DVD My Chinese Vision || Herman Pekel

In my review of Herman’s previous film with APV, I described him as a magician. To that, I think I’ll add alchemist. Although this is filmed in China, the city street and beach scenes could be almost anywhere, although a session around (newly built) traditional architecture does give more sense of place. All the sessions are dogged by heat, humidity and a dense haze (which might be smog). It’s clear that working in these conditions is hard labour and Herman does well to keep going and produce what can really only be described as pure gold from base metal.

What makes the film watchable, indeed compelling, is Herman himself. His commentary is continuous – few other artists can manage to work and talk at the same time as well as he does – and includes nuggets of wisdom you’ll want to write down. In the city, where buildings, street furniture and signs abound, he remarks, “The more complex a subject is, the more I tend to use just drybrush”. This combines with advice to “Let the water, pigment and paper do the work for you” to demonstrate ways of simplifying not just the subject, but your technique. He adds later, “You must have a vision, you must see the painting finished before you start.”

The scenes Herman chooses are unpromising and the haze makes things more difficult as details are obscured and distances barely visible. His ability to focus on a small area and to manipulate it into an effective composition is the alchemy I referred to earlier. He also has sound advice, especially in the conditions, to do 90% of the work on location, but to leave the remainder for later (on this occasion in the comfort of an air-conditioned hotel room) when you have had a chance to rethink. Here, outlines are tightened up and further details added that pull everything together.

I’m not sure how much of a flavour of China this presents, apart from the heat and the crowds, and it would be unreasonable to suggest that it was something to look at from that point of view. However, as a lesson on painting in unpromising conditions, and on working on location with watercolour, it’s utterly gripping.

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DVD A Journey in Watercolour || Herman Pekel

Herman Pekel is a magician. Most of the commentary on this film is something akin to a running patter with occasional nuggets of wisdom (“Never let a sky dry until it’s finished”) dropped in apparently at random. In fact, it took me half the film before I had any idea how I was going to find anything to say about it. Part of the problem is that he likes unpromising subjects, but they are in fact the proverbial blank canvas, ideas on which a composition can be superimposed and a painting built.

The first two demonstrations take place in Herman’s native Melbourne and are complex street scenes that need careful marshalling of shapes, colours and structures. Spontaneity is Herman’s stock in trade and he allows the work to develop almost with a life of its own. The result is that, because he has no detailed plan, the audience is similarly in the dark and this can make viewing difficult.

Where the film comes into its own, however, is when we move to Faversham in Kent. A dull day, a flat landscape and a muddy river at low tide do not augur well. However, this is where the magic happens, because Herman pulls three amazing pictures from, quite literally, nothing, manipulating elements of composition, adding boats, vegetation and a church and working in cool colours that reflect the conditions without actually portraying them.

One of the things you also notice is that Herman is a fan of darks – “A dirty palette always has lovely greys”.

It’s in conditions like this that spontaneity comes to the fore and Herman really does create something out of nothing. A rabbit out of a hat, in fact.

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