Rob Adams a Painter's Blog painter's progress

April 27, 2019

Ideal Homes

Filed under: Dorset,How to do,Painting,Thames,Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Rob Adams @ 2:32 pm

So what kind of house has a picture like yours? Is it posh? Is it sleek and modern, an apartment with views over the Thames? Is it a tastefully updated Georgian terrace with a gymnasium in the sub sub sub basement? Surely only people with discrimination would buy one of your works.

When artists and galleries display work they often put them on the wall of an ideal room. It always has a minimal sofa with a few swish designer goodies, the people who exist there do not do clutter. No mould in the bottom of forgotten coffee cups or abandoned crisp packets for any one who might purchase your oh so trendy wares. Here is one of mine in a designer penthouse… he is in marketing and she is an interior designer.

lounge

Is it only me? When I see one of my pictures inserted into such an aspirational setting I have to choke down the desire to snigger… So let’s have a go at some other potential hanging sites, maybe it is just the setting I object to and if I nailed the right context I would have to beat off potential buyers with a spiked club. How about somewhere grander?

Versailles, palace

Louis XVI might ring me up and say he had a spot in his country hideaway for one of my pictures. I’m sure Louie would be convinced by this… Ok Ok he’s dead and I’m getting delusions of grandeur. Anyway the super rich, as history repeatedly shows, have the worst possible taste. Those super-yachts have so much gold plate, general bling and marble aboard it’s a wonder they don’t sink.

How about the Waitrose set? Restrained, comfortable they aspire to an understated elegance. They buy pictures for period rooms and my old fashioned daubs would look better in a chic updated Georgian job with Farrow and Ball “Elephant’s Last Gasp” painted on the walls…

That’s more the thing, I could put an ad in Ideal Homes… but wait a minute maybe poor people could be lured into mortgaging their granny or taking out a payday loan to buy art… or grannies might sell off their grandchildren as chattels and snap up my painting of Christchurch… you have to appeal to a broad cross-section of society in this credit driven world.

See my picture adds a little bit of class to an otherwise depressing granny flat. I think that those gallery sites should offer all these options…

Students might be persuaded to blow their loans and buy art to decorate their squats. Hmm how low should I go…I need to research this. Is there an “Ideal Slums” magazine do you think?

I have some exhibitions coming up so I am trying to get some larger studio pictures painted. I find it so much easier to paint plein air that when I move to the studio to paint you can almost hear the gears in my head grinding. The two disciplines use similar skills, but are very different in process. With plein air you paint whatever the day brings and you are constrained by time. In the studio there is too much choice and you can linger over the work as long as you like. Both are fraught with danger!

So I have been trying to do the pictures I would have painted on the day but there was no way to set up. I nearly always take snaps of these in any case. So I have my reference and also whatever I actually did paint on the day.

Bridport, market, oil painting, Dorset

This is Bridport market on a busy day. This view was great but only from the road so I ended up painting further down. One thing I soon remember with studio work is that it has to go through at least one “ugly” stage and maybe more. I scraped this one back twice and then brought it forward again. Once you have resigned yourself to the process it becomes less traumatic. You have to learn to set aside that, “If I do more I’ll ruin it.” feeling we all get. Actually if you loose something good you can nearly always get it back. This one is 27in by 20in which is the great thing about studio where you can stretch the size up a little. Oils.

Sketch, Salisbury

Next up was Castle St Salisbury. I had done a watercolour but felt the scene would work well much bigger. For once I remembered to take snaps as I went along. This is my drawing out, it is really just notes of relative positions of things, I use different colours to remind me what things are. If I want to change things now is the time. Here I wanted to invert the curve of the perspective to sweep the eye down the road faster than otherwise. I tend to use oil to draw out as I can just wipe out with turps to redo an area. This is about 2 hours worth of scribbling and adjusting.

salisbury, oil painting, block in

This is the most dramatic moment in any picture and in someways the most fun. Blocking in is quick and once done you get an immediate idea if your picture is going to work. Here I spent considerably more time mixing colours than applying them! With current ideas of art many people prefer this stage to the finished thing, but for me it is just a way marker.

Salisbury, Castle St, Wiltshire

The next stages are the donkey work, the dramatic transformations are done with. Here I am just making corrections to the drawing and tones. I really try hard not to get any area in advance of another. About 3hrs work from the previous image.

Castle Street, Salisbury, oil painting

Here it is all brought forward a bit more. I left it for a few weeks to dry as I wished to do some general glazes. My darkest darks and lightest lights are missing from the buildings and road at this stage.

Salisbury, oil painting, castle st, Wiltshire

Here it is finished, I left it another couple of weeks then “brought the sun out” with the final highlights. This has made some of the distant darks a little sharp and over defined so I will do a couple of softening glazes to finally finish. 36in by 20in Oils.

Richmond Bridge, thames, oil painting

Next big one… This is Richmond Bridge. I took the reference shot after I had completed a pen drawing of the same scene and the light was signalling time for the pub… The picture is 36in by 36in so quite an area to cover. Fun to block in with a 3in brush. The middle stage here was particularly ugly and I nearly abandoned the whole thing. I felt he “last light” mood was all important, so took a lot of work to get all the close hues and tones working together. Perhaps finished, a few bits of softening to do. Oils.

Dorchester, Oil painting, Dorset, High East St

This is High East St in Dorchester. Learning my lesson from Salisbury I made the sunny side of the street softer, which I feel works a little better.

I find the boundaries between accuracy and mood fascinating, if you are over precise you loose mood and atmosphere, if you are too vague you loose structure and the narrative sense of place. It is technically easier to work at the extremes than trying to get them to play well together, the risk being that you achieve neither aim. 20in by 16in Oils.

steam engine, locomotive, Swanage, railway, oil painting

This is the railway at Swanage. On the day I painted the contre jour view of the workshop that was to be seen from the other side of the bridge. As luck would have it they were testing a train or whatever and they kept going to and fro under the bridge. This allowed me to get lots of action shots and nearly got me run over a couple of times as I dashed from side to side on the narrow bridge. In the reference the locomotives merged more but I decided they had to dominate, so I gave them the strongest contrasts and suppressed everything else. 20in by 16in Oils.

That’s it. I shall catch up on the plein airs done in between next time.

3 Comments

  1. A fine set of paintings Rob. Love the street action.

    Comment by Doug Elliot — April 27, 2019 @ 6:20 pm

  2. So funny, made me laugh out loud.

    Do galleries really do this? I suppose they must,,or you wouldn’t have referenced it. I suppose it is quite a good idea, although really to work properly, you would need to give them a picture of your sitting room,,or bedroom or wherever….

    Actually, I tend to feel that the excitement of getting something home and thinking, okay, where shall I put this, do I move the gare print to somewhere else….is a big part of the fun of buying art. And I have come round to thinking, you don’t have to have everything on show at the same time, you can circulate, or have a rehang ( the joy of finding something you have forgotten under the bed or behind the wardrobe). If it doesn’t make it onto the walls ( or the cupboard/ bookcase for objects) in five years, maybe time to say goodbye. Though you may regret that, says the hoarder.

    I’m going to move soon. Rehanging is just as important as where to put the furniture, and possibly more important.

    Comment by Niobe — May 12, 2019 @ 8:08 pm

  3. Oh my, this made my morning! Sprucing up granny’s place was lovely. It’s interesting to see your pictures hanging in different rooms. Never thought about it and now it will be stuck in my head for awhile. I have read your blog forever and decided it was about time to let you know how much I enjoy it. Thanks for sharing your work and your world.

    Comment by verna — May 29, 2019 @ 4:37 pm

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