Similarities

There are similarities between my way of painting and my way of sculpting.

With watercolour, speed is of the essence and it is the same when modelling with clay. Both give of their best when given freedom and then left alone. Overworking only screws things up.

True enough, the time frames are different. A watercolour can be thrown down in a matter of minutes, whereas sculpting a life-size figure in clay can take weeks. With both I work from the live model. This is easy enough when a painting can be done in one sitting, but more difficult when the modelling goes on from one week to the next. 

To get around this I draw on a lifetime’s experience, rather than a reliance on photographs, and do what I can between modelling sessions. The ear and hair shown below are a case in point.

This detail of the model’s right breast shows how suggestion can be achieved by putting down and then leaving well alone.

From the past to the present

After the brief sojourn to the canals of Ireland in my last entry, I now return to the present to bring you up to date with work in progress on my life-size sculpture of Annabelle’s reclining figure.

My double dilemma has been resolved: the finish will be by suggestive hints and the torso will be extended to the full figure, with the right foot tucked under the left leg. This involves some re-working from the waist down because the re-positioning of the legs gives the hips a subtle twist for the better.

As you can see in today’s pictures, the hands have begun to take shape. But I dare not go further until I have my model before me. 

Long ago and far away

In 1970 I made a four month voyage through the inland waterways of Ireland aboard a twenty-one foot sloop called Jessica. My wife Norma and our three year daughter Diana were respectively, first mate and crew. The book that I wrote about our travels was shelved and all but forgotten about when we set sail for the Caribbean.

The manuscript, along with hundreds of photographs, have spent the intervening years sealed in one of those old fashioned square biscuit tins.  As such they have twice crossed the Atlantic and weathered their fair share of hurricanes. Amazingly, they have survived intact and the contents are now a veritable historical document.

Recently I began revising the manuscript and converting the photographs to digital images. 

As a foretaste, here is a picture of me with a paint box that is still in daily use. But alas, almost fifty years on, my head of hair has somewhat diminished.

Here is my first mate Norma, affectionately known as Nobs, studying “where next” on the map.

And finally, our daughter Diana, now a Chartered Accountant and grandmother!

A double dilemma

Continuing from my last post: my quandary is now not so much how to finish but where to finish!

My original intention was to carry the torso down to the top of the thighs. This the usual practice, at least with a standing torso. But with a reclining torso, terminating at the thighs gives the impression of a rather messy amputation. I now begin to ask myself: as we already have head and arms why not make it a full length figure?

While I mull over that one, today’s pictures show work in progress on the head. I first roughly modelled Annabelle's facial features and the outline of her scull vertically, as shown in the first picture. I then then positioned the head against the torso. The arm that rests between the breasts remains to be finished.

By suggestive hints or by laboured finish

I am in a quandary. Should my sculpture of Annabelle be completed by suggestive hints or by laboured finish? Taking breasts as an example - the most sculpturally pleasing aspect of the female form - here are the options.

The finish of my standing figure titled You Must Believe in Spring represents one extreme.

And by comparison, the breasts from my recent torso represents the other.

The first appeals to the touch and the second to the senses.

Only nature can unite the two, as is evident from this life-cast.

The limited repertoire of the female nude

In terms of the female nude, there’s nothing new under the sun. Kenneth Clark’s definitive book on the subject* reveals that the same postures have been used time and time again.

…it is remarkable that in the female nude there is hardly a single formal idea of lasting value that was not originally discovered in the fourth century.

There are however many variations on the theme. Today’s painting is one of those variations from my own repertoire. Once again my model is reclining and, yet again, her arm reaches over her shoulder. Nevertheless, it is subtly different to the scores of my paintings that have gone before.

The one similarity is the speed of execution. Today’s modelling session was meant to be devoted to making a start on my sculpture of Annabelle’s reclining torso. And so it was. But as I washed the clay off my hands at the end of the session, my model rolled over in sweet relief. From previous diary pages, you can guess the rest. I grabbed my paints and in fifteen minutes this 20" x 16" painting materialized.

 The picture below shows the progress I made in building up the clay. Just to the right of my turntable, is the turntable for the model. They are continually turned in unison from one angle to the next.

*Kenneth Clark, The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form

Butterflies and the other story

Today’s picture shows the formwork for the reclining sculpture of Annabelle’s head and torso. It comprises of wooden blocks wrapped in cling-film. The blocks are kept well below the outline of the final form. They are made from white-pine and save on the mass and weight of clay.

The Maltese Crosses that can be seen hanging at each side are a century’s old sculptural device. They are known as butterflies and serve to take the weight of clay in suspension.

Now for “the other story” that I promised in my last post.

When painting, I work from the live model and never from photographs. I make an exception to this rule when it comes to sculpture in that I make a photographic record of the pose that my model has to repeat countless times over the weeks and months that the work is in progress. These photographic references, along with chalk marks on the modelling stand, serve as a reminder to my model and as an aid to me when jotting down measurements and setting up the armature.

The photographs are intended as a working document; no more, no less. But once in a while, by accident rather than intent, there is one that takes my breath away. One of the pictures taken for my present sculpture is a case in point. As a photograph it portrays all that I wanted to portray and almost makes the upcoming sculpture superfluous. This says a lot because there is only one photograph of the nude in ten thousand that I can get passionate about.

Sorry for you but the photograph is absolutely personal to my model!

By way of consolation, I’ll return to butterflies and the remarkably talented Cecile McLorin Salvant singing "Poor Butterfly".  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_F_potBug

Begotten by despair, upon impossibility

The New Year heralds the start of a new piece of sculpture. Its origin dates back to a painting that I made at the speed of light as Annabelle rolled from one pose to another. At the time she was modelling for a half life-size reclining figure. This time around she’ll be modelling for a life-size figure.

To refresh your memory, here is the painting again. It is a tangle of lips, breasts, arms and hands that beg to be interpreted three dimensionally.

If art can be likened to love, the opening verses of Andrew Marvell’s poem The Definition of Love sum up the difficulties I face in turning my vision into reality.

            My love is of a birth as rare

            As ‘tis for object strange and high;

            It was begotten in despair

            Upon impossibility.

            Magnanimous despair alone

            Could show me so divine a thing

            Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown,

            But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing.

In the weeks to come you can follow the work in progress. In the meantime, the picture below, along with faded photographic references of past work, are the measurements I need to set up my clay for the first modelling session.

The photographic references that I use to remind my model of the exact arrangement of a pose are another story. And that I will tell you about some other time.

Draperie mouillée

Clinging drapery on the nude figure is the classical sculptor’s equivalent to the photographer’s wet tee shirt. It is a sensuous device that reveals rather than conceals.

The scantily clad figure is more sexually provocative than the nude. By partially concealing the model’s attributes by what the French call Draperie mouillée the nude form becomes all the more alluring.

The sculptor’s most difficult task is to create in clay or carve in stone the delicate trace of drapery. Edouard Lanteri, in his book Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure, devotes a lengthy chapter to the subject. It is a skill that takes a lifetime to learn, whereas the camera can capture the same in the split-second click of the shutter. However, as the second pictures proves, through the eye of a good photographer and with the aid of a good model, the end result can can be equally as beautiful. 

Venus Genetrix (2nd Century BC)

Anonymous (21st Century AD)

A Merry Christmas from FedEx

For Christmas I ordered for my son a well-deserved computer. Both Amazon and the supplier came up trumps and had it moving in the time it takes to click a mouse. FedEx Express then had the best part of two weeks to get it from New York to my daughter’s forwarding agents in Miami for it to arrive in Dominica in time for Christmas.  

For days on end we were glued to the FedEx tracking page. Yes, it finally did arrive at Miami with two days to spare. Then FedEx, after only one attempt to deliver outside office hours, sent it straight back to the supplier!

We’ve made up this board game to keep us amused (sic). Please feel free to copy on send it on to all of your friends.

180,000 words, 1,080 images and still counting

In other words, my sculpture studio diary pages, past and present, can claim to be one of the world’s largest resources of the working methods of a figurative painter and sculptor.

Decades before my diary went on-line it was jotted down, long-hand.  Here is an image and fragment of a page from twenty-five years ago.

The message still holds good:

…Always looking dead: a lack of colour, a lack of boldness, a timidity that wasn’t there at the mental onset, but crept through against all my efforts to control it. Must: paint freer, paint faster, paint more experimentally with colour. Must leave out…must see the fundamental mass and no more than suggest detail…

Dreaming while digging ditches

In the diary page I posted on December 3^rd (Continuing the Tango) I stated that digging ditches would be less exhausting than working from the live model. To prove that I know what I’m talking about here is me, at first light this morning, digging ditches.

In my seventy-four years I’ve dug more ditches than most. On the left is me at the age of twelve, digging ditches. And on the right at the age of twenty-five digging ditches.Digging leaves my mind free to dream. In this instance, free to dream of my next piece of sculpture. Paintings posted on November 24^th and December 3^rd together with the thumbnail sketch below gives you an idea of what I have in mind.

From the actual to the virtual

Today’s photograph dates back to the time when my studio was based in the North of England and my work as a sculptor attracted major commissions. On Saturday afternoons I opened the studio doors and invited the public to view work in progress. Even in the depth of winter I had scores of visitors.

Those were the days before blogs and my daily diary pages were posted on the internet, the hard way, by my brother with pictures taken with an early Kodak digital camera. However, as computers had not yet reached every-man my visitors were real people with snow on their boots that came to me the hard way.

Now, from my studio in the Caribbean, I have hundreds of visitors. But alas, no one shakes my hand or pats me on the back as they are all virtual “stats”.

This painting dates from that period. It is of my native Yorkshire in the depths of winter.

Continuing the tango

Yesterday, I posted “one of today’s paintings”. But as usual, the one and a half hour afternoon session resulted in three large 16” x 20” water colours. Here are the other two.

 A session begins with five minutes of catching up on the week’s events. Then, in complete silence we get down to work.  After four years of working together, words are superfluous. There are no set poses. Annabelle is free to stretch and turn as she pleases. My task is to get the result of one stretch and turn down on paper before the next. It is not easy. Digging ditches would be less exhausting. And the same goes for the model. At the end of the session we are rarely sure of what we’ve accomplished. It is too soon to judge. In fact, followers of these diary pages are very likely able to form an opinion before we do.  

A naked girl and a loaf of bread

Working from the nude figure demands passion tempered with integrity and daring tempered with restraint.  Before beginning my day’s work, or when instructing life-class students, I repeat the biblical words of advice given by a past master of the nude figure.

Take the shoes from off thy feet, for the ground you are about to step upon is Holy Ground.

Kenneth Clark, in his definitive book on the nude, has this to say:

“…No doubt an artist can achieve a greater degree of detachment than the profane might suppose. But does this not involve a certain callosity or dimness of response? To scrutinize a naked girl as if she were a loaf of bread or a piece of rustic pottery, is surely to exclude one of the human emotions of which a work of art is composed…”

If awards were to be given for artists’ models, Annabelle, the subject of one of today’s paintings, would surely come away with gold. Just as it takes two to tango, it takes both artist and model working in absolute union to portray the sensuous beauty of the nude.

Facial attraction

If asked, what is the first thing you look for in a model? Without hesitation I can answer that it is the face that first attracts. This holds true, even though in my paintings the face is secondary to the figure and sometimes it is not shown at all. Nevertheless, the spirit of my muse is personified in her fleeting glance. Here lie her subtle moods and changes.

In the first painting from today's session, the face is visible albeit partially cover by the model’s shoulder.

In the second foreshortened figure, the upturned face is nothing more than a suggestive brush stroke. Fleetingly though it may be, it nonetheless allows the dark red of the lips to give continuity, first to the breasts and then to the toes.

Incidentally, both were painted in little more than the time it took for my model to turn from one side to the other.

Life-classes with a difference

A woman's life class 1879

No, I’m not reverting back to life classes of the 19^th century. As a matter of fact, I am not changing the format of my classes one bit. What I am trying to do is make it easier for those living overseas to attend.

Since I announced group vacation classes three years ago I’ve had hundreds of responses from all over the world. But getting one person to Dominica is difficult enough, to get a minimum of six together for the same date, is nigh impossible. The solution presented itself when one keen artist vowed to come anyhow. The session went so well that now offer tuition on a one to one basis.

Yes, my life classes are different. The warmth of the tropics means that we are free to work indoors or out. My models are not restricted to worn-out set poses and my way of working with a model is different to the usual life-class routine. Moreover, I do demonstrate rather than just critique.

You can find out more at: workingfromlife.blogspot.com 

The encroaching jungle

Maintaining a house, studio, workshops and three acres of gardens in the tropics is a never ending battle. While the woodwork of doors and shutters deteriorates, lush vegetation grows with profusion. We are on the verge of the rain forest and behind our backs is the encroaching jungle. Yesterday I spent the morning clearing the path to the river. By the end of the month it will need clearing again.

Even the paved walled garden below my studio is no defense against the profusion of tropical growth. Throw an orange seed down today and it will attempt to be a tree by tomorrow.

What with one thing and another, it’s a wonder that I ever find time for painting!

Where the pleasant fountains lie

Kenneth Clark's definitive book, The Nude, originated as a series of lectures that he gave at Washington’s National Gallery of Art in 1953. It is a classic of its kind. I have read the book from cover to cover on at least three occasions over the last forty years and most recently, over the last two weeks.

Those forty years span my development as a painter and sculptor of the nude. As with poetry, I have interpreted the book’s contents differently from one period to the next. It is only on my most recent reading that I discovered a curious omission: breasts and buttocks are analyzed at length, but nowhere is there mention of pudendum, male or female.

The Guardian columnist, Syreeta McFadden came up against a similar problem when perusing the Greek and Roman galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/absent-female-genitals-art-repeated

 Alas, the origin of the word pudendum – a shameful thing - still holds true.

Fotunately, Gustave Courbet, Egon Schiele and Auguste Rodin had no qualms depicting it, and neither have I.

Today’s picture is a detail from my painting of the reclining torso.

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

William Shakespeare “Venus and Adonis” 

Pure and simple

What follows is my murmured soliloquy while working on the last of four paintings from yesterday’s session with Annabelle.

I’ve ten minutes left to save the day…Just relax in whichever way you choose…Where do I start…I’m seeing a line in silhouette that runs over the left breast and down to right thigh…Just one simple line with a hint of the rib cage…And now I can place the right breast and follow the curve to the hip…What a wonderful line that is…Keep it loose, don’t play about with detail…The face is largely hidden behind the left arm but that doesn’t make it easier…First I must let the chin fall into place…Now I can tie in the arms. The complication of the clasped hands I’ll leave to take care of themselves…Okay, stretch if you need to…No more line, just get the washes down, boldly, once and for all…My brush instinctively finds the earth colours I need…Leave the washes to find their own way…Keep the lights light and don’t be afraid of defining the darks around the face…The same touch of Indian Red serves for the lips and the nipples and the merest hint where the thighs meet…No time for background and it would be superfluous for what I am after…A glance at the clock tells me our time is up…To add more would be less…Annabelle, that’s it, we’re finished!

Here’s the result: pure and simple. With thanks to my inspirational model.

Pregnant in body and soul

In 1992, with my wife five months pregnant, we sailed our 36 foot gaff cutter from the Caribbean to Bermuda. Our plan was to spend some months there and then fly to England for the birth. However, the inevitable never happens but the unexpected often does. Unexpectedly, our daughter Tania came into the world a month premature. From that date my work moved towards the figurative and my collection of Bermuda paintings have been hidden away ever since. These paintings represent the last of a tropical townscape period that I began twenty years earlier in the Caribbean.

This detail heralds the transformation.

The sweetness of sin

The word beguine crops up in Kenneth Clark’s definitive book, The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form. The dictionary gives two meanings: first: Infatuation and the second, A popular dance of West Indian origin.

On further research I find that the dance originated in my neighbouring French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. It is a slow close dance in which the female’s hands are clasped around the neck of the male and the male’s hands are clasped around the waist of the female. There is a back and forth hip movement.

Cole Porter encountered the dance when Martinique immigrants brought it to the dance halls of Paris. The rest is enshrined in the history of popular song. Interestingly, the accepted closing lines of the song are:

And we suddenly know what heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine.

But the first version read:

And we suddenly know the sweetness of sin,

When they begin the beguine.

I consider the accepted line to be adequate, but the presumably censored version, is pure poetry!

Here is Ella Fitzgerald’s classic recording of the song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boJ2RZ545Ik

I promise to track down the actual dance. So far I’ve drawn a blank here in Dominica, despite our strong French Creole connections. It might add some spice to our more formal crop of cultural dances, about which V. S. Naipaul had this to say in his book The Middle Passage:

To this mincing mimicry, the violence and improvisation and awesome skill of African dancing has been reduced.

These pictures illustrate one against the other.

An ingenious work of art

Today’s picture illustrates a work of art, but not one that you will find in a gallery.

I stumbled across it a few weeks ago when visiting a village that was almost wiped out when Tropical Storm Erica devastated Dominica just over a year ago. The government is intent on re-housing the villagers in a new estate of plastic pre-fabricated houses; the equivalent of Pete Seeger’s “Little Boxes”.

However, some villagers, like the creator of this ingenious cane crashing mill, are staying put on what may now - after nature has done her worst - be considered safe ground. Some might say they are foolhardy, but for me they emphasise the unconquerable spirit of man.

Reaching for the impossible

What I am after keeps moving just beyond my reach. It might even be impossible, given the fleeting minutes I have available to capture the subtleties of nude figure, the intractability of a rapidly drawn line and unruliness of watercolour washes thrown down with a Number 12 brush.

Into the bargain I am experimenting with a different paper, both in texture and whiteness. Hence, I am up against the equivalent of letters on a computer keyboard being suddenly shifted about. 

My models are doing better. Next year Annabelle will be studying medicine in the States and Saryta (the subject of today’s paintings) will soon be professionally modelling in France. 

From a different perspective

Before a line or a wash goes down on paper, I have a vision of what I am after. As the painting progresses I become doubtful that my first intentions are being fulfilled. Watercolour is the most demanding of all painting media: what goes down stays down, highlights have to be jealously safeguarded and washes have a mind of their own. In thirty minutes scores of things can go wrong and it is often the last brush stroke that does most of the damage. On completing a painting I am rarely satisfied.

It is not until later, after the shock of seeing from a different perspective, that I realize that what I originally perceived as a failure might have the makings of success. In the old days I would place the painting flat down on the floor and view it from all directions. Now, the image on the computer screen allows me the same detachment.

Today’s painting is a case in point. Immediately on completion I thought all was lost and that my model had needlessly endured mosquito bites. But now, viewing it hours later in a different format, I realize that our labors were not entirely in vain.

The only flaw with using the computer screen is the reduction in size. Even the detail shown below is smaller than the original 22" x 13" painting.