Practicing what I preach…

This week I have had to keep reminding myself to practice what I preach.  It is easy to say forget about defining detail but difficult to loosen up – especially when there is the temptation to flatter the face and figure of a new model. 

Fortunately, my models soon enter into the lyrical scheme of things and, more often than not, loosen up before I do. 

Here are a couple of sketches that came about towards the end of a first session, when freedom and synergy between artist and model makes refinement superfluous. 



Loose ends...

I made today’s sketches at the beginning and end of this afternoon’s modelling session. 

The first, as my model stood wondering whether she should stand, sit, kneel or recline.  The second, as she rocked back and loosened up after an uncomfortable pose that might have resulted in a good painting, had not the large sheet of expensive watercolour paper made me nervous. 

As is often the case, it was the loose ends of the session, jotted down on scraps of paper, rather than the intended finished painting on 100% all-rag, that made my day. 

A final fling…

During the 1980’s my studio was located on the shore of an idyllic cove in the British Virgin Islands.  In those days my 16 ton gaff cutter shared the pristine anchorage with no more than a handful of visiting yachts and a couple of inter-island cargo boats. 

All too soon marinas, hotels and condominiums invaded my paradise and I moved on.  However, before leaving I took out one of my largest sheets of watercolour paper and had a final fling.  But alas, even my farewell image was fated not to last.  In moving back and forth between the Caribbean and England the painting was damaged beyond recall. 

For years, those vibrant brush strokes have existed only in my memory.  And mine is a selective memory.  It can remember every painting I have ever painted over the last seventy years but cannot remember my telephone number.  Neither can it remember making a high definition scan of the original painting when selecting illustrations for my book Caribbean Sketches.  

The scan came to light when my high-tech daughter resurrected the hard disc from one of my defunct computers.  So here it is, my last vision of the Virgin Islands. 

Out of the corner of my eye...

 

 Whether it is the fleeting movement of the model, or the transient scene that I glimpse out of the corner of my eye, it is the unexpected that makes my day. 

Twenty years ago, while painting on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, I interrupted an overly laboured seascape to scribble down this sketch.  The fishermen landed and sold their catch in a matter of minutes and I had to catch my subject in the same moment of time. 

At the end of the day, I valued my sketch infinitely more than my “finished” painting.  It is something that in a hundred years time I’d like to be remembered by. 

Fortunately, this sketch of fishermen landing their catch is permanently lodged in my brother’s collection.  If you go back in the archives to an entry posted 8^th March 2011 and titled “Dear Theo” you’ll find out more about the similarities of our brotherly relationship and that of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo.

The following letter brings our correspondence up to date.

Dear Ali,

I desperately need the following Winsor & Newton Artists’ Watercolours:  one 14ml tube of Raw Umber & Burnt Umber and one 5ml tube of Viridian & Prussian Green.  They may have discontinued Prussian Green, but the rest should be readily available.  Post them regular airmail. 

I am sending you one of my recent reclining nudes for your collection.  Keep faith, one day it may be worth a little something.

With a handshake in thought,

Rog

The devil is in the detail…

 

If push comes to shove, I can paint every leaf on a tree.  The job would be tedious for me and boring for you.  Far better, that I throw down a thunderous wash of Prussian Green and let your  mind do the rest.  In other words, it is better to suggest, rather than to define detail.

For the bold watercolourist, the best suggestive passages are often the happy accidents that are beyond the artist’s control.  Except, you might qualify that statement by saying: the better the artist, the more often the accidents happen in his or her favour.

By suggesting rather than defining detail, we allow the public to enter into the creative process and interpret a picture as they may.  As with poetry, they are free to read their own meaning between the lines.

I have illustrated this entry with a suggestive detail from one of my sketches of the female nude.  If I have been more specific, my painting might have had to be hidden from view for a hundred years - as was the fate of Gustave Courbet’s realist masterpiece* of the same subject. 

*The Origin of the World

Starting young...

Whereas my daughters Tania and Trina can claim they started their modelling career captive in their mother’s womb, my son Tristan had been in the world eight months before modelling for his first sculpture.  Now that he is ten, getting him to model is a different kettle of fish.  A portrait bust that I started of him a couple of years ago dragged out so long that the clay turned to dust long before completion.

My sculptures have themselves brought children into this world.  Behind the backs of the commissioners, I added a little boy to the maquette of my figures for Leeds City Centre.  When called to account for this addition to their budget, I shrugged it off as the inevitable consequence of the couple’s liaison.   

Although children have featured in many of my sculptures, I confess that they are not my preferred subject.  Mummy’s little darling can soon become a fidgety thorn in my side. 

Today’s picture shows Tristan pointing out to me the errors of my work while it was at the initial clay stage.   

In the mood…

Between the mid 1970’s and the mid 1990’s it seemed that I had sketched every beach, every coconut palm and every grain of sand throughout the length of the Caribbean.  I then declared enough is enough, and turned to the figure with a vengeance.  

Last week, for the first time in almost twenty years, I put aside my ebony flesh colours and dug deep for tubes of viridian and turquoise.   I slung my sketch bag over my shoulder and headed for the wild Atlantic Coastline of Dominica.  This seascape of Rosalie Bay is the result of my morning’s labour. 

Confronting the real thing…

A few weeks ago, I visited an exhibition that featured the work of regional students who had over the years, won top marks in the Caribbean Examination Council Visual Arts Examination.  Many of the works were portraits of meticulous detail.  A representative of the Council confirmed my suspicion that they had copied from photographs.  Furthermore, it seems that students are encouraged to work from photographic references, whether it is a portrait, landscape or market scene. 

As a staunch advocate for working from life, this approach to teaching the next generation of artists, beggars belief.  There have been occasions when I have sourced technical detail from photographs to ensure accuracy.  The Caribbean postage stamps that I designed in the 1980’s are a case in point.  But when it comes to the landscape, portrait or figure, I need to confront the real thing. 

I cannot walk around a photograph of my subject, neither can I touch, feel, sense or talk to it.  It can be troublesome working outdoors; you get burnt by the sun, drenched by the rain, bitten by ants and easels get bowled over in the wind.  In the studio, models cannot be expected to retain the freshness of a pose for longer than a couple of minutes. 

Nevertheless, the rewards of working from life are worth the effort.  Between the torn up false starts, the exploratory lines and the dashed down runs of colour, there, on paper, is a trace of the breath of life!   

The above watercolour, which I painted from life this afternoon, illustrates my point.  A photograph would have defined five fingers: my wash dribbled down to make three or four.  I leave the difference to your imagination. 

Standing Pregnant Nude

I will begin my collection by going back twenty years to when I painted Denise through the pregnancies of our daughters Tania and Trina. Their birth dates are less than a year apart, so what I missed on one pregnancy, I caught on the other. I exhibited the entire collection of twenty-five paintings and drawings in the UK in 1998. 

A visitor to the exhibition - a lady in her eighties - was pleased that I had captured the beauty that she had not dared to realise in the days of her youth.  She told me that in those days the nude figure – let alone the pregnant nude - was considered shameful.  Alas, my dear lady, for many it is still so!

This is one of those rare watercolours that I painted directly on the page without the guide lines of a preliminary drawing.  Remember, in watercolour mistakes cannot be corrected and a successful painting – one that has avoided a thousand pitfalls along the way - is a minor miracle.  But as G. K. Chesterton said, “The miraculous thing about miracles is that they do sometimes happen”. 

Incidentally, I had this painting in mind when I wrote my poem The Colour Black.  (Search the archives for entry dated August 11^th 2011)

Problems associated with growing younger…

When my father - who lived well into his nineties – made his infrequent visits to the village surgery, the doctor would greet him with the words, “Good God, are you still walking around”!

After an absence of well over a year, I’m sure you’ll be saying about me.  Let me explain.  This year I reach my biblical three score years and ten, and my long absence has all to do with the problems associated with growing younger. 

At this time of life, I have so many projects on the go that it is difficult to find time to sit down and write about them.  Which brings us back to Henry David Thoreau and his line:

My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.

It is not only projects that I have been grappling with.  Last week for the first time in living memory, we took a day’s holiday.  My family enjoyed it immensely but agreed that we wouldn’t want to repeat the experience too often.  

One of the projects has been tutoring the next generation of creative artists and, as an extension of that initiative, offering my studio life classes to visitors. 

Bythe way, as I grow younger, so does my wife.  Here's a sketch of her as she begins her twenty-second year of modelling.  

  

My list for the week…

The fact that my diary entries have become infrequent does not mean that I’m sat twiddling my thumbs.  Far from it, as a glance at my list for the week shows.  The jobs range from raking the path to the river to reading the reading the Warrell Report on Guidance to Minimising Microbial Food Safety Hazards.  My shopping lists might appear mundane with nothing more exciting than Wellington boots and fuel for the water pump.  However, hidden between the lines are projects that offer new challenges and new horizons.  If only they could be revealed, you would find that my list is every bit as exciting as the Tony Buzan “Mind Map” that I use as one of the props for my Creative Thinking Workshops.

Dreamers of the day…

Thankfully, at the start of all my New Years, I’ve never been able to predict what I’ll be doing this time next year.  That very uncertainty has been the spice of my life.  If nothing else, these diary pages bear witness to the fact that, what I’m doing today I’m unlikely to be doing tomorrow. 

These lines by T. E. Lawrence are an appropriate beginning for 2012…along with my sketch of the Halifax Symphony  Orchestra. (You’ve seen sketches of individual players before but not, as I remember, the full orchestra.)

This, therefore, is a faded dream of the time when I went down into the dust and noise of the Eastern market-place, and with my brain and muscles, with sweat and constant thinking, made others see my visions coming true. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.

A Very Happy New Year

Santa’s workshop update…

Christmas was just a little late this year.  The Lego custom wheels and axel had me working until ten this morning.  At least they bear the stamp Made in Dominica!

Santa’s workshop…

If toyshops had to depend on me for their Christmas trade, they would soon have to put up the shutters.  On Christmas Eve my workshop becomes Santa’s workshop.  When it comes to toys, you name it and I’ve made it.  Either that or I’ve handed down my toys.  The picture shows a random collection that I managed retrieve from Tristan’s bedroom this afternoon.  The mallet I made on the day he was born.  The boat is one of a whole fleet that I have fashioned over the years.  Muffin the Mule was one of my Christmas presents when I was about his age.   The aeroplane goes back to when he was four years old and the Lego blocks are a clue to this year’s present – a set of custom made Lego wheels and axels.  I’ll be working on a custom made Meccano set for next Christmas. 

Occasionally the present originates from the studio.  Tomorrow, a little girl by the name of Jaylah will be finding a framed sketch of herself among her presents (See diary entry for 3rd October).

I must thank my brother for my Christmas present…a replacement battery for my camera.  Thanks Ali!

My life has been the poem I would have writ…

When I read the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh or the diaries of Michelangelo, I have to accept gaps in their accounts that sometimes extend into years.  Over the last fifty years, my diaries have followed the same pattern.  Usually I write most when nothing much is happen and least, when everything is. 

The scarcity of entries over the last week is due in part to waiting for a replacement camera battery but to a much greater degree, due to keeping the wheels of the island’s production lines turning.  Just as my grandfather Enoch was expected to repair everything from church clocks to violins, when all else fails, that “white man at Antrim” is expected to rectify things mechanical. 

I quote again Henry David Thoreau lines,

My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.

The picture is of a cast that I made some weeks ago of a tropical leaf the size of an umbrella.  I leave you to guess the material.



I am two fools…

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry…

In a wider context John Donne’s words might well sum up the story of my life. Whereas most people take life very much as they find it, I have live it and loved it with a passion.  In attempting to express that love, one way or another, I have often made a complete fool of myself…but no regrets.

Nadine Stair, was 85 years old when she wrote these lines:

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

Finding a sketch to illustrate today’s diary is difficult, but how about this one.  It was a proposed life-size bronze figure for the Glan Clwyd NHS Trust.

Rosie the riveter…

A couple of my machines date back to World War II and it’s possible that in those days they were operated by women.  On both sides of the Atlantic, women took the place of men in engineering workshops.  Many of them enjoyed the work so much that they were still on the job when I served my apprenticeship in the 1960’s.  Their contribution to the war effort came to mind today when I was sharpening milling cutters, one of the many jobs that benefited from a woman’s delicate touch. 

Welding was another, and back in the 1980’s one of the best welders in the Caribbean was a pretty Guyanese girl.  With a welding torch she had the touch of an angel and I’m sure she’d agree with the sentiments expressed by one of the WW2 women welders:

I loved the look of welding, the smell of it.  You moved the welding rod in tiny, circular motions, making half-crescents.  If you did it right, it was beautiful.  It was like embroidery. 

At the war’s height, women, many of them African-American, made up more than a quarter of the Richmond, US shipyards’ 90,000 workers.  Norman Rockwell captured their image for all time with Rosie the Riveter.   Here’s Rosie and my nine-year-old son Tristan serving his time on my fifty-year-old tool and cutter grinder.

Practising to be a painter…

In the top right hand corner of one of my recently posted market sketches are the words, “What he doing?”  As one follower correctly assumed, these were the words of a passer-by.  

I’m a collector of phrases uttered by those who look over my shoulder as I work.   In my formative days an onlooker once asked, “Are you a professional”.  When I modestly answered no, the response was, “I thought not”. 

A couple of young lads watched as I worked as I painted the sketch shown below.  Curiosity finally got the better of them and one of them asked, “Are you practising to be a painter mister?” 

I suppose in truth I am – and always will be.  Like Renoir, I’ll probably say on my death bed, “What a pity, I’m just getting the hang of it.”

After the Burnett battle of the market place, (See http://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/) I award today’s sketch to my brother.  He may just recognise it as a view to the south over Elland, a West Yorkshire town of which he has many memories.      

A market pie in the sky…

The recent Burnett brother’s theme on markets set me thinking about plan that I devised for the West Yorkshire town of Sowerby Bridge some years ago.  The linier town centre is blighted by a road, along which passes every truck in the North of England.  Over the years various by-pass schemes fell through, the most recent of which was being discussed one day as I queued at the Post Office.   The lady ahead of me chipped in with her six pennyworth, “Nay love, if they can’t move the road, why the heck don’t we move the town?”

Accustomed as I am to moving mountains, her remark fell on fertile ground.  It tied in beautifully with a government regeneration plan which, according to a brief from the Deputy Prime Minister, had to be “initiative led, not funding fed”. 

As I developed the idea of moving the town 300 years to the south (incidentally, it was wonderful press for slow news days) one thing led to another.  I gained the potential of a quarter mile river frontage and it was along that strip of derelict land that I proposed an indoor market to end all markets.  It took the form of a five-storey glass fronted promenade - think on the lines of a linier Crystal Palace - with shops and stall vendors at ground level and balconied restaurants, offices and residential accommodation on the floors above.   My imagination ran riot: trees and exotic plants, a small theatre, a bandstand, some pubs and a church.  Here, within easy reach of the cities of Leeds and Manchester, would be a vibrant living, working and recreational space, summer and winter alike. 

Here are the preliminary drawings for my market “pie in the sky”.

Now dear brother, if you can come up with a compilation photograph to illustrate my scheme, you’ve won!  

Been there, done that…

A couple of days ago my brother featured a photograph of Halifax indoor market (See http://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/) a glorious listed building that is equal to a couple of cathedrals. 

Not to be out done, here are a couple of sketches I made of the market.  The first is from the very same vantage point as my brother’s photograph and the second, shows the market’s grandiose entrance arcade.  As my regular followers know, I have a great love for markets - and all the more so when they housed within fine buildings. 



Fire engines and an Institute for the Arts…

Yesterday I attended a meeting to discuss the formation of an Institute for the Arts and I spent today machining parts for one of the island’s fire engines.  In this day and age, I doubt if work can be more varied than that. 

A few generations ago, a craftsman turned his hand to all manner of things.  My grandfather was just as much at home repairing clocks and fairground traction engines as he was cleaning windows.  I could sense his ghost – and that of my father - looking over my shoulder as I successfully completed a very tricky piece of machining to an accuracy of 1/10^th the diameter of a human hair.  In turn, I told my son Tristan, you’d better watch carefully, you might never see the likes of this again.  Maybe one day, all three of us will be looking over his shoulder.

Incidentally, in today’s picture is one of my grandfather’s micrometers.  It’s a hundred years old and still in daily use.  Also, my father’s depth gauge - now going on eighty.  Both instruments bear their initials.   

These things are sent to try us…

When struggling with some intractable mechanical problem my father used to say, “These things are sent to try us.”  His words came to mind today after assembling a complicated gearbox many times over because nothing went together as it should. 

At sea, it can be equally frustrating when squalls demand one sail change after another.  After three days and three nights of sail changing, single-handed sailor Dan Bowen's nicely summed it up with the words, “Rog, that sail’s been up and down like a pair of whore’s drawers!”

And why did the gearbox give me problems…at the end of the day I found that the manufacturer had sent the wrong instruction manual!

With a dead camera battery there’s no picture of the gear box.  This sketch of a tramcar is about as close as I can get to something mechanical. 

Models and life-long friends…

Without exception, all of my models have become life-long friends.  Just as they came to my aid when I desperately needed them, I try to repay their help when ever I can.  When we left England for Dominica I hung onto my Volvo Estate car until the very last day.  Then, just before leaving for the airport, I telephoned Dave (who didn't have a car, but for months had faithfully modelled for my sculpture of the lockkeeper) to tell him I’d made him a present of the car.  

When my models need a reference for a job, they usually call on me.  I’m not sure how being an artist’s model equips you for the army, but with somewhere within the womens’ fighting forces, thanks to a glowing reference, there’s one of my models!

I still owe Ganeen (the model for one of my controversial NHS figures – see diary entry for August 22nd) the promised favour that one day, when her figure is cast in bronze, she’ll have a copy.  Sorry Ganeen but I’m still waiting for a rich buyer.  In the meantime, here is your plaster master cast, safe in my studio.  What’s more, it’s warmer here so you don’t need that circle of blow heaters!



Have you a big one mister…

At a meeting tomorrow, I will be presenting some of my ideas on market places in general and street markets in particular.  Since my childhood days, markets have always fascinated me and over the years, I have done my fair share selling from the pavement.  I enjoy the challenge of making a sale against all odds.  Non-stop patter and a ready quip are a stallholder’s best bait. 

To that end, no quip could beat the wry look a stallholder gave my mother when, looking over small to medium size tins of brown boot polish, she asked: “Have you a big one mister!”

Today’s sketch is of a street vendor in Santa Domingo selling freshly squeezed orange juice from his tricycle. 

A near perfect cast…

The polymer plaster cast of the bas-relief that I began months ago finally emerged from its wax mould today.  Breaking a mould to reveal the cast is always a nerve-racking process.  If there is a significant flaw, all is lost.  Thankfully, the cast was near perfect. 

Photographing the cast with a dud camera battery demanded the speed of a ten-second sketch.  From charger, to camera, to pressing the shutter – just a matter of seconds before the battery dies on me.

Sketch away…

In recent weeks, these diary pages have neglected my first love – the figure – and more especially, the figurative sketch.  I believe it was Degas, who named one of his models “Sketch Away” in recognition of the inspirational input she gave to his work.  Such is the gift of an inspired model.  This sketch goes back to the early heady days sketching a young lady from Grenada who became both my wife and model. 

Note:  For the time being, I will have to resort to digging in my photographic archives while my digital camera awaits a replacement battery pack, courtesy of my brother in England. 

Faded photographs…

Those of you who are regular follower of my brother’s “belles-blogs”
http://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/
will know that his thread of old photographs titled, Sepia Saturday is coming up to its 100^th entry. 

Many of the posts originate from the Burnett family albums and here and there, you will find images of a much younger me.  However, there is one photograph that brother does not have.  It is hand-tinted rather than sepia, but I believe it qualifies none the less.  Here is me again, at about the age of two. 

I can remember catching the tram to have the photograph taken in the studio of Brown Muff’s department store, Bradford - once known as the “Harrods of the North”.  I can also remember nervously chewing the collar of the coat I was wearing.  It tasted good!

Incidentally, from what I can make out, the pencil inscription on the mount is an abbreviation of “Brown Muff’s Studio”. 

My first one man show…

There’s a score of tales to tell about my first one man show.  How do I select and where do I begin? 

The year was 1971 and the place, Kings Lynn, Norfolk.  I had intended the show to be a low-key fringe event at the Kings Lynn Arts Festival.  However, a week before the show opened the key signature changed from minor to major. 

Being arrested for a good cause helped.  My crime…I pasted a protest sticker over the council’s notice of closure for one of the town’s historic alleyways.  This brought public attention the series of thirty paintings I had made of the town’s rich historical heritage – including a painting of the threatened alleyway.  The show opened at 10.00 on the Saturday morning and by mid-day ninety per cent of the paintings had sold!    

Over the remaining ten days of the exhibition, there was a constant stream of visitors.  By midweek, I was getting suspicious of two smartly dressed fellows that repeatedly made the rounds.  Just before the weekend, they revealed their crested identity cards.  They were checking out the festival in readiness for a visit of the Queen Mother.  Out of all that was on offer, they thought my exhibition would be right up her street. 

Alas, there was no way that the festival organisers were going to let an upshot artist on the fringe steal the limelight and I had to wait another thirty years for my Royal Patronage.  But that’s another story.  For now, here’s the exhibition poster and a photo of a photo of one of the paintings.