What not to paint

Just as the British army has an unofficial list of things its junior officers should never do, lessons learned from long study of military history - don't march on Moscow in the winter, never invade China by land, don't attack Afghanistan* - so there's probably a similar list for painters. Here are just a few of those hard won lessons regarding painting that I know.

- Don't try to paint something through something. I could put this better, so I will. If you chance upon a subject that is coyly hiding behind, say, a tree, but you can just about see the subject behind it... paint something else.

Why? Because painting a simple thing well is hard enough on painter and viewer alike, without adding the possibility of confusion. A chain link fence with a shop window full of glassware and reflections behind it could provide a real challenge for a photorealist, but the rest of us are better off sidestepping subjects like this.

- Don't paint any pictures too big to fit in the back of a London taxi.

Why not? Many of your potential gallery partners are located in London. Have you ever tried to take a large painting through central London on an average day?

- Don't paint anything your mother wouldn't like.

Why not? Because she has better taste than you think. Scary or difficult paintings won't get past her mum radar, which means they won't get to frighten off buyers.

- Don't paint fast. It's not a race. Get it right.

If you try to do everything in haste, you'll end up with a painting that looks like it was done in a hurry.

- On the other hand, don't faff about. Get it done.

If you take too long, your impetus and enthusiasm will dry up long before you finish. And your painting will look like you second guessed every brush stroke you made.

- Don't paint Spring landscapes.

Why not? The greens are vile, and blossom is impossible. And even if you get everything right, it'll look too pretty.

- Don't be too honest with the greens you see in the landscape.

Why not? Green is a difficult colour, and a little goes a very long way. What looks admirable out there in the landscape has a way of looking bilious on canvas. Solution? Tone down those greens with red, or mix them using pigments from the grubby underside of the colour solid, like Yellow Ochre and Raw Sienna.

- Don't make your paintings deliberately eccentric to get attention.

Why not? You can get a lot of attention by wearing a clown outfit, but it's not the sort of attention you want. Similarly, any attempt to stand out on a gallery wall that doesn't involve painting really well is best avoided. Some artists have made a career out of their quirks, but forced oddity gets old pretty quickly - probably more so for the painter than for their audience. I can't imagine a worse fate than having to top the last odd idea with something even weirder.

Am I teaching my granny to suck eggs here? Any words of wisdom from the audience? Extra tips would be appreciated, and stolen for the follow up.

* The wily Pathan, then as now, has always been a tricky customer.

Landscape painting: building a composition.

So my most recent small paintings began to sprout and join up, and before I knew it they'd turned into a study for a larger work.

Three 10" x 12"s laid out in a row became the centre of a larger planned painting. I took this photograph of the three together and used it as the basis for further studies with GIMP.

On the one hand, GIMP is a great way to quickly get a notion of what a planned painting could look like. On the other, there are drawbacks: one is that you can choke on choice.

The problem is the ease with which GIMP enables you to try out different compositions: you can be seduced into spending all your time and energy discovering different solutions instead of sticking with one. Too much choice can be disabling.

But that's just me chickening out of the process of coming up with a pictorial solution. Composing a picture needs a toolkit I was fortunate enough to pick up in school art class, thanks to a great teacher. A small painting is pretty easy to compose. Things begin to get out of hand when you're dealing with a larger work which has several parts, which is where you can learn from the lessons of the past. In a previous post, I mentioned drawing a copy of Constable's 'Flatford Mill', and discovering how every component played a role in the composition, guiding the eye around the picture.

So what are some rules of composition?

- Look for big shapes. You should be able to read your painting from across a room.

- Frame studies with two right angled L shapes to help you find the right size and shape rectangle for your support.

- Echo shapes in different places. That bouncy treeline? Turn it upside down and use it in the clouds, or in the foreground.

- Contrast significant elements. Bush with leaves turning orange? Put against blue sky for maximum impact. Foliage mass in full light? Place against darkest shadows.

- Design matters more than reportage. Make each element work as part of the painting, rather than slaving to make it look 'real'.

Sketchbook? Drawing book. Potato, potato...

I just dug out my old drawing books and scanned the best pages, having found enough material for several new paintings. It was a pleasant surprise to discover how well past me could draw, at least when he was on his game and trying hard.

Incidentally, can we settle one thing now? It's a drawing book, not a sketchbook. A sketch is something done in a hurry. The very word sketch implies something unfinished, hurried, unimportant.

Drawing, on the other hand, is done slowly, in a measured way, calling on the full powers and concentration of the draughtsman. It's a task involving hand and eye and mind, memory and perception, the juggling of rules and craft and the inspiration of the moment.

A sketch is something you throw away. A drawing is a treasure. And drawing - whatever the current orthodoxy declares - is the centre of art.

I read a line in Martin Gayford's book about David Hockney, in which the author and painter spoke of a contemporary artist who said he didn't draw, just as people 'no longer rode a horse to work'.

My opinion? If you can't draw, you're not really an artist.

It's like someone illiterate declaring themselves a writer, or a tone deaf mute insisting they can sing. It would be like me claiming to have a full head of lovely hair. It's simply not the case. Some careers have a minimum entry requirement, and to me, calling yourself an artist demands that you have some competence with a pencil and a sheet of paper, to the extent that you can make a recognizable effort at drawing whatever's in front of you.

Drawing is the central competence of art. That's just the way it is. It's not really negotiable.

Drawing teaches you to see, in a way that photography or video never will - these mechanical means are a way of not looking at the world, a delegation of the task of sight, a way to avoid the responsibility of seeing. And seeing is the only important thing an artist does. Artists show the rest of us what the world looks like.

If you want to learn how to draw, join a life class at your local college. Then do a Google image search on drawings by Renaissance artists, download a few to your desktop, print out the best and copy them freehand. Google Harold Speed and John Ruskin to find free PDF downloads of their books.

I don't recommend the arts section of your local library. Most of the books about drawing in mine have the words 'Fast!' or 'Easy!' in the title, and were written by people who not only can't draw, but also don't realize the fact. Sadly, the same applies to many of the hundreds of YouTube videos on drawing and painting.

The good news is that a Google image search will turn up many examples of good drawing for you to ponder over and copy. The whole of art history is there online, at your disposal. 

pochade box

I bought a pochade box recently, thinking it might prove an easy alternative to lugging my portable easel around.

It's certainly lighter. A cleverly designed, two piece folding box with a carry handle and strap, it has enough space to stash all the paint and brushes you need in the base, plus two 10" x 12" boards and a palette in the lid. That's a day's work right there for your average landscape painter.

The one on the right requires a fork lift truck.

Pro tip: if you cut your own boards to size, make sure they fit into the slots in the lid without being forced. Failure to ensure this will result in a tug of war when you try to remove them, which is only funny to onlookers. Run the end of a candle up and down the edges of the boards to make sure they slide in and out easily.

The palette is part of the lid, and folds neatly into it when the box is closed. This effectively seals it from the outside air and seems to slow down the drying time of the paint quite effectively.

Pro tip #2: Seal the palette with a couple of coats of linseed oil rubbed on with a rag and allowed to dry before you use it for the first time.

Is a pochade box a workable alternative to an easel? Well... no. Half an hour into using it for the first time, I rested it on top of a nearby fence and swung my left arm about to get the feeling back into it, and admitted that what this baby really needs is some legs to stand it on. So that's the next part of my plan: get a tripod bush fitting and attach it to the underside of the pochade box so I can put it on my camera tripod. Which I'll have to bring with me, along with the pochade box... which is tantamount to hauling along the full sized portable easel.

I haven't really thought this through, have I?

There's room for a small bottle of medicinal whisky.

So what is it good for? Well, it really is a lightweight alternative for those days when the full kit is just too much trouble. If you can find somewhere to sit, a pochade box is perfect. If you can't, you're stuck with a sore arm or hauling a tripod around. If you can work from your car, the pochade box is exactly what you need.

Working in that 10" x 12" limit is perfect for outdoor painting, when you're not going to be working on any painting for more than ninety minutes because the light changes. Studies for larger works you'll do in the studio can be finished in that time, or at least brought to a stage where you can finish them at home.

I've been using it for three studies for a planned larger painting to be done in studio, and it's worked fine. The subject is a grass bank and a small wood which I noticed a couple of years ago looking particularly fine in the autumn. On a related note, if you attempt an autumn landscape yourself, look sharp about it, as those pretty leaves don't hang around for long. One day everywhere is all golden and lovely, the next day some lummox coughs and every single leaf plummets to the ground. I started drawing a stand of trees in full leaf and overnight they went and turned into bare branches, which is awkward. I've got drawings and photographs of the pre-naked trees, so it's not a lost cause.