Mendip Winter Wonderland

Following on from a posting on my wildlife blog, I've added some more images of the hoar frost on the Mendips, Somerset on January 2nd. Hope you like them.

A Christmas Message

As this is my art (in all permutations) blog, I thought in the spirit of those dratted round robins we all receive, I'd post my own RR, as an antidote to the Credit Crunch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well I can safely say this will be the last Christmas message from me for 2008. Is it really only a year since one of my Round Robins floated effortlessly onto your doormat? Well actually it’s three years. So much has happened in those 3 years I’m at a loss to know what to put down on paper, therefore I won’t. But to outline the whirlwind lifestyle of Border Reiver, that well known socialite, the following diary excerpts will add warmth to any cold winters day.

Monday:
The books (not to mention the glossy magazines) say Christmas is a time to reflect, sit back, unwind a bottle and send someone a friend. But is it me? Christmas is getting just far too hectic. What Credit Crunch? The shopping Malls are heaving. Today I found myself having to queue for at least a minute while buying some Sellotape to wrap my presents. It’s a tradition of mine to wrap and send myself a present. Always better to receive than give. After that dramatic episode which saw me seething at this monstrous delay as the woman in front of me bought 3 stamps, using cash of all things, I had to return home.

Actually I had to return home as the 4pm curfew came around quicker than I’d planned. If I’m not home by then the tag I am now required to wear doesn’t half set up a din, and at a frequency which seems to attract cats. Never again will I believe a Polish immigrant that the Afghan he had with him was allowed to remain in the country. It looked such a lovely dog to me as well, or at least that’s what I told the authorities as they entered the transit van at Clacket Lane Services. Mind you being indoors all winter has its advantages, as I’ve done all my Christmas shopping on-line this year. Don’t expect anything though, as the one day I did leave the house (to buy Sellotape) the post arrived. Not being at home the card which was left for me said I have to collect my purchases from the sorting office which is only open..... you can probably see where this is going?

Tuesday:
Decided to deck the halls with holly. Given I don’t actually have any holly, or a hall, I made do with some driftwood and tinsel around the shed. I have to say it looks tremendous. Later I headed out into the front garden to wrap my new outdoor lights around a tree. These 150w fox-lights have the ability to light a runway and with 200 on the string, a long runway at that. So I was especially keen to get them in situ soonest and then all my neighbours could enjoy the spectacle. It didn’t quite work. On the box it said a 6m cable from plug to first bulb. Smashing I thought, more than enough for my needs. What the box failed to say was that at the 6m mark lurked the “interface” box (which allows various animated illuminated light displays) which must not be left outdoors. Is it me, but surely outdoor lights are not meant to begin indoors. Anyway I muddled through and now sit watching Emmerdale wearing sunglasses, until that is the next phase of the light show plunges the house into darkness momentarily. Fantastic.

Wednesday:
Christmas is always the time for having the house lit by candles. There is something magical in the warm glow candlelight provides, and the seasonal treats of stubbing one’s toe or maybe ricochet a shin off a coffee table while trying to find the remote control in the gloom make this time of year so pleasurable. This year’s Advent Candle is providing much needed entertainment. In my youth such a candle would burn quietly through the relevant days, no bother. What on earth is this one made of? In glorious red, it is the shape of an elongated pyramid but just refusing to budge past day 12. I had it lit for 48 hours last weekend and only half of number 6 succumbed to the flame. However the table it is on now looks like an extra from a Sweeney Todd play. Considering the candle is getting no lower, where on earth is this wax coming from? Fetching brown paper and an iron to remove the wax from the carpet, I tripped on the flex went a right old perler into conservatory. Olympic gymnasts would not provide such an acrobatic spectacle. Words were said while I staunched the flow of blood from my nose. I’ve decided to leave wax on the carpet as a Christmas decoration. I’ll stick a sprig of holly in it, no one will notice.

Thursday:
I’ve been neglecting my wildlife blog; such has been the excitement of this week. Today saw the 1st anniversary of my blog, which seemed to pass-by the newspaper headlines. After posting a journalistic tour d force, I waited with baited breath for my legions of fans to post comments and best wishes. There was obviously some sort of internet problem, no other way to explain the lack of replies, so I brewed myself a cup of tea. What is it about tea, we English cannot survive without it? The slightest mishap and out comes the caddy, kettle boiled and away we go, all the problems of the World solved in one cup. I’m always amazed where the stuff I write comes from. I seem to have a very fertile imagination, and certainly most of the comments I receive seem to confirm it is mostly unbelievable. Sent myself a comment anonymously, this may start the ball rolling.

Friday:
Still no comments on the blog. They must all be out Christmas shopping. Following a walk along the beach to blow off a cobweb or two, returned to write my Christmas cards. Before this can happen I had to print them off. Simple job, select a photograph, print it onto card, sign card, pop into post box. I bought a new printer in the autumn, which is singly unable to print anything sensibly. All looks stupendous on the screen, press print and some other highly amended version of the article emerges. It’s all too much, I can feel my blood pressure rising. I may pop to Lidl and buy my cards instead. One version in particular was, very artistic. Somehow orientating itself NE/SW on a card it managed to avoid the entire photograph, printed the text on the back, twice, and somehow added some characters from clip-art. Mind you having said that, it looked far better than the original.

Weekend:
Is finally upon us. Time for a rest and put my feet up. First though I had to nip to the recycling centre to remove the mountain of scrap paper I seemed to have developed since yesterday. Piled alongside the candles, it was a bit of a fire hazard. It was while at the tip, I fancied a poached egg on toast. Returning home a friend popped in so we unleashed the free range into the pan. Lo and behold, a double yoker, it’s years since I’ve had one. This must be a symbol for the coming festive season. The symbolism of this egg wasn’t lost on me, went down a treat, with some tomato sauce. Great Stuff!!

I feel much better now, so with that I’ll wish you adieu Mon Ami, all health and happiness for 2009, a wonderfully happy Christmas and of course leave the washing up to Santa and the little elves!

And don't forget to watch Santa on his travels from this website. But only on Christmas Eve

Christmas Card 2008 is....

Well after all of that thought, my Christmas card for 2008, is NOT a painting. Hopeless, I had a wonderful image in my mind, a watercolour of a streetlight at night in a street, lights from a window, you know the sort of thing, all atmospheric and moody. But it just wouldn't come. I love watercolour paintings but I'm not very good at taking my time drawing out the details and then making it come alive. I'm more a slosh it over the place person.

So looking at the frost in the garden at the end of last week, I thought why not take a photo of a plant in the garden and looking at the winter tubs I'd planted a few weeks ago, an idea came instantly to mind.

So photographing frost covered Heather, Cyclamen and leaves on a shrub, I then went into Photoshop to play about. Not quite an original painting, but good fun to let the software manipulate the mundane into something special. I think it is anyway. And here are the results.

Frosted Heather with a 3 way Kaleidoscope

Frosted Cyclamen with a circular distortion

Frosted Leaves with a circular distortion

But in the end one image appealed to me, Frosted Cyclamen with a 5 way kaleidoscope. There was something in how the flower became a star and a star is for Christmas of course. Symbolic as well as unusual.

So here it is, the image used for my Christmas Cards in 2008, Frosted Cyclamen.

Christmas Card Inspiration - or not!

Is it really 6 months since I last posted something onto my Art Blog. The last 6 months haven't been good in terms of keeping the creative juices going, but recently I can feel the paint coursing through my veins.... and of course kept my wildlife blog going......

..... but it's nearly Christmas, and every year I try and produce a Christmas card. This year I'm struggling a bit, not because I don't know what to do, I have an image in my mind and it's formulating well, and have never done a watercolour Christmas Card before. It's purely time to sit down and do it.

This is as far as I have got!! I thought if I leave the stuff in the conservatory rather than the very cold Studio/Shed, I may get cracking. But not yet. However tonight I'm off to Dunster for the Dunster by Candlelight evening, so I may just come back and get this finished, after being inspired there... the weather looks fab for this evening anyway!!

2007 Christmas Card

2006 Christmas Card

2005 Christmas Card (Abstract doesn't go down well)

Framing June

Well after yesterday's excitement at Silverstone I spent a quiet day at home messing about with frames. I tend to buy frames in bulk, from a framer in Yeovil, or a framing factory in the North East when I'm up there. So I always have a fair stock in and paint to fit the frame...makes life much easier. Also for me I like to sell paintings at a reasonable price, having standard sizes of frame and mount, keeps the price down, so what one is paying for is the painting.

So today I was again looking at the frame and double mount I did for the clover picture I took in May. Do I still like it? I think so but I thought if I put it on the blog, comments may make me think again or give me ideas. Part of me thinks a square frame and mount may be better for this type of image.

Anyway the last time I was up in the North East, I bought a job-lot of rejected 10 x 8 frames. They'd been rejected by a business so were a steal, not least as I haggled the price too. I've not used thick frames before, as in deep. So printed off a copy of the mating Common Blue butterflies I took in early June, and framed it with a China White mount. Would a darker mount be better? Costing this up, the finished version was just under £5, so if I say sold it for £20, then that's a 300% profit. Mind you who would want butterflies mating on their wall? And obviously if an original painting was in there, it would be slightly more expensive.

And that's really the thoughts of this posting. It's a well known fact that a good frame and the correct mount can make a painting really sing, conversely a bad frame and mount can destroy an image. I think this is why so many people who frame their work, play safe with pale frames and mount........ I know I do!

Dorset Arts Week - messing about

Well after saying I'd be off line for 10 days, a slight change in plans means I will be able to offer the odd update to the trio-blogs as an when, but only intermittently.

This week is Dorset Arts week http://www.dorsetartsweek.co.uk/ so after thinking I'd not make it, I now should have a bit of time to see what else is happening in the area. I'll pop on some thoughts later in the month after our visits.

In the meantime I've been having another bash at fast, brash watercolours. There's something about watercolours I both loathe and love. I love the traditional forms of painting in watercolour, such as this boat I produced in 1996. But although others like them, I loathed the lack of vibrancy in my work, and for nearly 10 years gave up on watercolour altogether. I've never understood why a child's first foray into art is often with watercolours. They are a very hard medium to master, not least as often wet on wet produces a mess and the finished colour is lighter when dry.

Anyway last year I "almost" hit on the finished product I was looking for, examples of which are on previous postings. Though it was a hard and sometimes bad tempered slog at times. The technique is relatively simple enough, high pigment washes, blend washes and then undiluted tube watercolour for the detail, or lift off pigment with clean water. Golden rule = One brush, one colour. The tough part is not to make the paper so sodden it puckers and forms rivers of pigment, while not allowing it to dry to much before blending is compete.

Having not picked up a watercolour brush for a year, this week I had another go, with this "Betula Calm". I've now framed this and the finished painting has slightly less purple in the bottom section and lifts the reflection into the mid ground. Like all my paintings I'm never 100% happy as there's always something else I see I could improve, but I'm pleased with this and it got my eye in nicely. If you're in Frome in July, it'll be on the stall.

~

I've not just been painting this week. With my new camera I've been messing about with images from nature, again in a vibrant way. Below are three images of a Red Clover (Trifoluim pratense) I picked on a walk yesterday. Photographed against black gives the flower head a vibrancy I was looking for. The top photo was printed off as a 10 x 8 inch image then mounted into a 16 x 12 frame with a double mount, leaf green on black. And very nice it looks too on the lounge wall. Who'd have thought a common plant could look so exotic.

The camera never lies...

I'm more of a painter than an artist but art covers a multitude of sins. Those who read my Gardening Blog last week will know I went to Malvern RHS Show last Saturday. While there I photographed Iris "Secret Service" as seen below in all it's splendid glory.

Much as I love the colours and the form of this photograph, painting it would be dull, unless as some Hockney-eske, montage poster... which gave me a thought. What would happen with a little bit of messing about in photo edit software.

Wow now this is the business, I like this "water" effect. I can now see this becoming a painting for me. Breaking up the image like this for me brings to it a whole new dimension and vibrancy. I love it.

And then we can go really mad. This Kaleidoscope effect is very appealing as it brings in to the image, movement. By increasing the effect as much as possible I got a similar effect to one of my roller paintings, Crop Circle which I created in 2007. And when I then used the "water" effect image above in the Kaleidoscope mode, and maximised the manipulation - it became striking!!

Iris above at maximum manipulation, took 10 seconds, Crop Circle below, created with a 6 inch roller on paper, which took blood sweat and tears and a lot longer than 10 seconds!!

And finally in a moment of madness, or should I say, Thelma was watching me messing about and said, why not turn it around and make it into a tree. So here you see it, the World's first Inverted Iris Tree..... Inverted colours, slightly water effected and turned 180 degrees. I think this is just wonderful, so as we say in the North East, "thanks pet for suggesting this"

What a dull World it would be if we all viewed it the same way!!