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.

painting trees

It's easy when you're five. Big green blob for the leaves, brown stripe below for the trunk, and little red blobs for the apples. Not an apple tree? Doesn't matter, get them in there. 

Now that's how you paint a tree. It gets a lot harder when you're older. Especially when they're all bunched up and you're trying to paint them in changing light. You can't see where one ends and the next begins, or where the branches start and finish. The trunk is in there somewhere, and you could see it yesterday when the light was different. But you can also see the outline of the tree behind through the tree you're trying to paint, and that's not helping at all... 

So you have to get organized when you're drawing or painting something that insists on being undrawable. Painting trees en masse is a little like painting clouds, in that both move about and are made up of deceptive forms which change appearance with the light. 

'But trees just stand there,' you say. Well, yeah, but their forms are hard to read, in that while a mass of foliage looks like a solid some of the time, it's really a collection of twigs and leaves. And because of this, as the sun moves, or clouds cover it, different aspects of various trees appear and disappear like stage flats lit by madmen. Branches pop in and out of sight. Foliage is light, then dark. And it moves with the wind. So you have to simplify, and make what is ambiguous, plain. Painting demands that we pick and choose from what we can see, and make all our selections work together in one convincing whole.

  

I often start with the trunk, then try to lay in the branches and the outline all at the same time. If you get the outline, that's half the job of making your tree look convincing done. The outline can usually identify the species, which at least tells the viewer you actually looked at a real tree. Incidentally, learning a little about the species of tree you're likely to encounter can help you draw and paint them well. 

Judicious placement of sky holes comes last - probably fewer than there are in real life, unless you want your tree to resemble a lace doilie. Remember that verisimilitude matters, but making a good painting matters more. There comes a point when a painting has enough facts in it, and you have to start thinking of it as a performer thinks of a music score. Getting the notes right counts, but not as much as making music. 

the horsey test

Having opened my big mouth a while ago about real artists being able to draw horses, I thought I should probably attempt to prove myself capable. Since there are horses conveniently parked in the field over the road, that was where I began. I took a small drawing book and a biro and set out to draw me some horsey. 

They obliged me by standing around, quietly wondering what the scrawny human was up to. Some went so far as to actually pose nicely, which was handy. Others took the mickey something fierce, and stood in front of the ones posing. Eventually, they all lost interest and moved on, having heard there was some great grass at the far end of the field.

There are pitfalls lying in wait for the horse draughtsman. Their ears come out looking like Doberman ears if you're too emphatic with the curve and point. The legs leave the body at unexpected angles, giving them the appearance of being perpetually poised, ready to spring forward at the gallop, even when standing still. And don't get me started on hooves. What kind of design is that for a foot? That's why God made tufty grass, so painters wouldn't have to deal with hooves.

I took photographs too, but something weird happens when you take pictures of horses. Even though they were standing still, they all came out looking as if they were caught in the middle of a peculiar dance, with legs inexplicably in the air, tails flapping about, and gormless expressions. Anyway, here's the end result. A drawing I'm not totally ashamed of. 

It had to be patched and redrawn a couple of times. Obviously, it's time to take a look at how other, better artists tackled the same subject. Leonardo's drawings for the Sforza equestrian statue spring to mind, along with Degas at the races. Degas is a great choice because you can often see his mind working with different versions and over-drawing in his studies. 

Horses in a Meadow, by Degas. Photo by cliff1066 on Flickr.

The trick, I've found, is to avoid making your horse look like a freakishly stick-legged rodent - more easily done than you might suspect - and to take care over the aforementioned Doberman ears. Remember, horses come in different shapes and sizes, and that experts will look long and hard to make sure you've captured the characteristics of a particular breed, quite possibly with that same obsessive attention to detail that makes painting steam trains a no go.

The good news is that information is just a Google away. I already have George Stubbs' 'Anatomy of the Horse', which will show you more than you wish to know about the insides and outside of that quadruped, along with Muybridge's 'Animals in Motion', which demonstrates how a horse runs. YouTube has this video, 'Equine Anatomy on a Live Painted Horse'. 

Am I going to explore the horse as subject? No. There are equestrian artists online who will capture the likeness of your favourite hunter for a fee. Paint what you love, should be the guiding principle for any painter, and I confess I don't feel much more than wary admiration for horses in general. And now I know what a fetlock is, and where the withers are, I feel I know as much as I needed to. It's just that, as a landscape painter, I think I should have some ability to convincingly render any of the staffage that might appear in my paintings. So, cows next. People I can do already.

The Nottingham Castle Annual Open 2012

I got on the mailing list for this show, forgot about it and missed the entry dates in August, then got an email inviting me to the opening on 29th September.

The rule of thumb for entering any open show is this: just as writers should never send a story to a magazine they don't enjoy, painters should never enter any show which contains stuff they don't like. It's common sense. If you don't like what they do, chances are the converse also applies. And you should never pay money to have people you don't know reject your work.

At first I wasn't going to go. But then the email mentioned free drink...

I took the bus to town on a Saturday evening and strode up to the castle grounds. It's always a pleasure to visit. The gardens are well worth a look, and the castle has exceptional views over the city.

The exhibition occupied three rooms and seemed smaller than the sprawling, overstuffed shows I'd been to in previous years. It may well be that more work was tucked away elsewhere - I didn't ask - but all I saw was in those three rooms.

I had to take particular care not to step on some of the works on display. There were a number of floor mounted pieces that barely reached knee height, including some displayed under what looked like huge sheets of plate glass. The potential for gruesome death and huge lawsuits seems to have bypassed the usual health and safety checks, but don't let that put you off going. Just walk like you're in a mine field and you should be okay.

Among the paintings I stopped to take a closer look at was Tanya Foster's 'Kyrenia', which you can see here:

The others were Giles Woodward's 'Step up to a dream', which nicely captured the look of neon at night, and someone whom I can only hope is called Steven Ingram, because I can barely read my own spider-track handwritten notes, whose three small paintings of shop fronts, each about the size of a paperback book, impressed me no end.

As for the rest - well, the older I get, the less I'm prepared to invest in anything. If a novel doesn't hook me on page one, I won't read it. If a film looks like it's going to follow all the usual Hollywood cliches to a predictable ending, I'm out of there. If any art demands that I puzzle over its meaning or suspend my tolerance for things I find ugly or irritating, my eyes are going to slide right over it.

In the end, I can only relate to painters who deal with the way things look. That's my personal preference. It's like Match.com; if you've got tats and a nose ring you won't make my shortlist. Doesn't mean you're a bad person; just means we won't get on. Similarly, if you do video installations or pile stuff in gallery corners, chances are I won't even notice your work. There were some photographs in there too, but I didn't look at those either.

Having gone the rounds a couple of times I decided to visit the permanent collection. I found they'd been digging through the cupboards since my last visit. Their very nice Stanley Spencer was still on display, but my favourite Marcus Stone was missing, while a number of works I'd never seen before had been dusted off and brought out. I noticed a good Laura Knight, who easily passed the horsey test with a circus scene. I may well be going mad, but I seem to remember a large seascape in their collection which was also absent: a Victorian era coastal scene, looking out to sea in full sunlight. There was a rowing boat out on the water, and in the foreground a large boulder, with children playing around it, and a little girl in period dress leaning against it. Or maybe it was in the Walker in Liverpool, and I'm getting confused. If it rings any bells, I'd be grateful for title and painter, if you happen to know.


(Edit: It's Golden Prospects, St Catherine's Well, Land's End, Cornwall, by John Brett, painted in 1881. Oil on canvas, 3' 6" high x 7' wide. You can order a print here.)
 
Anyway. I claimed my free red wine, sat in the restaurant and drank it, then wisely eschewed a second glass, being half cut, and made my way home.

And now I know better than to apply next year, having seen the kind of work that mostly gets shown. At some point, when I've done enough good paintings to make it worth my while, I'm going to have to sit down and work out a list of galleries and open shows I could usefully approach. Remember, getting into a show or gallery is easy. It's painting that's hard.


* If you're planning to visit the castle to see this show, remember that Nottingham's Goose Fair, which is also worth a visit, begins next week on the 3rd of October. You don't need to bring your own goose. In fact it's probably better if you don't. 

alla prima

I just bought the book 'Alla Prima' by Richard Schmid, which is his account of how he paints. Schmid is held in high regard among his fellow American realist painters, and I wanted to find out why.

I bought the book from his website, richardschmid.com, for a hefty $49.95, the thick end of £45 when you factor in overseas shipping. For that I got a fair sized paperback, about 10 5/8" by 8 1/2", delivered a couple of weeks later, with 193 lavishly illustrated pages, printed on high quality paper. There's also a hardback version for an eye watering $95.

Schmid's style is realist, and direct. He usually paints from life, and ideally in one continuous sitting. Schmid was taught by William H. Mosby, whose own teachers were contemporaries of Sargent and other well known painters of that time.

Schmid's painting is unashamedly concerned with the look of things - and he certainly has an eye. At times, his rendering skills can seem little more than a vulgar magic trick, but mostly you're just left wondering, somewhat enviously, how it's done. Which he is perfectly happy to explain, and indeed make simple.

He emphasizes the importance of getting it right first time, and sometimes will stop work on a painting rather than risk losing or spoiling what he's already done. Speaking as someone who will grind away at a canvas that has already suffered too much, like a man industriously flogging a dead horse, I'm inclined to think he has a point. This light handed treatment of his does sometimes result in pieces which I think look lightweight and sketchy - but they're always beautifully and tightly drawn.

There's a tension between this tight drawing and his bravura brush strokes. At first glance, some of his more complex paintings look like an abstract jumble. Then the thing jumps into focus and becomes a still life, which somehow looks more real, more solid and convincing than it has any right to.

In the book there are chapters on drawing, tone, edges, colour, and composition, among other things, in which he calmly and clearly tells how he works. One colour exercise he describes is a way of making colour charts of the paints you use, which I can recommend, having made similar charts myself. Getting your hands dirty with this will teach you more in a few hours than any number of textbooks on the subject, and help you mix cleaner, more accurate colours easily. No more thrashing around in mud.

The chapter on edges filled a gap in my knowledge I didn't even know I had, and gave me several new tools for my paintbox that I'll be trying out soon.

I can recommend this book for anyone struggling with the problems thrown up by painting in a realist style. His calm, reasoned analysis and simplification of those problems would have been a big help at the start of my painting career. Things I took years to learn first hand are explained in this book in terms anyone can understand and apply.

I tend to paint and repaint to get the result I want, working from drawings and colour studies and photographs done on site. A painting can take weeks, often because I have to wait until it occurs to me how I'm going to finish it, and will sometimes end up with passages that work well jammed up against areas that look worse every time I take the painting out.

Many realist painters have to deal with this problem of working from life and from studies, reinventing what they see from scraps and memory, and trying to make the resulting patchwork look good. When your subject is too big to paint in one session, 'alla prima', that's what you have to do.

But I will still apply the lessons I'm learning from this book to the studies I make on site from now on.

Long story short? If you paint in a realist style and want to learn some things, this book is well worth the money. Consider it an investment; cheaper than a painting holiday or course, and always there for you to refer to. Painting is a lifelong education, and Richard Schmid can teach you a thing or two. And no, I don't get paid for telling you that.

There are other books for sale on the website, from what I presume is the artist's own Stove Prairie Press, including one on his landscapes which I will definitely be getting next.

Health and safety in your studio. Whether you like it or not.

Safety is a good thing. When I cut and sand boards, I use a dust mask. When I use thinners or turpentine or varnish I make sure the room is adequately ventilated and that there are no naked flames. When I paint, I take care not to eat or drink or smoke, and I wash my hands carefully after every session. 

I always use safety gear. People who don't end up with nicknames like 'One eyed Pete', or 'Stumpy Joe'. Or 'Counts to nine then has to take his shoes off Dave'. Safety is good. 

But then I bought some Naples Yellow the other day to replace an old tube that was running out. The old tube is full of lead antimonate - nasty, lead based, toxic paint. Which handles like a dream and does wonderful things in paintings. 

The new tube is some ersatz mix of Titanium white and synthetic iron oxide, which doesn't work wonders. I don't like it. 

Which brings me, by a circuitous route, to my point. My first, instinctive reaction was this: 

"Given that I'm a responsible adult - no, really - why is someone hindering my right to use paint which, in careful normal use, offers no risk to anyone? I'm not going to smear buckets full of genuine Naples Yellow all over the nearest infants' school. I'm fairly sure I'm not going to spoon it into the coffee of unsuspecting diners when I stop by Wilko for tea and cake. I'm going to try my very best not to force feed it to terrified hostages while dressed as the Joker and holding Gotham City to ransom. So why is it getting harder to buy?"

You should probably read the preceding paragraph in an angry, sputtering, shouty voice for full effect. I've used an appropriate font to help you do this. 

But a little internet research - which is my avenue of last resort, and only comes after my customary self righteous, knee-jerk scaremongering - tells me that you can still buy the genuine article online and elsewhere easily enough. Spectrum have taken to selling it in tins to get around the law against selling it in tubes. Obviously, if you buy Naples Yellow in tins you have to tube it all up - thus ironically exposing yourself to more risky lead paint contact. 

Pigment manufacturers have slowly stopped making lead based pigments over the past few years, not because of some gigantic plot against the world's artists, but because safety legislation has led to fewer household paint manufacturers using them. The few remaining customers are those art materials firms who make lead based paints. And that's not a big enough market to justify the cost of continued production. Hence the difficulty of finding Flake White, and its rising price. 

Gentlemen. One of you is an impostor.

I want to use real Naples Yellow, not some second rate imitation. I want to keep the option of using Flake White. I want to make the informed choice and balance the advantages these pigments offer against the tiny risk inherent in their use. 

And while I believed that not being able to was down to the machinations of Eurocrats who've got nothing better to do than fiddle their expenses and think up new ways to annoy me, I could enjoy the full fury of righteous indignation. Finding out that it's all down to blind economic forces caused by safety legislation I can only approve of is somewhat deflating, but at least my blood pressure has stopped spiking now. So, safer on that score too. 

Michael Harding's site has got the lowdown on lead carbonate production here. 

If you want to know even more about it, there's a great blog post here which also gives handy hints on how to make your own lead carbonate using a scrap yard, horse manure, apple vinegar, and an old fridge. I have a policy of leaving paint manufacture to people whose job it is and who know exactly what they're doing, so I won't be going that route myself. 

If you use oil paint and fret about health and safety in your studio, Winsor & Newton have some helpful and informative PDF handouts on their website. 

We've come a long way on the safety front. Within living memory, back in the 1930's, you could buy radium toothpaste. Which was presumably quietly phased out when people's jaws began falling off from the resulting radiation poisoning. Travelling by car used to be about as safe as bomb disposal, but since the 70's better auto design, seat belts, air bags, ABS brakes, and drink and drive laws have changed that. Also, people generally don't have to breathe asbestos fibres everywhere they go these days, and that's good too. 

Whether we like it or not, we're all a little bit safer now. 

But I still want my genuine Naples Yellow. 

(PS: You can keep Vermilion. It's got mercury sulfide in it. Now that stuff's dangerous.)

I hate Art. Because underpants.

I'm very fond of painting. Tell me there's an exhibition of landscape painting on down the road, and I'll get my coat.

Tell me there's an exhibition of 'thought-provoking contemporary art that challenges the status quo' *, however, and I'll give you a dirty look, smack your head in passing, and cross you off my Christmas card list.

It all started years ago when my artist friends took me to a gallery opening, where some guy did a performance piece which involved painting himself blue and prancing about in his underpants. I could forgive the less than stellar paintings, the junkyard sculptures, the grisly, dull, video installations, but this was a step too far.

Always with the underpants.

I don't like contemporary art. I think it has become little more than the retarded cousin of the fashion industry. To get me into a gallery showing it these days would take armed men or free drink, and more fuss than would be seemly.

Is there still a place for art, now that the avant garde is running down? Or is all the real talent already hunched over a Wacom tablet, working on the next big game release or movie?

Status Quo pic by Watt_Dabney on Flickr

* If you insist upon 'challenging the status quo', you obviously haven't cottoned on to the fact that you are the status quo. Don't be the status quo. Unless you're Status Quo.