Organising Exhibitio

Organising Exhibitions: Tedious Repetition or Challenging Opportunity

The Chairman’s appeal for someone to organise the Summer Exhibition at the Ludlow Art Society’s Society’s AGM was greeted by an ominous silence. Members’ reluctance to grasp such an opportunity is odd because the Exhibitions are the sole reason which motivates most of our members to join. Slowly it dawned that it would have to be me or there might be no exhibition.

The preparation of the entry forms with my name featuring as the recipient aroused a feeling of déja vu – been there done that some fifteen years ago. In those relatively far off days things were much more leisurely. We invited external selectors to judge the entries and advise on hanging. There was no shortage of volunteers and we were all fortified with a glass of wine which made hanging a convivial occasion.  This all helped establish the Society’s reputation for mounting exhibitions of high quality that were well presented and tastefully hung. Nowadays constrained by a high rental we are forced to do things in a hurry.

So would a job I once tackled with relatively youthful enthusiasm be a tedious repetition of all the old chores or a creative challenge? Surprisingly it had elements of both. For many years we benefited from the computing expertise of a retired Anglican priest and I owe great deal to him through our association in the production of the Society’s Newsletter. He taught me about correct typographic conventions used in printed documents – when to use an en-dash and when to use a hyphen. The first creative task was to set up the software procedures to produce exhibition stationery to the standard which Ernest had established. This took about four weeks and was tested with the data we had stored from the Spring Exhibition.

  I was also helped by the exhibition organisers who succeeded me – I was delighted to find amongst a bag of papers passed to me a file of very detailed records which had been compiled by one of my succcessors. There are the routine chores of course, telephone calls have to be made, preview mailings, press releases, and posters distributed. All too often these tasks fall to the hard-pressed few and yet they could be undertaken by anyone willing to attend two or three exhibition planning meetings where a check-list of jobs is drawn up and allocated.

The August 2005 issue of ‘The Artist’ carried a very sad editorial called ‘Please Don’t Say No!’  It was written by Jan Milsom about her Art Society that finally had to disband after 23 years. The Society had been kept going by a dwindling band of ageing volunteers but inevitably it collapsed when the Chairman had to undergo major surgery  and a successor could not be found. It’s the same the whole world over. I correspond with a friend who is a member of the Thames Art Society in New Zealand. They had to call an extraordinary general meeting to appoint volunteers to enable the Society to carry on. The Ludlow Society has been close to that situation.

What then of the future? I have to be hopefully optimistic for two reasons. First, the Society has rightly earned a widely respected reputation for almost 60 years – yes that is an anniversary  we must plan to celebrate in style next year. Like many others I drifted into a Summer Exhibition when I was planning to move to Ludlow and was given an encouraging and friendly welcome by the Secretary who handed me a membership form. I’ve never forgotten that welcome or being told that there was no waiting list or that I didn’t have to present a portfolio of work and be voted in by members. The subsequent years of active involvement confirmed that I had been fortunate to join a very friendly society. If that experience is common to other newer members there must be sufficient motivation to continue the Society’s good work if it could be harnessed.

Jan Milsum’s plea in her editorial ‘…if you are asked to help out in some small capacity at your art society, please, please, please, think very carefully before you say no!’  was very apt. Better still, don’t wait to be asked just volunteer!

The loose handling of watercolour has a surprisingly long history. The most notable exponent was Turner whose Venetian sketchbooks are full of drawings which have colour notes added in watercolour. Some of his sketches are made directly in watercolour and there are some interesting examples using body colour on blue paper. They were done as working studies to note down effects of light and to develop his visual memory of a place.

Another exponent of the genre was Sargent who frequently made watercolours on his extensive travels in Europe. Most of his watercolours date from c1900-1917 when he became disillusioned with portrait painting. He embarked on journeys through Europe with friends and students recording places in direct bold watercolours many of which he casually gave away. He probably painted them for simple enjoyment but his fame as a fashionable portrait painter ensured interest by dealers and collectors in everything he produced. In 1909 80 watercolours exhibited at Knoedler’s in New York were bought by the Brooklyn Museum and gradually his watercolours were bought by other American museums.

The loose fluid manner of execution which Sargent developed was very similar to that used by Edward Wesson. In particular there is a striking resemblance between a small watercolour of Venice by Sargent,‘All’ Ave Maria’ painted c1907 and one by Wesson titled ‘Venetian Waters’. The location and composition are very similar. Both paintings could have been made as a quick impression in front of the motif with the aim of further development in the studio. That seems to be the way Wesson evolved his characteristic style – he was able to refine a method that was quick and immediately recognised by his distinctive direct brushwork. It brought him steady sales and a host of imitators.

I am a keen admirer of Edward Wesson’s watercolours but he is a bad exemplar for amateur painters. Wesson developed a very personal loose way of working which is very popular and his style has spawned look-alikes of varying degrees of competence. Demonstrations by professional artists who paint in a loose Wesson manner are sure to captivate audiences at meetings of amateur painters.

The April meeting of Ludlow Art Society members enjoyed two watercolour demonstrations typical of the loosely handled genre. The first demonstration followed a predictable course. First a quick sky painted with fluid washes laid on with a Japanese hake – Wesson’s favourite tool for this job was a French Polisher’s mop. The hake was used again with stronger blues to create foreground shapes. At this point the demonstrator announced it would be a snow scene. The use of a hairdryer to dry off part of the sky area enabled the demonstrator to drybrush the outline of an oak tree with the side of a sign writer’s liner. The point of the liner was used with a dark pthalo blue/umber mix to flick in suggestions of branches. Finally purple blue/grey washes were used to suggest distant hills and create the outline of a farmhouse roof. After further use of the hairdryer a suggestion of the detail was added and the job was done – a finished watercolour in 35 minutes. Members were treated to a second slick performance after an interval. Two large water colours ready for framing in 90 minutes.

Over the years I have observed several demonstrations of this kind and they teach you very little. For the beginner they encourage the idea that loose direct handling is the key to success in water colour and little else. After each of these demonstrations I always return to Barry Miles book on Edward Wesson* to compare his work with that of his look-alikes. This kind of study is important if you want to appreciate him. A superficial awareness of Wesson’s work overlooks the fact that the loose brushwork of his small plein air landscapes are based on keen observation developed through drawing.

Wesson like his contemporaries Jack Merriot, Leonard Squirrel, and Claude Muncaster was a fine draughtsman. For me Wesson is seen at his best in his pen and wash watercolours. There is a fine example, St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol on the dustjacket of Barry Miles book. The clean loosely handled transparent washes are there to be enjoyed but they are supported by accurate, though understated, ink line drawing.

Wesson has so many disciples - John Yardley and Ron Ranson being the most widely known - that it is worth reflecting that Watercolour has a long tradition. It is important to visit public collections to discover how other artists have used the medium. Dear old Edward's watercolours are very seductive but it is best to avoid becoming enslaved by them.

* Edward Wesson 1910-1983: Barry Miles, Hallsgrove (1999)

The other day I was talking to a friend about drawing in pen and ink. The medium is essentially a linear one and tonal contrast is generally achieved by cross hatching. Ruskin in ‘The Elements of Drawing’ sets a very tedious exercise asking the student to cover a small square with lines to achieve gradations of tone. I’ve tried this several times and however hard you try – varying the line spacing, varying the density of cross hatching – smooth gradation of tone is very difficult and time consuming requiring waiting for each stage to dry.

Studying the Whistler etching in Walsall's Garman-Ryan collection the thought occurred that some of the qualities of the print could be reproduced in a pen drawing. An etched plate is often dipped in the acid bath several times. The length of time in the bath determined the depth of ‘bite.’ A deeply bitten line holds more ink than a shallow one and results in a darker line. A similar effect can be achieved by using dilute ink for the most delicate lines in the drawing. Turner used dilute ink in his small watercolour in the Garman-Ryan collection for distant detail. It’s a simple idea which is rarely used and when applied sensitively broadens the scope of pen drawing.

Artists, I am certain, love their own paintings – it is something that is inherent in the creative process. I daresay there are artists, driven by the necessity to sell, who turn out three or four paintings a day with little real affection for what they are producing. This has a hint of production line mentality and there can be little real satisfaction in that way of working.

David Cox, enfeebled and on his death bed, is reported to have said, “Goodbye paintings, I will never see you again.” It was as if he was saying farewell to some dear friends. I experience a similar sensation whenever I sell a painting – part of me is sorry to see it go. I sent'The Flower Girl' which is shown on a Blog posted in February to the LAS Spring Exhibition. I’d enjoyed having her around for a few weeks before the handing-in day and David Cox’ attributed remark came to mind when I learned the painting had been sold. “Goodbye Flower Girl, I may never see you again.” I only hope you give your new owner lasting pleasure. But then the purchaser may be a dealer who will add a 50% mark up and flog you off to someone else. I do hope not.

I paid a visit to the Walsall Art Gallery which houses the Garman-Ryan Collection. Sally Garman was Jacob Epstein’s lifelong mistress who he married late in life. Garman was born in nearby Wednesbury – a fact which influenced her decision to choose Walsall as a home for the collection of Epstein’s bronzes and the art works that she and her friend Sally Ryan had collected.

The Epstein bronzes in the collection are powerful works modelled directly and retaining a satisfying feeling for the plastic nature of clay. Epstein made friends with the Parisian avant-garde in the 1930’s particularly Modigliani. His interest in modernism made him a controversial figure yet he was denied the acclaim which he deserved. In the post war years he became sidelined largely due to the promotion of Henry Moore by the then Director of the National Gallery, Kenneth Clarke.

The rest of the collection consists chiefly of drawings and works on paper – minor works perhaps but many are worth close study. A nicely handled drawing by Sickert of St. Marks Square freely drawn in pencil overlaid with watercolour washes. Then a small watercolour of Westminster Bridge with detail subtly added with diluted ink.

Another favourite is a small etching of riverside buildings at Chelsea. Whistler is mostly known by his loosely handled Nocturnes – sand also the controversial ‘Cremorne Gardens, the Falling Rocket.’ This little etching shows him to be a sound draughtsman. An artist who has learned his craft so well is entitled to display a little cockney impudence and fling a pot of paint in the public’s face occasionally. Ruskin, who was invariably right in his comments on art, was wrong in his assessment of Whistler.

I’ve currently been working on a pastel sketch that I made some years ago on a painting course run by Claire Spencer PS at Westhope College in Shropshire. I think it was Claire’s suggestion to use a portrait format for an in situ pastel sketch of a view along Wenlock Edge. That did not present any particular problem but I never really resolved the composition satisfactorily and my enthusiasm for the painting went off the boil. I discovered the unfinished picture in a folder of work and decided that I ought to take another look at it.

The decision to work on it again was encouraged by my current preoccupation with ‘Land and Light’ as a progressing theme and the happy memories of the late summer weather when it was begun. Thinking about a strategy my first idea was to catch the sunlight on the rising slopes of Wenlock Edge. The second was to simplify the foreground in some way. In the original sketch there was a broken hedge in the foreground. I had been lured by its rampant summer growth much of which had gone to seed. The seed heads created interesting forms but they were really a distraction - but what to do?

The solution was found by simply playing! The joy of pastel is the pleasure taken in just making marks - it offers almost unlimited possibilities to rub, blend, scrape, and add new marks at will. So the first task was to rub out the hedge by making random marks with dark pastels and blending them – great fun. Then the thought occurred that a grassy path emerging from shade would create a simple foreground that would emphasise the feeling of sunlight on the rising ground beyond. All that remained then was to create a little more interest in the sky and enjoy a little more creative mark making in the fields with complementary colours.

After an hour or so of total absorption I felt the painting was finished – and as Alwyn Crawshaw used to say at the end of his TV demonstrations, ‘”I’m happy with that!”

Whenever possible I try to avoid using fixative because it can create problems. Too heavy application renders the paper surface hard and smooth which makes further drawing and blending difficult. The problem can be solved when using robust grounds like board by roughing the surface with fine sandpaper. This happened when I applied fixative to the face and hair – fortunately Canson is a heavy robust paper which can take a certain amount of rough treatment so no real harm was done.

For this portrait an intermediate fix was needed to seal the underdrawing and prevent it lifting and soiling the final marks. Faces generally have to be highly worked in order to render the subtle tones created around the eyes, nose and mouth. Even the lightest pastel sticks make strong marks which have to be softened when drawing delicate forms. This detail from the completed portrait shows the degree finish that can be achieved.

My strategy was to treat crown of the hat and nightdress more loosely to focus attention on face. The best laid plans though collapse if you get too engrossed in mark making. I began suggesting the straw weave of the hat and the marks took over – I could have brushed them off of course but I was beguiled by the effect they created so it was too late.


Framing is another aspect of the craft of painting that I agonise over. Victor Ambrus lovely pastel drawings on light tinted Ingres paper look fine in a wide ivory mount inside a narrow frame. A full painterly treatment needs a different form of presentation. I had to hand a wide frame which had a gold finish, a slip made from a length of glass bead was used to separate glass and painting. There was a problem – the painting would need to be cropped.

I believe portrait heads need space within the frame if they are not to look imprisoned. The role model who led me to this conclusion is Goya, his head and shoulder portraits are all drawn sight size and the chest is often fully facing the viewer. The width of the shoulders then creates the required space for the head. I had drawn a sideways pose and I think the wide brimmed oversize hat created just sufficient space to allow the painting to be satisfactorily cropped to fit the smaller frame.

The attractive qualities of pastel are its directness and the textural marks which are possible with the medium. With a portrait currently on my easel I began to consider strategies which might be implemented to bring the painting to a conclusion. It helps when deciding on a particular approach to look at examples. One valuable source of reference is ‘Pastel Painting and Drawing 1898-2000’ published by The Pastel Society to celebrate the Society’s Centenary Exhibition.

The book illustrates some fine examples of portraits done by PS members which display the broad range of techniques which can be used with pastel. Ken Paine is an artist who tackles his portrait heads in a vigorous direct manner. The faces seem to emerge from a flurry of textural marks. His subjects are usually old, hirsute, and with ‘character.’ In contrast Victor Ambrus portraits are essentially light firm drawings with hints of colour in the face and parts of the clothing. The linear approach he adopts is ideal for recording detail.

Between these two extremes are portraits which have highly worked parts – usually the face – and more more loosely treated areas which exploit the dry textural nature of the chalk. I decided that this would be the best strategy for a portrait of a child where the skin is smooth with subtle tonal contrast best achieved by blending the coloured marks made by the pastels. Background and clothing could be given looser treatment.

I’ve temporarily abandoned studies of birds to return to a portrait that is in danger of going off the boil. I began it last summer prompted by the sight of my granddaughter dressed in my wife’s nightdress and her straw sunhat. Most children love dressing up and this one is no exception but recording them in their fancy dress is not easy except with a camera. Reliance on photographic references becomes essential since the first tentative drawing was made over six months ago.

The portrait has progressed to the point where major corrections to the pose have been made, one of these – to the outline of the hat – still shows. She is turned away from the light and the face for the most part is lit by reflected light. This creates subtle contrasts of tone around the eyes and nose which I hope to record rather - dare I say – in the way that Rembrandt did!

I’ve gone for a full painterly treatment in pastel on the reverse side of a grey Canson paper – preferring this to the ‘correct’ side which has an insistent regular grain that breaks into textural marks. The work has progressed to the point where I’m beginning to consider an intermediate fix. I’m always reluctant to use fixative preferring to scrape down to the ground when I can. I don’t think I will be able to do this on Canson because the rubbed blends and corrections have filled the grain of the paper. Little can be done that is not likely to damage the paper surface.

This digital image was made from a photograph of a 2005 calendar published by Hawksworth Graphic and Print Ltd. The calendar was one of the most appreciated gifts I received at Christmas - it is now hanging on my studio wall and is a delight and inspiration. The illustrations are by Leonard Squirrel RWS, RE. who has long been one of my favourite watercolourists. He taught etching and engraving at the Ipswich School of Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy for around 50 years. He was born in 1893 yet he was not elected a full member of the RWS until 1941 – a surprising fact which shows how persistent and determined you have to be to progress in the art world.

He belonged to a generation which produced fine landscape painters like Jack Merriott, Stanley Buckle, and Stanley Badmin. They never get a mention in the scholarly art history books and rarely feature in exhibitions in public galleries - yet they were all very prolific artists making a living from commissions and sales of their work.One of the best ways to become familiar with their work is to look at Greg Norman’s book ‘Landscape Under the Luggage Rack.’

The illustration shows a watercolour ‘The Street, Kersey, Suffolk’ painted in 1960. It is a fine example of a class of English watercolour which use controlled washes over a fine drawing. The detail reveals the method but it is hard to decide if the tiles are drawn with a pen or a fine brush superimposed on the wash or beneath it. The choice of instrument and order of application is a matter of the artist’s preference. Jack Merriott advocated the use of a brush drawing in Indian ink with superimposed washes of colour.

Interest in the work of these artists declined as amateur artists engaged with the looser style of Seago and Wesson. Although both artists developed a loose understated method of working this was underpinned by close observation. Wesson in particular could draw well and it is fatal to try and imitate their style if you can’t. So many of the Wesson ‘look alikes’ in amateur exhibitions suffer from a badly drawn beginning.

I meet artists who are excited by the concept of developing new ways of using watercolour - extending its boundaries. Then I often recall a comment by Milan Kundera which I once read. He questioned whether 'the never before expressed is always ahead of us – may it not be found from something which has gone before and has been overlooked?' Artists like Leonard Squirrel tend to be overlooked but there is much in their work which can be rediscovered.

A poster announcing an exhibition called ‘Cuoto on Netsuke’ caught my eye at the Museum and Art Gallery in Hereford so I made a brief visit. Netsuke are small Japanese beads used to secure objects to a belt. They are highly decorative objects and very beautiful Cuoto turned out to be an artist who was showing large engravings influenced by traditional Japanese themes. Of more interest were the woodcuts of birds and flowers. Although they were described by the exhibition catalogue as realistic, to modern eyes accustomed to photographic images that seemed inappropriate. There charm springs from the limitations imposed on the artist by the medium he is using. Details of colour and texture have to be suggested rather than accurately recorded. For artistic rather than scientific purposes this is not a handicap and they can be enjoyed for their directness and honesty of purpose. These are qualities that distinguish the best hand made artifacts and which give them value.

I’ve just enrolled for a Wildlife Drawing and Painting Course at Ludlow Museum. The museum has a good collection of bird specimens that are interesting to draw. Our tutor Angela Gladwell MArt (RCA) is pushing us in the direction of careful observation and accurate recording. Good basic principles once instilled into art students in the life class. Drawing museum specimens is a good discipline. It’s more like drawing from the antique casts that were once used to prepare students for the life class than drawing a living breathing model.

That said it is a worth while form of study and a lot easier than drawing birds in the wild. I’ve tried drawing garden birds and visitors to our bird table and also puffins at their nesting burrows on Skomer. This is essential study if you want to capture a sense of how birds move, perch, or feed but there is no substitute for having a mounted specimen to study anatomy and plumage. I’ve only ever managed to record such details in a very superficial way in the brief time you get to observe from life.

Having tried sketching birds from life I never cease to be amazed by Charles Tunnicliffe’s sketchbooks. The published sketchbooks are a good source of reference and I’ve learned a lot about drawing techniques from making copies from them. Another artist I greatly admire is Victor Ambrus who makes drawings to reconstruct the buildings excavated by Channel 4’s Time Team.

Victor is also a prolific book illustrator and he has published ‘Drawing Animals’ a book which describes his method of sketchng animals from life. All of his drawings were done at various locations using carbon pencils. I’ve found it instructive to make copies from these by following his methods.

These quick studies copy the style of each of these two fine artists – a brush drawing based on an illustration from Tunnicliffe’s ‘Peregrine Sketchbook’ and a Macaw from ‘Drawing Animals’ by Victor Ambrus.

Angela Gladwell’s web site is also worth a visit at

www.angelagladwell.co.uk

Compared to the practical humanitarian work that needs to be done to help the broken communities recover from the Tsunami disaster painting suddenly seemed to be a useless and irrelevant activity. The enthusiasm for painting left me completely as the daily news bulletins carried more and more horrific images. Then I saw aid workers helping children to face up to their horrific experiences by drawing. So there is a place for art even in the midst of complete chaos to help people overcome the trauma of disaster. Where words cannot be found to record the emotional nightmare perhaps images can.

New Year’s Day seems to be a good time to post a Blog. The last day of 2004 saw the arrival of the Pastel Society’s Newsletter – always an interesting though rather brief read. Roger Dellar, the Editor made reference to ‘Degas, Art in the Making’ - an exhibition currently on show at the National Gallery. Degas late pastels are a source of inspiration for anyone using the medium. He frequently used tracing paper as a support. He made use of it to create mirror images of the poses of his drawings of dancers. In this way he could create varied figure compositions from just a few simple poses. He seems to have resorted to this practice as his eyesight began to fail and he was no longer able to go to the ballet.

Degas also used canvas as a support for pastels – a practice which is hardly ever used today. Sickert, who studied with Degas, criticises this practice in his book ‘Open House.’ because of the risk of damage through vibration. He has a point if a traditional stretched canvas is used but the risk is greatly reduced if the canvas is glued to board.

There are valid creative reasons for exploring the properties of different grounds for pastels. Roger Dellar states the case nicely in his Editorial. ‘I find myself being more and more concerned with the paint surfaces, textures, mark making, and also the composition.’ Painting begins with the preparation of a ground suited to the subject being portrayed. The use of prepared pumice grounds and materials such as canvas offer choices which extend the range of the medium. Degas seems to have been aware of this and in his late pastels he produced some of his most exciting paintings.

While passing the Municipal Gallery in Worcester yesterday my eye caught sight of a poster advertising an exhibition of paintings called ‘Porth’ by Kurt Jackson. Shows in the Worcester gallery are usually a disappointment they are usually touring shows of installations or the ill considered daubing that seem to be in fashion with museum curators. . I first became familiar with Jackson’s work on seeing an exhibition of his innovative watercolours in a gallery in St. Just. So this time I went in eagerly anticipating a welcome change from the usual stuff.

Well for this touring exhibition Kurt has put together large collaged paintings in mixed media. The collaged bits were mostly items retrieved from the beach at Priest’s Cove where Kurt mostly works. ‘All that was left’ had two crumpled oilskin jackets and cork floats with bits of rope evocative but somehow inappropriate.

The majority of the paintings were made up of two or three door-sized stretched canvasses fixed together – gallery art again. Very few locations could display these paintings, a college refectory if you shifted the portraits of pensioned academics perhaps. There were perhaps three of four mixed media watercolours framed but unmounted as though they were a hurried addition. These were typical Kurt showing evidence of his playful exploratory way with water based media – capturing effects of light on the sea and evoking in the viewer a sense of noise of waves breaking on shingle. I wish there had been more.

The gallery was showing a video of Kurt at work outdoors on a cliff top at Priests Cove. He gave a bravura performance working on a huge canvas spread on the turf and held down by stones. I guess he was working on an acrylic underpainting laid in earlier. The video showed him working barefoot, trowelling on paint with a knife, splattering it on with a loaded brush Jackson Pollock style and blending it with fingers and toes. Great fun and with an eye for the chance effect or happy accident but never completely controlled.

For quiet reflection I wandered into a neighbouring gallery and saw ‘Herald of the Night’ by Arnesby Brown - an oil painting of about 1870 he was also a Newlyn painter. The painting shows a full moon rising over a simple landscape with two rather badly painted cows, a painting easily dismissed because of its romantic Victorian subject matter. But then I looked at how he had painted the evening sky, there were blues mauves greens juxtaposed and harmonious. It was controlled and considered the product not of impulsive brush gestures but of carefully placed marks. Characteristics all too rarely found in contemporary painting.

Robert Hughes is still one of the few critics that are worth reading. For an art critic he has the rare quality of expressing his opinion in plain words. His international status as a critic is long established and he has no time for dumb hyped-up nonsense posing as fine art.

He wrote in The Guardian recently a review of Lucien Freud’s exhibition of recent paintings and etchings at the Wallace Collection, Hertford House, London – it runs until 18th April. He used his review to contrast Freud’s achievement with the show at the Saatchi Gallery called ‘Fresh Blood.’ A show of ‘awful dumb-arsed posturing’ to paraphrase Hughes’ assessment promoted by Ad-men without any kind of connoisseurship. Nobody can really take the whe work of Hirst, Emin, Lucas and their chums seriously can they?

By contrast there is Freud at 82 producing strong engaging work – the product of a lifetime engaged in subjecting people and objects to obsessive scrutiny. This scrutiny leaves the viewer if not the sitter feeling uncomfortable. There is a residual element of the expressionist distortion which characterised German art of his Grandfather’s time – those reclining figures with exposed genitals distorted by exaggerated perspective.

For Hughes, Freud is England’s greatest living artist - other critics share his enthusiasm - ‘our Titan among minnows’ is Laura Cumming’s assessment of him in The Observer. It is good to find critics who are defending work done by a figurative oil painter. Freud has a sensitivity to the way the oil medium can reconstruct a perceived form and give an interpretation of reality which is far superior to the photographic image. In part this superiority is due to the fact that much effort and obsessive observation have gone into the creation of the paint surface – a result of long and exploratory reworking of the surface. Freud’s paintings show the ‘naked evidence of labour’ to quote Cummings. It is this display of effort which for me gives the work a value which demands respect. After all the uncompromising nakedness though it is refreshing to escape into the fresh air where the breeze ruffles the leaves on the trees and and sunlight creates vibrant colour. I need to gaze at a little David Cox watercolour I think.

Read the reviews at:
Sarah Cumming: 'A brush with Genius'
Robert Hughes: 'The Master at Work.'

It is good to meet an artist who is at home with digital technology and makes competent use of it. Last week I went to meet Mark Ansell one of our new Ludlow Art Society members. Mark is a graphic designer and we met to discuss the Society’s publicity – specifically designs for the posters for our exhibitions. Mark had been busy on his Apple Mac and showed my some of his preliminary designs for the Society’s logo and a redesigned format for the Newsletter.

Some years ago I designed the Society logo using a graphic created with Corel Draw. Greyscale versions of it are used on our membership cards and on the masthead of the Newsletter. Colour versions also are used on the Society’s web site. The design carries the words ‘Ludlow Art Society’ superimposed on the church of St. Laurence the town’s most visible landmark. This in turn has the skyline of the Titterstone Clee as a background.

Mark essentially adopted the same device but gave it more impact by placing the lettering below the graphic and simplifying it into a stark black and white design employing counterchange. It was at once more contemporary and striking. I congratulated him and we chatted about this and other changes over a cup of coffee. What was refreshing about our talk was the way in which he was quite ready to engage in critical discussion without rancour. A rare quality I find in the art world where artists can be temperamental and easily upset if someone expresses a dislike of their work. But then as a professional designer he is constantly discussing designs and listening to his clients instructions. Such is the difference between the real world of the commercial art and the more esoteric one of the fine artist.

Richard Wardle RE in a recent demonstration he gave to Ludlow Art Society members expressed concern about the marketing of Giclée prints. It is a concern I share because of the way they are marketed as a form of fine art. An advertisement once caught my eye in, I think, The Observer. It was offering a ‘Fine Art Giclée’ of ‘St. Michaels. Mount’ in a limited edition signed by the artist – an elected RA. The image was printed of course on archival paper with lightfast inks by state of the art digital technology - a quality bargain at around £200!

Well the gullible may be impressed with that and there is nothing new in the marketing of mass editions of signed artists prints. Russell Flint and L S Lowry are two artists who come to mind whose work was marketed in this way. Lowry though was honest enough to admit that he was being paid a fee essentially for signing his autograph. There is a nice story told in his biography that a dealer brought a quantity of prints for him to sign. The dealer became concerned when he noticed that Lowry was signing the prints ‘L.S.Low.’ When asked to explain Lowry replied, “You have only paid me half my fee so you are only getting half a signature.” He was also quietly amused by the fact that gullible art shoppers were prepared to pay a prestigious gallery £45 for a signed numbered print from an edition of 850 when the same print could be bought unsigned for around £5 from less pretentious outlets. Do artists, who can now produce their own passable prints rather than use a commercial printer, really wish to compromise their integrity with this kind of marketing?.

Richard and other RE members make prints which are individual in the sense that each carries the stamp of the artist’s hand–tooled mark. Their work has far greater integrity than the digital print where the technology creates a barrier between the original hand crafted artefact and the mechanically produced print. I once took issue with the writer of an article in ‘The Artist’ magazine which explained at length the skill and care that she took in producing her giclée prints - using the finest materials and making test prints to get the right contrast and colour. All of this of course is sheer pretension, the real skill resides with the programmer who wrote the robust code that kept her system stable while she tinkered and played with the image on her screen. The final digital print owes more to the programmer’s skill than hers.

There is of course a place for digital imaging in helping artists to promote their work. The technology is quite appropriate for cards and notelets that are not being passed off as fine art. But as painters or printmaker we have chosen to work using hand-craft methods which have a long tradition. We should work in sympathy with the tradition and practice of our chosen craft if our work is to have integrity. In any hand crafted printing process image quality degrades after a number of prints are made. This is why the printmaker produces a signed limited edition – at the end of the print run he destroys his plate. There is no such constraint with ink jet prints so it is a pretence to sign and number them.

By using graphics software like Adobe Photoshop to merely make copies of their paintings artists are missing the creative potential of digital technology. There are artists with the necessary skill and training who use graphics software to create original digital images. Their work has greater integrity and honesty of purpose than scanned images of paintings. The simple reason is that their work does not attempt to simulate a hand made artefact. Indeed original digital images are created by a process in which the hand made mark has no place. The appropriate place for digital graphics is in the developing media like video, the internet, or advertising. Digital images are quite out of place in a gallery or exhibition whose primary function is to display hand-made artefacts. I personally would like to see an addition to the Rules of Entry for the Society’s exhibitions that would exclude Giclée prints from being accepted. I hope most members will be persuaded by the logic of my reasoning

Yesterday a poster placed in the window of Hereford Art Gallery caught my eye. It announced an event called ‘Making a Splash’ which turned out to be an exhibition by St. Ives artists. The doors of the gallery were closed and enquiry at reception revealed that the exhibition did not open until today. I was saved from disappointment by a nearby gallery assistant who having overheard my enquiry asked if I had traveled far. “Oh about 30 miles,” I said, “from Ludlow.” At this she invited me to have a look round while they continued to hang the pictures and I was privileged to spend 20 minutes or so with three very friendly assistant curators who pointed out the paintings by artists I was interested in. It was a kind gesture that I really appreciated and I promised too return again to see the exhibition when it is up and running.

The exhibition has a painting by Stanhope Forbes of a group of figures enjoying a summer day in the shade of a tree lined pool. There was something familiar about the location and the way he handled the ripples on the water. Then I remembered his large canvas ‘The Drinking Place’ which is in Oldham Art Gallery. Did he work at the same spot for both pictures? It’s worth another visit to check. Critics have been rather sniffy about Forbes but in my view he handled paint very well. There was also a nice watercolour by Dame Laura Knight that I must return to study and a rather disappointing small work by Peter Lanyon painted in 1945 I didn’t get the title but it shows him working in the manner of Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo. These flat abstracts created from linear designs have lost their novelty and interest now. Ten years later the linear basis is still there in his work but the colour is more subtle and textural treatment of the paint surface makes his work more appealing. Another visit to the exhibition is a must.

Tim Marlow is currently presenting an interesting series about great artists on Channel 5, the series is enjoying a rerun and last night his subject was Delacroix. I was delighted when he opened the little Phaidon edition of the Journal and read from it. The same edition that graces my bookshelf and which I also turn to from time to time. It takes real determination to write a journal and there are periods when Delacroix never wrote a word. So his journal has several gaps whether this was due to pressure of work or because he had little to say is uncertain. Well in this respect I’m in good company - this is the first entry in my blog since September 2003. 2004 begins with a resolve to pick up the thread again.

Viewing the Delacroix programme again I was struck by the strange preoccupations of 19th Century Romantic painting. The massacres, noble suicides, violent revolution, and voyeuristic glimpses into harems. Uncomfortable subjects hardly enjoyable to contemplate. Better perhaps to simply look at how the paint is handled, It is now easy now to understand why the Impressionists admired Delacroix vigorous free handling of paint – a revolutionary change from the tight handling of the French classical tradition. Those raindrops he painted with juxtaposed touches of rainbow hues are also prophetic. The idea of exploiting the optical blending of primaries did not occur again until it was developed by Seurat and the Divisionists.

Recent correspondence with my New Zealand friend (see 25 Aug. 2003) has renewed my interest in Frances Hodgkins. Frances who? you may be forgiven for asking unless you were at Art School in the 1950’s, then she was better known and her work was featured in ‘The Studio’ and other art magazines of the time. She was born in Dunedin but spent most of her artistic life and did most of her painting in Europe. From the age of thirty when she came to England and for the rest of her life she was totally dependent on what she could earn from painting, so life was a struggle. She never had a permanent home of her own and stayed with friends or rented rooms and for a time led a gypsy lifestyle roaming around France, Morocco, Italy, Holland and Belgium.

She taught in order to keep painting and her letters home to New Zealand which are now preserved in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington tell of her struggle. ‘Painting reduces me to tears and misery, peaks of ecstasy, disillusion I feel as if I am possessed by a painting devil which is devouring me body and soul, and claims my brains and energy and leaves me with no wish nor inclination for anything else. Is it worth the sacrifice?’ She found it difficult to get recognition from the conservative British art establishment but finally she was awarded a pension negotiated on her behalf by Sir Kenneth Clarke during his time as Director of the National Gallery. She died in 1947aged seventy-eight in poverty and suffering from depression.

She is honoured today in New Zealand as one of the country’s finest artists. Her work is represented in Tate Britain but there is more to discover on the web site of the Dunedin Art Gallery and that of the City of Dunedin.

Tate Online
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
City of Dunedin

This photograph shows the old school building where the Thames Society of Arts hold their exhibitions and workshops. (see yesterday's Blog)

I have a friend who is a member of the Thames Society of Arts – I should explain that this Society is based in a little town on the Coromandel Peninsular, North Island, New Zealand. They have converted an old school building which they use as a gallery and for running courses – but that is another story. Dennis went out to New Zealand in the 1950’s and the native born Kiwi’s jokingly refer to him and an ‘improved Englishman.’ In a recent letter I asked him what the winter colours were like in the North Island landscapes commenting that Rowland Hilder was the first English watercolour painter to really make extensive use of winter landscapes. The New Zealand seasons do not have the dramatic changes of those in England, plants seem to grow all year and winter simply is the season when there is more snow on the mountains. Rowland Hilder turned out to be a painter that Dennis admired and reference to him had the effect of arousing nostalgia for the Kent landscapes that he knew as a boy.

This exchange renewed my own interest in Hilder and so I turned to a copy of ‘Sketching Country’
That I bought in a second hand bookshop some years ago. Hilder’s description of his working methods makes fascinating reading. He was an artist who loved making sketches out of doors, sometimes these were simply scribbled notes and ideas for paintings following in the footsteps of Turner who left a thousand or more such drawings in sketchbooks. Ruskin – who went through Turner’s effects and arbitrarily destroyed many that he considered might undermine Turner’s artistic reputation – wrote comments on the back of some of his Petworth sketches. Ruskin clearly did not think much of them – he wrote ‘rubbish,’ ‘inferior,’ ‘worse,’ on many of them.

It is curious how taste changes, now these little Petworth colour notes are highly regarded. In Hilder’s day Turner’s sketches and Constable’s oil sketches aroused great interest and the sketch became elevated to being a work of art in it’s own right. So there developed a taste for the direct sketchy style of painting practised by Seago, Wesson, Hilder himself and currently John Yardley. It is a style of painting which has attracted many amateur watercolourists. But beware it is difficult to carry off.

However on balance I think Hilder is right when he observes that; ‘…I am a believer in banishing from a watercolour the kind of detail which I have heard visitors to mixed exhibitions applaud as being ‘true to life’. Truth, in all art, is not the same as literal description.’

I believe a painting benefits from having a part which is understated yet this is rarely appreciated. This year the Ludlow Art Society Summer Exhibition had a lovely watercolour in pen and wash by Maggie Humphry. She is one of the Society’s new professional members and this was the first time she had submitted work. She must have been thrilled to bits to have her watercolour awarded the Selector’s Choice.

I was admiring it when a friend who was with me said it had been frequently criticised because of an understated indefinable area which could be visually read as an area of grass or perhaps part of a farmyard or driveway. The point of the understatement was that it provided a quiet area which focussed attention on some beautifully drawn foreground plants yet afterwards led the eye past some buildings into the distance. The current preoccupation with finicky detail, a result I suspect of unimaginative use of photographs, means that artistic subtlety of this kind often goes unnoticed. A great pity because Maggie in this painting was teaching a lesson which we all ought to take to heart.

You can see more of Maggie's work on her web site at: Maggie Humphry at Pink House

‘The Art of Chess’ exhibition currently showing at Somerset House has attracted media attention even though chess does not have a great deal of popular interest. The exhibition displayed 19 chess sets dating from the 19th Century to the present day including some newly commissioned work by some members of the Britart school. With the exception of a set designed by Marcel Duchamp, who was himself a very good player, it would be very difficult to actually play a game with some of the sets. In one case this was the deliberate intention. Yoko Ono designed a set entirely made up of white pieces so that the combatants would become so confused that an effective battle could not be fought. So chess has been used to promote the cause of ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ A laudable objective perhaps but missing the key idea that chess is a cerebral battle not a physical one.

The Britart gang clearly had little interest in or knowledge of the game. There was a time when if an artist was given a design brief he undertook some background research to ensure that his design was appropriate for its use. Good design becomes a fusion of imagination with knowledge of materials and understanding of the artefacts function. The Britart school blindly ignores this tradition and is in danger of becoming totally irrelevant to real concerns. Not surprisingly a chess journalist commented that ‘one of the exhibits looked like the contents of a kitchen cupboard which had fallen onto the floor.’

Away from the exhibits the real Art of Chess was being demonstrated by two chess prodigies David Howell aged 12 and Sergei Karyakin aged 13 who played a demonstration game on a giant-sized chess board in the courtyard. The genuine beauty of the mind game being enacted through the moves each player made is something which none of the artists, except perhaps Duchamp, seem to have understood.

It is sad to discover an interesting artist by reading his obituary. This was how I learned of Cliff Wilkinson, a painter who shared my love for the Lake District. He developed a style of painting quickly in order to capture the quickly changing effects of light which can be so lovely in mountain landscapes. Judging by the illustration that accompanied his obituary he developed a spontaneous free style approaching abstract expressionism. In this picture ‘Lakeland Walk’ the colours are right and the marks are textural and evocative.

Wilkinson taught at the Borough Polytechnic from 1950-59 that was about the time that David Bomberg established the Borough Bottega and became influential in developing the style taken further by the likes of Frank Auerbach. Wilkinson seems to owe something to Bomberg too. After studying printmaking at the RCA he ran the School of Printmaking in the Fine Art Department at the Manchester College of Art.

Brian Morley, writing the obituary, explains Wilkinson’s attitude to printmaking - dismissed often a mere ‘craft., Wilkinson had no time for ‘..snobbish distinctions: “It’s all shapes and colours in the end,” he said.” I like that. Apparently he rarely showed his work but I hope someone will organise a major retrospective in his memory – I would love to see it.

The annual Ludlow Festival in June-July is built around Shakespeare plays performed outdoors in the castle. The event throws this family into a month of midsummer madness because my wife manages the wardrobe backstage. Actors work peculiar hours after the evening performance they end on a high and like to socialize in the nearest pub until they are turned out in the early hours. Then its off to bed until around mid-day. After a few weeks of this normal mortals find it impossible to come to terms with the real world – hence the long gap in my blog entries.

What makes our involvement worth while though are the friends we have made through meeting the cast every year. Most actors when not performing generally have mild and sensitive personalities which is contrary to what their public expects. I was struck this year by how much thought professional actors give to how they are going to perform the role they are playing. For most it involves a deep study of the text of the play and I have learned far more about Shakespeare by listening to them than I ever did at school.

This kind of commitment has a general application to all creative activities. One of the traps which painters fall into is that in the desire to loosen up and paint freely their work becomes badly constructed and superficial. Ruskin knew this ‘the hand of a great master at real work is never free:’ he wrote, ‘its swiftest dash is under perfect government.’ Good painters give as much thought to where they place their marks as the best actors do to how they recite their words.

The photographs were taken backstage at this year’s festival.

I visited a favorite restaurant for a meal last week and found the décor changed. New softer colours and the walls displayed about 30 watercolour paintings by Roland Spencer Ford. Roland was a prolific watercolourist with a traditional but quite distinctive style. I knew him towards the end of his life – he died in 1990 – when I joined the Ludlow Art Society. Roland was a founder member and former Chairman who worked hard to establish the Society in its earlier years. He supported the Society by always showing his work in Members’ Exhibitions to the end of his life.

He moved to Ludlow and opened his own studio/gallery on College Street - now just a private house – and made a living from his paintings and prints. He left his unsold work to The Shropshire Hospice when he died and I was surprised to see so much of his work still being offered for sale an indication perhaps that even successful artists sell only a part of what they actually produce. An Exhibition of Roland’s watercolours is being held in Ludlow College, Castle Square, from 28th July to 2nd August. Proceeds from the sale of his work will go to the Shropshire Hospice.
I visited a favorite restaurant for a meal last week and found the décor changed. New softer colours and the walls displayed about 30 watercolour paintings by Roland Spencer Ford. Roland was a prolific watercolourist with a traditional but quite distinctive style. I knew him towards the end of his life – he died in 1990 – when I joined the Ludlow Art Society. Roland was a founder member and former Chairman who worked hard to establish the Society in its earlier years. He supported the Society by always showing his work in Members’ Exhibitions to the end of his life.

He moved to Ludlow and opened his own studio/gallery on College Street - now just a private house – and made a living from his paintings and prints. He left his unsold work to The Shropshire Hospice when he died and I was surprised to see so much of his work still being offered for sale an indication perhaps that even successful artists sell only a part of what they actually produce. An Exhibition of Roland’s watercolours is being held in Ludlow College, Castle Square, from 28th July to 2nd August. Proceeds from the sale of his work will go to the Shropshire Hospice.

Art should never aspire to be cerebral it is a creative activity where expression of feeling and emotion are its major concerns. So watching a recent broadcast treating Channel 4 viewers to an explanation of Tate Modern’s themed display on Still Life made me immediately suspicious. Great art needs no explanation it just ravishes you.

We are far enough removed from Picasso and Braque’s Cubism not to be shocked by it. Their reconstruction of observed objects for artistic effect was driven by painterly concerns which now need no explanation. Their insistence that painters had total freedom to organise and present the world in any way they choose was characteristic of the revolutionary times in which they lived and explains the diverse and fragmentary nature of Modernism.

One of Modernism’s unfortunate consequences is that it seems to have led artists to become more arrogant and extreme. Duchamp’s urinal presented as a fountain and signed ‘R. Mutt’ was perhaps a joke but it led to the doctrine that anything can be art if the artist says it is. Magritte’s little painting ‘The Treason of Images’ with the inscription ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ is a light hearted reminder that you are not observing the real thing but he keeps a visual reference the real world. In contrast Michael Craig Martin offering a tumbler of water displayed in a glass shelf as ‘An Oak Tree’ does not. As an idea it’s pathetically weak and lacks a logical general reference as a well devised concept should.

It is questionable whether art should be driven by logical constructs anyway. Artists unlike say mathematicians are not trained for this kind of creativity. When they try they generally display the kind of arrogance which only comes when you are ignorant of the real world. A concept is not true just because the artist says it is. ‘Believe me my unmade bed really is as good as any Vermeer.’ Tracy Emin was just kidding wasn’t she?

The bird drawings I did at the natural history drawing workshop renewed an interest in wild life art. A few years ago I became interested in the paintings which Charles Tunicliffe did at ‘Shorelands,’ his home on Anglesey. He devoted his artistic life to recording birds and country life and the wood engravings done for book illustrations and his large watercolours which earned him election to the Royal Academy are true works of art and deservedly popular.

Tunnicliffes’ sketch books are fascinating documents, examples used to be displayed in the museum at Llangefni on Anglesey which has a large collection of his work. Drawings of birds hold more artistic interest than than paintings – the paintings of the likes of Basil Ede for example do not quite capture the excitement that catching the sight of a bird in the wild. I think it is partly due to the carefully contrived backgrounds which most paintings in the genre have. I suspect this kind of art is mostly admired for the technical skill displayed by the artist in rendering detail.

In pursuit of inspiration I turned to Victor Ambrus, another artist I admire and well known now for his illustrations of the archeological sites investigated on Channel 4’s ‘Time Team’ programme. He once published a book of animal drawings, now long out of print, that I use for study. The drawings reproduced in the book are all done with graphite pencils. I make studies of them using Woolf Carbon Pencils which are similar. The following sketchbook studies are based on some of Victor Ambrus, drawings but there is one which is entirely mine. Can you spot which it is?

I enrolled for a day course on Natural History Drawing and Painting run by the University of Birmingham Extra Mural Department. The venue was our local museum which has a good natural history collection. The tutor presented us with cases of butterflies, shells, stuffed birds and a hare. Recalling Durer’s famous drawing of a hare I was put off attempting it. All that fur and the fine tips of the ears was too exacting. I settled on a wigeon which provided more than enough interest for the day. I stayed with simple drawing tools 2b pencil and a Pentel colour brush. I find the Pentel brush produces a variety of marks that add interest to the drawing and the marks can be diluted into washes with water. Here are two pages of sketchbook studies:

Sunday mornings provide a nice quiet opportunity to study chess. I find it an absorbing and relaxing pastime and have no aspirations to play in tournaments or gain a club norm. A schoolboy interest in the game waned until a couple of years ago when I was alerted by the fact that there was a theory going around that keen chess players rarely developed Altzheimers Disease. They may suffer mental exhaustion and need psychiatric nursing but rarely suffer the brain degeneration that goes with Altzheimers. Having reached the age when I can go upstairs and be unable to remember why I did so I decided that the memory training that chess requires would be beneficial!

Playing chess also has a lot to do with pattern recognition when deciding what moves to play. This is not so far removed from painterly activity where the emerging pattern of marks and shapes influences where the brush is to be placed next. I read a lovely concise definition of art by Alfred North Whitehead which was; “Art is the imposition of pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of this pattern.”

I discovered recently that Marcel Duchamp was a keen chess player and somebody has published a book of his games. He is quoted as saying; “From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” I like that and even today, when we all use Fritz on our laptops and GM’s are challenged to play tournaments against computers, intuition can often influence the moves top players make.

The National Geographic web site carries a discussion of digital imaging on its Message Boards. www.nationalgeograpic.com
Apparently some readers were upset by some of the surreal photo images which appeared in the magazine. Images were distorted and superimposed – one showed a goat suspended by spider silk growing out of its back. The point being that a silky fibre has been extracted from the milk of a genetically modified goat, the ethic of this procedure merits a debate of its own but it seems odd that people might be taken in by an obviously contrived photograph.

Now that photographs can be digitally manipulated so cleverly it could be difficult to detect whether the image is an accurate representation or not. The National Geographic has built up a reputation for objective photo journalism and it was the fact that some images shown in the magazine may not be what they seem that upset some readers.

On the other hand digital photography offers a creative tool for artists that needs to be explored. It rarely gets used in an imaginative way outside the world of advertising. By using Corel Draw or Adobe Photoshop to merely make copies of their paintings artists are missing the creative potential of these programs. There are artists with the necessary skill and training who use graphics software to create original digital images. Their new art form has been described as ‘Digitalism’. Examples of Digitalism can be found on the internet at http://www.digitalism.org.

giclee prints can't equal a hand crafted artefact

The proliferation of prints made with an inkjet printer, usually from digital scans or photographs of watercolours, is a depressing phenomenon. Craft and garden centres are the main offending outlets. Those prints that are signed and numbered to simulate the limited editions of hand-crafted prints are a crass attempt to give the print an artistic value which it can never have. There are good technical reasons why a wood engraving or etching is produced in a limited edition the plate or block has a limited life before the quality of the print degrades. There is no reason why an inkjet print from a digital source should not be produced by the thousand and of course the cheap prints sold in department stores are. L.S.Lowry – an artist with some business acumen allowed his work to be marketed in this way. A print of one of his paintings would sell for around £35 unsigned but for over twice that if signed. It amused him to think that people would pay £35-£40 for his autograph. A story goes that a sharp dealer once brought a batch of prints to his house to be signed. He started to sign them L.S.Low. when the dealer asked him what he thought he was doing, he replied, “Well you’ve only paid me half a fee so you’re only getting half a signature.”

The visit to Yns Hir reminded me that some years ago I became interested in painting birds – this is a watercolour I did at that time. It is based on sketches and notes made on a trip to Skomer off the Pembrokeshire Coast. I used to go to the local museum where there was quite a varied collection of stuffed birds that the curator kindly let me draw in the storeroom where they were kept. It was a useful discipline but cannot compare with the experience of observing and drawing in the wild.

C.F Tunnicliffe was a wildlife artist that I greatly admired and I visited Anglesey where at Llangefni there is a permanent collection of his work to study. Tunnicliffe was lucky to live at ‘Shorelands’ a bungalow on the estuary at Maltraeth and the waders, swans and ducks which were his main subjects were birds of a reasonable size. The garden birds that were my subjects were all too small to record with anything other than a miniaturist’s technique. So the interest waned and I’m left with my puffins, which my wife won’t let me sell, and sketchbooks.

William Condry wrote a ‘Country Diary’ for The Guardian for a number of years. His piece always appeared on Saturdays and it was generally the first thing I turned up when the paper dropped through the letterbox. He was Warden of the RSPB reserve at Yns Hir on the Dovey Estuary in Wales. I was fortunate to visit the reserve many times and benefit from his knowledge of birds on his tours of the reserve with parties of visitors.

In addition to his column he wrote several books ‘The Snowdonia National Park’ published in Collins New Naturalist Library is one of my favorites. When he died five years ago his moving obituary in The Guardian, pointed me to his autobiography ‘Wildlife, My Life’ which I still find moving every time I take it from my bookshelf. On the way home from a visit to Yns Hir I made a new discovery, a second hand bookshop with a shelf full of Bill Condry’s books. I picked up a title I didn’t have ‘Pathway to the Wild’. For Condry enthusiasts a visit to Coch-y-Bontddu Books in Machynlleth will be worthwhile.

As often as I can I grab a sketchbook and draw the first thing that catches my eye. It is a good way of ‘keeping your eye in’ to borrow a phrase from cricket. So this is a page of sketchbook studies of plants. It might be of interest to know that they were done with a cut turkey quill. Having seen some Rembrandt drawings I was moved by a fit of nostalgic idealism to get back to traditional artists tools and carried around a little bottle of Acrylic Artists Ink to use with the quill. (I baulked at Rembrandt’s method of making drawing ink by using soot mixed with water!)

I also had a spell of making copies from Leonardo’s landscape drawings and plant studies. The BBC website currently carries some fascinating material about Leonardo da Vinci to supplement Alan Yentob’s television programmes. Leonado was first and foremost trained as a painter but his restless enquiring mind took his interests beyond purely painterly concerns. For Leonardo painting was a science, a branch of optics by which it was possible to describe the world through careful observation and applying the principles of perspective.

What interests me most about Leonardo is his astounding ability to communicate his ideas and explore the world through drawing. Draughtsmanship was the primary tool he used to explain his ideas. His notebooks are full of beautiful drawings the written notes seem to be dashed down and frequently written backwards due perhaps to his left-handedness and have to be deciphered in a mirror.

In addition to the BBC web site it is also worth visiting these:-
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vinci/
http://www.mos.org/leonardo/bio.html
http://banzai.msi.umn.edu/leonardo/

In a rare act of kindness my geography teacher on learning of my love of hill walking loaned me a copy of ‘Snowdonia Through the Lens’ a book of mountain photographs by W. A. Poucher. I was captivated and grabbed every opportunity to avail myself of any of Poucher’s books in the local library. His books of mountain photographs were published by Chapman and Hall during the latter years of WW2 and continued through the 1950’s when he became a regular contributor to ‘Country Life’ magazine.The photographs in the early books were all in monochrome taken on Kodak Panatomic X film with a Leica III camera. Later on Constable produced a series of books of his colour photographs but these were terrible – ruined by bad colour reproduction.

The early books quickly went out of print and became keenly sought by collectors, I managed to pick up two of the Chapman and Hall books some years ago and have been browsing second hand bookshops over the years to find others in acceptable condition. Copies worth buying eluded me until last week when I found a copy of ‘Snowdon Holiday’ in a bookshop in Malvern. It was published in 1943 and had been well cared for, the only damage being slight iron staining on the endpapers and dust jacket.

The reproduction in these early books is superb even though this one was produced under war-time restrictions. The paper has a warm neutral tone and the ink a warm black tone with a hint of sepia about it. This represents for me the best in artistic photography for anyone who has walked the welsh hills the photographs gently evoke memories of the experience – colour reproductions are too intrusive and rarely interpret colour accurately anyway. I can use the Poucher monochrome photographs aided by my own memory as the starting point for paintings but anything which has colour is best avoided.

My visit to Worcester Art Gallery on Monday was a depressing experience. Why is it that art educators these days seem to be lost in their own peculiar world which has little reference to the world of exciting and interesting development which the rest of us experience. More creative ingenuity is displayed in contemporary technology than you will find in the Art Colleges.

The contemporary artists which really interest me are those who are largely self taught and have become painters out of love for the craft after experience in a different kind of work. John Yardley and John Blockley are examples from an older generation, another is Mark Leach who works mostly in pastels and whose work tends towards abstract landscape. Generally when these painters talk or write about painting they express themselves in plain words – a refreshing change from the unintelligible prattle of the academics.

Here is a brief quotation from an article which Mark Leach wrote in ‘The Artist’ in April 2003. It interests me because it challenges traditional practice.

‘Each painting is a recollection. To that end, I rarely do preliminary studies, and hardly ever work on site. This I now realise just confuses my feelings. I literally cannot see the wood for the trees. What I try to do is make use of my memory. I want the finished paintings to be like a memory where the mind over time has sieved out all extraneous detail and left only the relevant.’

Mark is developing a web site at .www.markleach.net

I paid a visit to Worcester today where there is a nice Municipal Art Gallery sad bout the work they show though. The current show in the main gallery had the intriguing title of ‘Ellipsis’ – so I entered in a state of curious anticipation. The first exhibit in the gallery was a poster with the heading ‘Artists’ statement.’ It is always a bad sign when an artist feels the need to explain his work before you get a chance to look at it – it is an indication that it will be obscure and bad.

The gallery was lined with abstract daubs and scrapes applied to small panels of MDF about 30cm square. All showing dribbles of paint on the edges of the sub frames – lazy this even Howard Hodgkin who paints similar but more sensitive abstracts puts his work in a frame and then incorporates the painted frame as part of his picture. None of the works bore titles or prices.

The whole show was rather sad and meaningless. It seemed like the work of a recently graduated fine art student who had been badly let down by his course. I made this point to the lady at the information desk at the end of the gallery and received the surprising news that the artist was a college lecturer in his fifties. God help his students after all he is old enough to know better.

The May issue of 'The Artist' magazine carried an article with the intriguing title'‘A Journey with Pastels.' The author’s idea was to explain the process of developing his Cumbrian landscapes into abstract paintings by emphasizing the observed patterns and textures. Every artist feels the need to move on and develop and I suppose it is useful to use the analogy of embarking on a journey – an artistic, if not an actual one. A local artist friend Joan Baker, who studied with John Blockley used the same analogy and produced an interesting little book with the title 'My Artistic Journey' Her work like that of John Blockley developed towards abstraction though in John’s case his concern was to exploit the properties of paint itself rather than looking for formal patterns and textures. John liked to simply play with paint and there is nothing wrong with that if the result pleases the eye. The concept of embarking on an artistic journey as a way of developing one’s work in new ways is a helpful one. It is more constructive than being self critical about trying to produce ‘better’ work. We never live long enough to become ‘better’ we only change with experience

Applying a coat of wood preserver to my garden shed is a task that is not likely to generate aesthetic excitement. Yet today as I removed green encrusted lichen I became aware of the subtle colour contrasts in the weathered wood. There were subtle contrasts of grey and green which made quiet harmonies that could be used as the basis of colour composition in a painting. It was important to make a note of them to aid memory. When the work was done I used pastel as a quick medium too record the effects I had observed.

I have decided you can’t be an artist and a gardener. I try to paint or draw every day but at this time of year plant growth takes over and unless the garden is tamed there will be little chance of any artistic activity through the summer. I normally try to do at least one drawing each day even if the opportunity to pick up a paint brush doesn’t present itself. The best way to grab a drawing opportunity is to pick up the most readily available tool usually a fountain pen, grab a sketchbook and draw the first object that comes into your line of sight. There may only be ten minutes or so available but the practice keeps your eye in. Here is one such drawing grabbed in a brief interval before having to face some tiresome routine chore.

Campo dei Frari
There are many quiet corners in Venice which are a delight to sketch. This quick pen drawing was done with a Rotring Art Pen and the tonal washes created with an index finger moistened with saliva. A technique I first saw demonstrated by Sir Hugh Casson in a BBC programme. I’ve since refined the technique by using a Pentel brush pen which has a reservoir in the handle that can be filled with water. This drawing supplemented by photographs of the foreground gondolas has been the starting point for paintings in various media.

I had another look at Grahame Sydney’s web site tonight and I never cease to be amazed by the way he creates a painting from the most unpromising material, a limp windsock on an airstrip in a bare landscape dominated by the sky. Or an old shed which may be used for shearing or as the bar of the Dog Trials Club. Central Otago is a strange lonely place and he captures the spirit of the place perfectly. I only have a brief experience of it and I couldn’t make any painterly sense of it. Grahame Sydney Gallery/shop Page 6

I spent a month sketching my way around New Zealand and had more luck on North Island where the character of the landscape is quite different. There is open space but there are the trees and lush vegetation of the bush. You are also acutely aware of volcanic activity on North Island – there are still active volcanoes and the hot sulphur springs are indicators of the fact that molten magma is not far below the surface. North Island’s thermal reserves are fascinating places full of colour from the brightly coloured algae which thrive in the hot springs. One of my favourites is Orakei Korako near Taupo. To reach it you are taken by boat across the Waikato River to a laid out trail in the bush which climbs up silica terraces passing several hot springs and steam vents. I made a pastel painting based on watercolour sketches made on the reserve.



Orakei Korako, Silica Rapids. Pastel

We completed our day in the Cotswolds with a visit to Burford ­ another nice Cotswold village with interesting galleries. I noticed a nice watercolour by Alan Simpson and in another gallery there was a show of contemporary Scottish painters. This was unusual, except for the likes of Joan Eardley, Alan Davie or Elizabeth Blackadder who are featured in municipal galleries Scottish work rarely gets shown in England.

Then an oil painting with a four figure price tag and a red spot on the label caught my eye in the window of the Brian Sinfield Gallery. It was a painting of a Swiss ski resort and it turned out to be by Bob Brown who was being given a one man show. I was miffed because the gallery was closed and I could see very little except for the window display. I would have liked to see his work again. The last occasion I saw his work was at an exhibition by members of the New English Art Club in Cardiff. The NEAC ran two one-day drawing workshops in St. David’s Hall in association with the exhibition.

I enrolled for one and Bob was the tutor. It was an enjoyable day and having exhausted the possibilities of sketching rather restricted street views from the windows of St. David’s Hall Bob suggested I work from the street and he set me the task of drawing ‘The Hayles’ from the main entrance of the Hall. He dropped by to see how I was getting on, then I became totally engrossed in the drawing and when I came back to reality found it was time the course was due to end. Returning to the exhibition I found other students packing their gear and Bob had gone home! He owes me a crit.

Sheila and I had a day in the Cotswolds yesterday. It was a glorious sunny spring day trees bursting into leaf and celandines and primroses in the roadside verges. There was a time when we would have taken to field paths to observe the reawakening natural world more closely. We had other more material concerns on this day out. For me it was a spell of gallery going, for Sheila household shopping.

First stop was Stow on the Wold where I always look in on one or two galleries. Thompsons who took over John Blockley’s gallery a few years ago is my first choice because they usually have an oil painting by Fred Cuming on show. Sure enough there was a lovely atmospheric oil of his trademark subject just sand, sea and sky with perhaps an occasional figure. I’m bowled over by everyone I see. Always the paintings have a aubtle, limited range of colours which harmonise perfectly. Yet the paint surface is not descriptive, a dash of paint reads as a cloud but doesn’t describe or classify any particular type co cloud formation. The pictures are just beautiful paint surface and I love them. They motivate me to get a primed board on the easel and paint which is why I look at a Fred Cuming painting whenever I can.

A book I received last week from a relative has prompted memories of New Zealand. Its title is ‘Timeless Land’ and it contains reproductions of paintings by Grahame Sydney of the landscapes of Central Otago on South Island where he lives. On my first visit in 1999 I was privileged to meet him briefly at a major retrospective of his work in Dunedin. Although he is New Zealand’s most successful contemporary painter his work is not generally known.

The landscape of Central Otago on superficial acquaintance does not seem to offer the painter many subjects. It is a wild landscape of eroded gullies; there are dilapidated farmsteads, empty shearing sheds and disused railway buildings, roads that appear to go nowhere. To capture the spirit of this landscape requires contemplation in Grahame Sydney’s words, "I’m the long stare rather than the quick glimpse." So his beautifully crafted paintings deal with acutely observed incidents, the shadow patterns created by the play of light across weatherboarded buildings or eroded hillsides. That’s about all there is in Central Otago but it is a landscape which is home to him.

You can get to know these paintings by visiting Grahame Sydney's web site.

Waikato River.

This is a pastel painting of some high pumice cliffs on the Waikato River close to where it flows out of Lake Taupo. Its a beautiful peaceful spot. The peace is occasionally disturbed by the shrieks of Bungee Jumpers leaping off one of the high points. They are picked up by boat and returned to the bank feeling elated no doubt.

I have a kind of affection for the painting and will be sorry to see it go when it sells. At least I will have the satisfaction of knowing it is giving pleasure to someone else. Alfred Cox the English 19th century watercolour painter had a similar affection for his paintings. As he was dying he is reported to have said, "Goodbye paintings, I will not see you again." - as though he was parting from old friends. I know what he meant.

Still on the subject of Rembrandt's teaching methods it is interesting to note that there was an air of theatricality which pervaded Rembrandt's studio practice. He would often explore the nature of biblical incidents by enacting them with his studio assistants. A good example is where he depicts himself carousing and with Saskia posed as a tart on his knee – the epitome of ‘The Prodigal Son.’ Rembrandt encouraged his students to enact similar scenes themselves and very often the notes he wrote on students drawings resembled stage directions – ‘move the ass backward’, ‘Mary must hold the child more loosely’, and so on.

There is an amusing story about the studio play acting which is almost too good to be true. Students had their own.enclosed studio space where they could work from the nude model. One student acting the role of Adam rather too literally was overheard to remark, “Here we are naked like Adam and Eve in the Garden.” When they were discovered by Rembrandt he banged on the door and shouted, “But because you are aware you are naked you are banished out of the Garden of Eden.” The master then drove them out into the street as they tried to get dressed. The account, which reads like a scene from a comedy, was recorded by Arnold Houbraken a student of Samuel van Hoogstraten, a painter who once studied in Rembrandt's studio.

The recent discovery of a Rembrandt self portrait which had been overpainted by one of his students was a reminder that Rembrandt, established a flourishing studio enterprise in Amsterdam. Quite why Rembrandt allowed one of his students to paint over the head of the self portrait is unclear. He had several assistants his studio and he would often rework part a student’s drawing and then insist they make a copy of the reworked original – a procedure which often left his students in despair. Allowing a student to rework one of his own paintings seems to be a departure from normal studio practice.

It was once common studio practice to allow students or apprentices to complete parts of a painting. There is a famous example of the striking figure of the angel in Verrochio’s ‘Annuniation’ which was painted by the young Leonado da Vinci when he was an apprentice in Verrochio’s studio. This was unusual because students usually undertook minor features like drapery or ornament. In the Rembrandt portrait the student has reworked the head, the primary focus of the picture. Whether the reworking was done in Rembrandt’s studio or later when the painting came into the possession of another painter is a mystery.

I try to spend an hour each day studying Chess. I rarely play an actual game against an opponent except Fritz on my laptop. Its engine is much too strong to play at full strength and if I feel the need to boost my confidence I reduce its strength to ‘moron’ standard when I can usually manage to win. Chess is a beautiful but complex game and to make any sense of it requires study and analysis. Since I am no ambition to compete at any high level study of strategy and games played by GM’s in major tournaments is for me a form of relaxation.

The thought has occurred to me that a painting is constructed rather like a game of chess. An opening phase where the ground is prepared and the preliminary moves made with the brush. Next you have to devise a plan or strategy to develop the painting. Finally an endgame where the final marks are made and the painting brought to a conclusion. Just as the chess player has a number of variations to learn so the painter may have a bewildering number of options to consider in developing his painting.

Renewed interest in 'line and wash' brought to mind a TV programme made some years ago. It was called 'Making their Mark' and was broadcast on the the BBC's 'Learning Zone.' It recorded four artists demonstrating and talking about drawing. One was Sir Hugh Casson who was videoed sitting on a folding chair drawing a little Baroque church in the parkland of a country house – he described it as a delightful 'rich man's God box.' His kit merely consisted of a shetchbook and a Rotring Art Pen. He incorporated a wash into his line drawing simply by spitting on his finger and smudging. Later on in the programme he refined his technique by wetting his finger with water from a plastic cup. I adopted the method the following day!

I've never enjoyed humping cumersome painting gear around and for years I used a cartridge sketchbook and charcoal. With charcoal you have to work at A3 or larger which makes you rather conspicuous, and it is messy. I changed to a portrait format A4 sketchbook which gives an A3 double spread if you need it. Looking back through my sketchbooks around 75% of my drawings use pen linework and monochrome or sometimes coloured wash.

The only drawback with Rotring Art Pens is that the ink is watersoluble which makes a fully developed wash technique difficult. It is possible to use waterproof drafting pens of course but the Pentel Brush Pen makes varied marks resultinh in more lively drawings.

Jack Merriot was an inspiration when I began to paint in watercolour and I still get ideas from the techniques which he advocated. He was asked to devise a correspondence course in Watercolour and this gave him the chance to describe his methods.The material was subsequently revised by his associate Ernest Savage and published as a book 'Discovering Watercolour' which sadly has been out of print for years. After having it recommended I was lucky to find a good copy in a second hand bookshop and snapped it up. Over the years it has become my watercolour 'Bible'.

Feeling the need to get back to basics I turned to it today to refresh my knowledge of Line and Wash This was the first technique Merriot recommended for the beginner. The painting is developed in three stages, first a pencil lay in, followed by a fully developed ink drawing. The job was virtually complete after the ink stage all that remains is to add simple washes of colour. I never cease to get enjoyment from using the method although I have varied my use of it over the years, sometimes beginning with loose washes and then firming up the drawing with the ink linework. Further variety can be introduced if both pencil and ink linework are allowed to play their part in the final image.

The ink linework is usually done with a pen although the likes of Edward Wesson would happily draw with sharpened matchsticks or twigs. Merriot on the other hand was a firm advocate of the use of a fine brush for the ink linework and with good reason – it develops facility and control of the brush.. Watercolourists of the Seago, Wesson school used a french polisher's mop to produce loose understated albeit very attractive paintings and Wesson's style has been widely, imitated often with poor results. Wesson had a trained eye and could draw many beginners who try to emulate him lack these necessary pre-requisite for success.

I went back to Merriot's line and wash technique to experiment with a Pentel Brush Pen. This is a terrific tool.It has a finely pointed brush inserted into a pen loaded with a cartridge of black waterproof ink. The brush is capable of producing an amazing variety of marks – It will hold me engrossed for some time.

DAYS LIKE THESE When I read about Cornelia Parker's little wheeze to wrap Rodin's 'The Kiss' in a mile of string I envisaged the effect might be like an old cricket ball which had lost its leather cover. As kids we used to play with these worn out cork cricket balls. I used to be fascinated by the patterns created by the hemp string used to bind the cork pieces together. Unravelling the outer layer revealed more of the same in the layer underneath. There was a logic to the way the construction process determined the string pattern.

There was a time when art students taught by Maurice de Sausmarez and others were encouraged to observe the ways in which processes created patterns whether they were derived from man made processes or natural growth. This study had two objectives; first to develop a sensitive understanding of the nature of materials and secondly, to see these patterns as basic elements of design. There is little evidence that these ideas are taught any more. It is hard to see any point to Ms Parker's creation or why the Mail on Sunday described her 'idea' as "a big, memorable statement of desire and pain." The London Evening Standard, Brian Sewell perhaps, fuming with outrage, writes; "shall have we have Canover's naked Graces waving dildos." A remark in bad taste which is hardly constructive.

Ms Parker's creation continues a fashion started some years ago by a German artist who wrapped buildings in plastic sheets. If you are going to engage in this kind of exercise the point of it is best conveyed with humour. Rather than a mile of string draped on 'The Kiss' why not fit a bra on the 'Venus de Milo' – less effort and it makes just as valid a statement. Duchamp of course painted a copy of the 'Mona Lisa' with a moustache and the trick was taken further when the photographer Philippe Halsman created a photo montage of the Mona Lisa with Salvador Dali's eyes and moustache. Amusing and trivial perhaps but at least Duchamp and Halsmann were exercising acquired craft skills to produce their pictures which adds merit to the final work. Does Ms Parker's creation display a comparable level of craftsmanship?
'Days Like These' at Tate Britain

It could be me being dense but I do not find graphics software easy to use. Yesterday I ranted on about tatty clip art and thought I might design a few simple amusing images to enliven emails sent to friends. I failed dismally to produce anything satisfactory. Far easier to pick up a pen and draw – the process is immediate.. Moving hands have been making marks on surfaces with a variety of implements for a thousand years or more. A process by which there was communication between what the brain perceived and the marks made by the hand. Sophisticated technology intervening between mind and hand is a recipe for disaster in most artistic circumstances.

I feel sorry for calligraphers and signwriters these days because letter forms and layouts are far easier to create with a computer than drawing by hand. That is one the one branch of computer graphics I enjoy, the ability to change layouts and font sizes makes designing much easier. So easy in fact that we can become insensitive to the beauty in traditional letter forms. There is a lot of ghastly illegible lettering used in commercial printing nowadays created by gross distortions of basic letter forms designed with the pen or brush. Adapting these forms to a different process – cutting in stone or wood produced changes but the esential character and legibility was preserved. The design freedom provided by digital imaging has been a mixed blessing. We have a local group of calligraphers and it is always a pleasure to see exhitions of their work to be reminded that our letter forms originated from written marks made by hand. Ugliness arises when we lose sight of our cultural roots.

All graphics software these days comes with a CDR filled with clip art and photographs. All of the decent photographs are licensed and can have restricted use. The clip art comes free but all of it is tasteless tat and mostly unusable if you want to produce elegant artwork of good quality.

Awhile back Corel adorned the packaging of CorelDraw with a vector graphic of Hedi Lamarr. An impressive digital tour de forgce I guess and God knows how long it took the designer to construct it. Somehow though it was a cold unemotional image which didn't allow you to acquire a perception of her character. Professional photographers produce better images of celebrities but then perhaps digital images were never meant for serious recording and will be confined to packaging and advertising.

Commercial art studios once employed talented artists and designers to produce hand-drawn artwork but all this seems to have gone to be replaced by digital imaging. I am saddened by the demise of hand crafted processes in commercial publishing and remember with some nostalgia a time when major publishing houses like Penguin used talented artists to produce engravings and woodcuts to illustrate their book jackets.

We no longer need have qualms about painting from photographs – most professional artists do. Most of the current crop of 'how to do it' books have sections on using photographs – why not? Incidentally one of the best is Richard Betts 'Masterclass in Water Media. I guess Turner when recording his impressions with quick scribbles from a gondola would have given his right leg for a camera; yet the old prejudices linger on. I was amused when a friend was handing in his pictures to an exhibition and he was welcomed with the comment, "You've painted those from photographs." I haven't," he protested. He was silenced by a withering look of disbelief.

True professionals are unpretentious which is why I love John Palmer's philosophy. "I'll do a quick sketch of Venice," he announced at his demonstration, "Never been there of course." He then did a watercolour looking across the lagoon towards San Giorgio or perhaps the Salute – presumably from someone else's photograph. Nice one John.

Reflecting on John Palmer's performance at the LAS meeting last Thursday, what impressed was the simplicity of his working method. Just a simple pencil outline as a beginning and superimposed washes. Very direct and I suppose very traditional but not to be decried because of that. Essentially in a medium like watercolour it is the quality of the hand made mark whether made with pencil, brush or even finger print which counts. The watercolour painters marks are individual and distinct as with everyone's handwriting and – as with calligraphy – it is really the character and beauty of the drawn forms which gives quality to the work.

At Ludlow Art Society's March meeting we were entertained by John Palmer RWA who gave a watercolour demonstration. I had some knowledge of his work from a book he wrote on Drawing and Sketching in which he displayed an impressive variety of techniques in various grapic media and was looking forward to meeting him. I was not disappointed he is a most engaging and entertaining character and dashed off three watercolours during the course of the evening. John's artistic skills were sharpened during his 32 years as a designer producing commercial artwork to tight deadlines. To survive in that environment you have to develop the facility to handle a range of media and work quickly and to see someone display such skill is awesome.

But does the skill demonstrated in such bravura displays rub off onto us the observers? I don't think it does, in fact after watching John for 10 minutes I became filled with enthusiasm and would have loved to have grabbed the brush from his and to have a go myself. The next day with the performance just a memory, the enthusiasm and excitement has gone. It doesn't come back unless you get a brush in your hand and start to work for yourself.

The tracker on my web site shows that around 25% of visits are from US Commercial sites — which makes me wonder sometimes what is going on. The only indication of American commercial interest has been the occasional e-mail offering me web services of various kinds. Fellow artists sometimes ask, 'Am I not worried that images of my paintings can be copied?' Well that is a risk you have to take if you publish on the web and there is really no way of checking if anybody is making commercial use of any of my images.

On balance I guess that the benefits of reaching out to a world-wide community to promote my work and share ideas outweighs the worry that somebody somewhere might be making money from copying my images. Unlike conventional publishing my experience of the web has so far been constructive and not soured by feelings of exploitation. I have been surprised by how willing people are to share their experience and expertise through support and discussion forums. Everybody who builds web sites will check out other people's source code from time to time. I was amused to read a comment in the HTML of one site I looked at. The author placed a comment between the tags, 'Now you're here you can help yourself to my source code but remember the words and images are mine!' A nice touch that and I hope it will be generally observed.

Struggling to recreate the subtle tonal effects of Seurat’s drawings set me thinking about the nature of drawing itself. For Ruskin it is merely ‘dirtying the paper delicately’ and certainly Seurat’s subtle and delicate tonal effects require great delicacy in the use of Conté crayon. For Dawn Arkell, a mature art student quoted in The Guardian drawing is like ‘Dancing on paper – that’s what it is just dancing on paper.’ I rather like that — the movement of the hand when hand/eye coordination is working well is like dancing. You can sense the thrill of the hand movement in Rembrandt’s quick sketches done with a reed pen or Raphael’s quick exploroatory drawings for his Madonnas.

I broke off from the Seurat studies to do some computer graphics. The contrast between the two processes is stark. Good computer graphics software allows you to draw after a fashion on a touch pad but the resulting marks bear no comparison to the hand made marks creatred by traditional drawing tools. Indeed computer graphics are created by a process in which the hand made mark has no place.