A Payne in the Arts

Connections - The Route to Payne’s Grey

Nick sent me a link to a YouTube video showing his working process, made for Australian television. I thought it was interesting that he starts his paintings by blocking out the tones with Payne’s Grey.

You would usually work from light to dark with watercolours, though I’ve seen articles in The Artist magazine that advocate starting with the darks.

Establishing the tonal contrast early in the painting gives it depth that can easily be lost when concentrating on colour.

Lessons in Tertiary Greys (that should be the title of a book) at PSAD.

Grey is not just a mixture of black and white, and even if it was, the variations in black and white pigments allow you to create a wide variety of warm and cool greys. You can mix tertiary greys in many different ways but a good starting point is to mix a secondary colour with its complement (a primary) for example orange (secondary) mixed with blue (primary) or purple (secondary) mixed with yellow (primary), or you could mix 3 primaries (red,yellow and blue).

Tertiary greys make a painting interesting by their variety. You can mix any degree of warm, cool or neutral tones and create interesting effects by using mixtures of granulating and staining pigments.

The range of greys available is immense given the number of colours you can start with. Tertiary greys will always sit comfortably in the composition if they are mixed from colours used in the rest of the painting.

Experiments with Limited Palettes (another book title - the sqeaquel praps)

A few years ago I did a couple of summer schools at Putney School of Art and Design - painting classes with Ian Ellis and Graham Cole. Redcurrant themes in both were the use of limited colour palettes and mixing tertiary greys. Both techniques give a feeling of unity to a painting, although you can mix a wide variety of colours from your palette, the limited number of starting colours binds the picture together - the colours look as though they belong together.

Just Doodling

After watching Nick’s video I rummaged through my paints only to find the Payne’s Grey slot was empty. So, off to the shops I went.

I painted a few swatches in various dilutions and stared at them for a while. Winscale and Neutron’s Payne’s Grey is quite blue but leaning towards greenish.

Since I’d squeezed the new kid on the palette into an empty well alongside a couple of my limited Earth colour palettes, I thought I’d have a go at mixing it.

My latest colour scheme is based on what I thought Aaron Becker had used in his illustrated children’s book Journey - Prussian blue, alizarin crimson, burnt umber and yellow ochre.

I found I could get pretty close by mixing a bluish purple with Prussian blue and alizarin crimson then progressively adding yellow ochre. Along the way I made some rather nice looking greys.

Looking it oop on Wicky PDA.

I had a look on Wikipedia for information about Payne’s Grey and found it was named after the 18th century English watercolour painter William Payne who mixed this grey to give his paintings more luminosity than using black.

Guess what? He mixed iron (or Prussian) blue, crimson lake and yellow ochre or raw Sienna.

I looked on the tube for the pigment codes to see what Winscale and Neutron actually use. PB 15 - Copper phthalocyanine, PBk 6 - Carbon black, PV 19 - Quinacridone. So, a modern synthetic blue and crimson plus lamp black, but no yellow.

It’s amazing where a little thought or scrap of information can lead you.

Awa Nick on The Tellybox in Oz

Watch my super talented brother on Australian TV showing you how he paints his rather idiosyncratic dog pictures.



Pssst! it's better in full screen

from Graeme Stevenson's Put Some Colour in Your Life.

Celtic Hearts Entwined

I finished the Celtic Valentine card in a bit of a rush - like, while I was making the first cuppa on the morning of Valentine's day. I was reasonably pleased with it but the longer I looked at it the less happy I was.

So I started again.

Watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Classico .5 HP 140lb. watercolour paper

Happy now Awa Rich?

Yeah, well, y'know... Get'n there.

Don't Call Me Shorty!

A diminutive Nordic character. Watercolour and coloured pencil.

No particular reason.

Celtic Hearts

Last week's brief at the Putney School of Art and Design Illustration class was to create a bookmark or a Valentine's card.

Several people produced Valentines bookmarks so I was not being original. I removed some bits after the show and tell session as the general opinion was that they were unnecessary. I had to agree.

I was going to do more to it but this morning I decided it was done. There are more ideas germinating from this project.

There always are Awa Rich. Thing is to do summink about 'em!

Can you see 6 hearts?

(Watercolour and coloured pencil on 200gsm cartridge paper)

John Singer Sargent

I did my daily dip into my favourite art blog - Charley Parker's Lines and Colors - and was delighted to see a collection of charcoal portraits by one of my favourite artists, John Singer Sargent.

I love the spontaneous  appearance of his watercolours and charcoal drawings, but at the same time they seem so precise and considered.

There was a familiar looking face amongst them.

I made a copy of this drawing in watercolour, a few years ago, during a painting class with Ian Ellis at the Putney School of Art and Design. The exercise was to copy a painting or drawing by a well known artist using tertiary greys - mixing greys from primary and secondary colours.

And the winner is...

Not Awa Rich!

Shurrup, who asked you anyway?

My Bruvver

Did I mention I have a very talented brother?

I think you did Awa Rich, there's a linky thing over there---->

He lives in New Zealand and exhibits his painting in galleries all around the country and they're proving very popular. I know when the painting frenzy is upon him - and an exhibition dead lion is looming - as I don't hear from him for ages.

This morning I got a short email directing me to YouTube and Jimi Colzato's promotional video for his paintings in the Lightwave Gallery.

My socks are currently in orbit around Proxima Centauri! I knocks my little video into a cocked hat.

Something to aim for Awa Rich.

Cernly is.

Knot So Fast Buster!

A good place to start telling a story is in the middle. I put this Celtic knot picture in a previous post as an example of a drawing I'd made using the 53 Paper app. on my iPad. It started as a doodle, a warm-up for some other sketches in a proper paper sketchbook, but I reworked it after drawing more of the same with pencils, coloured pencils and watercolour.

Decisions I made while using physical media influencing decisions about the digital image. Using the eraser a lot - much easier in the digital context, though in the 53 Paper app. there is only a hard eraser whereas a real eraser can be more subtle. Real paper can only withstand a certain amount of scrubbing but a digital eraser can rub out as many times as you like.

I like the effect of layering colours you get with coloured pencils, the way you can see the granular texture of the colours in the previous layers. I tried it in the digital image and achieved a fair approximation. A pleasant effect, better than flat colour. Using the pencil tool to draw the thick outlines was useful as I could over draw lines to make them stronger or ease back on others - more like a real pencil and less digital looking than using the pen or marker tool to give a solid line.

Overlaying watercolour glazes creates some interesting effects but nothing like real watercolour.

Here's a page from my sketchbook with the same design drawn with non photo blue pencil - to establish the design - overdrawn with a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil then coloured with Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

The design below has been outlined with black ink.

Finally, a more worked up version done with a combination of watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Accademia Desegno e Acquarello 240 gsm natural grain paper - which is very absorbent for a paper that declares itself suitable for watercolour, though you can achieve some interesting effects once you get used to it.

The absorbency of the paper exaggerates the way watercolours dry lighter than they appear when they're wet. Some colours appear very dark when wet but almost disappear when they dry.

So, how did I get here? I was marvelling at The Book of Kells on my iPad - get it in the AppStore for the price of an average bottle of wine, you'll be enjoying it long after the wine has gone.

You should go into advertising copywriting - back in the '50s Awa Rich!

I was wondering where you'd got to.

Same here Awa Rich. I was beginning to think you'd abandoned me.

I've been fascinated by Celtic knotwork since I was a kid. My brother Nick and I went through a phase of filling any available piece of paper with intricate designs we called 'creepers' like the tendrils on a pea vine. We'd discovered fractal self similarity, though we didn't know it at the time.

A prize with no bells on it for you Awa Rich!

This made for fertile ground when I got a book about the Vikings from a 'book of the month club'. It had some knotwork design on the cover and/or there were photographs of wood or stone carvings inside. This is all fogged by the passage of time.

That's my version of the story. Nick might remember it differently.

It was Nick that took knotwork as his own thing, beginning with the dust jacket of the Vikings book. The original must have been pretty boring as he replaced it with his own design. From then on, any available surface was fair game. Take a look at his website, there's a link over there on the right.

The design in the image at the top of this post was copied from a small pendant on a troll in a Brian Froud illustration.

All this because I was scratching around some designs for a logo or monogram for my sketchbooks. Actually, a seal to replace the bead on the end of the bookmark ribbon.

Is that the future feature Awa Rich?

One of them, yes.

My Sketching Kit

I thought you might like to see what I used for today's sketch and the Fulham Palace sketch.

From left to right:

Pentel Clic Eraser

Rotring Art Pencil - 2mm 3B Faber Castell lead

Faber Castell 2mm lead sharpener

Pentel Waterbrush

Rembrandt waterclolours in a Winsor and Newton Bijou box

The paper can speak for itself

That should be the title of a book

A little voice in my head says that frequently when I see or hear certain groups of words. So many phrases sound like book titles.

I'm sure that making titles for books is a more arcane form of witchcraft than just thinking a bunch of words sound good or clever, but it's a little thing that keeps me amused.

Are you going to tell us the title of your latest bestseller Awa Rich?

Sketching with Olivia.

This week we went to Merton Abbey Mills as it's easy walking distance and midway between where we both live. It's the site of William Morris's Liberty Print Works. You may have seen Tony Robinson snorkelling in the Wandle  - is that another book title Awa Rich?  - when the Time Team excavated the area looking for any remains of the works, before the site was developed.

We found a shady bench opposite the water mill. Olivia did an A3 (A4 double page spread) in fineliner and watercolour. She was a bit doubtful whether she'd post it on her blog. I thought it was great, bold lines and colours compared with my rather ticklish pencil and wash.

Funny how we're far more critical of our own work than other's. We both sat there telling each other what was wrong with our own sketches whilst praising each other's.

The Water Mill as Merton Abbey Mills

Once again, I used A4 200 gsm cartridge paper, a 3B 2mm mechanical pencil, Rembrandt watercolours (cunningly disguised in a Winscale and Newtron Bijou Box) and a Pentel Waterbrush - though water and spillages were not a problem today.

I hope you didn't use any of those wicked cadmium pigments. T'would devastate the ecosystem Awa Rich.

Nope, just raw Sienna, burnt umber, Prussian blue and alizarin crimson.

Whoa! Now that's what I call a limited palette Awa Rich.

Well, limitations can make you more creative and a big box of colours can encourage you to make mud. I bought a book recently, called Journey - now that's a good title Awa Rich - by Aaron Becker. It's a wordless story about a bored and lonely young girl who draws a doorway into another world.

After looking at it for some time I reckon he used a similar palette, or at least, I could mix the colours in the book from just those four colours. The printers may have cranked up the saturation a bit and the girl's red crayon is probably cadmium red, but it's surprising what you can do with so few colours.

Sketching at Fulham Palace

On Friday (20th June) the illustration class from Putney School of Art and Design had a PlayAwayAwayDay at Fulham Palace. Bright Phoebus shone most glorious and a good time was had by all.

Find out about Fulham Palace

Fulham Palace is a haven of tranquility and contemplation in the midst of urban London. It's a great place to sketch as there are usually people around - on Friday there were a couple of school groups and a wedding - several interesting buildings and the recently renovated walled garden which is a lovely place to escape from the hullabaloo to read, sketch, eat your lunch or canoodle - as evinced by several couples who found the sunshine and seclusion highly conducive.

I stayed all day and did two sketches, one in the walled garden and one of the facade of the palace.

Ian drawing the greenhouses in the Knot Garden

 Ian is an architect who eschews 'puters and still draws the traditional way. He does fantastic pen and watercolour drawings. I did this sketch on A4 200 gsm cartridge paper with a 3B mechanical pencil and Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

A gaggle of school children in front of Fulham Palace

I did this sketch on A4 200 gsm cartridge paper with a 3B mechanical pencil and  Rembrandt watercolours using a Pentel waterbrush, which is great for sketching as you don't need a pot of water which can spill all over the parquet floor.

When you visit a museum and Uniformed Security Personnel (What's your USP Awa Rich?) search your bag. They're not looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, they're after your watercolours, as Ian will relate.

I got the proportions a bit askew, the building is wider than it appears here. Another problem I always have with buildings is dividing up the space between the windows and doors. I think I can do it by eye rather than using a perspective division method, but as you can see - I can't.

Linda asked Ian how he gets his drawings to look so accurate, he just shrugged and replied "years and years of practice". The answer no one wants to hear but know deep in their hearts to be true.

Accept no substitutes eh Awa Rich?

True enough. Now go practice!

p.s. I can thoroughly recommend the coffee and the chocolate brownies in The Drawing Room cafe, I went back twice!

Mary Anning

Today's Google Doodle (in the UK) celebrates the 215th birthday of Mary Anning who discovered the first complete plesiosaur skellington in the cliffs at Lyme Regis in Dorset.

I met her a couple of years ago while on a PlayAwayAwayDay with the Putney School of Art and Design Children's Book Illustration class at the Natural History Museum in London. We sat on a bench in the long corridor - where many of the "curies" she found are displayed on the wall - and spoke of many things, of ichthyosaurs and brassicas and monarchs.

She told me she'd "ben streck boy loytnin twoice!" Perhaps that's how she found herself in the Natural History Museum more than 200 years later. The lightening opened up a dimensional nexus in the timespace continuum and sucked her through. Or perhaps her doppelgänger was spirited there like in the film 'The Prestige" where Nikola Tesla's (David Bowie) lightening machine teleported duplicates of objects and people placed in its path.

More likely she was an actor acosting unwary visitors to elucidate them concerning the nature of the history and the history of the nature.

Here's a not quite finished waterclolour I did at the time. I think the project was to create a book jacket.