Time for Another Round of Musings...

Winter setting well in, here in the northern hemisphere. (NB the "cold" blue colour! Nice touch?)

TIME FOR REFLECTION(warm reflective colour)

This time, self portraits: here is one I did years ago, things must have been
bad!

The reason for a blog on Self Portraits? I have been going through hundreds of pictures and sketches of all sorts, hoping to find some to throw out (I know I could throw out the lot and the world would not be the worse for it.) Last time I attempted to throw away because I was moving house, a friend was watching, "helping", and grabbed rejects from my bin. Subsequently he has had them framed and I am now questioning my judgement, .....as one should....all the time...on everything! They look quite good!

This time I had hardly any to reject, mostly because I felt that with further work (!!! how much I wonder, and when?) they could be improved. Also my inner Protestant, almost moribund in several other matters, doesn't like waste. (Another good reason to hang on to work is that a large number of pieces in waiting often, jumbled up in serendipitous ways, can give rise to new ideas.) One marvellous tutor, years ago gave the injunction "Never throw anything away, it can always be re-cycled." Well what a good excuse to keep every little scrap and scratching, until one is nigh buried under them.

Amongst the pieces that could be, as the French like to say a "re-looker" (not a wonder sometimes that the Académie Française wants to keep the French language pure, when such ugly phrases are adapted) were a number of self portraits, often done in classes over the years.

One is on my blog title of course. Another was in a previous blog....called Bad Hair Day, done when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and frightened myself by seeing my image on the mirror. (This happens nearly all the time now, not just in the middle of the night.)

 
Some years ago I read an article in a psychology magazine that put forward the idea that artists do self portraits when they are facing, or have made, a change in their lives. This seemed to be a very interesting observation, however there were things missing, such as the desire for self understanding, or the portrait of
oneself as a projection of someone else, possibly “wishful thinking”, such as making oneself appear much younger or more beautiful. Very tempting! Seldom successful. Of course Dürer managed it rather well: he painted himself as a Christ look-alike.

It must have been difficult doing self portraits before good quality mirrors were invented. Highly polished metal, or a reflection in water does not give such a clear image, often this is can be a comfort. Poor light is another way of avoiding the truth about the face reflected back from the mirror.

At one time I did a portrait looking in a mirror, of myself looking shocked...I was rather proud of it, and it went into a small show of students’ work. Someone must have taken a fancy to it, or found it so horrendous that they took it down, because it disappeared. I was very upset. And obviously I have not forgotten the incident. It rankles still...how immature is that?

Most self portraits have the artist looking rather serious, which is not surprising if one is really searching for the “truth”. This next self portrait is rather a clever thing, how did he manage to paint himself with his eyes closed? It is part of a larger painting of the Resurrection (A story from the Bible, central to Christian belief,) by Piero della Francesca, which is a good way of sneaking oneself in, in the way strangers in a crowd will get themselves in to the background of a TV reportage.

Piero woz here 

One of the most difficult self portraits I was asked to do, in a class, was of myself reflected in 2 mirrors.

This was a real mind blower. I began to wonder who I really was!

I am still wondering.

In this glorious portrait miniature of 1577
Nicholas Hilliard does not seem to suffer this problem. 

He was a Queen Elizabeth I favourite, and we can see why.

I am sure he just winked at me.

What a contrast with this by Zen monk Hakuin Ekaku circa 1764.

He probably would have said he was nobody, and really meant it.

It does seem that as one ages,
one is more interested in seeking the truth rather than glamourising.

Here is the wonderful Rembrandt - I feel he is not trying to flatter himself.

And another favourite, by Chardin. 

The shadow over the nose is so telling,
and the lack of vanity, clothes thrown together, hair in a strange turban and blue ribbon. Wonderful. We feel, I think, that we know him,

certainly I feel that I would LIKE to have known him.

The inscription under this painting by Salvatore Rosa 1640, 

(who doesn't look like the sort of chap you would want to take to a rowdy party,) says

"Of Silence and Speech, Silence is better"

SO

Maybe of Blog and Blank page, Blank page is better.

(This is a self portrait projected into the future.)

PS. On the other hand I do feel a change is imminent, 

so maybe it is time for another
LONG look in the mirror of interior self.

PPS. Shock! Horror! How could I have done this...no pictures by women painters, except ME ME ME.

Next blog and New Year Resolution (Year of Dragon) to fix this.

All the images of The Masters are courtesy of Wikipedia. Thank you.

Another Short Blog with a Moral

Another short blog, with a Moral, so I need to start with

Dear Reader,

“Inspiration” if one can call it that, and usually, for me anyway,  it is a question of getting on with work, comes from many sources.  Often triggered by a flash of something out of the corner of the eye, or a dream, a juxtaposition, an object, someone else's work  which leads one on another path.

This picture, in pastel, was inspired by a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. During the visit I noticed on one of their information sheets that there was a painting competition. The work was to be based on an object in this vast and wonderful collection.  As I wandered through the ceramics rooms I saw a small vase or dish, I really can't remember which, and the dragon on it seemed so lively.  I particularly like dragons as this is my Chinese Horoscope sign (“I'm not surprised,” as someone once said to me when I told them. What did they mean by that cryptic comment? Me? A Dragon?)

With the details of the competition in my bag, I hurried home and got to work.  It went very quickly and was fun to do. When I had finished I read the Rules of the Competition...the picture was to be no more than 4 inches square...mine was about 2 feet by 3 feet! 

The Moral is...well it is obvious isn't it?  I was just too enthusiastic and hurried to be bothered to read the Rules first. And in fact this time, for once, I don't regret it, after all it wasn’t an exam,

and not all Dragons are scary, are they?

Bored Witless

A little blogette:

WARNING

May contain offensive asterisks ***

Sometimes a friend will say, as part of a conversational gambit, “Have you met Jennifer? She is a painter.” Sometimes they will add, “She is a very good painter.”

This is a conversational gambit, as I pointed out. This statement does not prove that I am a painter, or a good painter, let alone a very good painter, however, it is said as part of an introduction and to get the conversation going. Which it frequently does, and the response so often is:“Oh really, my mother (daughter, cousin, step-father, dog ) is a painter too. He/she/it is a very, very good painter.” At which stage I get to learn all about them and their hopes and desires, successes, and less often, their failures.

Remember dear people reading this blog, young or old, that one of life’s great secrets is to be a good listener and thus, far too often to be bored witless, occasionally to learn something, and to realise that most people are far more interested in themselves than in you, so it doesn’t matter whether your hair is having a bad hair day (see below), or that you forgot to change into your f**k me shoes for the party. No one will notice, and if they do, does it really matter? Sorry guys, this bit doesn't apply to you...well, perhaps to some of you it does.

This as any discerning reader will notice is so far only loosely about

PAINTING!!

So to return to the subject: when a painting appears online, one might have the feeling that the work one looks at is “real”, but of course it isn’t. What it lacks amongst other things is scale (everything is limited by the size of the screen,) tactile qualities (because you cannot reach out and touch the work,) shininess, dullness, density, flatness, and much else. In fact the whole gamut of real experience. It is extremely useful if one remembers all of that, in the way that a film at the cinema can carry one away completely and then real life takes over as one heads back out into the street when it’s over.

I was really shocked by one painting teacher whose class I attended.... only once. She issued the class with enlarged, poorly printed images of part of an Old Master painting (not the most competent Old Master either,) taken from a web page on the net, and asked the class to copy it.

What will they have learnt from that experience? Of course they may well have passed an agreeable few hours, which is fine, but why call yourself a teacher of painting and not an “Entertainer”? Whatever was looked at was at fourth or fifth hand, the image had been perverted, all the important choices had already been made, everything was at a considerable remove and the original was far away, still in the Museum.

Another incident which shocked me was to learn that a School “Art Teacher” had taken to making marks on a pupil's work, instead of demonstrating what was meant on a separate piece of paper. I feel this is unforgivable, and a violation. Some people are delighted because they think they can then pass the work off as their own.........usually though the work then lacks integrity.

Am I being over picky? I don’t think so. It is to do with authenticity, with “who owns” the work.

It was great fun rootling around to find an old pair of almost f**k me sandals, which I haven't worn in years, and then “tarting” them up a bit for the drawing. Those poor toes though! Health warning, wearing sandals like those depicted can do serious podological harm. And as for the bad hair......

Apologies and Excuses

Apologies and Excuses, with a Bit of Self Justification.

Over the months since I posted the last blog I have had several reminders from my “Boss” that I should get on and post another.

The last reminder was more or less an order to get on with it.

My excuses are many, here are a few: having health problems; selling a house; moving house; settling down somewhere new; Christmas; bad weather; Easter; good weather for gardening; trying to be useful to friends who need help; lack of ideas… No. This last is not true, it is much more a case of not being able to order my ideas or having too many of them.

Ok. Ok. There have been times when I could have got on with it, but my chosen subject

COLOUR

is one of such magnitude that it could run for years. Don't worry, it won't....

Get ON with it I kept hearing from the Boss!

I haven't been idle though, one project was to design a logo for a great new website. This followed on from on an earlier successful logo design, mentioned in a previous post, for blackbirdebooks. This new logo involved armadillos instead of blackbirds - altogether more exotic beasts and not quite as plentiful, in my garden at least.

It started out like this, after hours spent in the Natural History Museum looking at stuffed ones and learning lots of Armadillo FAQS. The noise from excited kids in the Museum was deafening. It is a wonderful place, one I love to visit. All the architectural details are extraordinary. If you get a chance take a good look at the facade as you go by.

This is how I started......  Here is an early armadillo sketch:

I think it is the 9 banded armadillo.

And here is another, later one:

I am trying to work out how to do the logo: the Armadillo is admiring the portrait of Great Uncle Armadillo, actually it might be Great Aunt Armadillo. With armadillos it is pretty hard to tell.

Eventually it became something like this:

And then this:

To see how it looks now it’s finished, in full colour, visit the new website, although it’s currently only a holding page:

http://www.armadillocentral.com/

Another occupation has been to design a new Certificate for a garden Society, of which more later.

Writing the blog was rather neglected, but here it is, at last.

And here's an armadillo FAQ just for fun: there are some called Pink Fairy armadillos, living in South America - now nice is that?

A Thorny Problem

Some time ago I mentioned that my experience of book illustration was not a great commercial success, or, to put it another way, it was, commercially, a failure. However the experience was useful and the actual work on drawing and painting was an enjoyable challenge, so, although it could have been a disaster financially and "morally", thanks to the excellent advice I was given by: 

the Association of Illustrators

all was fairly well that ended as well as could be expected.

Of course I should have gone to them first!

The following is my version of what happened, and it is meant as a warning to anyone who, like me enters into a "friendly” agreement to do some work, without first having taken the precaution of a drawing up a proper contract.

Warning !

Doing work without a Contract can damage your health.

As always the dilemma is, what guidelines should be established, what questions should you ask, and what precautions should you take when you start a project on a friendly basis? At that stage you don't realise that there are questions that should be asked, or precautions you should take.......all of that comes with EXPERIENCE! To get the experience I was about to make some serious mistakes.......

The brief originally was to do one illustration for a poem in a book which was to be published privately. What is called, rather unkindly perhaps, vanity publishing. The Poet liked my interpretation of her words into pictures and thus ended up asking me to do ten in total. Here is one of them.

That poem was about moving house, "Making a Nest".

(My research showed that the female starling has pink on her beak and the male blue!)

I had to make all the pictures up as I went along, of course. With this one there were no starlings to be seen, and certainly no way to peer into a nest.

At this stage we reached an agreement on remuneration. A sum of money for the work, and a small share of any profits if someone wanted to publish it commercially. Given the nature of the book and the state of the publishing business, the latter seemed very unlikely to happen. We exchanged e.mails about the work and I showed every change and idea to my client The Poet. She told me she was delighted with my interpretations of her ideas.

It was all going well.....or so I thought....

There was a deadline for the book, the famous Frankfurt Book Fair 2 months later. I set to work straight away, as, once all the poems and illustrations were ready, it had to be set up graphically. This was to be done professionally by someone who was paid by the page for her work, The Graphics Designer. She would do it in her leisure hours.

If you refer back to previous blogs you will see that I painted an enormous (7 metres by 3) back-cloth for the Music Hall, to be performed in the local village as part of the summer festivities,

This is part of the backcloth, painted on shiny plastic.

and in between these two projects I was given a commission to paint a picture of a house for a birthday surprise. With this extra project, pressure was building fast.

Well it is often no bad thing to have a bit of pressure and stress, it gets the stream of creative "juices flowing".

Flowing

As I finished each piece I would show it to The Poet and then it would go to The Graphics Designer to be set up. The deadline was moved closer several times by The Publisher (who was rather inexperienced in this field, as were The Poet and I).

However

I managed to finish all the work (plus a couple of extras for which I would not charge) with a couple of days to spare. At this stage, much too late in the day, it occurred to me that a contract dealing with Copyright and Fees would be a good idea. The Publisher had told me quite firmly as she handed me a paper to sign renouncing my entitlement to Copyright, that the Copyright on my work belonged to her. I was sure she was wrong, but...we can all make mistakes, thus........I told her i would need to check on this.

And so it started to get a little rough........

Fortunately it was suggested to me by one of my collaborators

that I should contact The Association of Illustrators who specialise in such matters.

They were so helpful, I joined on the spot and was given PROFESSIONAL advice. It seems that I had not asked for a sufficiently generous fee, (too late to do anything about that), and that The Publisher was in error in thinking that the Copyright belonged to her.

Unless subject to a special contract the Copyright always belongs to the artist.

Once they were finished, I had given the final pieces to The Graphics Designer, but requested that the work not be handed over to The Publisher untill the Contract and Copyright issues had been settled.

But by the time I got back to The Publisher with the information that she was in error...........without telling me, she had already withdrawn all my work, and then refused to pay me anything on the grounds that I had not delivered it in time. I was stranded.......

The AOI advised that I had every reason to take the case to court........

But, for various reasons I decided not to. My Client The Poet was not well. I had had enough of the whole thing and had learnt my lesson the hard way. 

Time to Move On

I have recently been approached to do some more illustrations for another book, and some other work for an e.book publisher, blackbirdebooks.

This time I shall approach matters differently!

P.S. All but 2 of the illustrations in this blog were originally for the book.

Quotations

When I started to really study painting I enjoyed collecting quotations. I still do. Some of the following have their provenance, some do not. It is possible that some of them are my own, but mostly they are too wise or clever for them to have been mine...

I think it was Constable who said "He who is self taught has a fool for a Master."
When I read this, I decided to go to art classes rather than "re-invent the wheel" by my own efforts.

"The idea and the paper - what gets in the way?" I wish I know who said this....

"Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how. But when you know how, ah! Then it is a different matter."
This I can vouch for. Thank you Degas.

"Other birds will fly higher."
Nicely put, Nietsche.

Zen saying "Questioning is answering."

This latest "self portrait" is an amalgam of my own collage (done years ago) and a photo I took recently. I was trying to get to grips with various techniques in Paintshop Pro. It blew my brain, but I got there in the end.

There will be more quotes along the way.....by the way I read that the Dani People of Indonesia have words for only two colours, black and white. That must make life simple. How do they do it?

An Update at Last

Some Sources of Inspiration

It is many, many weeks since the last blog. Spring was supposed to be with us when I first started writing this entry, but although we were well into the month of May, (and it's now almost August as I load this), the heating would come on and a fire was welcome in the evenings, if I could be bothered to light it! The weather has been strange again this year, or is it like that every year?

I had been unwell. I painted a small picture, this one...... even I found it rather worrying.

Face 2

And another, that was supposed to be a jolly, bright sunset over the Esterel Mountains, and turned out to be this melancholy little thing. You know the phrase "Feeling blue"? Cause for reflection.

Sunset Over The Esterel

Many years ago I read either a book or an article that discussed how the body can send us “messages” about our health and its problems. One story in particular I found very interesting. This related to a young child who was suffering from symptoms which had resulted in him going to hospital. Nobody knew what was wrong with him and someone had the bright idea of giving the child some drawing materials. He drew a picture of himself with a bird flying down and its beak touching his head. It was found that he had a tumour on the brain.....

There were other incidents related with the same message. What we need is to be able to interpret our own messages, and to do that we need insight, which mostly seems to come after the event, called hindsight! In my experience one can also be creative with problems of an emotional nature. Here are a couple of examples:

I had a friend, well more an acquaintance, who had what are called “relationship” problems. When I told her that I found painting a useful way of working through difficult areas or periods of my life, she asked if I would show her how. I said I wasn't a trained art therapist but would be happy to show her what worked for me. (It could be dangerous to "mess" with a serious psychosis.)

Every piece of work she produced had the same underlying theme: there were three separate parts to it, and to me as silent observer, they didn't seem to relate to each other in a harmonious way. It turned out that she and her husband had a problem with her widowed mother, which caused innumerable rows and disagreements. I moved away to live elsewhere, but I later heard that she and her husband had parted company. She told me that seeing the paintings had given her an insight into her problems. From these beginnings painting became her serious hobby.

For me perhaps the most moving and emotional of these experiences have been in relation to my childhood. My darling mother was very loving and caring however she could be over protective, of me but not of my brother, once he was no longer a small child.

Mother was the eldest girl in a family of six children. Two brothers were older, and their sport was to bully and tease her.

She was in school, aged fourteen, when a message came that her mother had been taken ill. In shock she ran home, and never went back to school. Instead she was detailed to look after her two younger sisters and brother. She became in effect a mother to them as her own mother had taken to her bed, and even when recovered from what was some sort of a breakdown, from then on treated her eldest daughter, my mother, as an unpaid servant.

Many people would have become bitter and angry at such treatment, and might have taken it out on the “little ones”, which is what they then became to her. But the abiding love and deep respect between her and the three younger children continued till death.

Mother told me that at school she loved painting lessons and asked her mother for a paint box and other materials to be creative, however her request was ignored and to make it worse the longed for materials were purchased for her two little sisters.

In later life she joined an art class run by the local authority, (and here I am getting to the point of the tale,) but she never had the courage to paint anything original. She could copy a photo or the reproduction of an Old Master very well, she sculpted from models, embroidered and knitted exquisitely from patterns, cooked well and was admired for her “taste” in matters aesthetic. What stopped her when it came to being original in her work, with her many skills? Why did she feel inadequate in creating her own pictures and patterns?

One day, and she was an old lady by then, I at last persuaded her to try for something original, no matter how or what, and we sat down together to paint and I suggested she just make marks on a large sheet of paper. We used pastel chalks as they cover a surface quickly. When she had finished (working in silence, no comments from either of us) we sat and looked at the result. It appeared to show a girl sitting under a very large dark cloud which hovered just above her head. The image came from deep inside, unplanned and without thought. When she examined it she was surprised with its specificity and what she could divine from it.

Not long after that she created another picture, again using pastels. It was a simple subject, but it was original work, doodled out of her head, not a copy, and contrary to her past practices it was large and very colourful. She died some years ago, but I keep this picture and it means a great deal to me.

Mother's Picture

Art can heal deep wounds, and I would include other creative processes in the word Art. Perhaps the most useful aspect of painting in its widest sense is that words are not needed, nor any particular skills in representation, simply the ability to make marks with pigments.

There are many sources of inspiration. This is a painting by Jean-Baptiste Simon Chardin ( from Wikipedia Open Source). He seems to have been inspired by rather simple contemplative subjects, it is obvious though, that to be able to paint such things does requires a high degree of skill, even though it is still "marks with pigments".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Baptiste_Sim%C3%A9on_Chardin_029.jpg#filelinks

My father died when I was in my thirties. I didn't mourn him. It didn't touch me. He had left home (or been forced out, I don't know the circumstances) when I was 11. I came home from boarding school and was told “Your father has left and won't be coming home again.”

Bewilderement

I remember feeling bewilderment and intense anger which was immediately suppressed. Anyway, to get to the point... years later, maybe twenty years, I decided to paint a portrait of my father. Of course it wasn't in any way a physical likeness, more an idea. When I had finished it, and looked at what I had done I started to cry as though my heart was broken....which in a way it had been when I was told he had left and he would not be coming back. I wept for hours, and the anger and grief I had unknowingly bottled up drained away. He was forgiven (not, I am sure, that he intended any wrong) and I could love him again.

It was about this time that I moved from (inexpert) Botanical Illustration...

...to a much freer style and approach.

Freer

Much Freer

There have also been several occasions when my work has, unintended by me, given me messages in advance about physical conditions.... that, however, is another story. It almost moves into the realms of magic, and I need to think a lot more about it and the implications.

"Thus shall you regard all things - a flash of lightening in a summer sky, a bubble in a stream, a phantom and a dream." *


*Saying of the Buddha from Mountain Record of Zen Talks by John Daido Loori