March already?!

Gosh, I'm a Mrs Tardy-pants, aren't I?  Well, if you've been reading my blog for any length of time you'll know I'm a bit cavalier about updating.  Then I always come back and apologise.  I should stop apologising, shouldn't I?  So, I will.

Anyhoo, since I last posted there's been more art done, a couple of visits to exhibitions in London and some illness.

Yes, Jones Towers has been visited by the Flu Fairy who really seems to have been busy this winter.  I thought we'd managed to avoid it but no.  The Lovely Husband has had it MUCH worse than I have - he had the full panoply of fever chills and high temperature.  He's now much better but is still coughing a lung up from time to time.  I've managed to get away with aching joints, lethargy, bit of a scratchy throat and an annoying headache that's been around for about 5 days now.  I do know people, though, who are on antibiotics and a friend of a friend that's ended up in hospital with pneumonia and septicaemia so I think we got away lightly!

Anyway, let's look at some art, shall we? 

A few weeks ago, in class we were being shown how to do scumble glazing to create an out-of-focus effect.  To do this you need to get a stencil brush or two, or (if you can afford it) a Da Vinci pastel brush.  You use what's known as a 'dry brush technique' which is exactly as it sounds - you don't wet the brush AT ALL.  You dip your dry brush into the paint, then blot most of it off again.  Then apply the brush to the surface gently.  It gives a sort of air-brushed effect.  Kim (our tutor) gave us a large A4 printout of a photo that she wanted us to replicate - it was of a tree trunk in close up on the left of the picture, then the rest of the woodland behind it out of focus.  She also showed us how to use gel and matte mediums (media?) applied with a palette knife to create texture on the tree bark.

None of this I'd done before and was a little daunted but found that I absolutely loved it, and it worked really well.  This is my finished picture of the tree trunk in woodland (NB. the photos of mine that I downloaded from Flickr seem to be cut off a bit on the right - if you click on the photo it will open up to the proper size):



The week after that, Kim showed us how to do a stormy seascape using the same techniques.  We did a dry brush scumble glaze for the cloudy sky and she showed us how to paint the sea using glazes and flicking a toothbrush for sea spray.  When I got my one home, I decided to use white matte medium to add some texture to the crests of the waves, and I think it worked:



So now I'm a BIG fan of the scumble glaze, out-of-focus thing and I realised that, several months ago, I'd saved a photo that I'd found on Flickr that I thought would make a really good painting at some time, and the scumble glaze technique is EXACTLY what I needed to be able to make the painting work, so I had a go.  And it's currently my favourite painting.

The original photo is the one on top, and my painting of it is below:



A close up of the painting:



Needless to say, I'm now trawling through my own photos and those on Flickr to find similar pictures that I can have a go at!  I'm loving the bokeh (which is, apparently, the photographic term for shallow depth of field, or deliberate out-of-focusness - you know what I mean).

I've found pictures of flowers in meadows (similar to the one I've already done) but I'm also rather liking city night lights as well.  I may do a series.  And, yes, I am going to have to get rid of some of these - I was going to try and put some in Cranleigh Art & Crafts Society Spring Exhibition to sell but I missed the deadline for submission, so they'll be in the next one in the autumn.

I hope people like them enough to buy them, but we shall see.  If they don't then friends and family are going to start getting a lot of artwork from me for Christmas!

Finally, I've started work on the project for the end of this current term's art classes - a large landscape that's supposed to take 3 weeks to do.

I've chosen the picture - it's a photo I took myself from the top of The Trundle, an Iron Age hillfort just to the north of Chichester, right next door to Goodwood Racecourse:

It has some decent sky, and there are nice lines in the composition.  All I've done so far is to sketch out where everything goes.  This is always a good idea because, if you look carefully, you'll see that there are bits in my sketch that aren't quite right so I now know I'll have to watch out for them when I come to do the painting proper:



Anyway, I've not done any painting this week and, in fact, am not going to class today as this bastard headache refuses to go and I'm left with a head full of cotton wool.  This also means that I'll tell you about the visits to the exhibitions in a later post but just to whet your appetite, I'll tell you I went to the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum; 'Death - a self-portrait' at the Wellcome Institute and finally to the Grant Museum of Zoology (taxidermy!  things in glass jars! skeletons!) and there's LOTS of photos to show you.  But you'll have to wait....

PS.  I'm also knitting a scarf in the shape of a tentacle because, you know, tentacle.

Fiddling around with a naked lady and a teddy bear....

Another picture has been finished.  And a small tapestry of a cross-dressing potter's favourite teddy bear.

In fact, let's deal with the tapestry first, shall we?

As I mentioned in my last post, earlier last year I bought a couple of tapestry kits from the British Museum's Grayson Perry exhibition.  It was of Alan Measles, who is Grayson's 50-year old teddy bear and overlord.  One kit was completed and gifted to my good friend, Katy, for her birthday last April.  The other has sat around, forlornly, waiting for me to find the inclination to pick it up and start it.

The inclination arrived last week.  I had a 'need' to do something with wool (or 'yarn', as our American cousins would have it!).  I'd had enough of crocheting hearts and the Celestarium shawl I mentioned at the end of last year is a bit of a non-starter until I learn how to use double-pointed needles properly (perhaps later this year when I've forgotten how frustrating it is) so I was flailing around a bit until I remembered poor, forgotten Alan.

I located the kit from the back of the cupboard where I'd ignominiously flung him last year and got everything out.  With the kit comes the Aida fabric (the specialist tapestry/cross-stitch fabric with the little holes) with the design printed on it with all the colours, a black and white photocopy of the design with the little symbols for the colours, all the tapestry wool, a needle and a thread sorter (this is basically where you label a short length of wool with its relative letter of the alphabet):



This is a close up of the actual printed design after I'd done all the bright red on the first day:



And here he is finally done, five days later:



I think you'll agree he's a handsome fellow and needs to be framed.  Normally I choose very plain frames for my creations, either black or white.  But Alan is such a colourful, flamboyant character that it would only be fitting for him to have the most elaborate frame I could find:



I think he'd be pleased.

So, onto the naked lady.  About 10 days ago The Guardian had a short article about an exhibition of photographs of nudes by Nadav Kander, with examples of 10 of his photographs.  The models had been coated with an emulsion made from marble dust and therefore look a little like marble statues, a little like dead bodies.  If you bother to read the comments on The Guardian page (at the risk of your blood pressure), you'll see that they're slightly controversial inasmuch as the old 'is photography art?' argument goes.  I didn't - don't - care about that as I firmly believe there is no definition of 'art'; all you can rely on is whether you like something or not.  If you like it, you're more likely to classify it as 'art'; if you don't, then you won't.  Simple.

I like these images.  REALLY like them.  I like their simplicity, their stark black and white ness.  The subtle shading of muscles and fat.  The soft, dough-like body of one of the women versus the sharp angular insect-like man.

One of the pictures really stood out to me, the standing, full frontal nude with gorgeous, flowing red hair.  It's called 'Islay standing':

As soon as I saw it, I thought it would make a stunning picture in white pastels on black paper.  So I decided to have a go at it.

I've never done life drawing before but I'm getting more confident with my ability to observe and draw what I see, more or less accurately so I hoped she wouldn't be too difficult!

I printed off an A4 print of the photo and got quite a large piece of black paper, and started to draw the outline in white pencil, trying to get the proportions right and hoping that she'd all fit on the paper:



I figured that wasn't too bad, so went over the outline in white chalk pastel and started filling her in, from the legs upwards, blending with my fingertips and doing some shading by removing the pastel with a cotton bud:



About 4 days later, this is how far I'd got.  I knew the top of the picture - hands, face, hair - were going to be the most difficult so sat and thought about it for a few days:



Finally decided to be brave and just go for it:



And here she is, final version:



I'm really REALLY pleased with how she's come out.  To be honest she wasn't that tricky to do although I was anxious about the top bit, and I was constantly expecting to accidentally smudge a bit or drop the pastel right down the picture but, for once, that didn't happen.  And the beauty of using chalk pastels (as opposed to oil pastels) is that you can rub it out with a putty eraser.

I'm now giving serious consideration to doing another of the photographs in the series, plus going to life drawing classes next term.

I have to say I seriously think that doing these art classes has been one of the better decisions in my life - I only wish I hadn't given it up for the previous 30 years or so.....

London Archaeologist

Apart from me doing my first gig in 23 years last weekend,  it being my birthday this week, us buying a new car, and the weather being unbelievably fabulous, something else happened that was also quite exciting.  Well, to me at least.

As I've banged on about in the past, I used to be an archaeologist.  Between 1996 and 2006 I got myself a BSc (Hons) and an MA, I went on digs and I taught adult education courses and lectured to undergraduates.  Then the University where I was teaching decided, in its wisdom, to close down all the archaeology courses, at the same time as the County Council also cut funding for adult education and, bang, that was it.  The end of my burgeoning career as an academic.  And because I was only at the beginning and hadn't had very much experience, I couldn't just walk into another job at another University because (a) all the other Universities were also cutting their archaeology courses so there were myriads of far more experienced lecturers than me all going for the same jobs and (b) the ones that might still be teaching were much too far away, i.e., Exeter or Durham.  So I drifted away from it, saddened, because I had really enjoyed teaching, but wiser for having got myself a real proper edumacation and ending up with both a science degree and an arts degree.  I am so smart.  S-M-R-T.

Anyway, one of the digs I went on was at Tolworth in South London in 2000 and 2002.  One of the main lecturers on my BSc course lives in Tolworth and had been aware all her life of all the lumps and bumps in a field just off the A3.  She'd done shed-loads of historical research on it and felt fairly sure that it could have been the site of the medieval moated manor of Taleorde with a possible associated medieval village.  The site was investigated by Kingston upon Thames Archaeological Society (which has the fabulous acronym of KuTAS - yes, really, 'cute ass'), and the (now disbanded) University of Surrey Extra Mural Archaeological Society (UniSEArch) which I was on the committee of at the time.

The dig in 2000 went on for six weeks and because my knee joints, back and neck aren't very happy when I kneel on all fours on the ground and trowel away for hours at a time, I specialised in working in the Finds Hut, which is the location for everything that the diggers pull out of the ground, and where it's all washed, identified, dated, tagged, bagged and recorded.  It's less physically demanding than digging but it's still busy and you need to be incredibly organised and good at identifying and dating stuff.

What I also decided to do was produce an online Dig Diary.  This was in the relatively early-ish days of the internet but, at that time, I was fairly experienced in building web pages.  One of the other diggers also owned one of the first commercially available digital cameras which he very kindly offered to lend me so I could take loads of photos to upload to the website.  The Dig Diary is still available online but some of the picture links are now broken (just the earlier ones, almost all of the later ones are still there, from Friday 28 July 2000 onwards) and I do actually cringe when I look at the design but, like I said, this was 11 years ago so be gentle when judging my web page skills!

Anyway, at the end of last year I got a phone call from the curator of Kingston Museum saying that they were putting together a display of all the Tolworth Court Farm artefacts and asking for permission to use the online photographs, and if I still had electronic copies of any others.  Naturally I gave permission but sadly I couldn't find the disks that had the electronic copies.  She also asked me if I would like to come along and help them set up the display as I would have first hand knowledge of the artefacts.  Unfortunately I wasn't free on the set up days so couldn't help but was flattered to have been asked.

And then about 2 months ago I received an email from her saying that the 2011 spring edition of the magazine 'London Archaeologist' was going to have an article all about the Tolworth Court Farm dig and they'd like to use one of my photographs, if I was happy to give copyright permission!  Ooh, one of my photos in a publication!  Of course I said 'yes' and filled in the forms they sent me and returned them.

I subscribe to London Archaeologist anyway so was thrilled when it landed on my doormat about 2 weeks ago!  And, indeed, there on page 335 was my photo, reproduced in colour and in pretty good detail.  And I'm damn glad I got all my angles and verticals properly aligned in it too!

I've been meaning to scan the article so I can blog about it since it arrived but I kept forgetting, so this afternoon I took some iPhone photos (which might be a bit dark) so I can finally get round to sharing with you this small triumph of mine:

The front cover of Spring 2011 London Archaeologist.  The picture is of a 2nd Century Roman bronze mount found at Syon Park.

The article

Map showing the site location.  The roundabout in the top left hand corner is where Tolworth Tower is.  The site itself is in the bottom right hand corner, cross hatched in red.

My photo!  With a credit and everything.  The picture shows part of a line of postholes that were filled with late Iron Age and early Romano-British artefacts including the ubiquitous pottery, cattle bones and, more rare, a melon bead fragment.

I'm a published photographer!  Sort of.  No, I am, really.  Not that I get any money for it or anything, and it's just a single photograph in a minor and specialist publication, I realise that but, hell, if I can't blow my own trumpet, no-one else is going to.

It's been an exciting few weeks here at Jones Towers.....

Seeing ghosts....

Sergey Larenkov is an amateur photographer who collects old wartime postcards and had the idea of combining them with modern day photos.  He spends time researching the exact place where the wartime photographer stood to take the shot, so that he can line up his modern day photo to match it, then uses Photoshop to meld the two together.

It's like looking at ghosts.

It's a reminder that the past is all around us, we are enmeshed in history whether we like it or not.  Where we are walking, stuff happened - good, bad, beautiful, horrific, mundane or of world importance - it occurred, right here. Do click on the pictures to make them bigger and get the full details:

You can see more of the pictures at Sergey's blog

Jo Teeuwisse has done something similar with pictures from Amsterdam:

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You can read more information about her work here.  (My Modern Met - where I found all these pictures in the first place - is fast becoming one of my absolute favourite websites.  It says it's a site "where art enthusiasts and trendspotters connect over creative ideas" which is a very Hipsterish thing to say and hence open to ridicule but I'm constantly in awe of the photography and art that is featured there.)

Pictures from the Poppy Field

"We usually think of the poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field ... the poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it.  Wherever it is seen - against the light or with the light - always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby".  (Ruskin, "Proserpina - studies of wayside flowers", 1874).

Hullo clouds, Hullo sky

Tra-la-la - "Spring is sprung, the grass is riz" and I am skipping around like a wet and weedy gurly wot sa "hullo clouds, hullo sky" in true Fotherington-Thomas fashion*

Spring this year has, so far, been fabulous, in fact I think it's safe to say that that last three seasons have been really well demarcated and absolutely doing what they should do in a manner not seen since, ooh, I last saw my waist I reckon. It's been warm, sunny and dry which, I hope, bodes well for a good summer (last year's was truly pants). So I've been going menkle with my new camera and taking pictures of spring flowers:









*Basil Fotherington-Thomas, student of St Custards. He is unloved by Nigel Molesworth, our valiant schoolboy hero of books by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle.

Wintry Weather

As an aside from the maudling thoughts on my probably imminent demise, I thought you might like to see some of my most recent photos, taken during this extraordinary winter weather we've just had. Yes, there's a cat in there and some snow and some trees and some birds. Damn, I wish this blog was more entertaining....