A compilation of Chris's humorous and entertaining travelogues, revealing some of the pitfalls and frustrations, as well as the joy of being a professional artist. Hoping that his efforts abroad will continue to bring in a daily crust to continue supporting his family at home!
I wanted to paint something really bright and sunny again this week as our summer is a long time coming. So I've revisited an old favourite haunt in Venice, the square dominated by the Church of Saint Barnabas, which has found fame in popular culture by being used in the film Indiana Jones and the SomethingorOther, you know, the one with Sean Connery as his Dad. Anyway I found enough photos and drawings from old sketchbooks to put this picture together. But before I start I always do a 'compositional' pencil sketch to think a few things out in advance.
In this case it helped me sort out the sunshine and shadows and where to perhaps put figures and maybe a gondola on the canal. After finishing the sketch I liked the rythm of the composition, even though the gondolier is too big. (The pencil sketch is only about 4" wide).
Unusually I have used masking fluid, a sort of rubber solution, to keep the paint off the white facade of the church whilst doing a nice loose wash of blue across the sky.
Masking tends to give a crisp edge which in this case helps the atmosphere in the painting which is clear and bright.
I started by painting the (slightly leaning) campanile to give me a benchmark of tone which which to compare the strength of tones and shadows to come. Then I continued area by area ensuring the shadows were related in colour and strength, all the time bearing in mind the feeling I was after of midday light in Venice at this time of year which is SUNGLASSES BRIGHT but don't we love it!
And here I am having just cut a rather indulgent mount with a small gold fillet inserted within. But Venice is indulgent and this painting is one that may make you hum 'Just one Cornetto' afterwards.
Am I pleased with it? Well perhaps the drawing and some of the figures are rather 'static', but then the atmosphere is supposed to be that time of day where you just feel like wandering slowly and maybe stopping for a cold beer under a cafe umbrella and watching the world go by. So it gives me back the feeling I wanted and that's the most important thing for me.
Sat 14th July & Sat 18th August 2012 10.00am – 5.00pm
Would you like a relaxing day in the countryside brushing up your painting and drawing skills? Then why not come along to our painting workshop days at the newly refurbished National Trust CHEDWORTH ROMAN VILLA ……in the heart of the Cotswolds!
£60 per Day or £110 for Both! Price includes entrance to the museum and grounds, individual help from tutors Chris & David, morning coffee and a light lunch.
With all
the beautiful sunny weather this week I just wanted to paint something really
sunny and summery. Looking through an old sketch book I found a pen and ink
drawing of some boats from when we were on holiday as a family in Cornwall in
August 1998. I had never got around to producing a painting from it despite
also keeping a reference photo, but here we are 14 years on and I finally found
the moment!
I often
like to paint from a combination of sketches done on the spot, and reference
photos. The rest is interpretation. So what was my ‘take’ on the picture? Well,
I wanted it to be as sunny and bright as possible. The way to do this in
painting is not only to make the shadows dark and often hard-edged but also to make
the shadow colourful, ie blue and mauve rather than grey or brown. Also bring
out the bright colours big time on those red and yellow balloon thingies with
shine on, and don’t touch the white, just leave as blank paper. I’m pleased
with the result as summer has been a long time coming and may disappear again
in another day or two, so I feel as though I’ve spent the day back in St. Ives!
When a letter came through my door last Autumn inviting me to consider painting a wall in one of the most important Roman Villas in the country I was somewhat taken aback. What did I know about Roman Wall Painting?
A major transformation project has been carried out at the Chedworth Roman Villa by the National Trust during the winter and as a part of the refurbishments a purpose built educational facility has been added on behind the café area. This will be known as the ‘Salway’ room and will provide schools and community groups with a dedicated and inspiring area in which to explore Roman life and culture at the Villa. It is having a recreation of a Roman Kitchen at one end, and an ‘eye-mat’ is being fitted on the floor digitally recreating some of the mosaics from the dining-room. That just leaves the walls and that’s where I came in.
It was with some trepidation that I agreed to meet up with eminent Roman historian Professor Peter Salway and Dr. Rupert Goulding (National Trust curator at the Sherborne Park Estate), both consultants to the improvements on the site, along with Jane Lewis, the learning officer at the Villa. I had already bought a wonderful book I’d found on the internet ‘The Splendor of Roman Wall Painting’ by Umberto Pappalardo so I had done some homework, but the meeting was a steep learning curve. However they were all very encouraging and the exchange of ideas was stimulating, not to say a bit mind-boggling! I knew at this point that I had my work cut out.
Examples of actual Roman wall painting:
Unlike my preconceptions the Romans loved bright colour and bling. Never mind less is more, they loved reds and golds, intricate borders, mixtures of styles, fake marbled panels, friezes and painted scenes from ceiling to floor. I could see the styles and colour schemes in the houses of Pompeii from my book, but how was I to translate these as relevant to Chedworth, and how to do it in the time allotted?
When I arrived the room had no doors windows or heating, but the wall was as shown above, divided into three by two timber supports. After consultation we decided to have three central panels surrounded by borders, edged by columns, a dado rail below and a frieze along the top. The left hand panel would depict a hunter returning with his catch, the central panel would show the Chi-rho, a Christian symbol found at the Villa and the right hand panel would be a painting of the Villa itself. My mock-up drawing of it was as follows:
Once I had bought some tester pots of Farrow and Ball paints and had done some experimenting on the walls of my studio, I began the more straightforward task of measuring up, masking off and blocking out the areas of colour on the wall. At least it should have been straightforward. Due to technical problems with the building work the doors and windows failed to arrive at the room during the week I had allotted to making ‘a good start’. Arriving on the first day the temperature outside was minus 4 degrees! Not much warmer inside I nevertheless drew out the initial designs on the walls but coming back the next morning some of my paints were frozen solid! So I had to adjourn for 10 days or so, during which time I decided to paint the inner panels in my studio on 4mm mdf to save time and hopefully get a better result.
The hunter panel was inspired by a small stone carving which can be seen in the Villa’s museum of artefacts showing a hunter-god with a hare, dog and stag.
He also features on part of the dining-room mosaic clutching the hare. I worked up my sketch showing the hunter wearing a hooded cloak or ‘Byruss Britannicus’ and a blue tunic with embroidered stripes or ‘roundels’, striped leggings and simple shoes. Also some Roman snails as they liked filling up empty spaces in their pictures!
The central panel depicts the principal Christian symbol in use at the time of the Villa, the Chi-rho incorporating the two letters X and P, the first two letters of the word ‘Christ’ in Greek. My initial sketch for the panel also shows other symbols around including the fish, peacock, pomegranate, dove and two-handled urn. Along with the laurel wreath these are all interpretive symbols, against a background of a garden setting.
The finished Chi-Rho panel with a distinctly Roman border, taken from one of the mosaics.
The third panel depicting the Villa as it may have looked in c.360 AD was more or less copied from the publicity painting supplied by the National Trust as I had no other reference from which to work. I have simplified it rather and just shown a small hunting party making their way home into the Villa.
But then back to the room itself, and when the doors and windows were fitted and the room was finally warm I had the task of painting all the rest of the wall. I got through an awful lot of masking tape to achieve the clean edges of the borders, although I deliberately painted some of them freehand to give the design some ‘liveliness’ here and there.
The borders took the most time, particularly the ‘egg and dart’ one, the inspiration which came from a house in Pompeii, along with the colours surrounding it.
A natural sponge was useful in giving texture to the panels – I know that ‘marbling’ is a skill unto itself but economies of time dictated certain of my methods. I didn’t worry too much about the authenticity of the columns with their ‘Corinthian’ capitals as it was the spirit of the Roman wall painting I was trying to capture. The wall painters of ancient Rome and Pompeii mixed whatever styles they liked and often lapsed into complete fantasy with their columns!
The ‘frieze’ saw me up a ladder painting with the barest of stencilling with a signwriter’s brush. The design was inspired by yet more of the mosaic in the Triclinium, or dining room of the villa. It was almost the last day of what by now had become something of marathon paint. I rather liked the colour which was ‘duck egg’.
I couldn’t resist signing the wall and dating it by ‘carving’ on the podium below the furthest column.
And thus I put the last brushstrokes to the ‘Salway Room’ of the Chedworth Roman Villa.
Here is a photo of me having just finished, but the eye-mat with its digital mosaic surface was not yet in place. If you wish to see Chedworth Roman Villa and its amazing mosaics, and have a coffee in its newly refurbished café, visit the website here for details:
The Salway Room is used by schools on weekday mornings but is available at other times. You can find more details on the website or by phoning Chedworth Roman Villa on 01242 890256
I return to Oxford again and again to paint as I love architectural subjects, and Oxford contains some of the finest buildings in the world. I’m not sure this painting is completely finished yet, but with watercolour it’s usually best to stop while you’re winning, and not overwork a subject. Why the angle chosen in the picture? When you approach Radcliffe Square from the High, through a narrow pedestrian lane, the Camera is suddenly there in front of you, and I wanted to evoke the ‘impact’ it has when you first round the corner and look up.
I’ve just suggested the Bodleian Library in the background. I’m never certain a painting has ‘worked’ when I’ve just finished it, but I certainly enjoyed working on it, and that’s important to me!
The Radcliffe Camera was designed in the English Palladian Style by James Gibbs between 1737 and 1748, and is believed to have been the first circular library to be built in England.
(This painting is a copy by me, in acrylic paints on canvas)
Which is in fact ‘The Green, Northleach’ featuring Tudor House, home to Fothergills Gallery for 15 years from 1994 to 2010, to the left hand side of the painting!
This painting by Lowry came to light recently in Christie’s auction house, and sold for around £265,000. So what you may ask? Well I was tickled to think that our old shop was painted by Lowry at all.
I knew he had been to Northleach and done a charcoal sketch of The Green, as I had seen a copy of it, but I didn’t know he had gone on to do a painting.
It is set in the bitter winter of 1947, with children playing in the snow. I was so taken with the scene that I decided to paint a copy of Lowry’s original. Stretching a canvas to the original size of 18” x 21.5” I painted a thick layer of titanium white over the canvas in a rough texture as one might artex a ceiling. Then painting in the outlines with ivory black I began blocking in colours and putting in figures, then painting around them, and adding thin colour over thick, then more white. I studied the paintwork on the original (online!) and Lowry obviously worked back and forth in all sorts of ways. I found out that he only ever used five colours in oils; flake white, ivory black, vermillion, Prussian blue and yellow ochre. Getting into the mind of another artist is never easy, and I only used acrylics instead of oils so that I could accomplish the painting quickly and the thick paint would dry fast.
It was a fascinating exercise, and I was pleased with the result, which on the face of it is quite similar to the original. I put a thinnest watery grey wash over the top afterwards to age the thick paint, and some button polish near the edges to give a mucky patina.
Great fun, but I don’t think I’ll get £265,00 for it! The Ox House Wine Company in the Market Place, Northleach might just hang it in their Wine Bar though, it should make a good talking point!
