DVD: Oil Sketches || Peter Brown

I’ve spent a great many years trying to work out what the difference is between a sketch and a painting. You’d think it was obvious: a sketch is, well, sketchy and a painting is something that’s planned and executed meticulously with time being no object. Except that some artists are quick workers, paint on location and use broad, quickly-applied strokes. Does this make them sketchers rather than painters? Well, no, for reasons I’ll elaborate.

The difference, I now know, between a sketch and a painting is that, while a painting is planned, a sketch coalesces. And, if you don’t understand or even agree with that statement, I refer you, m’learned friend, to Exhibit A: this DVD.

A lot of artists are really at home in the studio. Take them out, film them on location because it makes for better TV and you can see that they’re like a fish out of water. The noise, the wind, the people, the bright or changing light, even the occasional shower, take them out of their comfort zone and it can be painful to watch. I’ve seen demonstrations that break down at the final hurdle because of it, compositions that don’t quite add up and perspectives that, well, my dear, frankly…

Peter Brown is apparently known as “Pete the Street”. This isn’t actual TV, so I’m inclined to believe the sleeve notes. He tells us at the beginning that he does most of his work out of doors, and it’s immediately apparent that this is his natural habitat.

The first demonstration is at the top of Broadway Market in Hackney and is as busy as it can get. People and vehicles move in and out, the light changes, especially after a shower, but Peter is unfazed. This is also where I came up with my definition of the sketch. There’s no blocking-out, the structure of the painting isn’t pre-planned – at least not on the canvas. Instead, Peter works from the main structural features, allowing the scene to develop, almost with a life of its own. In this way, the fact that it’s constantly changing doesn’t matter. Certain fixed points emerge and figures are inserted as and when the composition demands.

The scene now changes to Lambeth Bridge and it’s raining. The tones are basically greys and greens, but Peter manages a composition that not only captures what’s there, but has life as well, which is a neat trick.

The final three demonstrations are painted at Bantham Bay and Burgh Island in Devon. The first, done in bright sunlight, is of interest because later assesment reveals that, viewed indoors, it’s too dark, and remedial work is required the following day. These scenes are also heavily-populated and Pete betrays his roots: “I’m itching to get on with the figures”, which he adds as tiny, yet essential, brushmarks.

When videos first appeared, they were normally limited to 60 minutes partly, I suspect, so that the more robust standard play tape could be used. The result was that the demonstrations often jumped from one stage to the next, with big cuts in the progress. DVDs opened everything up and, at nearly two hours, there’s a lot of material here. However, even that can’t really contain five full paintings and there’s clearly been a lot of editing, but it’s almost impossible to see the joins and it feels as though you’re watching the whole process.

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Watercolours – the story continues || James Fletcher-Watson

It’s immediately apparent when you open this book that it’s a labour of love. It is a centenary tribute by his family to one of the greats of twentieth century watercolour, who also did so much to spread the word and to encourage his students.

Yes, that does sound like an encomium and, yes, it does reflect the tone of the book, and it’s meant to. To know James was to hold him in great esteem, both as a painter and a man. To go on one of his courses was to come away feeling enriched and encouraged. He always had a good word to say to and for everyone, whom he called not his students, but his painting friends. In this, he was very much the inheritor of the tradition of Edward Wesson who, in fact, first persuaded him to take up teaching.

The book itself is a summary of James’s life and teaching and also includes tributes from contemporary painters such as Robert Wade, David Bellamy and John Yardley. I haven’t been able to check that all the illustrations are new to print, but they are certainly all very well reproduced, something which didn’t always happen in previous publications. The text has been adapted from James Fletcher-Watson’s Watercolour Secrets, the revised edition of The Secret of Watercolour, which is probably the definitive work published during James’s lifetime.

If you already have a collection of books by James, whether you buy this will depend on how much new material you think there is and how much you want. For those new to him, however, a celebration which includes his own words is certainly worthwhile.

James Fletcher-Watson: The Story Continues

Wabi-Sabi Art Workshop || Serena Barton

OK so, yes, I had to look this up too. Let’s go with Serena’s definition, since that’s how she’s applying it. It comes from two Japanese words and “refers to that which is imperfect, aged, humble and authentic.” It’s “an aesthetic that values the passing of time, the seasoning of time and the elements, the handmade and the simple.” It is also a state of mind which is expressed in haiku poetry. OK, so a bit-new age, a bit mystical and a bit of the Arts & Crafts movement. I think. Maybe the subtitle is more help, “Mixed media techniques for embracing imperfection and celebrating happy accidents”, which I’m not sure is the same thing.

At this point, you may have got the impression that I’m a little irritated by the whole thing. At least, I hope you have!

However, delving into the book, my mind is changed completely. This is a book about abstraction, but about achieving it by finding rather than creating. Oh dear, that’s about as clear as mud, but it turns out that what sounded like a woolly-headed idea is actually completely clear in Serena’s head and she presents it well. There are projects, techniques and ways of working that bring your materials to the fore and allow them to decide how the result will go. And there it is again, that new-agey thing. But the thing is that it’s all so convincingly presented, with neatly-formed chapters and plenty of illustrations. I’d defy you not to buy into the whole ethic. OK, you’re probably not going to start filling your studio with wind chimes and dressing entirely in cheesecloth, but there are some genuinely good ideas here that are worth following up.

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The Road Less Travelled – exploring the paintings of Michael Morgan RI

A road or trackway is a constant, indeed almost a universal theme in the works of Michael Morgan, leading into, around and sometimes out of the composition. Both literally and figuratively, it is also a journey and hints at something beyond what is presented as the image within the frame.

The starting point for this book was a series of long-forgotten slides and photographs of early “lost” works that became the jumping-off point for a survey of the output of several decades. At the same time, it became a reflection of the paths that Michael’s life has taken, a retrospective not just of a working life, but of a method of working too.

Given that artists’ records often consist of poorly-exposed and chemically unstable transparencies – or worse, prints – it’s a relief to be able to report that the quality of reproduction is up to Halsgrove’s usual standards. There are no genuine duds here and those images which clearly won’t stand enlargement to the full page have sensibly been left smaller.

Michael Morgan is clear that he doesn’t want his books to be instructional, so there’s no technical information. However, that’s not the point: his work is always about the image and, if you really wanted to create something similar, it would probably be possible to see how the results were obtained. I suspect, however, that Michael’s work is so unique that the nearest it would be sensible to get would be to emulate his way of thinking, and you can spend the whole of this book working out what that is.

At £40, this is not cheap. Look through it though and you’ll see that it’s some of the best value around.

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Handbook of Plant Forms for Botanical Artists || Ernest E Clark & Margaret Stevens

The original Handbook of Plant Form by Ernest Clark was published in 1909 and its content has stood the test of time well. The obvious change, which this updating brings, is the addition of colour, the original illustrations all being line drawings. If what you want is the basic outlines, these are hard to beat, being simple and accurate. The same can also be said of Clark’s text which is simple and concise, describing the plants both physically and aesthetically but also economically. Guidebooks such as this, from the age before good and relatively cheap colour printing, are often invaluable as they tend to be generic rather than specific. They also avoid the trap of illustrating one specimen so accurately that they can end up excluding all others – indeed, it is for this reason that paintings rather than photographs are usually used in definitive guides to natural subjects.

Margaret Stevens avoids many of the pitfalls that can come from introducing colour by featuring the work of a variety of artists who are either SBA tutors or have completed the Distance Learning Course. The resulting variety of style not only adds to the charm of the book, but also avoids that issue of being too definitive. She also wisely leaves Ernest Clark’s text alone, instead adding a commentary of her own to the new material, which not only describes the plants illustrated, but also discusses the work of the artist in question and their style of interpretation.

The result is a pleasant combination of the old and the new, the joins being almost completely seamless. Although it is not a step by step manual, an aspiring botanical illustrator can learn much from both aspects of the book and it should also please any plant lover.

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Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That || Susie Hodge

I was given this for Christmas and my initial impression was that it felt similar to the Isms volume on Understanding Modern Art that I reviewed a while back. To be fair, it’s not really possible to get into a book against a background of Prosecco, rustling paper, squeals and general chat. You might think that saying, “Shush, I’m reading” is high praise for a gift but, trust me, it gets you dirty looks.

Back home, it immediately became apparent that the similarity is purely superficial. Similar titles, formats and layouts (most things dealt with in a single spread), but that’s as far as it goes.

This is a bold book. It starts with the cover, which intrigues only if you’re intrigued by that kind of thing. The piece by Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’ is a slashed cloth and, while it embodies the contents of the book, it doesn’t scream “look inside me”. Given the nature of the book, it’s hard to see what would, to be honest. The next piece of boldness is to attempt, even to think of, explaining the perhaps unexplainable in a couple of pages. Whole books get written on this kind of thing, usually by people who wear large red glasses and use the word “juxtaposition” a lot.

So, what about Fontana the slasher? This is what he had to say for himself, “Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art”. (I bet it sounds better in Italian – most things do, but try closing your eyes to slits: it makes perfect sense.). In short, graphically-delineated paragraphs (now I’m doing it, think panels and coloured headings!) Susie explains how Fontana developed his technique, how the cuts are both planned and decisive (think brushstrokes) and how he used materials that would be more than two-dimensional, a black backing often emphasising depth. I’m not saying I’m a convert, just that I understand that Fontana was not a charlatan and that these are not the emperor’s new clothes.

Let’s look, too, at something more familiar, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (the urinal). “No novice could have judged the right moment to intervene or chosen the best means to scandalise the public”, says Susie, placing the context perfectly. Duchamp was, of course, making a point in this and other pieces both about aesthetics and about the commoditisation of art; the piece is meant to be taken both seriously and not seriously at the same time, surely the best joke anyone ever played on the critics.

If you want to understand modern art but have trouble not giggling, then this is the book for you. Susie is serious without being precious and the format she has chosen takes full account of the attention span the general reader has for this kind of thing.

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Watercolor Unleashed || Julie Gilbert Pollard

Subtitled “New directions for traditional painting techniques”, there’s an immediate attractiveness to this that invites further study. The blurb adds, “This book is all about painting boldly, embracing the medium’s unpredictable nature, and achieving a loose, painterly quality” and I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Beyond that, it’s quite hard to pin down what the book is actually about. I suppose the best thing I can say is that, if you’re feeling stuck in a rut and in need of new ideas or a kick-start, this will provide it. The subjects are mostly landscapes, waterscapes and flowers and what Julie Pollard is particularly strong on is the use of colour and of negative shapes. She also has a style that tends towards abstraction, but at the same time keeping a foot firmly in the representational camp.

I find the whole thing completely refreshing, which is what it says it wants to be. Spot on.

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