2018 Christmas Cards

Since finishing the tram painting a couple of weeks or so ago, I’ve devoted all of my spare art time to making this year’s Christmas Cards. Two years ago, in 2016, I hand painted cards for all of the other teachers in my department at work, for other teachers on the same corridor, and for friends from the old school. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’d like to think that the recipients at least appreciated the time and effort I put into them, even if they maybe weren’t that impressed with the results.

Last year, in 2017, I didn’t start off with the intention of making a whole stack of cards. However, I did see a sketch of Santa which I was inspired to copy. So I used a well known internet auction site to buy a pack of blank cards and envelopes, and using my trusty sketching pen I went into production. Each card had a different design on it, and the vast majority were ink sketches. In particular I’m a huge fan of the cartoons of Thomas Nast and Sir John Tenniel, and I used many of their designs featuring the American Santa Claus, in Nast’s case, and the very traditional English Father Christmas in Tenniel. I did paint a few cards, but mostly these were reindeer. 

I remembered that last year it was several weeks’ work to produce the 30 or so cards that I made. So this year I bought the cards back towards the end of September. I had 4 cards left over from the ones I made last year. Mind you, looking at them I can understand why I didn’t want to give two of them. They’re not great, and are sat at the bottom of the pile mentally filed as ‘emergency cards’. I began producing cards back at the beginning of November, and gave myself the month to produce the 25 cards I’d need to start with – or 21 cards when the remnants of last year were taken into consideration. I actually made that target last Saturday, so I set a new target of 30. Not quite there yet, but really not so very far away now. I’ve done more painted cards this year, because I really love the work of Norman Rockwell, and some of his Saturday Evening Post covers are perfect Christmas Card ideas.

These are all in the Christmas Card Gallery now, but here’s the ones I’ve produced this year so far:-

FInished tram painting

I don't know if you can quite see the signature, but this is the finished painting. I put about an hour and a half more work into it during artists' group this evening. I didn't do a huge amount. I finished the figures on the right foreground, and tidied up what's going on above them. I added a little more definition to the figures on the left, and did some shadow work on the poster on the side of the tram. I also reduced a bit of the glare on the wet road. Pretty pleased with the outcome at the moment.

More on tram paintings

I was in Amsterdam last Wednesday so I didn't get to work on the tram painting in Artists' Group. However I did find a couple of hours to work this morning. I didn't spend all of that on the acrylic, mind you, but this is where I am with it now.

The figures on the bottom right foreground aren't finished - obviously - and then there' some finishing touches needed in different areas of the painting. But there's really not that much left to do now.

As I said, I didn't spend the whole time this morning on this painting. I also made a quick watercolour sketch of a double decker London tram in the Kingsway tram tunnel. 

The Kingsway tram tunnel was rather unique for the UK. It's a cut and cover tunnel which was exclusively built for single ecker trams, to link the northern and southern London tram networks. As you can see , they did eventually use double decker trams in the tunnel. Part of the tunnel are still there, which is how I came to read about it in the first place, since it features in several works on disused stations of the London Underground railway - go figure. What remains is now grade 2 listed. The last trams passed through in April 1952. I chose to attempt a monochrome sepia tone because I did something similar based on a photograph of an old Mumbles tram a few weeks ago to christen my new 'studio' and I liked the results, which is why I wanted to go the same way with this one. 

Tram painting

I did say in my last post that I reckoned that I had a good 10 hours of work to put in to finish the London tram painting. Here's where I was at that stage: -

Here's the photos which show the progress I've made in the last fortnight: -

I'd estimate that I've had my ten hours and I'm not that close to a finish yet. What the hell, I'm really enjoying it. I go through stages in terms of my feelings about the painting I'm making while I'm making it. I start off with optimism then start thinking it's rubbish, then start falling in love with it as glimpses emerge of what the finished painting will be. That's the stage I'm at for the moment. Of course, after I finish I get all critical again, but that's just the way that it goes. I'm really pleased with the front end of the tram at the moment. How much I'm going to work the painting now I don't really know, but I know that at a minimum I have to do the shop fronts immediately behind the tram, and then I need to do the extreme right hand side of the painting. Watch this space.

What have I been doing, then?

Well, not a lot of acrylic painting, to be honest with you. In fact the only reason why I've shaken myself up to post on this, my original art blog - the mother ship, if you like, is because I've started only my first acrylic for a few months. We'll come to that. So what's been going on, then?

1) My Spanish expedition. This took up three weeks of August, and I made tons of ink sketches, and ink and wash sketches. You can see all of these over on my sister blogs "An English Fool Abroad with his sketchbook" and "South Wales Urban Sketcher"

2) My commitment to make at least one sketch in whatever medium every day for a whole year. I began on 26th March, and have so far kept it up every day, having reached just over the 200 day mark.

3) Inktober 2018. The commitment is to produce an ink sketch every day for the month of October, following a prompt.

4) The last of my children to move out has found herself a flat. I've coveted what was her bedroom for several years, and it's now become my studio. I've put up some of my bits and pieces on the wall, and it's a nice place to paint and draw now.

5) I've been working on an acrylic again. With the Artist's group starting up again, I spent the first couple of Wednesdays just working on sketches, but felt that I wanted to be working on a proper painting. So it's back to my lovely old trams. My current painting is an old London tram in the 1950s in South London, right at the end of the first generation tram era. Here it is.

It's a shame that I didn't take photographs in its earlier stages, since the sky was truly horrendous this time a week ago, and I'm quite pleased with the way I've 'rescued' it. As for today, well, on the original sketched design the figures on the left were too small in proportion to the building, but I corrected it when I started painting them in today. I'd make a rough estimate that there's at least 10 hours of work left in it.

Sorry it's been a while:-

- and I would hate you to think that I've given up painting and sketching. I most definitely haven't! For most of August I've been away - almost three weeks in Spain and then this last weekend I spent in Worthing visiting my parents. Much of that time I've been Urban Sketching, and then prior to that I was working with watercolour. Here's a selection of the bits and pieces I've been doing for the last few weeks: -

To date the last watercolour movie icon I painted. Big John was never an actor I really liked - he was the property of my Dad's generation as far as I was concerned - however, you can't argue with box office.

Direct watercolour painted in mighty Kidwelly castle. It was in Kidwelly that I made my first ever ink and wash sketch in 2017. I'd like to think that this is considerably better - oh, who am I kidding - it IS considerably better - mind you, that's not difficult. 

This was another monochrome blue experiment, and I have to say that I was pretty pleased. I made it in an evening at the Artists' group in our last meeting before September.

Then , as I said, I was in Spain. Here's a selection of some of the urban sketches I made in that time:-

In the last week of July I joined a Facebook group called Sketching Every Day. I thought that the daily prompts would help give me ideas for my challenge to make at leas one sketch every day. For more about this challenge you might like to visit my sister blog called South Wales Urban Sketcher - the link is in my links section on the right. I've made a number of ink sketches and watercolours for the site, and here's a few examples:-

Bringing everything bang up to date - I realised this morning that I haven't touched acrylics since my last train painting, and so I resolved to use acrylics for whatever prompt we had this morning. This is the response:-

The Fortune Teller

What I'm pleased about is the depth and richness of colour. Also, it's a wee bit looser than I've managed with acrylic before, which probably accounts for it only taking about 90 minutes from starting to make the sketch on the canvas. Speaking of which, here's a photograph of the sketch: - 

What  I tried to do with the sketch is keep it simple, and not overdo the detail.