New Grimm's Fairytales Artwork

A short post for those who have not seen my latest output:

'The Fox and the Cat'

watercolour and gouache

24 x 13cm

'Shoemaking Elves'

watercolour and gouache

24 x 13cm

'The Raven'

watercolour and gouache

24 x 13cm

'The Cat and Mouse In Partnership'

watercolour and gouache

24 x 13cm

Some of you may have spotted these illustrations are all inspired by Grimm's Fairytales. I will be producing more illustrations based on the well-known tales very soon.

The Raven WIP

Sometimes I like to paint two paintings on the same piece of paper. Is it because I enjoy the jeopardy or am I frugal? You decide.

Both of these illustrations are for a small series of Grimm's Fairytales that I am producing. 'The Cat and Mouse in Partnership' on the left, and 'The Raven' on the right.

My thoughts On 'Supper Arrives'

'Supper Arrives' watercolour and gouache, 31 x 40cm

This is my latest painting for Galerie Daniel Maghen. I finished it last Tuesday, and I'm not sure exactly how long it took to complete other than I felt I spent longer on this piece than anticipated. 

 

The scene is taken from 'The Wind In The Willows', when the carol singing mice are invited into Mole's house for supper. Soon they realise Mole is low on food, so two young mice are sent out with a basket to fetch more vittles for their evening feast. Here you can see the mice have returned and their fellow creatures are excitedly dishing out the basket's contents.

 

Normally I'm very confident when it comes to these cosy interior scenes, however this time I really struggled to keep everything warm and slightly gloomy (if that's the right word), especially when I was painting the blue welsh dresser. If you're not careful, a blue dresser can swiftly turn green when painting in watercolour.

 

The gouache highlights certainly helped to sharpen well lit edges, such as an ear, whisker or ceramic mug. The candlelight was deliberately kept to watercolour and using the white of the paper to create a bright glow. If you try to introduce gouache into something so bright it can look a bit flat and even grey as the opague paint doesn't always reflect natural light as effectively as watercolour paper.

 

Out of interest, most of the items in the kitchen are taken from Avebury Manor in Wiltshire. The kitchen table, dresser and stove are very similar to the ones in this painting. It's always much easier to draw something straight from reality than invent your own objects, and quite often you spot something that you would never have imagined too.

 

 

'Circus Parade' Work In Progress

For the last six days I have been working intensely on this large 90 x 50cm watercolour painting. It might not be a mural but it's large enough for me!

Fuzzy photo time! Still using the drafting I was given when I was a school boy.

You can see I returned to the usual sepia tonal under-painting to maintain a warm hue throughout the image. I decided if all the action is inside a tent lit by gas lamps, without natural light, then all the shadows are going to be warm.

Fuzzy / wonky photo! Note the reflected warm light on the underside of the elephants.

Once the under-painting was completed, I blocked in all the local colour for every single character and object. In the process of 'blocking-in', I suddenly realised I needed to roughly outline most of the audience, using sepia, in order to create a mass of shapes that would convince the viewer they were looking at a group of seated animals. This took a  l  o  n  g  time, not surprisingly, but as I introduced local colour, when I returned to 'blocking-in', the effect was as intended and so worth the effort.

Final fuzzy photo! The current state of the painting, waiting in my studio for Monday morning.

Local colour down, I started to really render each individual character in the parade as best I could, starting from the left and moving across. I'm still in that tight rendering process now, but I'm happy with my progress. At this rate, I should be finished late next week - unless I run away to the circus.

'Warming Up' Finished

Warming Up
Watercolour & Gouache
51 x 39cm

After a break from painting to work on other jobs, I have finally finished Mr Badger's kitchen. I'm very pleased with the final result but it does feel like I took longer on it than I should have. A possible reason for the drawn out painting process could be I decided to have red and black tiles, and a complicated Persian rug on the kitchen floor.

Below you can see a few photos I took as I painted. Sorry about the blurry shots, what can I say, having a wild badger model in your studio while painting can make your hand shake.

The beginnings of my rough drawing, getting the basic layout and positioning of the characters.

The finished rough - notice how I have changed the perspective, especially the fireplace horizontals. I realised I had to use two point perspective to create realistic diagonal kitchen tiles and so the two vanishing points positively affected the rest of the composition.

Once the under-painting was completed I then blocked in colour with a medium sized round brush.

I had nearly finished at this stage, I just needed to fully render the wash bucket, fireplace, food stocks and rug.

School Playground

 'School Playground'
Watercolour & Gouache
66 x 50cm

After working on other jobs and taking a week off to teach a summer school course, I have finally finished 'School Playground'.

I'm pleased with the overall result but I do think I could have developed the relationship between the characters and first school further. Maybe by depicting a young animal going through the doorway or a few heads poking out of the windows? I'm not sure, but it is certainly something I will keep in mind for future similar paintings.

Enough of the internal soul searching... here are some pictures showing my progress.

Rough Drawing

Concentrating on the background after finishing the sky and trees

For this passage I was closely copying a photograph I had taken a few days previously

School finished, working on the playground now.

Bit by bit I worked through the characters

Keep painting...

... and painting

... and finally pull out the gouache paints.

The school is based on the old Corsham Primary school which is now the Pound Arts Centre - where I have my studio! Next door to me are two other artists, the superb Penney Ellis and the extraordinary Caroline Rudge. We have an open studio every Monday, so please feel free to drop by and say hello if you are in the area.

See if you can spot any of these animals in the playground. The two young rabbits might be hard to spot.

Picnic By The Lighthouse

Picnic By The Lighthouse
Watercolour & Gouache
70 x 50cm

Here is the most recent of my large paintings. It was surprisingly quick to finish, mainly due to the vast sky and relatively small amount of characters.

My aim was to produce an accompanying image for 'Rescue From The Storm', maybe depicting the day after - I'll let you decide.

More WIP

I've spent the last day and half working on this and it's finally starting to come together.

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes" Final Instalment

For my previous posts click here, Part 1 and Part 2

Below are a series of progress photographs taken as I worked my way through the painting.

Moving on from basic blocking in of colour.

You can see here I am starting to get past the local colour stage and really moving into finding form using colour. For example look at the fox playing skittles. He is lit from the top by the warm glow of the lanterns (lots of cadmium yellow, yellow ochre and burnt sienna), however the majority of his head is facing away from the light so he is picking up the cool colours of the wood in shadow so (more prussian blues and greens).

I could have been more thorough by adding an aardvark and zebra.

By the above stage, I had just about painted the furry aspects of each critter to a suitable standard. Believe it or not, I had a folder of animal reference on my laptop that I methodically worked through from A to B (or badger to wild boar). I didn't move on to the next creature on the list until I had completed the one before it. I found it helped to break down the painting into manageable chunks by creating these small milestones to tackle each day.

It's hard to tell from the above photo, but by this stage I was concerned with the lack of depth in the image. I decided to darken the bottom edges with cool colours to hopefully lead the eye further into the middle of the scene. The bottom edge now acted like the sides of a stage design by framing the scene and providing more perspective. Note how in the final image below I darkened the sky in the far right background, again to push that further away from the tree in front.

I also completed the lanterns by deciding to keep it simple by using just yellow ochre where I could. I felt they would glow more if I depicted less detail, as if they are so bright they would be over-exposed in a photograph.

Woodland Party
Watercolour & Gouache
66 x 45cm

Job Dunn (pardon the pun)! I was pleased with the final outcome as it came very close to realising the fuzzy image I had rolling around in my head at the rough drawing stage. However I wasn't pleased when I had removed the painting from it's board, scanned and stitched it together on Photoshop, only to find I had forgotten to paint the skittle ball being held by the rat! As you can see I fixed that and then double-checked the whiskers on every animal, which is normally the thing I forget to do at the very end.

I hope you enjoyed this series of posts. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, either on the blog or Facebook.

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes" Continued

See my previous post here.

My drawing was approved so it was time to start work on the painting.

The process to get the finished drawing on to stretched watercolour paper can be a bit tedious but it has to be done. Firstly I enlarge the scanned rough drawing in Photoshop and then I print the image on A3 layout paper. The layout is just thick enough to go through my printer and thin enough to act like tracing paper. This enables me to trace on the reverse of the printed image, with a soft pencil and then place it on the watercolour paper and transfer using a bone folder. Some people like to use biro pens for transferring because it's more accurate, however rubbing with a bone folder is very quick.

I remove the print and find the soft pencil has transferred enough to give me a ghost image on the stretched paper. I then go into the drawing with a 3H pencil and very carefully outline everything I need and tidy up any areas that are not legible. By using a hard pencil, I'm able to erase the softer lead and wash watercolour over the top, all without losing the important line work. If I were planning to keep an area very light I might not use a pencil at all, just because the pencil line might show and distract from the overall image.

Once the line work is completed I start an under-painting in sepia watercolour (see below)

The finished under-painting. If you look carefully you can see lots of the original line drawing, especially around the lanterns hanging from the oak tree.

The under-painting serves me well throughout the whole painting process. It maintains an overall warm hue as the majority of the painting will be in transparent watercolour. Also it helps to create tone and define characters in a complicated scene, and it provides me with a useful beginning step into colour because I know, whatever colour I glaze on top, the under-painting will hold the composition together for me. There is nothing worse than having to re-draw a section because the paint has washed away the initial compositional drawing.

Colour decisions being made - there's no going back!!

Under-painting finished, time to get out the colour palette! I start by blocking in the local colours (i.e red for the badger's jumper, green for the leaves), at this stage I'm not thinking about reflected warm or cool light. I have a good idea how warm the final painting needs to be, so I make sure there are lots of yellows, reds and browns, however when it comes to the clothing I either make it up there on the spot or research some old Edwardian photos to get an idea of pattern and arrangement of colour.

Working mainly on the background.

There are so many decisions being made at this stage, such as how best to depict bark on the tree trunk, does it need to have a warm into cool transition, how much light do I need to show around the lanterns, how much detail in the lanterns is required, what colour should the sky between the trees be and why did I decide to paint such a complicated image?! That last question kept on being asked.

TBC

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes"

I have recently completed a very complicated watercolour painting featuring a multitude of British wild animals having a good old 'knees up'!

I thought I would show you the various stages I went through in creating the scene. To begin with the sketching stage. I began with thumbnail sketches, I think I did only eight in total before I found a suitable viewpoint. It's very hard thumbnailing such a detailed scene so I just concentrated on working out where the viewer should be and then relied on the more detailed drawing to find my composition.

The rough drawing below was created by sketching out rough shapes without reference working from left to right. I deliberately allow the pencil to do the work and just see what happens as I make my way across the paper, otherwise if I plan ahead, my brain would probably explode in trying to cope with all the potential compositions, characters and actions I could create. Working this way is like rediscovering my original joy of drawing as a child - no clear plans just drawing for the sake of it.

Once the basic shapes are in then I start to refine with lots of reference to guide me. I had three separate folders of reference material on my desktop for this piece, one for animals, another for furniture and props and another for trees and woods. I sketched away with a 2B pencil and used a blending stump (or tortillion) to speed up the shading. Finally I ended up with the drawing below

The first rough before alterations, 44 x 30cm

The scanned rough was sent to my wonderful client, Olivier Souille and he came back with some useful alterations which helped to focus the scene more effectively and generally improve the overall composition. It's great to have somebody like Olivier, who has a fantastic artistic eye and can often diagnose the weaker points AND suggest correct remedies.

In short I discarded a selection of animals on the woodland floor (two hares, two chickens and a toad). These were acting as filler and by removing them gave the main characters, like the badgers and foxes more room to to be defined against a lighter background. I also adjusted the female otter's 'walk like an Egyptian' left arm, added a banjo playing mouse, repositioned a stool leg which was unfortunately placed (see drunken hare, ahem) and tweaked a dancing bunny's right paw.

Final approved rough

 The new rough was approved and I was ready to get painting.

TBC.

'Air Mail'

Still catching up with my art back log. Here's another painting for you:

Air Mail
Watercolour / Gouache
24 x 31cm

Again these two characters feature in 'A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten' in the top left swooping under the arched station roof. I'd like to think there are different birds used to deliver post depending on the destination, maybe seagulls for the coast, an albatross for long over sea journeys (especially in the North) and an owl for night dispatch. Ravens and crows are without doubt the early morning delivery fleet.

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .3

For the first part of this post click here, and for the second part click here.

Finally I was up and running with my brushes (not literally, although I do have wheels on my studio chair so the option is there if needed).

Under-paintings and then some.

As is my wont, I began with an under-painting. However, just to be difficult, I began with payne's grey for the station and engine and then moved onto sepia for the characters. This was to re-enforce the difference between the cool station colours and the warmly coloured characters.

After that initial stage, it was a case of blocking in colours to work out the types of clothing. Every now and then I had to grab new reference (thank goodness for Downton Abbey screenshots) but mostly I had a reasonably clear idea of costumes beforehand.

A series of WIP shots taken over a period of 10 days

You'll notice in the 'works in progress' photos I tended to concentrate on the foreground characters more than the background. Traditional thinking would be to do this the opposite way, but I found it easier to focus on the main elements first before I lost enthusiasm with the painting and ended up slacking on my quality control. There's nothing worse than a fantastic scene with a poorly painted character sticking out like a sore thumb. Also there were so many elements that really I'm not sure it mattered where I began so long as I eventually finished it.

Speaking of which here is the final painting.

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten
Watercolour & Gouache
50 x 92

 

3 weeks work in total and my biggest watercolour painting of this series so far.
 

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .2

For the first part of this post click here.

After working out a basic, almost abstract, composition for the passengers and laying that on top of the station rough, it was time to work on each character individually. I had the intention of re-using characters from previous paintings and also introducing some that would then feature in their own personal painting. However I had no definite ideas so as usual I just started to draw in the hope something satisfactory would appear.

The full pencil rough

I'd better make clear that in order to produce the final pencil rough I printed out the initial rough at a larger size and then transferred that image onto a fresh piece of cartridge. I knew it would be a lot of work but you can't create a large painting like this on dodgy foundations (that's a favourite saying in my house).

Once I had the characters fleshed out I then put the image into Photoshop and had a play with the tonal values.

Photoshopped (is that a word?) tonal study

With the tonal study I tried to expand the tonal range on the characters and reduce the levels on the train in the hope the characters would be brought forward. This was all well and good until I realised I needed to darken the background roof to accentuate the light train in front. So now my tonal order was (front to back) dark/light medium/medium. I wasn't too confident in making the difference between all three of these tones clear in the final painting but decided (as you will see) to use a blurring effect on the roof to make sure it receded and a light glaze of white gouache on the train to bring the characters forward.

Tonal Study Detail: The badger, signing an autograph, happens to be the famous opera singer Madame Albani from a previous painting. In the background you can see an otter soldier holding his child - a reference to William Powell Frith.

Who knew the fox was a black market salesman. You might recognise the hedgehog too.

I sent this rough to my client, Olivier Souille, and he asked me to revise the bottom left section (see below)

Detail of the section in need of revision.

Olivier thought it looked clunky (my word, not his) and I agreed with his observation. I think I was so desperate to add the barrel, box, bench etc that I lost interest with the characters and how they interacted with whole image.

Before I heard from Olivier I had already sized up and transferred to rough onto stretched watercolour paper so I had to rework the area on a piece of tracing paper until I was happy and only then could it be added to the final pencil drawing.

Final Pencil Detail On Watercolour Paper: You can see I removed the bench and station paraphernalia and added more porter mice, a stoat and two young foxes. (Sorry about the poor picture quality, from here on the rest of the shots were taken with a camera phone )

The final pencil drawing ready to be painted

Detail: That little chap is awestruck.

'Valkyrie'

 Valkyrie
Watercolour / Gouache
24 x 31cm

I can honestly say this is the first time I've painted a badger singing at the opera. No matter how serious I make her expression I still can't help but laugh at her absurd appearance (don't tell her I said that).

In terms of technique I did the usual sepia under-painting then masked everything except the backdrop using tape and cellophane in order to pull out some big brushes and work wet in wet with blues, violets and blacks. (See previous post).

After the damage was done I removed the cellophane and got to work laying in the colours on everything that was left blank, being careful to suggest a warm up-light and blue in the shadows. When I had taken the watercolour as dark as it would go, white and yellow ochre gouache came into play on the extreme highlights (metal specular highlights, skirt, claws, fur etc.) and then gently glazed around the footlights to suggest mist creeping across the stage.

Feast - Finished Watercolour Painting!

'Feast' was a BIG job. Some of you may already have seen the previously posted progress shots but I thought for this post I would collate everything so you can see the whole development from pencil to finished artwork.

First off I produced this detailed sketch which I extrapolated from a series of thumbnails. I'd like to show the thumbnails too but I have a habit of using them for scrap and they tend to disappear in the recycling bin well before I remember I'll possibly need them again. The sketch below is the largest drawing I have produced for the series so far and believe me, it had to be. There was a lot of erasing, re-positioning and general jiggery-pokery involved before I had a composition I liked. I always find a table-based scene particularly hard because, well, there's a table in it! They get in the way of the action, are often much wider than you think and not very exciting to draw. To counteract these issues I raised the eye-level to suggest the viewer is stood behind the mouse and hare looking down on the raucous feast (Rockwell never struggled).

A lot of the characters are taken from my previous paintings and some of them like the hares and squirrel are bound to make there own solo debut in future paintings. Also note the three distinctive social cliques formed by the guests - top left - the greedy bunch, top right - the liquid diners, and bottom - the polite company.

After the sketch was completed and approved by my wonderful client, Olivier, I moved into Photoshop to produce a small tonal study. I knew in advance how the scene should work, dark background, light middle ground and a slightly silhouetted foreground badger, but I thought it prudent to develop the study considering the amount of time I would spend painting especially if I were to make mistakes and find myself re-working the final image.

Tonal study completed and on to stretched watercolour paper. I traced down an enlarged print out and got to work on a light sepia under-painting (predictable I know). Then added local colours and started to build up and refine from there until I finally added gouache on the whiskers and highlights.

 

I deliberately chose a scene that contained objects and characters I had painted before so, armed with reference, I could confidently render every aspect. The next large painting might be more challenging but as this was my first I played it safe. Oh and I've always wished to depict a feast after reading so many wonderful foody descriptions in the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

Feast

Watercolour & Gouache

50 x 40cm