materials

paint

I use Winsor & Newton artist's quality oils. And I love them. I'm still using tubes I bought back in the 80's, only two of which show any signs of paint hardening in the tube. Lately I've bought more oils from Spectrum, who make a low cost range, and Michael Harding, a top of the line English brand.

Searching for the perfect paint is a losing battle. It's one of those sideshows, like the technique hole, that can divert you away from what matters about your painting if you're not careful. Paint is coloured mud. If it goes on nicely and keeps its colour over time, that's its job done. Buy artist's quality. Student quality paints are cheaper for a reason - they aren't as good.

mediums

Turpentine. Linseed Oil. Liquin. Paint fat on lean. That's most of what you need to know about oil painting.

    

palette

The palettes I use for mixing paint on are a sheet of glass laid on a sheet of white paper in the studio, and plywood palettes when painting on site. I seal the plywood with linseed oil.

My palette in the sense of what colours I use, and what would I recommend? In oil paint:

Titanium White
Mars Black

Cadmium Red
Alizarin Crimson

Cadmium Orange

Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Lemon

Opaque Oxide of Chromium
Viridian

Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarine

Permanent Mauve

Naples Yellow
Yellow Ochre
Raw Sienna
Burnt Umber

That's 16 of the 30 colours I'm currently using, and represents a colour range I'd find it hard to do without. I pick for permanence, and for a warm and cool version of each primary.

Paint is peculiar stuff. I love Cobalt Violet, but I can't recommend it - it handles like treacle, lies down and dies in mixtures with its weak tinting strength, and looks cold and grim in tints. And it costs the earth. On the other hand, it looks gorgeous on its own over white. I've got a selection of greens that pretty much could all be replaced by the two in the list. Some colours - Prussian Blue, Light Red - have their place, but their full on tinting strength means they have to be held in check.

Conclusion? In the end, paint choice is down to you. You pick the pigments you're comfortable with and which suit the paintings you do.

In watercolour:

You can do more with less. If it gets above 12 colours, you should probably cut back.

Cadmium Red

Cadmium Lemon

Opaque Oxide of Chromium

French Ultramarine

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Umber

Payne's Grey

 

brushes

I fashioned my own, with the hair from my head stuck in forked twigs. Until I went bald.

Buying artist's brushes has always been a risky proposition, since the prices are generally calculated to make you faint. You want how much for that small hairy stick? Made from the pubic fur of a rare Asiatic ocelot it may be, but I'm not paying that. 

And handcrafted by dusky maidens.

Actually, paying premium prices for Kolinsky sables is a good investment for a watercolourist, providing you take excellent care of them. An illustrator friend reliably informed me that they're worth it.

Me, I get through handfuls of cheap nylon brights. They get worked hard, but treated well, but even so tend to start losing shape and getting raggy after a while. I solved my brush problems altogether just this last week when I found Rosemary & Co. online.

Quality brushes at great prices, and fast, smooth service when you order online. And no, that's not an affiliate link. That's a happy customer link. I don't get a penny out of recommending them. Check out the site, download the pdf catalogue, order the free print catalogue.

A word on brushes: You will, I guarantee, over the course of your painting career, buy all kinds of fancy pants brushes. Sable riggers. Fan brushes. Badger blenders. Sword liners. You will use each of them once, maybe twice. Then you'll go back to the handful of boring everyday flats and rounds you always use, and that's okay. Keep the fancy brushes. They look all professional and stuff.

surfaces

I used hardboard battened with 1" timber for years. Then I discovered 3mm MDF this year. You can buy 4' x 2' sheets, which you can get home on the bus. Make sure you wear a dust mask when you saw MDF to size or sand it - the dust is carcinogenic. Seal both faces and all edges with a water coat of PVA, then prime it with two coats of Winsor & Newton oil primer. Allow 24 hours between coats, and another 24 before you start painting on it.

A note on primer: When a major art materials manufacturer goes to the trouble of developing oil primers that do the job - use them. I used to spend hours making gesso to Renaissance formulas, with the result that my house stank of decomposing glue size and the gesso was prone to mould attack and spalling in cold weather. Don't waste your time.

MDF seems to be less prone to warping, and there's none of that priming both sides malarkey you have to do with hardboard. I'm painting up to 10" x 14" without battening the board, and it seems to be okay.

Buying ready stretched canvases is probably best done in bulk when you know what sizes you commonly use. I've bought rolls of cotton duck and linen and stretched my own, but it's another thing that can bite into painting time.

Paper is another personal choice thing. I buy packs of Waterford HP, medium weight 22" x 30" sheets. I cut these down to a half or a quarter sheet, which suits the size I work on.

drawing

I bought a lifetime's supply of cheap Chinese made HB pencils years ago. Boxes of them, with those erasers on the end that make nasty smudges if you use them. And I bought a box of black Bic fine point ball pens that I'm still using. Keeps me from getting fancy when I'm tackling preliminary drawings of a new subject.

Erasing? Get a putty rubber.

conclusions

Buy the best paint you can afford. You're better off with 4 tubes of artist's quality paint than 50 tubes of cheap stuff. That's red, yellow, blue and white, in case you were wondering.

Shop around. Don't like the price? You can probably find what you're looking for at a lower price elsewhere, and the internet will help you find it.

Know your own mind. This comes with experience. After a while you know what kind of paint and brushes and whatever else you're best off using. Just buy those.

Above all else, don't go haring off trying out new and different media. It's like starting from scratch all over again. Don't waste your time. Find the three things you do well, and hammer them into the ground. Tired of oil painting? Take a week off and do some watercolours. Or spend a while making an etching. Then back to oil painting. Don't spread your efforts out too far, or you'll never get anywhere.

Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum, 'Self Portrait'. Photograph by deflam, on Flickr. 

Yesterday I discovered the paintings of Odd Nerdrum, Norway's best painter, online. And today I understand the court is hearing his appeal against what sounds like a somewhat shoddy case against him, on charges of tax evasion, for which the 67 year old painter was sentenced to two years in jail. 

Where he's not allowed to paint. 

I'm not going to discuss the rights or wrongs of the case - in the absence of information, I have no opinion on the matter - but guess where my instinctive sympathies lie. Shame on you, Norway. Just when I was beginning to like you. If you don't like the thought of an ageing genius languishing in jail, go and sign the petition calling for his freedom here. 

Eyesight

I was born myopic. Really very short sighted indeed. Without spectacles, I can focus to about 9" away from my face, and everything beyond that turns into an Impressionist blur. 

Which is absolutely brilliant. 

Because, as a painter, it's the best of all possible worlds. When I peer over the top of my specs, all I can see is big, soft edged shapes and average colour values. When I slide them back up my nose, I can see pin sharp detail in depth. Which is exactly the best combination a painter could ask for. 

Whenever a drawing or painting threatens to get bitty and piecemeal, just take off the specs and immediately see the big picture. And pretty much nothing but. 

 It applies to painting from photographs too. I've talked elsewhere about working from photographs, but the problems I listed - particularly excess detail - can be overcome by the simplest means. Turn off your camera autofocus, and using the focus ring on the lens, just blur the picture slightly. Take a sharp picture, and a fuzzy, out of focus one. Or just run your sharp picture through a blur filter in GIMP. Go on. It's free. All the functions of Photoshop at the price point everybody loves. 

Detail is a weird thing to deal with, and a snare to get hung up on if you're not careful. If you're a photo-realist, who takes three months to paint a large canvas, squaring up a photograph and painstakingly copying it, detail is everything. If you're an impressionist, trying to catch a fleeting light effect, detail is a trap. 

Most figurative painters work somewhere between those two extremes, and constantly run the risk of getting snarled up in a tight, fussy interpretation of what they can see. It's something that lends itself to overthinking, which will hamper your painting efforts if you let it. 

Perhaps the best way to deal with detail is to not consider it as something separate, but as part of the process. A simple solution is to start with a big brush, and never get too small. If you ever find yourself fiddling with a one hair brush and squinting, you're doing it wrong. 

As you gradually work towards smaller and tighter areas, relate your small brushstrokes to the large ones in terms of how you make them. And remember, you can't paint everything, and if you did it would look awful.

Imagine, for example, you're painting some trees. In the foreground, some leaves are hanging above you and 'in shot', as it were. You could paint these one by one insofar as they contribute to your composition. How closely you observe them is up to you, but if you go into so much detail that they take over the whole painting, you've failed. Paint objects as well as they need to be painted for the part they play in the painting as a whole. 

And at some point, as they recede into the distance, individual leaves become foliage masses. That tree fifty feet away? Probably best rendered by a well drawn green blob with some subtle edge and mass detail to suggest foliage. That stand of trees in the distance? A tiny blue speck explained by context and well judged tone and value. 

Remember that a painting is about big, beautiful shapes. You should be able to judge a painting from across a large room. On the other hand, if you walk across that room and find the painting gets no clearer, you're entitled to feel somewhat cheated, and a little more detail might well be in order. 

You have to strike the balance between the broad picture and the telling detail for a painting to work. I once ruined a landscape painting by working too closely from photographs. If you ever do this, make sure you keep stepping back from close detail work to judge the painting from its proper viewing distance. While detail is necessary, some passages should be broadly handled to provide contrast and give the eye a rest. I ended up painting detail all over the place, which just looks weird. 

There's a particular kind of amateur painter who thinks that adding detail can only improve a painting, but they're wrong. Exactitude in painting matters, but it's a different kind of exactitude. A ragged flick of paint, providing it's of the right tone, the right colour, and in the right place, can tell the viewer more than any amount of fussy, nit-picking detail. Context is everything. 

What if you're not lucky enough to have been born short sighted? Squint. When you're face with a big, complex subject, whether it be a landscape or anything else, the first thing to do is to see less of it. 

Squint, until you can just make out the big shapes and get a handle on how to tackle your drawing or painting. Start with the general and work towards the particular - and only include as much of the latter as you strictly need.

Plein Air Painting

The first heat wave of the summer brought me out toting the plein air portable easel. Which is portable in much the same way that a steamer trunk full of brick samples is portable, if you have a fork lift to hand.

Actually, it's not so bad. Load up the backpack with camera and drawing book, load up the easel box with tubes of paint, brushes and turpentine, and you're good. The easel has a sturdy leather handle, and a substantial carrying strap. My subject is just a fifteen minute walk away, but it's as well to remember that you also have to haul the damned thing back when you've finished painting.

Starting to draw on a quiet rural road is an open invitation to the whole world. Last week, with no one in sight and not a sound but for bird song, within thirty seconds of putting pencil to paper I had company in the form of a kid on a motor scooter and an old guy driving a forty foot curtain sider who stopped to ask for directions. We put the lorry driver straight, then I waited out scooter boy's curiosity and he headed off after telling me I could draw. It's always nice to get an unsolicited testimonial. The best thing about spectators is that they quickly realize that watching someone paint is only marginally more interesting than watching paint dry, then make their excuses and leave.

I've got a morning painting and an afternoon painting on the go, which seems like a good way to handle it. Evenings I stroll back with a drawing book and take pictures too. There's a sweetness to the evening light at this time of year which is probably too saccharine to paint but is nonetheless very enjoyable. Everything looks to have been shot through warm up and soft focus filters. Golden light rakes across blossom and glowing green grass, and lights up trees that reflect in the stream. Far too pretty to paint.

Hey, wait a minute... note to self: Pretty is good. Forget everything you picked up at art college. These days I walk around looking at stuff until I see something that makes me stop and say, 'Dang!' Then out comes the A5 drawing book for a biro drawing. Followed by the camera for reference shots. Followed by the big drawing book for a watercolour study, maybe, and then a full scale painting expedition at some point.

The paintings so far all pass through a stage I've come to call the heeby jeeby half hour, when it seems impossible that they could ever come good. You just keep painting, and at some point realize that it's turning out okay. If you learn to trust the process you've developed, it usually pays off. Look at your subject, draw it, judge tone and colour and mix your paint. Apply paint, working from dark to light. Cover up all the white ground and painting gets easier.

Picture Framing - Or, You Win This Round, Random Bearded Stranger.

So I bought a mitre saw.

As I was walking away from the B&Q, some bearded cove passing by took a look at the box I was holding and informed me, unasked, with that malice the English reserve for strangers, 'Those things aren't very good for cutting mitres'. I was glad to rebut this allegation with my personal experience that provided you take care, clamp the moulding securely, and let the blade do the work rather than trying to force it, you can, with a little skill, cut excellent mitres.*

Little did I know.

Besides, of the options out there, a manual mitre saw was the only one I'd countenance. I could have bought an electric rotary mitre saw, but I have a special relationship with power tools. I refrain from using them, and they refrain from scattering my favourite body parts around the room. I'm very attached to my fingers. And I intend to keep it that way.

I did price a Morso mitre cutter, the best option of all, while I was looking, but those things start at £500 second hand, and I can't currently afford one. Or, indeed, have anywhere to put it. So a manual mitre saw it was.

Because I have to frame my paintings.

This whole business of picture framing is something I've only just got to grips with. I priced several framers online, one of them conveniently close and very good, but the fact is they're all too expensive. So I'm forced to develop another skill set. (Website coding, picture framing, fixing my jeans with duct tape - is there no limit to what one man must do?)

The fact is, a well framed piece does look 647%** better than the identical piece unframed. That's just the way it is. An unframed painting is like a man sitting around unshaved in his vest and slippers - in no fit state to receive visitors. A framed painting says someone went to the trouble and expense of putting this bad boy in the painterly equivalent of a very nice suit, so he could impress the ladies. For those potential customers who wouldn't know a good painting if it bit them on the face, a great frame might be the only thing they really see. Worth thinking about before you show your work to anyone.

In the past, I've had to take paintings all the way to Nottingham to get them framed at a franchise outlet, which is basically half a day lost and a wearisome train ride. Now I've bought a stock of picture frame moulding online, and the only inconvenience is remembering not to trip over the stuff in the hall, given that I can't figure out where else to store it, or indeed how to get the 10 foot lengths out of there.

In the past I've used dado rail mouldings glued to planed timber, which worked pretty well and looked classier than you might expect. I once sent a picture to a London gallery in a plain pine frame made this way and got it back after the show painted and gilded, and a very nice job they did too. If I have to cook up some gesso and learn how to apply gold leaf myself, I'm up to the task. Essentially I'm spending time instead of money, time which I could use to paint - but the skills, once you have them, are always there, ready to be called on.

But oh, the irony...

* Having just spent a fretful afternoon and evening wrestling with this particular saw, I'm forced to eat my words. While my previous mitre saw cut perfectly accurate mitres, this one doesn't. It's slipshod, rickety, ill made, tacky, plasticky and pot-metally, and it's ruined most of a length of moulding.

Watching YouTube videos of smiling picture framers getting perfect results with similar kit is particularly galling. 'Use a see-saw motion to get a straight cut.' Yeah. And when I do it, watch the blade skitter and jump like a frog's leg hooked up to a car battery. I could get better results blindfold, using an axe.

Seriously, this is not a good tool and I can't recommend it to anyone. Yes I know, a bad workman blames his tools. The fact remains I could work wonders with my old saw. But not, apparently, with this one.

So... plan B. Save up, buy Morso mitre cutter.

Still, there's always a silver lining. I failed to make a decent picture frame, but I now have some rather fancy firewood.

Yippee.


** Actual made up statistic.

Artists Online

One of the best things about the internet is that you can find just about anything and anyone. I sometimes spend an hour looking for artists, just so I can see what everyone else is doing.

I think the 'painting a day' thing is just about exhausted now, swamped by wannabees, but the original and best is still worth a good long look. Duane Keiser's blog and website feature his beautiful paintings and videos. Go take a look. I'll wait.

I've never seen any other painters with the same throwaway rendering skills. Try painting a scrap of that cellophane wrap you get on cigarettes or small packages. Now make it convincing. Not as easy as you might think.

Another painter i found through YouTube is Paul Fenniak, whose work reminds me a little of the paintings of Alan Dyer, who taught at my old college. I like them not so much for the subject matter as for the way they're painted. How can I put it? The paint quality and the rendering are part and parcel of the subject.

One English painter who has made a huge success of the painting a day discipline is Julian Merrow-Smith, who paints small pictures of Provence and auctions them online. There's a book too. (Smart move.) Which I may well buy.

And the last, and my most recent discovery, is the blog of Stapleton Kearns, an American landscape painter, which is absolutely crammed with useful - and occasionally hilarious - advice.

In the recent past, I would probably never have heard of any of these people. And I would have missed out. The internet is a lovely shiny thing that belongs to everyone. Which is why we need to protect it from the depredations of special interest groups, politicians of every nation, big copyright industries, and their loathsome ilk.

This is the only time I'm going to get even slightly political on here. For one thing, I'm too lazy to be an activist. I'd have to get informed, which is agonizingly dull and takes up huge amounts of time and effort, just so I wouldn't be merely sloganizing instead of coming up with cogent arguments.

What's my point? The internet is the best thing ever. Then along comes legislation like ACTA, in Europe, and SOPA and CISPA in the US, which are going to destroy it. If you're concerned, Google the whole deal and then make your representative's life a misery until these things go away.

And disengage political mode...Now.

Done. Check out my favourite painters online.

While you still can.

May In June

So I just started painting again.

A small (6" x 6") oil on board taken from a landscape photograph I took a while ago. It's some hawthorne in bloom, around June, taken on a hot morning when I went for a walk, gathering a crop of photographs to work from.

It's a bit loose and brushworky, since I dropped the fiddly oil and tempera technique I used. Now I stick to the simplest methods: oil paint in layers, fat on lean.  Word of advice to painters - if it looks about right, leave it alone. Before you foul it up.

I had a long think about scale, and decided to work between 6" x 6" at the smallest, and 16" x 20" at the largest, at least for now. I used to finish about three paintings a year. Now, I'm trying to scale that up, and doing smaller work is an obvious step.

I finally bought a decent, portable, plein air easel too, so I'll be out and about when the weather turns. Photographs work, but there's no substitute for painting on site. 

I sat down at one point and tried to figure out a list of subjects, only to end up admitting that I'd have to stick to landscape - and maybe still life on wet days at home. Second word of advice to painters - paint what you love. I love the look of things around here. Gorgeous spring, lush summer, misty autumn and stark winter, all with their own colour schemes and points of interest. Open countryside precisely one strolling minute away from my front door. I wouldn't live anywhere else.