Paintings, Paintings Everywhere...!

Sunrise Wave; A4-size, mixed media, 2017.

My week's annual leave seemingly passed in the blink of an eye and I enjoyed my time off, and took the dogs on several extra long walks.  I managed to get some of the garden pruned back too - most of the roses and the St John's wort.  The bin's full now so I will have to wait until that has been emptied before finishing the job.

I went to the Tate Gallery in Liverpool to see the "Constellations" exhibition, which thematically links select works by well-known artists of the past century to look at different contemporary approaches to similar subjects.  The diverse exhibition brings together works by Lowry, Rothko, Braque, Duchamp and Warhol, and many more, and is well worth viewing.

I also saw their small Roy Lichtenstein exhibition plus a third exhibition, this one by two lesser-known artists, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley.

After a much-needed pit-stop at Cafe Nero, I visited the ever-fabulous Walker Art Gallery which houses some of my favourite pieces of Pre-Raphaelite art plus other old favourites, such as Harold Gilman's Mrs Mounter - I love the bold colours and loose brush strokes of this painting, and the resigned expression of her face, as if the weight of the world is on her narrow shoulders and the highlight of her life is indulging in this simple pot of tea.  The artist produced several versions of this piece.  It reminds me of the person I fictionalised as Beatrice in Tamsin: An Artisan-Sorcerer Story.

The life-drawing group is proving to be a useful and fun activity.  It's a small but friendly group.  I hadn't done much life drawing since my art school days, other than a few hastily sketched portraits, so of course I was totally rusty.  However, my skills are slowly improving.  These are from the two most recent sessions.

Life Drawings; 8B pencil on paper; 2017.

A corner of my art room, 28th November 2017.

I took this photo of my display table in a corner of my art room this morning.  You can see four of the miniature canvases I've been playing with, plus some oil paintings and watercolours.  The work in the two small folders are all watercolours, and you can also see a small stack of greetings cards.  The blue box poking out from under the table holds prints of photos by Richard and myself, which I use for visual reference.  Beneath the box are some sketchpads and beside them, in the lower left hand corner of the photo, you can see some card-making supplies.

The table in my art room, 28th November 2017.

 Here's a photo of the table in my art room.  The drawing board used to be a part of a kitchen cupboard, but it serves the purpose.  You can see a table-top easel with some life-drawings in a sketch pad, with my watercolours in front of that.  The folded towel is used to control the amount of water on my brushes.  There're watercolour pencils in a pot I made many years ago at a pottery class; the square pot holding watercolour brushes is one I made too.  They're not great examples of pottery but they were fun to make!  The brushes in the glass jug are for oil painting.  The felt tipped pens are Richard's. 

Behind the tube of Reeves gesso is a vintage pipe rack I use to holding brushes.  The pliers are used for prising lids off obstinate tubes of oil paints.  There are some larger brushes beside the table lamp, which I rarely use.  The wooden box decorated with a gondola, which you can see behind the glass jug, was made by an uncle during his joinery apprenticeship - he's an elderly man now, so it's pretty old - and it contains art materials which I use less often, such as acrylic paints, charcoal sticks, oil pastilles, conte crayons, artists' chalks etc., most of which date back to my art school days some 30 years ago.