EVERYONE'S WORK - NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM

What a bright and shimmering day we had - the sun looked so inviting, only to confront those brave souls with bitter cold!

5 people turned up, and here's what they produced for those of you who weren't there..............

PENNY

Penny's drawings

Her first drawing (lower left) concentrated on the huge and slowly-turning propeller.  She wanted to give it the feel of moving, and tried things like overlapping the window, breaking the edges etc.  The comment was that the propeller looked quite organic compared to the hard diagonals around it, and maybe there was room to play with that idea.

then her next drawing (top left) was done in th Queen's House, and we all loved clever touches like the shard of black and white tiling on the floor, and the way she'd imported bits of paintings on display (old war ships) into the more formal space.

Then she did her 3rd drawing, which tackled the tricky issue of clouds and nature.  The formalised texturing of the trees etc. is very effective, but we all felt that the overlapping clouds looked a bit alien to the rest of the drawing.  Maybe they need handling in the same manner?

PAT

Pat no. 3

Pat no. 2

Pat no 1

Pat spent some time looking out at the trees in Greenwich Park, which were strongly back-lit to create dramatic darks (sheet no. 1).  I was a bit concerned that she might not have enough information on 'tree-ness-, but we'll see what she pulls out of the bag!  Then she went and sat in the cold, and did the drawings on sheet 2, again looking across the park.  Sheet no. 3 was a bigger drawing, containling lots of ideas to be played with, and whittled down.  

We talked about thumbnail drawings, and how they need to be different QUICK compositional ideas as to the possibilities of each drawing, not just smaller 'complete' drawings.

GERALD

Gerald 6

Gerald 5

Gerald 4

Gerald 3

Gerald 2

Gerald 1

Gerald produced some fine drawings (sorry - all of these seem to be coming out in reverse this time!)

No. 2, with the Royal Barge and its upright oars creating a rhythmic tension was a beauty, and very much reflected the ideas in no. 1, with the pattern of trees outside.  Isn't it interesting how two completely different subjects give the same visual stimulus?

Sheets no. 3 and no. 4 were all looking at the business-end of some big machine shaft.  we all felt that the one on the bottom half of sheet no. 3 was wonderful, where the description of the shaft has been reduced right down to just a circle, echoed by the subtle curve above it.

He hopes to somehow combine this with the squating figure drawn on sheets nos 5 & 6, so make a composite painting of some sort - good luck Gerald!

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth 6

Elizabeth 5

Elizabeth 4

Elizabeth 3

Elizabeth 2

Elizabeth 1

I think Elizabeth had a very useful day.  She devoted herself to exploring the opposites of tone and colour.  The tonal drawings were done with just b&w media, creating some very strong statements, again looking at the back-lit trees.

We all especially liked no. 1, with its Paul Nash-esque power, and the strip of light cutting across the dark - lovely.

Then, she used some coloured brush-pens which gave her no option but to use very direct colour to make here drawings.  The colours felt a bit shocking to her at first, but I think its a great thing to do for a while, and just see what strong statements emerge - there's no room for fiddling about in the middle!

MAGGIE

Maggie no. 1

Maggie no. 2

Maggie no. 3

Maggie had a more indecisive day - not really sure what she wanted.  She started off (no.1 - bottom) in the Queen's House, doing a very powerful tonal piece, looking through from one dark room to another space.  however, it didn't really fulfill her need to 'tell another story'.  Her next drawing (no. 1 - top) was very inventive, looking at a group of statues, and rearranging their relative positions to create this striking and strange drawing with the pointing finger.  No. 2 was something she explored briefly, but it wasn't hitting the spot for her.  Then, no 3 was based on a wall-mounted display of ship figureheads, and she has again played with the narrative, and created something which provokes questions - and I love the space they're looking into.

She is hopeful that ideas will evolve over the next couple of months!

Well done everyone.  Next time (Feb 17th) will be without me, so let's see how these ideas develop onwards.

RFH WORK - notes

The thing that stood out particularly for me this time was the fact that everyone was letting their work grow FROM the drawings done on site, and not just doing colour versions of the drawings they'd done on the day.  This sounds so simple, but actually I think it's the first time when everything on show was this kind of development of an idea, not just a rehashing of it. Hurrah!

PENNY has kindly sent me her work, to remind me, as I'd not written notes!  Sorry again.

Penny no. 1

Penny no. 2

Penny no. 3

Penny no. 3, cropped

No. 1 has some of Dr. Johnson's writings embedded into it.  The thing I love about nos. 1 and 2 is the fascinating play with space and perspective.  It works very well in both.  No. 2 is a more 'conventional' statement, but with this special handling, it becomes something very special.
No. 3 is to do with reflections in the wobbly old glass of the bookcase, and we all felt it didn't need the extra bit on the far left, hence the cropped version.  Thanks for sharing those, Penny.














PAT K. really struck out for something new this time, in the form of using figures, really quite recognisable figures, in her work.  This might not seem so radical, but there has always been a difficulty in how to use figurative elements in combination with the more abstract nature of Pat's usual way of representing a space (or rather, the FEELING of a space).

Pat no. 1

Pat no. 2

Pat no. 3

Pat no. 4

The thing that really made these work is the way that the figures GROW out of the space.  They are not superimposed on a space, nor somehow seperate from it.  They belong to the space, and breath the same air!  This is particularly true of image no. 2 above.

Much discussion was had, and I think this needs to be explored further next time - play with the simplicity of the context, with suggested figures/objects growing out from it.  Very exciting Pat!



GERALD  doesn't stop developing!  He brought a fabulous set of rich paintings, where the paint (gouache against a dark ground) was really working to define the subject, and as with Pat's, the painting was not just plonked on the paper - it grew out of the paper.  Really great, Gerald.  This was combined with lovely areas of paint and drawing combined, to suggest heads/areas of detailing.  More please.

MAGGIE came up with two very simple (deceptively so) pieces.  They were glimpses through into other spaces, and she'd created a fascinating surface pattern with all the fragments that you could guess at through the doorways.  That surface pattern was a great counterbalance to the 3-D depth implied by the 'looking-through' description.  Very clever.

ELIZABETH had a great selection of different experiments - we can always rely on Elizabeth for pushing her ideas on.  Interestingly, the two that worked best were at opposite ends of the tone/colour debate.
One was a symphony of blues and golds as an overall colour chord, with areas of specifically TONAL definition, and fragments of light.
The other was a piece where she'd used lots of colour very cleverly, really understanding that the tones of those colours needed to be fairly even to make the colours really speak.
Then there were other pieces which tended to fall somewhere in between, so those two were the most successful, really.  It's totally OK to make paintings using each of these languages, but you just need to be aware of which one you're ending up with in each painting, so you don't get them all muddled, and have both contradicting each other in a painting.  Using predominantly tone doesn't mean you can't have lovely colours (such a s blue and gold) - it just means you can't use lots and lots of different colours and expect them to work at their best.

STEPHANIE re-surfaced from her book, and it was really good to see her.  She brought some landscape work she'd been working on.  My main comment was that she was trying to say everything there possibly was to say about her landscape all in one painting.  It's not possible to cram everything in, and make it still readable.  My suggestion was that she should us no more than 5 words to describe her subject (landscape in this case), and then paint that.  Then she could use another set of words to describe another aspect of the same landscape, and do another painting......and then another etc. - all from the same landscape, but all exploring different, simple aspects.

MANFRED had come to visit, and he brought several sets of photographs and paintings.  His paintings were delicious and simple evocations really, essences of a remembered landscape, but really strong and emotionally charged.  All they were really were arrangements of horizontal bands of colour and texture, but they were immediately about remembered landscapes in all our minds.  Very wonderful, and absolutely what I was saying to Stephanie, who was very struck by them.
LESS IS MORE - FOR SURE!

PENNY. I am really sorry, but for some reason I didn't make notes on you on the day - why??? I can picture some of the work in my mind, but not enough to remember my comments.  Oh dear.  You can send them through if you wish, or I'll add the comments next time.