The great sketching project continues, and I am glad to say that it has not become a burden, but an interesting set of challenges. Each day brings a new task to be addressed. If yesterday’s task was the problem of depicting convincing ellipses in perspective, today’s has to do with “when is a line not … Read more
Improbable as that may seem it does appear to be the case. My sketching project is useful, but it does bring home to me how different has been my habitual practice. It comes down to the fact that I have been painting, and to do that I have been working largely from reference photographs. My … Read more
The other night I felt that I had recovered sufficiently from my horrible cold to make it to the weekly figure-drawing class in Ilkley. When the tutor enquired, on my arrival, how I was I’m afraid that I gave him both barrels! I don’t think that I was fishing for sympathy, but it is possible … Read more
I was thinking today, as I worked in the studio, about my old art master in my former grammar school. He was an unlikely candidate for the role. A former soldier, he had also been an army boxing champion. His appearance reflected both of those positions. Neither his trimmed moustache nor his terse Scottish delivery … Read more
…. which best describes how life has been over the past few weeks. I guess that this has been reflected in the rather friable nature of recent posts. I have been struggling against injury and the weather, both of which have been interfering in their own way with the things I want to/need to do. … Read more
Well, I’m back from my family (and other) engagements in London. So I hope that normal service will be resumed from now on. As usual, I couldn’t visit London without some kind of “art raid”, and on this occasion I decided I would revisit the Courtauld Institute. It has been closed for a while for … Read more
When our grandson comes to visit us he always asks that we can do something artistic together, and his current stay is no exception. I am always on the lookout, therefore, for novel ways to both engage and entertain him with some kind of artistic activity. The ways in which ideas suddenly drop into your … Read more
I decided to take seriously the advice my wife gave me the other day, and allow myself to become less fixated on the higher-level aims of art. At least for the time being I have elected to focus my attention on developing the skills that might, art some future point, contribute to a more elevated … Read more
Following yesterday’s post in which I put together some rather hostile thoughts about art critics. To my surprise, when looking through the quarterly newsletter of the Estorick Collection today, I encountered the following statement. “Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.” The source? This is a quotation from the Futurist Manifesto, that appeared in the … Read more
Recently I mentioned in a post that the idea had crossed my mind that I might attempt a portrait, and indeed that I had made a sketch of my wife. The other day, giving a lift to a colleague, I also mentioned this possibility. Promptly he loaned me a couple of DVDs about portrait painting. … Read more