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new watercolours

These paintings fell out of my head on the Sunday just before New Year's Eve, when I was hanging out at the House of Fun with Denny, Chris and Jay. I was in a strange, solitary, focussed mood, although I'd been grounded very effectively by a beautiful massage from J.

Earlier on in the day I'd been playing with a set of wooden building blocks which skorpionuk and dakeyras had given me for my birthday the year before last. The little blocks were of London buildings, including generic skyscrapers and icons from the London skyline - the Eye, Big Ben etc. I was setting up skylines along the stripes of J's zebra-print rug as if the white and black pattern represented the Thames and its banks. Along the top of the skylines, I lined up the tiny wooden cars that came with the set, and the buses, which looked to me as if they were elephants.

The image of elephants making their way in a long line along the London skyline hooked my imagination. I moved my game to Denny's glass desk, where the blue light of his binary LED clock cast strange, futuristic light along the little wooden streets I was creating, reflecting from the glass and back up on the pale wood as if the city was floating in a black lake. We had Mirrormask playing soundlessly on the big flatscreen monitor (with psytrance providing a weirdly appropriate soundtrack), and as the images on the screen changed so did the light bathing my little apolocalyptic landscape in beautiful, otherworldly hues. I tried to capture the effect by borrowing J's camera, but I'm not sure if any of them came out well. I'll get the photos off him this weekend and go through them. Later that evening, though, after a pleasingly zen game of Sac Noir, I had a strong urge to play with paints, so Denny set me up on the floor with the carpet protected by a old duvet. I painted for several hours straight - I'm not sure how long exactly. I've never worked in watercolours before, unless you count the foamy water-based tempura block acrylics we used at secondary school. I'd only brought some with me on a whim - I think the little carry case originated in a bag of unwanted art stuff I inherited from mostly_a_cat and mirabehn.

These are completely new, for me, in terms of style and medium. They fell out of my head without thinking about what I was doing at all. I don't know if I could recreate this style or if I'm going to try and develop it. But I love it.

I of V: March of the Elephants
Watercolour on primed paper
14" x 10"

This version of the image is sketchy and imperfect, but I'm still in love with the idea. There's a germ of children's book here, I think. In my head there's something very powerfully emotive about the image of the elephants picking their way, one by one, across the rooftops of the sinking city at the world's end. I'm not sure where they're going, but I can almost hear their trumpeting.

II of V: Indian Elephant
Watercolour on primed paper
14" x 10"

Expanding on the elephant theme. What's the name of those Indian ceremonial robes, the heavily embroidered textiles with mirrored sequins and things? Chris thought it was called jhaldi or jaldi, but Wikipedia hasn't heard of it. Is it Punjabi? Urdu? Anyway, this elephant appears to be wearing some. I don't know where this image came from, but I wish the inside of my head looked like this all the time.

III of V: Pipe Dreams
Watercolour on primed paper
14" x 10"

At this point I started making my companions pose for me. They're very long-suffering and patient, my friends are. This is

romauld, for anyone who doesn't recognise him. I love the minimalist, stylised face, but it all went a bit wrong when I added the pipe, it came out far too heavy. I really wanted to do a hookah pipe, but I didn't know what one looked like. Never mind eh. I like the absinthe-chartreuse green, it's very bohemian.

IV of V: Two Headed Dragon
Watercolour on primed paper
14" x 10"

I think this my favourite of the lot. It's a portrait of

mr_magicfingers and the conflict I perceive in his personality. I wanted to paint him as a Chinese dragon, and this is what came out. The two heads were an accident - I started with the one on the left, wasn't happy with it, started again on the right and ended up using both.

V of V: Ubuntu Wrangling
Watercolour on primed paper
10" x 14"

dennyd was installing Ubuntu on his computer (apparently he was getting bored with Debian), so I took advantage of the fact that he was sitting still for more than two minutes to paint him. This tends to happen when you leave people in the room with me for any length of time. At least I didn't paint on him.

Click on the images to view bigger versions. All of these are for sale, and I'm going to be turning at least the second one into prints/greetings cards. Not sure about the others, it depends on interest. If no-one buys them they'll probably end up on the walls of the Pembury along with everything else I'm producing at the moment :)

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Love these :) The very little painting I have done has mostly been in watercolour and I am very keen on the effects which are possible. Your pictures here have a very luminous quality and your colours and lines are so... kind of relaxing an energising at the same time. I think you should definitely do more with watercolours. I might find mine and have another go myself :)

I paricularly love the eyes in your last painting here.

I think the paper had a lot to do with the vibrancy of the colours, which was no more than happy accident. I have some watercolour at home and I can't cope with how textured it is. This primed paper for use with oils and acylics is much smoother, and has a sort of shiny surface that stops it being quite so absorbent, meaning the paint sits on the surface for a little while before sinking in. It bleeds less, it's more controllable and I think it makes the colours more vivid. I'm not sure though, I have very little experience with watercolour paper, mostly because I found the texture so difficult to paint fine detail over.

You should definitely do more painting! :)

Watercolour paper is *usually* rough-textured but not always. With some effort you might be able to find hot-pressed watercolour paper which should be smooth(er). The cold-pressed/NOT rough texture is presumably traditional for watercolours but I agree that it can be difficult to work with.

Oh lovely... particularly the colourful elephant :)
You're very talented!

Thankyou! The elephant was so much fun to paint :) I want to do more of them, but I've run out of ideas. Bah.

I love watching your art evolve, you have a wonderful talent. Please do take the children's book idea forward.

Aww, thanks :) The only problem with the children's book idea is that I don't have a full story, and I'm not really a writer. On the other hand, I know several... but the idea of collaborating on something unpaid is a fairly daunting one. Maybe I should hire a writer to write the story and then produce the book and try to find a publisher myself... or maybe I should just wait until that mythical time when Chris has enough free time to start writing again :)

My mum's always written children's stories that she never really did anything with, especially during her career as a primary teacher. I could get her to do it, but I'm not sure she's got the right style for the dark power I'd want it to have, as well as the pretty. Plus, you know, creative collaborations are fraught at the best of times, let alone when they're family ;)

Or I could host a pub evening with a group of friends to brainstorm the story, and then put the book together myself and credit everyone at the back? Hmm, options ... not that I have time to illustrate a children's book this year, but I love the idea in principle, it's definitely one to shelve and come back to.

Oh, I LOVE these. Especially the first one, the third and the fourth: that very sparse but decorative style of portraiture is just gorgeous. Really lovely!

Oh, thankyou very much! At least I now know how I should paint you if I ever get the chance :)

The elephant ones are fabulous!

Thankyou very much! :)

They're fantastic. :)

Thankyou! :)

Those are splendid!!

Why thankyou! :)

I really like the portraits, especially the last. I wonder if you could do well out of taking commissions for portraits in this style?

Mmm, possibly. I'm always interested in portrait commissions, but this style has the advantage of speed (and therefore cheapness). Promotion is the neverending problem though ... oh, to be able to afford a marketing assistant! :/

Thanks, btw :)

The first one is as beautiful as it is simplistic.
And by no means is that meant in a derivative manner.

Beautiful - all of them - the first however, is my favourite - just because I love the idea of it...

...makes me think of a perverse Anthony Gormley exhibition.

:)

Thankyou! I'm glad you like it. I really want to explore the idea more, but I'm not sure where I'd take it next. Food for thought, methinks. :)

I really like all of these but the elephants most of all. Your use of color is just lovely.

Thankyou very much :) It's odd - if you asked me what colours I tended to favour in my art, I'd probably say that most of my work used rich, dark jewel tones - wines and prussian blues and oak browns. But that's only true of one or two pieces, both of them commissioned. Let me loose without any instructions and my stuff is bright. I'm always surprised by it.

Those are fantastic. I particularly like the people ones - the way you've represented Denny and Chris, very stylised, but very clearly them, presenting... I don't know, an aspect of them in a rather interesting way. Never met Magicfingers so don't know how it compares to the original, but it's a most inriguing effect nonetheless.

I want to start a regular live painting session for myself, persuading friends to sit for me so I can get more practise doing worked-up paintings from life. All my detailled work so far has been from photos or imagination; whenever I sketch or paint from life it's always like this, quick things that can be finished in half an hour. I love the idea of working from life, although I'm very intimidated by it. I have no idea how much commercial mileage there is in nudes/portraits that aren't commissioned, but I really want to try and explore it anyway. One of the consequences of not having an organised program for painting from life is that I tend to end up painting and drawing Denny and Chris a lot. It's very interesting to see how my portraits of them vary - not only over time as each of us changes, but from situation to situation, from mood to mood.

Thankyou - I'm glad you like these :)

I am very vain and so like people drawing me, and will happilly model for a painting if you are looking for people to do that! Not sure how it would work - maybe I would promise to buy it very very cheap? - but if you can offer crash space I can be in London most evenings.

Oh, I LOVE these!

Thanks! They were such good fun :)

AWESOME.

It seems an odd thing to pick out, but I love the blue computer-screen glow on Denny.

Thankyou!

Haha, I'm actually really glad someone noticed the computer screen glow :) The yellow is part of that as well, although less obviously - I think there must have been yellow at some point during the Ubuntu installation process, I'm not actually sure.

Now there's an idea for a portrait series - skin with various colours/images/films reflecting onto it from a computer screen. You could play identify-the-iconic-image ... it would be like the basic idea behind Nerdy Anna's matrix photo (http://www.nerdpr0n.com/preview/pages/08.php) taken far beyond its rational conclusion :D

ps. I am coming to Oxford to see your exhibition in a couple of weeks! Not sure which day yet, I want to try and liaise with Jay and bring him with me if possible. Fancy meeting up with us at the Magic Cafe and telling us all about it?

Wow, that's... mesmerising.

And yes, come on up, you'd both be very welcome! My mum is coming on the 15th and 16th, and I'm in London on the 19th, but other than that I'm flexible.

I love IV, in particular the way that they converge together. also V is so distinctively denny that I recognised him immediately. I also am particularly fond of the animal sub-elements (were they conscious?) of the anteater and the blue flamingo? reminds me of some of my old drawings here (http://www.holophrase.net/php-cgi/gallery/paintings/effects_of_the_impact_cs) and here (http://www.holophrase.net/php-cgi/gallery/paintings/animalcula_s).

yes, they're lovely, and i recognised all of the boys. i'd be interested in prints or possibly cards of the elephant, so please do remind me about it when they're a-doing. *hug*
x

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