us to see some fantastic artwork...I'm not just talking about me here either! http://www.colchesteropenstudios.org/ you'll find me in the Artists Directory at the top of the page along with all the other wonderful artists (plug, plug, plug!)

There will be a lot more being posted her in the next couple of months, pictures updates on the new painting, Open Studios pictures and plans of the next series.  So sorry for the blog white noise over the last couple of months, I'll more than make up for it...I promise!

"Just give me Britain, so that I may paint it with your colours, but with my own brush."

After having spent a number of weeks researching, I made a start this week on my newest painting.  The preliminary sketch was completed on Monday.  The gateway of the Roman Wall at Colchester will be the focal point of the composition.  But as my previous post shows, there will be quite a lot of other images going into this piece.  The difficulty here is going to be how to lay it all out.

I want to create a really rich piece, with depth and layers.  2000 years in one painting is a lot, and if I get it wrong it could just look like a big mess.

The execution of this is going to take quite a while, especially in terms of the individual layers.  Letting one dry before being able to get on with the next.  I will be using a range of different materials on this; oil paint  varnish, gold leaf, paper, metallic flakes,and probably some other stuff too.

I am really looking forward to this one, I just have to wait a couple more weeks until payday so that I can get the canvas.
Last time I posted I had a very talented lady Anni Howard get in touch with me, who uses the history of the area as inspiration for her knitted pieces.  A very interesting read at www.annidomino.blogspot.co.uk

As always the progress of my new painting will be posted here and in more detail on my website at www.oilypalette.co.uk so keep visiting to see how it goes.  In terms of composition, it's going to be the most complex piece I've painted in a number of years and size-wise I want it to be grand in stature, perhaps the biggest painting I will have worked on since Art college...I just hope I can fit it in my studio space, it's only wee!!

Not a huge amount of progress!

After even more taping this doesn't look like it's going anywhere at the moment...it is...honest!  2 hours of cutting, tearing and sticking and I was about to call it a day at the studio yesterday.  But I just couldn't leave without doing at least some painting.  So here was how it was looking, I didn't take pictures of it once the painting was done and the tape came off, because...there's still.more.tape.to.go.on!!!

I have said it before but not necessarily on here, I don't think(?) - if I ever talk of making a painting with ANY straight lines in again, please someone just punch me in the face.

More pictures to follow later in the week that should show much more progress.  Only a small amount of painting left to go on the beach huts themselves, then I'm adding the spray paint, metallics and gold leaf.  Can't wait!

Too many straight bloody lines!

This week I'm sitting typing this at a far more sensible hour than last week.  To get to the studio today was  a real relief after a ridiculously busy week.  Whilst working to become a professional artist my...."day job" is Art teacher at a secondary school (those of you reading this outside of the UK, that's 11-16 year old kids).  It's an incredibly busy job at the best of times but this week it reached warp factor 10 in busy!

Ofsted graced us with their presence to carry out the second inspection in a year, this means high amounts of stress for all involved.  On Wednesday I finished work at 8.30pm and by 5.50am the next morning I was on my way into work again.  Thursday and Friday was my GCSE students mock exam (it might only be a rehearsal of the real thing but in organising everything around it - it might as well be the real thing).  Finally on Friday night as Head of Creative Arts I was responsible for my Faculty putting on the school Talent Show.
It went well, but was another late night and again in terms of helping my anxiety levels...it didn't!

Finally it was the weekend and on Saturday night I toasted it's coming with a few large glasses of wine.  So by today I was relaxed and ready to paint.

When I arrived at the studio today I knew that with most of the under-painting finished freehand, I now had to get to work on layering my colours and using masking tape to tidy up my edges.  So I began taping......

....and 15mins later I was still taping........

.......in fact for 3 hours I spent most of my time taping and this reminded me why I usually paint landscapes with not a sodding straight line in sight!!  In between I actually manged to do some painting!

The thing about working with tape is that, as annoying as it is putting all the stuff on, it is INCREDIBLY satisfying to peel it all off and see lovely crisp, straight edges.  Although it probably doesn't look much like a lot happened today, I managed to layer my colours and add light & shade to both of the flanking beach huts. Next week that just leaves me with the detail of the posts at the front and that's right, you guessed it...........more bloody taping!

Here's how I left it, night night all.

QR codes and art fairs......

Well as I have said before in previous posts, there are quiet weeks, busy weeks, disappointing weeks, successful weeks, weeks I can't even remember and some weeks where you get a little bit of everything!

I think this week was one of small triumphs.  My work was accepted into an Art Fair which is being held in Chelsea (the one in London, that of the Pensioners and famous barracks)

The manager of the art fair emailed me to say that he had seen my work and would like to know if I was interested in participating.  Abso-bloody-lutely!!!  So, I am now very focused on finishing my current piece (see post below!) so that I can include it with a few other recent pieces.  I shan't reveal all now but will of course be including here closer to the time.  It's in February, very helpfully it's actually at the end of the half term week so I will be off work to take my work to Chelsea to put it up.

Now fate would have it that it is also the weekend that one of my best friends gets married.  This particular fair has invigilators as a constant presence so the artists themselves don't have to be present for the whole weekend.  Good, but I was talking to my partner about the best way to include my contact details for those that are interested in my work.  They can obviously speak to the staff there but I felt like I wanted something a bit more immediate and fun than that.  Of course I have business cards which I shall leave out but then we came up with the idea of a QR code. 
I could put several of these on the display with my work so than rather than just a link on my business card those with smart phones could scan the code and be taken straight through to my website...genius!!

With great ease I found a website that enabled me to make my own code FOR FREE!!!  I downloaded it and when I tried it and it worked I was way more excited than perhaps I should have been.  And here it is.....

If you've tried scanning it and it has worked it should take you straight through to my website, yay!  Okay so some of you might be reading this thinking, "erm...yeah? Those have been out for ages!"  Yes they have but hey I'm always a little late to the party with this kind of stuff.  Anyway, who cares it's bloody brilliant!

Charles Saatchi - as I'll be just round the corner to you if you fancy popping in to look at my work then please feel free, and use the code - I bet you're a bloke that appreciates a QR code?!

There you have it, globally speaking a week of small triumphs, but I'll take them where I can get them.  Success is success right?  I'll take that!

Up to my elbows in it...literally!

Sunday roast is nearly ready so short and sweet.  Here's the progress in the studio today of my current piece.  A LOT of concentration painting all the straight lines....then whilst painting the roof I stuck my entire forearm (right up to my elbow) on most of what I had just painted, didn't even realise I was concentrating on what I was doing so much.

Anyway, tried to patch up the damage - see if you can spot it!  Happy Sunday!