Photocopying

Portrait by Vaughn Anslyn

Two portraits: the first doubtless copied from a photograph and the second, undoubtedly drawn from life. They illustrate the difference between precision and passion.

Without a photograph to copy from, most of today’s artists would be at a complete loss. The work of the copyist may be technically perfect, but the work of the artist that draws from life is genius. I stress to my students: no copying and no rubbing out…every line counts.

But it takes an artist of the calibre of Feliks Topolski to spontaneously capture the mood of Hastings Banda from life.

PS If my DGS students turn to my Notes for Art Students there is a posting for your eyes only...no one else is allowed to see!

In art there is no right or wrong answer

This morning I hosted a studio session for eleven students from the Dominica Grammar School who this year will be the sitting CXC exam in Visual Art. The school deserves credit for rounding up eleven students. For the remainder of Secondary Schools in Dominica the tally is virtually nil. Creative Arts are low on the Ministry of Education’s agenda. Sport is compulsory, but art is not. It is perceived as non-essential - something you can do in your spare time, a bit like playing dominoes. 

No matter how hard the students try at this late hour, they have a difficult task ahead of them. In previous years, the results from Dominican students sitting the exam have been abysmally low - and it’s not the fault of the students. Without a culture that is not steeped in art, it is difficult to relate to the subject. For the sake of these students I am resurrecting my blog: notesforartstudents.blogspot.com.  You will find the link in the sidebar.

I began this morning’s session by telling the students that in art, unlike other subjects, there is no right or wrong answer: creativity is different.

Here are my eleven brave students and a quick water-colour sketch that I made of one of them. 

Shayla is not studying art but was standing in for a student that was absent. Pity, because her interest in art was aroused and I feel sure that she has potential.

Working on it

While waiting impatiently for my computer to complete a task, I get a message on the screen that says: working on it. For those impatiently waiting for the release of my book Notes on the Nude I promise, we’re working on it.

When I started collecting and assembling the notes and images for Notes on the Nude last October, I had in mind printing the book in landscape format. Most of my images are of the reclining nude, and it stands to reason that my models recline horizontal. However, to keep to the printer’s preferred format, I switched to portrait, but portrait with a twist. The twist being, you turn the book through 90˚ to view the right-hand full-page images. The notes are on the left hand pages and are viewed upright. We tested the arrangement out on a proof copy and it worked. Moreover, it left space at the bottom of the text pages into which I could add more images. I’ve lost count, but we are looking at 150 full colour images in all.

While I worked on the content, my ever faithful daughter Tania worked on the computer page set ups. A week without internet access (the joys of living on a small Caribbean island) and other emergencies, further slowed down the process. But we’re working on it and we are nearly there.

Today’s picture shows the revised book cover.

Did I do that!

…Rick looked at Smoke Jordan’s black face shinning above a magnificent collection of white-skinned drums, and he saw how much the same he was. Same one that used to do the hot sweeping at Gandy’s, only that one wore yellow cords and this one wore a white tuxedo…His eyes were turned obliquely upward and he chewed his lower lip all the while he played; then he’d knock out a beauty and turn his eyes down, startled, as if he’d surprised even himself with that one…

The above passage is from Young Man with a Horn, Dorothy Baker’s 1930’s classic novel on the jazz age.

But whether it be jazz, poetry or theater, the creative feeling when things go well is the same. It is the feeling I get when I succeed in capturing the subtle beauty of the nude in watercolour. Did I do that!

My dad can draw better than that

Today's title is a quip that a boy made to his mate as they watched me make the sketch that illustrates today's post.

The sketch, along with fifty others in a similar style, illustrate my forthcoming book titled Townscapes. The book comprises of a collection of fifty street scenes and commentary that range from England, to France, to Portugal, to the Caribbean, and back again. I will tell you more about work in progress on this book in future posts.

In the meantime, my book Notes on the Nude is almost in print and hopefully by this time next week it will be available on Amazon and their associate outlets.

Unfinished Business

At the age of seventy-six I have by no means reached the stage of contentment in relation to my paintings and sculptures. Try as I may, I cannot bring myself to want to control the uncontrollable media of watercolour and to forsake the challenge of the nude figure.  

I have tried to revert back to the landscape, but from a different viewpoint to the tame and slick watercolours that you'll see if you Goggle "watercolour landscape paintings". Today's painting shows my most recent attempt. I leave it to you to sort out the wood from the trees.

Leonardo da Vinci: Notes to Painters

Like the subjects that I touch upon in these diary pages, Leonardo da Vinci’s copious writings are in no specific order, and his notes to painters are scattered at random among a host of other subjects. One of his notes came to mind this week as I cleaned behind a cabinet that holds samples of my hand-made paper. It reads as follows:

I shall not refrain from including among these precepts a new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is none the less of great value in quickening the spirit of invention. It is this: that you should look at certain walls stained with damp or at stones of an uneven colour…You will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes…strange figures in violent action, expressive faces…

Some years ago, in the aftermath of termites devouring my collection of jazz records, I titled one of my posts Termites Have Taste. I can now add that termites have vision. Leonardo would have been as taken aback as I was at their creativity. Their masterly rendition, directly applied to a white plaster wall, measures 30” x 12”.

Perhaps these particular termites have been observing my modelling sessions for I can detect, both in colour and form, a group of my reclining nudes.

Confronting the Real Thing

Feliks Topolski (1907-1989) painter and illustrator, claimed that abstract art is a means of avoiding confronting the real thing. I tend to agree. Along with the conceptual art, it is a handy device for many who would like to draw and paint the real thing but lack the ability. 

My abstract art (if that is what it could be called) is a fragment of the struggle with the real thing. The images below are fragments from my paintings of the nude figure. I stress the word “fragment” rather than detail, for my endeavour is to suggest rather than define.

Footnote: To celebrate being re-connected to broadband, my regular followers will notice that I've added a new image to the title of my blog. 

When least expected

Sometimes a breakthrough with my work comes when least expected, especially when seeking inspirational models for my series, Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. 

Dionne came to me a couple of weeks ago as an aspiring art student.  But as is often the case, those with no prior intention of modelling become some of my best models. Modelling serves as a masterclass in understanding the trials and triumphs of an artist’s work and moreover, to being part of the creative process.

Below are my first three hurried sketches of Dionne. Just when I thought I had exhausted the nuances of the female nude, my model’s twists and turns showed me otherwise.

Despite initial reservations, Dionne’s emailed response to her first modelling session reads: Today was terrific…I’m looking forward to our next session.

Ireland's Inland Waterways from Fifty Years Ago

The book that records a voyage I made through the canals and rivers of Southern Ireland fifty years ago is finally in print and available through Amazon.

As I mentioned in an earlier diary page:

Fifty years have passed since making the voyage that is the subject of this book. The manuscript that began as an up to the minute guide is now an historical document. Like the canals, it is a miracle that it has survived. 

When my original publisher to put the book on hold due to financial restraints in the early 1970’s, the typed manuscript took off on an amazing voyage of its own. It twice crossed the Atlantic aboard small sailing boats, survived storms at sea and two major hurricanes on land. For years it languished on a shelf in my studio, all but forgotten about.   

Between making the voyage and retrieving the manuscript, there is a time lapse of half a century. During those intervening years the inland waterways of Ireland developed beyond belief. What was then abandoned is now restored and the navigations upon which we once sailed in solitude are now popular cruising grounds. I have resisted updating the text in memory of those earlier idyllic times.

Practicing What I Preach

On occasions - and against all odds on a small island in the Caribbean - I meet a young person with a passion and potential for art. Six years ago I tried to introduce a one year foundation course in the visual arts for school levers but there was little interest. This is because art hardly figures at all in the secondary school curriculum and is therefore unknown. Through the Ministry of Education I have offered free introductory workshops but to no response. The island's State College offers nothing at all in Visual Art.

To get around this dilemma, I keep on open studio door for those interested in pursuing art and give ad hoc help and encouragement on a one to one basis. With me they don't learn how to mix colour but how to see colour; rather than copying from photographs I give them courage to draw from life; I don't watch them paint, they watch me paint. It is the absence of demonstrating that most art teaching falls down flat. There is not one art teacher in a thousand that dares to stand before their students and paint. 

Today's picture is a  fifteen minute portrait that I painted as a demonstration for Dionne, my latest prodigy. The sitter is her sister Danielle. Dionne desperately wanted to study art on leaving school but as no courses are available she's studying Law Enforcement. I am sure that there are many potential law enforcers in this world but few young ladies with the Dionne's passion and potential for art.

The same holds true for my equally talented model Verlena. There are thousands of Human Resource Managers, but very few talented calligraphers.

  

The emotional impact of colour

Abstract art has nothing on nature, particularly when it come to design and the emotional impact of colour. In comparison, the painterly daubs that so often pass as abstract art are a feeble thing.

Today's picture is an off-cut from the tree that demolished the roof of my life-class teaching studio during hurricane Maria. On my wood lathe, I am now busy turning segments of the tree into bowls that retain the tree's colour and grain pattern. The colours are so similar to the skin tones of my models that it seems nature herself benefited from observing the subtle beauty of the nude. 

Below is a partly turned bowl from the same tree. I now need to allow the moisture content to reduce further before finishing.

Below is the finished bowl.

In all innocence

In creating paintings and sculptures that express the beauty of the nude figure, my models and I work in all innocence. 

In addition to this blog, a small selection of my work is posted on Tumblr, the reason being that I follow the work of others on tumblr who have a similar interest. True, some of their postings may be deemed pornographic, but even at 75 I keep on open mind. I have a greater issue with the foul language that is often found on Facebook postings. Like D H Lawrence, I have no problem with the powerful single syllable "F" and "C" words providing their meaning is kept in their truer context of sexual intercourse and the vagina. I denounce them as curse words.

A few days ago I was alerted to Tumblr's out of the blue crack down on what their censors deem as "adult content"; and "adult" applies, not just to children, but to viewers of all ages. I thought my work would be except, but on checking I found that many of my posts had been deleted. Curiously, the posts that one might class as being on the borderline were left intact and the more innocent ones deleted. It seems that I can paint and sculpt breasts providing that I omit nipples!

I appealed their decision in relation to my work and, to the credit of tumblr, my appeal has been granted.

Below, in all innocence, is one of the paintings titled Jessica Reading that they initially deemed as phonographic. The adage still holds true: he who thinks evil sees evil.

My forthcoming book Notes on the Nude deals with these issues at greater length.

Who, where and when?

It  becomes confusing. My past portfolios contain thousands and paintings and sketches. You can add to that hundreds more that were started but never finished, as with today's pictures.

I can vaguely recollect making these sketches but what eludes me is: who, where and when. Moreover, after a promising start why did I not see them through to completion.

I stress that these sketches are unfinished and worse for wear after being battered by two hurricanes. They are therefore to be viewed in the context of this post. I say this because of a recent unfortunate experience where one of my paintings was used, without my approval, and re-published out of context. May I remind the unscrupulous, that both text and images are subject to copyright. 

A Note of Thanks

My forthcoming book Notes on the Nude begins with a dedication to my models - for without their contribution to the creative process my work would not exist; and ends with an acknowledgement to my daughter Tania for her help in formatting the text and illustrations.

Below is one of my faithful models, followed by my equally faithful daughter Tania.

Footnote:

Two days ago we were reconnected to broadband after the major hurricane that devastated Dominica of over a year ago. For these posts and my work in general, it is a huge step forward. My thanks to Cable and Wireless, our service provider. 

Am I wasting my time?

Recently one of my commentaries in the media evoked contrasting opinions. The subject was my mission to convince the Afro-Caribbean woman of her natural beauty, rather than prostituting herself to a foreign concept of beauty. It was titled: The Colour Black.

The first respondent stated: "You are called upon to be a voice to our Afro-Caribbean sisters through your work. You must never give up".

The second respondent claimed: "It is a waste of time for Roger to waste his attention on these people....he should use his God given talents to make money and become rich...there is scenery he can paint which will make him plenty of money.."

I have on occasions painted "scenery" but not the type that is likely to make me rich. My task is not to paint the beauty that you can already see, but to lead you to beauty that would have otherwise eluded you.

Today's picture is not of a palm fringed coral sand beach, but of the countryside that surrounds the industrial towns of my native West Riding of Yorkshire. 

It was painted twenty-five years ago, and when today I took it out of its frame to photograph I found the caption that was attached when it was first exhibited. It reads:

"Whether it be the figure or the landscape, no photographic reference can match working from life. Not only must I see the approaching rain shower, I must smell it and feel it".

Nothing has changed!!

The Naked Truth

Other than to keep warm in cold weather, I see no point in wearing clothes at all. From a moral standpoint it makes no sense. A clothed body is more sexually alluring than a naked body. We cover breasts, bottoms and pudenda but leave the face unashamedly in full view. Yet when it comes to seduction, whether the message is innocently beguiling or sexually provocative, the face wins hands down. We might hide the body but the face speaks the naked truth.

It is the exposed naked truth that makes an honest portrait difficult to paint or sculpt. By flattering the sitter I am guilty of fraud. It is usually on my first attempt - a hurried sketch made in a matter of minutes - that I come closest to the truth but not necessarily to what is perceived as a "likeness".

Fortunately, I get to keep those first attempts while the sitter claims the likeness. Here, in all honesty, is one of them.

Taking a chance

Research for my book "Notes on the Nude" has sent me digging deep into portfolios and dairies from long ago. The sketches below are of my wife Denise and they were made in the confined space our boat's cabin. My diary note from twenty-six years ago that goes with them reads:

"...I have to take a chance and in doing so risk failure, but not total failure for there is credibility in trying. The results are imperfect, but not without a degree of truth. The truth being my passionate belief in the beauty of the nude..."

Nothing has changed, I am still taking chances and I still have a passionate belief in the beauty of the nude.

Fragments and Versos

In my book "Notes on the Nude" I make mention of fragments and versos.

Within watercolours perceived as failures I find fragments of truth, and on the verso of a painting that has been cast aside I sometimes achieve success.

If only the painting in its entirety had the strength of the breast emerging from the depths of its surrounding shadows, as in the fragment below.

Luckily, I found this forgotten drawing of the fore-shortened arm and torso on the verso of an early painting in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".

Sexy Sam

When Samantha modelled for her sculpture twenty years ago she was a college student and her e-mail address was "sexy sam". From more recent correspondence I learn that she has climbed to the top of her chosen profession, got married and is expecting her first child. 

Actually Samantha didn't come to my studio with the view of being a model but to chaperone a friend that did. It is not the first time that I have chosen the chaperone rather than the applicant. Hence, the end of  beautiful friendships.

Samantha re-entered my life today as I was looking through images to illustrate my forthcoming book "Notes on the Nude". Samantha's sculpture qualifies as it includes, as she put it in her student days, her boobs.

In the days when peasants were pheasants and plaques were plagues

Dyslexia is not the best ability when it comes to proof reading. It took four reprints of my book Virgin Island Sketches to purge my spelling mistakes. And the more recent device of word prompting doesn't help. I sign off my personal emails with "Rog" only to find that behind my back it had been converted to "Dog". The cheek of it!

As you might guess, I'm doing the final proof of my forthcoming book "Voyage Into Ireland". The illustrations are more in my line and today's picture is a sketch I made fifty years ago of one of the Barrow Navigation lock keepers.

Reading between the lines

For my book "Voyage into Ireland" the gestation period from conception to impending birth has been fifty years. By comparison my book "Notes on the Nude will be with you in next to no time. The embryo showed the first signs of life two years ago and it has been growing ever since.

The collection of notes and images will give an insight to my lifetime's experience of working from the nude figure. As with my watercolours, the text will suggest rather than define. I will put down 75% and then leave you to read between the lines.

Through these diary pages I will keep you updated on work in progress.

In a matter of seconds

It takes only a matter of seconds for my model to twist from one position to the next. My task is to get that elusive moment down on paper - in a matter of seconds.

Maybe you can't make head nor tail of the end result. But I can, and equally important, my models understand what I am attempting to portray. We hope that one day the rest of the world will cotton on.

A Voyage into Ireland

Fifty years have passed since making the voyage that is the subject of this book. The manuscript that began as an up to the minute guide is now an historical document. Like the canals, it is a miracle that it has survived. 

When my original publisher to put the book on hold due to financial restraints in the early 1970’s, the typed manuscript took off on an amazing voyage of its own. It twice crossed the Atlantic aboard small sailing boats, survived storms at sea and two major hurricanes on land. For years it languished on a shelf in my studio, all but forgotten about.   

Between making the voyage and retrieving the manuscript, there is a time lapse of half a century. During those intervening years the inland waterways of Ireland developed beyond belief. What was then abandoned is now restored and the navigations upon which we once sailed in solitude are now popular cruising grounds. I have resisted updating the text in memory of those earlier idyllic times.

What a difference a year makes

The two pictures are a year apart. The first was taken a few days after Hurricane Maria and the second was taken this afternoon.

Nature has made an amazing comeback. Flora that I thought was lost forever is blossoming again. Our bananas, oranges and limes are again there for the picking. Even the river has reverted back to its old course.

How I wish that building back structures could go at the same pace. In my case it's not so much a case of Kipling's "building them up again with worn-out tools". The tools are okay, it's more a case of worn out me.

For weeks my days have been spent putting things back together again. And there's a lot more to do before I can get back to painting.

I spoke too soon

Just as I started picking up the pieces from last year's hurricane, Tropical Storm Isaac headed directly towards Dominica. This time around it was torrential rain rather than hurricane force winds. Nevertheless, outdoor work is on hold.

As sitting around doing nothing would drive me insane, I've spent my time making a shirt. Over the years I have frequently been reduced to making my own shirts and shorts. The reason being that here in the tropics it's impossible to find clothing suited to a hot climate. Shirts are in polyester and shorts come way down below the knees. My shirts are in light weight cotton and my shorts are even lighter and shorter.

Today's picture picture shows Marcella's torso doubling as a tailor's dummy. I'm sure that when she finds out she'll claim the shirt as her own!

Incidentally, some years ago I launched my own fashion label for the tropics and named it, "Bare Minimum".

My cure for vacant and pensive moods

It is almost a year ago since Hurricane Maria wracked havoc to my island of Dominica. Luckily, my main studio and workshops survived but our gardens and the gazebo that I used for life classes did not fare as well. 

After the hurricane I was on a creative high and up until now my time has been spent painting and sculpting rather than repairing the damage. But for the time being I have exhausted my creative muse and vacant and pensive moods have taken hold. Fortunately, for this malaise I have a cure: that is to throw myself into hard physical work. Hence, I am now picking up and putting back together the pieces that Maria blew down.

The curious thing is, when my muscles ache my hands are blistered, my muse shyly begins to favour me again.

Recognizing my own limitations

V. S. Naipaul, to my mind the greatest and most perceptive Caribbean writer of the 20th century, died last month. In memory, I am re-reading (I've lost count of the number of times) his masterpiece, "The Enigma of Arrival".

In that book he refers to a writer friend's "admiration of certain writers and artists (and) his wish to do again, but for himself, what they had done.."

How true of myself! In a hundred year's time I doubt that anyone will bother about my work as a sculptor, regardless of my admiration of Rodin, although it is as a sculptor that, during my lifetime, I have received some degree of recognition. However, there is a chance that someone will re-discover my watercolours, especially those in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".

Today's painting was hurriedly chosen at random from hundreds of paintings in that series.

Different perspectives

Actual studio visits, as against virtual visits to these pages, are few and far between. But last week I had two.

The first was a government sponsored group of "tourism stake holders". My studio is seen as a "niche market tourism product". The stake holders left me feeling unsure that my work had been understood. Anyone seeking sexual content in my work, as against the beauty of the nude, would be be better off tuning into the Disney Channel.

I was initially wary of my second visitor because knew his interest, for very legitimate reasons, was the sexual. But it was my method of depicting the nude that drew his attention, not breasts or pudenda. I felt rewarded and comfortable.

Today's sketch dates from almost twenty years ago. If I had wanted my model to appear sexy I would have penciled in a bikini. 

My twice daily ritual

Each morning, and again before evening, I go down to the river to bathe. 

In the thirteen years that we've lived here the river and the path that meanders down to it, has changed beyond recognition. Before Tropical Storm Erica there was a bathing pool large enough and deep enough to swim in. Three subsequent smaller pools were swept away by Hurricane Maria. But climate change has been around since before the dinosaurs and geologists tell me that the entire valley was once a large lake.

The path is now an obstacle course with a climb over huge fallen trees and a ladder to negotiate a section that has eroded away. But the challenge of getting there is rewarded by ladling cool river water over my naked body.

The first picture shows the river in earlier times with a life-class in progress. If you look closely you can just make out the model perched like a mermaid on one of the boulders. The second picture was taken today and shows the river cascading down to my present pool.

Off days

At last, here is the plaster cast of my latest sculpture. The molding was one problem after another and after week's of effort I almost gave up on the job. 

Working on a remote Caribbean island means that I have no means  of obtaining fresh plaster. I have to recycle outdated stock by regrinding and reheating to a high temperature. But beyond that, my biggest mistake was using questionable washing up liquid as a mold release agent. It appears to have prevented the cast from fully hardening. The surface is powdery and I have lost a lot of detail.

But it is from mistakes that I occasionally make a break through. To bind the powdery surface of the cast I brushed on a liberal coating of shellac. As I could not obtain clear shellac I used a version that carpenters use for sealing knots. And low and behold, the effect was a patina that I've spent thirty years searching for!

The loss of detail may also be seen as a positive. Many of Rodin's plaster casts have a similar suggestive appearance. Maybe his mold makers also had an occasional off day. But they had good old-fashioned soft soap rather than today's washing up liquid.

Capturing beauty

It has happened to me so many times. I see a beautiful face and I ask the recipient to model. But alas, by the time she reaches my studio her natural charms have been modified to a foreign concept of beauty: straightened hair, lightened skin and heavy makeup. Even worse, one young lady who was high on my list of possibilities has recently taken to wearing a wig! 

Afro-Caribbeans appear to have developed a hatred for their own natural hair. The machismo male shaves it all off and the daughters of the Caribbean sun disguise it in anyway they can.

In contrast, the nude figure, for the most part, remains true to itself. Hence my preference.