On the Road Again.. With a Charming Man

I've been away, and for the best of reasons- we won a pair of tickets, courtesy of Radio 2, to see Morrissey at the BBC's Radio Theatre...
February 11th at around 8pm sees us on the second row from the front for this bijou and intimate gig, hosted by an amiable Mark Radcliffe, with the rich and famous hiding themselves in the dark of the balcony. We have the better view with Moz only a few feet away.
Which gives Al the opportunity to pass him my postcard of Salford Lads club. See photo above- that's it in his hand! Honest!
It's good to be in London again and we have a great day as tourists with our friend Rhedd, who shows us Peckham Rye, Southwark, The Globe, and the Tate Modern. The sun's shining on the river and bathing the opposite bank in a magical glow. We have one of the Tate's frugal lunches (they're the same in Liverpool) and the serveur even warns me that the portion of tart will be rather small, and would I like a side order of potatoes? No, I would not, and certainly not at £3 a portion!
Lots of photos taken, and some sketchbook work. These are mainly done in cafes and on the cross-channel ferries, and when we're up North I'm especially happy to sit and draw in the mirrored and ornate Brucciani's cafe in Preston- almost unchanged since 1932... the ghosts of my student days linger here... where are you now, Chris, Doreen, Anna, Roger, Nesbitt, Melling, Steve and Viv- and who nicked my paintbrushes?!
Images: Rain at Le Havre; waiting for the ferry at Portsmouth; on board The Norman Voyager; Brucciani's, Preston.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It...

Thanks to a worrying amount of the white stuff coming down I've had to cancel the aptly-named Saturday Art Day. Someone I know kindly abbreviated this to S.A.D- and the Monday Art.... well, you get the picture.
This week- I can go to The Ball! I've probably sold two pictures at the Seegallery in Rossendale and one at Colin Jellicoe in Manchester.
All three were small collaged drawings of Manchester views- the Cornerhouse, Central Library, and Sunlight House.
Encouraged by the carrot of success and driven by the whip of a rapidly diminishing log-pile, I finished another one yesterday- of Deansgate.
The building's in collaged parcel paper, the drawing's in pen and ink and- spot this- I've included myself rummaging in my bag for my sketchbook. Or was it my camera?

Pictures: Deansgate Girls, Sunlight House Distant.

“Baby It’s Cold Outside!”

It certainly is, and they say there’s more to come, so any artwork en plein air has to wait ‘til the warmer weather.
Even when sketching in the car there’s about a fifteen minute threshold before my hands get cold. Turner lashed himself to a mast to see the effects of a storm at sea, but I see no advantage to wearing a hogshair shirt and beating myself with a bunch of paintbrushes in order to produce.

The last few weeks have seen The Ladies Who Sketch group gathering in each other’s warm kitchens…. I’ve been drawing friends’ kitchens for a couple of years now. At heart it's a place of work and I like the tools, the gadgets and the clutter. And the tea. And the cake.

"Another Year Over and...."

Well, there goes another one, and, looking back, 2008 was artistically quite successful.
Apart from the usual activities, I sold six or seven paintings, landed a big commission, and spent a month tutoring Painting Holidays in France
And I found three new galleries to show my work.
The friendly and un-po-faced Seegallery in Crawshawbooth- Rossendale, Lancashire- took several paintings off my hands. These included scenes of Manchester, and a view of the 'iconic' Salford Lads Club, as featured on a Smith's album cover.
Seegallery has a bit of a rock-n-roll edge to it- we originally called in to see their Ray Lowry (cartoonist, Private Eye, NME) exhibition. Sadly, Ray had died only a few days previous to our visit, and we felt touched to be invited to leaf through huge binders full of his unframed work- hundreds of images.. our silence broken by the occasional snort of laughter and "Here, look at this one!" Prices were incredibly reasonable and we treated ourselves to a cartoon about Elvis and The Jordanaires.
PAD Gallery in Preston has also asked for work and I'm pleased with my picture of a discount carpet warehouse. This building's in a part of town which has been allowed to run down, a deliberate ploy so that the public will be relieved when it's knocked down and 'improved'! Preston has a fine record for this kind of insensitive Urban Renewal- ' the only town with a ring-road running through its centre' ( historian AJP Taylor).
The county of Devon has a more immediate beauty and visiting the 'in-laws' can now be combined with a bit of business at The Hind Street Gallery in Ottery St. Mary. Ottery's main claim is that Coleridge lived here, and I've done his portrait in my alter-ego as window painter .
For this gallery I doggedly tackled a painting of nearby Exeter Cathedral. It's a complex structure- how many saints in niches did they actually need? I drew at least 63, each one of 'em different, some with skirts, and cross-legged!
These small successes of last year are, of course, meagre pickings from the vast table that has Damien Hirst as King Henry VIII at its head, and myself as a mouse in the wainscotting- but I'm cheered, heartened and motivated and I will venture forward to see if anyone's dropping any crumbs my way!

Ho-Ho-Ho!

At this time, the mind turns happily to all things festive.
Pity the poor window-painter- not myself this year, but my accomplice, Al. It's one of our busiest times and the red paint's slapped on like nobody's business.
None of our customers wants their shop window decorating too early for Christmas, nor too late, so it's a frenzied period of activity resulting in a sort of madness- a blur of holly, a whirl of snowmen, a sweetness of Nativities, forests of fir trees- and the dreaded favourite, Pere Noel, who, for this stressful period, is often referred to in irreverant and colourful terminology involving size and mother's marital status.
We work from photos and old cards. It's difficult to find a plumptious, white-bearded old fella in a red suit to pose while we paint, and the best-drawn images of Santa are the ones from the old Coca-Cola adverts. The offending bottle in his hand ( no wonder he's fat!) is replaced by a star or a dolly. Or, on last week's pharmacie window, a blood-pressure gauge.
I see that this year, Al's photcopied a picture of Brian Blessed as a possible model.... he'll have to bleach that beard, and add a few extra locks.
Other window painters crawl out of the woodwork around now and we see their handiwork. Some are ok-ish, but bad taste does abound in the city of Rennes. A semi-naked woman dressed as Father Christmas on a bike, smoking a tab somehow lacks the festive ring of Decking the Halls, Awaying in Mangers , and bringing pine logs hither.
And to Slade's perennial questions ' Does he ride a red-nosed reindeer, does he turn up on his sleigh?'- well, 'Yes, if that's what you'd like on your windows, M'sieur, Madame!'

Early Learning

It's a Wednesday and high time to have another 'Kidzart'. I've been reading the excellent 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' , so instead of doing what are essentially craft-based projects with the young 'uns we decide to give them a workshop that will, hopefully, get the creative half of their grey matter working.
We start off by copying drawings which are upside-down... we chose cats and dogs. The fact that the drawing is reversed abstracts the familiar subject matter into shapes, angles and lines. It also discourages using the usual symbols- by this I mean the tendency to think ' this is what an eye's like- round!' , or 'this is how I draw a tail!' . We're careful, also, not to name any of these bits.
The first drawings go well, but they tire after a while-poor mites! and start reverting to what they think or know is there. Or what they believe should be visibly there, eg a dog has four legs so I give it four even if I can't see them all.
We have a break and then they stand at easels like 'real artists' and do a painting of yours truly lying on a couch. We're amazed at how well they work- for forty minutes- remember these are youngsters aged four to eight only- and produce some great pictures. They all have an instinctive sense of design and even if the figure's badly placed in the beginning it's balanced out afterwards, somehow.
Well done Lawrence, Mathieu, Thibaud and Manon! And thanks to their Mums. And for the cake!

Phew!

After a pause from this blog I can now reveal to you, dear readers, that for the last few weeks I’ve been working non-stop on a series of paintings of Salford for an interior design company- an excellent commission, and- frighteningly, my first of this magnitude.

They’re to be reproduced , much bigger, for an outlet of (so my pizza-literate friends tell me!) the most up-market of pizza restaurant chains.

And with a short deadline, small wonder that I’ve been akin to a headless chicken!

For starters, photos had to be taken of the area, both of the spanking-new, trendy Salford quays with its bridge and Lowry Museum , and the old Salford… factories, mills, streets of red brick.

Out of hundreds of photos I found the best sixty, eventually whittling it down to a dozen or so, choosing a good variety of subject matter. Colour, too had to be considered – I didn’t want to use the same palette on each.

I worked in a mixture of media which gave me the grand sweeps of colour and the delicate architectural detail I wanted to convey.

I was pleased with the results- I’d have liked a little longer to do the ‘ pizzapics’, but I stuck with what I knew would work well and I feel I’ve captured some of the atmosphere of a city under metamorphosis.

It’s been important to me also that I record the changing scene before the charwoman that is regeneration arrives, takes up her Mr. Muscle, and cleans away the grime- and some of the character- of centuries.

Pictured are small details of the work, more to follow!