Christmas Cards 2020

 

This time I’m not posting about a painting of any type. Since 2016, I’ve been in the habit of drawing, and occasionally painting, my own Christmas Cards. I don’t sell these, they’re just something I like to do for my friends and family.

I tend to do most of them with an ink pen. Ink sketching is something I really enjoy, and I’m probably more skillful when it comes to sketching with an ink pen than I am when it comes to making cards with watercolours. For one thing you are working on a very small scale, and I find it’s far easier to get details right with a pen than with a brush. I really like the monochrome look, similar to a Victorian engraving, which you can get with an ink pen too. Which probably explains the subject matter that I like to choose.

I’m useless when it comes to making something completely out of my own head. I have to see what I’m sketching. So for a lot of the cards I take my ideas from. . . well, from original Victorian engravings. Few of these are actually taken from original Christmas cards, but for the most part they’re illustrations that have appeared in magazines or books.

Usually I use A5 blank white cards which I buy from a well-known internet auction site (other well-known internet auction sites are available). However, earlier in the year my youngest daughter obtained a pack of square blank cards, a bit smaller than A5, from somewhere, and bought me a pack, so I’ve started by using these. I scanned the before I inscribed Merry Christmas on them because it’s possible I may want to use these images again for another purpose. So, if you’re ready, here’s the first batch of 2020 cards:-

Yes, the traditional bringing in of the Christmas pud. It’s so huge in this one I can’t help wondering whether the lady’s old man is hiding inside it. Leaving aside the facetious comments, it can be tricky getting children’s faces right when you’re working on such a small scale. Still, at least it helped me get my eye in. Yesterday I worked at a fairly furious pace to produce 8 cards.

Working like this did at least mean that I had my eye ‘in’ for the next card. This is possibly my favourite of the cards I made yesterday. It’s such a simple idea (and not mine, as I said earlier), but the silhouette against the snowy foreground works beautifully, and I also really like the way the clouds and sky have been rendered. Using horizontal lines like that says about 1920s to me, but I’m always open to being informed otherwise.

Carol singers are, I find, a fruitful field in which to find useful images to copy, and in particular, Dickensian era carol singers, be they well meaning toffs like these, or harmless, humble yokels like in a couple of the cards I made for 2019.

This next design originally dates from 1900. I just really liked the cheeky faced chap with the mistletoe. To me, that sort of thing is perhaps just on the right side of twee. Being critical, this is probably my least favourite of the cards I produced yesterday since, with the girl and her dog in particular, it’s not brilliantly executed.

I enjoy sketching reindeer, and it’s not so hard to find old engravings and line drawings to work from. This one is part of an illustration from a Victorian or Edwardian magazine, I would guess, which shows a whole group of reindeer, of which this is just one. To my way of looking at it, you really can’t go wrong with reindeer for Christmas cards – pulling a sleigh, lying down, standing up, whatever you do you can’t go wrong, although the hatching and cross hatching to produce the fur is always an interesting challenge.

Of course, if it’s true that you can’t go wrong with reindeer, then it’s even more true that you can’t go wrong with Santa. This rather old fashioned Santa is just based on a rather old painted illustration of the lad himself. I was tempted to paint, but if I do paint any of this year’s cards I’m much more likely to do so on the A5 cards when they arrive.

In past years I’ve always tried to do at least some of the cards by using more old fashioned representations of the American Santa of wonderful illustrators like Thomas Nast, and the old English Father Christmas. This is a more traditional Father Christmas. I don’t know exactly where and when the original illustration that I copied was made, but the clues that it’s English are that long, pointy hood, liberally adorned with holly, that he’s wearing, and the fact that he’s not shown bringing round toys for the kids, but spreading good cheer with food and drink. In the original, he’s carrying a large, dead bird by its neck, but I didn’t like this, so I sketched him with a bottle of falling down water instead.

I really like this next Santa. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how old the original is, but I like the humour behind it – poor old Santa confronting the obstacles posed by the demise of the Victorian chimney pot. We always used to tell our children that Santa had a magic key which opened everyone’s doors so he could get in even if they didn’t have a chimney. Looking at the picture, the style of is coat suggests a little bit of a more old-fashioned Santa, but I think it’s quite a bit more modern than the previous.

Those 8 cards I made yesterday. I got up this morning, my drawing hand felt fine, and so I made these last couple this morning. I liked this rather bucolic carol orchestra, similar in a way to the choirs I’ve used in other cards. I know that if any of us were magically transported back in time to mid-Victorian times, for all the Dickensian trappings we’d find it a pretty grim and horrible place to be compared with our own lives, but there’s no denying the appeal of the images.

Number 10 then, and we’re back to the reindeer. Again, not from an original Christmas card, merely a book or magazine illustration. I always enjoy making cards like this one, because of the intricacy and the level of challenge.

That’s my first 10 3030 cards, then. I don’t have specific recipients in mind yet, but every year I produce more cards, and yet every year there’s requests from my nearest and dearest if they can have one of my cards to give to someone, and I never have any left over by the end. That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.

Acrylic on A4 paper Horse Racing Painting: 2

 Here's where I left the painting yesterday:-

I wasn't sure whether I was going to leave it until next Saturday, but after a good lunch this afternoon, I felt the urge to complete it.

The big job was painting in the stands, but that honestly didn't take a huge amount of time. The houses and the stands on the extreme right followed, and then the figure by the stands and his car. After that it was just filling in fiddly little bits, and finessing some of what I did yesterday.

Is it the best thing I've ever painted? No. On a subject like this, which has a lot of horses in it, I'd want a bigger canvas rather than a piece of A4 acrylic paper, which I've used for this. But it's quite nice, if I'm honest. This is the finished picture - see what you think yourself.

Acrylic Painting Horse Racing Project:3

 So, if you were with me last week, you might remember that I really pushed on with my horsie painting and by the end of Saturday's session this is how far I'd got:-

Looking at the photograph, there's really two obvious areas which were unfinished - the turf and the crowd. I didn't do any work on the painting last Sunday, so it was only today that I took up my brushes again. The plan, which I stuck to, was to work on the turf from left to right, then paint in the shadows beneath the horses. To be honest, this sort of job is a bit of a monotonous task, but it's best to take your time, have patience, and plug away at it until it's done, telling yourself that although this is not the most enjoyable part of painting, it should make your picture look better. 

When I'd painted in the shadows on the grass, there was only really the crowd left to do. Experience from painting my commission of Frankel the wonder horse, and my Racing from Newmarket picture, I knew you can get good results from minimal detail with the crowd, so that's pretty much what I went for. 

All in all it took less than two hours to finish - and that's including the time it took to hang up a load of washing and put another load in the machine. I'm pleased with the finished painting, but then I usually am when I finish a painting, so I'll keep coming back to it to get a more objective appraisal over the next month or two

Acrylic Project: Horse Racing Painting:2

 Here's where I was at the end of last week's first session on this painting.

You know, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to this painting all week. At the start of the day I was desperate to start painting the horses, but for once I managed to curb by natural impulse to go at it like a bull at a gate. The plan all along has been to paint in the advertising boards below the rails, and you can see this in this first of today's photos.

There’s still a little bit of work to do on the Vauxhall lettering, which need just a few dark shadows, but that will have to wait until my next session.

This meant I could start on the nearer of the two horses. The photo demonstrates the way I went about this. I started with a very light, watery layer, which I gradually darkened to build in areas of shadow, which gave the horse’s muscles their definition. The yellow ochre on the left foreleg was only meant to lie underneath the darker colour I was going to apply on top of it, however, as I built up the other layers on the parts of the horse surrounding it, the more it occurred to me that the ochre itself could well do the job.

The next photo shows exactly where it was I reached Deception Point 2. 

With apologies to Dan Brown, from whom I nicked the name, Deception Point 1 is the point in the painting process where you start to think that what you are producing is rubbish and should be thrown away. Deception Point 2 is the point where you start to think you’re producing an amazing piece of work. Both feelings are of course very deceptive, hence the name. Still, with the horse’s head painted, I could for the first time start to get a feel of what the finished painting might look like. Which was as good a point as any to break for lunch.

After lunch the temptation was to crack straight on with the second horse. Yet I made myself wait so that I could apply finishing touches to the horse, and in particular paint in the reins and tackle. 

Be honest, don’t those few small details, like the orange reins, the blue and red bands beneath the saddle, make a difference?

So now I could concentrate on the second horse.

This photo demonstrates the method I was using. I painted the legs and head with a thin layer of yellow ochre, while the body and neck were painted a darker brown mixed with crimson, and watered down. I’d already built up quite a lot of the shadows by the time I took this, and the darker shadows saw me mixing the dark brown with some pthalo blue. By this stage I’d spent maybe 4 and a half hours today, but I could see me easily achieving my target of painting boards and both horses today.

This is where I finished for the day after about 6 hours’ work all told. Not only are both horses painted in, but so are parts of the crowd, done a little remedial ork on the sky by the horse's head on the right and I’ve also started working on the grass. One more good session of anything between three and four hours should see a finish.

Acrylic Project: Horse Race Painting

Yes, my friends, I enjoyed spending a proportion of the last two weekends making an acrylic painting so much, that I've started another one this week. Last time out I painted a Glasgow tram. Well, I don't want to saturate the market, as it were, so this time out I'm making another horse racing painting. 

It's a funny thing. I don't bet on horse races (apart from the Grand National - last time I had the winner was 1991). I don't watch horse racing. If I were to list my favourite sports, horse racing would, I'm sorry, be closer to the bottom than the top of the list. But I enjoy painting horse racing scenes. I'm not really sure why that should be. Still, I do enjoy painting horse races, and I've not done badly with these paintings over the years. I've sold every acrylic horse racing painting I've ever made, and was also commissioned to do a painting of Frankel the wonder horse too.

I was late starting this morning - so late, in fact, that it was just about the afternoon. I was sketching, you see. Still, when I put down the ink pens and picked up the pencil, I sketched the basic composition onto the canvas.

I set out to make the horses and the jockeys larger than in any painting I've made before. They aren't as big as I envisaged they would be, but I like the size they are oin this composition. 

Compared with other race paintings I've made , the background is pretty uncomplicated with this one - sky above, grass below, not a lot in between. So I made the decision to paint the base for the sky and the grass to begin.

Both sky and especially the grass will need a lot more painting before we're finished, but I was glad to get this down to start. 

One of the things which makes horse racing paintings fun to paint is the brightness of the jockeys' silks, and so this was what I really planned to concentrate on for pretty much the rest of this painting session.

One of the reasons for only putting on a very light coat of paint for both sky and ground is that when I start applying full, bold colour to the jockeys' silks, they really start to pop out from the canvas.

I got this far, and had to make the decision whether I was going to start on the horses. With the best will int he world, I wouldn't have finished them tonight, even if I rushed, so I decided to just paint the basic emerald green of the cloth beneath the saddles, and then leave it there for today. So this is how far we've got today:-

 We're at the stage here where I have to tell myself that it will look completely different once the Horses have been painted, and the after that, when the backgrounds have been properly painted in. When I start the next session I'll have a couple of decisions to make. Shall I go for the horses, or do more work on the background? I'm certainly planning to do the advertising boards and the railings, probably before I tackle the horses. 

Watercolour Challenge: 21 - 23

21) Ginger Tom

22) High hurdler

23) World War I tank in monochrome blue

#30x30directwatercolor2019 - 10 - 12

Here's the next three direct watercolours for 2019:-

Number 10) Rhino Neal - I was thinking about doing another elephant, but in the end I settled for the next best thing, a rhinoceros.

Number 11) Goldfish. I'm quite pleased with this one, it was only about 15 minutes' work, and there's some nice blending of the different tones

Number 12) Dancer. I did a picture of flamenco dancers as one of my 30 last year, and this time I fancied going more down the ballet route.

From the sublime - 30x30 Watercolour Challenge 1) Rock Lobster

Right, well after a quartet of acrylic paintings, each of which took much more than 10 hours, this month we have a little light relief in the shape of the 30x30 watercolour challenge. I participated successfully last year - basically it involves producing 30 direct watercolour paintings during the month of June. Some people do try to do one each day, but it's not essential. If you wanted, you could paint all 30 on the 30th - you'd have to go like the clappers, but it's theoretically possible. So I never got my act together yesterday, but now, today, it took me about 30 to 40 minutes to make this wee rock lobster. A direct watercolour, to be precise, is one where you sketch with the paint itself - you don't make a preliminary pencil sketch, you just paint your design straight onto the paper. Here you go:-

Elephant Painting - Finished

So I said on Tuesday that I'd probably finish the painting in the next session. Well, it looks like I was right. Here it is - signed, dated and finished: -

I have to be honest and say that I'm pretty satisfied with what I've done here. Up to now I've only ever been pleased with my horses when it comes to animals. A couple of years ago I painted a camel and a stag and to be honest I didn't think that much of either painting. But this is pretty close to what I wanted to achieve - the whole point when I started sketching onto the canvas was to try to get across the monumentality of an African elephant, and I'm happy that I've done that to the best of my ability.

Negative points? Well, looking objectively I think that the head is just a little too wide. However I am pleased with the use of shade and shadow on the body. I'm really pleased with the foliage as well. If you've been following the progress of this painting you'll know that just the foliage alone took hours. Here's a comparison between the painting with just the foliage and a hardly painted in elephant outline, and the finished painting: -

Elephant Update: Supplementary

I managed to sneak in another hour or so's session this evening. I cracked on with the rear leg and the body, so much so that there's relatively little left to do, and I'd say that I'm likely to finish next session. Here's the latest: -

Elephant Update 4

Here's where we finished yesterday:-

So my priorities for this morning were to finish the right ear, and the right foreleg. Here's my progress photo after 1 hour:-

It doesn't look as if I achieved a great deal in that first hour, does it? Well, let's be fair, you can spend a lot of time just thinking and working a plan of attack in a first hour, and if it pays dividends then it's time well spent in my opinion. You can see that I have actually done quite a bit more work on the right ear, and started painting my way down the foreleg.  This is next photo is after about another half an hour:-

The leg looks a lot better now, and has joined nicely with the foot which I actually painted in a couple of days ago - still not as disciplined as I could be in my approach, I'm afraid. By this stage I'd made up my mind that the trunk needs quite a bit more work, but I've decided to leave that until all of the legs and body are painted in. So this last photo is at the end of the session, after almost three hours in total.

The biggest development between this last phot and the previous is that there's been some work done on the body. So we really should be seeing now what the finished painting will look like.

Elephant Update 3

Despite being a bank holiday today I've only managed to put a couple of hours into the elephant. Here's where we got to yesterday:-

So, today's plan, if it can be dignified with so grand a title, was to continue to work on the head and trunk. Here's the mid session photo: -

I added a thin layer of colour to the rest of the head and ears, more wrinkles on the trunk, and some of the shadows on the forehead. I think that we're pretty much at the stage with this where I can just start to get an idea of what the finished painting is going to look like. Here's where I was when my daughter and son in law called round and I adjourned to take my youngest grandson to the local park.

I'm not saying that I've finished with the trunk yet, but it makes a hell of a difference having completed it as far as I have done. Both ears need more work, and I should think that's what I'll concentrate on for the next session is finishing both ears before I move onto the body and the legs.

Elephant Update 2

So today I found about 3 hours all told in two sessions. Here's the interim photo:-

I couldn't resist doing the end of the trunk to start with. Well, also, there is a hell of a lot of work to do with the trunk. There's an absolute UK road network map of wrinkles on it, and it's not going to be done in one or even a couple of sessions. So I decided to start working on it, and do a little bit each session until I'm finished. Then I started to build up layers on the left foreleg, which is mostly in shadow. I wanted to test out colours for the feet, too, and I'm not unhappy with what I achieved on the foot that I've painted in.

Well, I have said in previous posts that I've been trying to be more methodical, but the fact is that old habits die hard, and I couldn't resist starting on the head.This is where I am now at the end of Sunday's sessions:-

You can see the wrinkles I've painted in one ht etrunk, and so at least I now feel I have a way of getting to grips with them. It's going to take some time, mind you, but we're off and running at least.

Elephant Update

Right, so let me tell you where I am now. It’s been a funny old week, one way and another. So since I last posted on Friday I’ve put a few sessions into the elephant painting. You’ll recall that last Wednesday I made a start on the background. Well, last weekend I put in a few hours on Saturday, and a few more on Sunday, and I really felt I was starting to get somewhere, as you can see by the photographs.

 I’ll be honest, I’ve never particularly enjoyed painting foliage. There might be a way to cheat and do it quickly, but I don’t know how. It’s an awful lot of work, but nonetheless, I’ve stuck to my guns and my resolution in the last few paintings to do the background first.

About half past two on Sunday afternoon I had a phone call from my first born. Basically she had woken in the wee small hours with a terrible headache, and been throwing up intermittently ever since. She couldn’t even keep any liquids down. She’d rung the NHS out of hours service, who told her in no uncertain terms to get to A and E. When she told me this I downed tools.

To cut a long story slightly shorter, she was admitted with suspected meningitis. A lumbar puncture and blood test later, this was ruled out, and feeling better she was allowed home on Monday. In the interim I’d left her at the hospital and returned home on Sunday evening, stopping to pick my grandson up from his Dad. As I was driving home I felt worse and worse, and as soon as I put Ollie to bed, I started throwing up. I got one of my other daughters to take him to school the next day, and rang in sick. By Monday evening the nausea had receded, but I did nothing more with the painting other than cleaning up a bit after the Sunday session which I’d left in a hurry.

Come Tuesday morning, I woke up, my stomach felt a little tender, but not queasy, and I got out of bed. Or tried to. It was something I’ve never really experienced before. It was as if my body had become drunk. My balance had gone completely, and I toppled from one side to the other. To an onlooker it might well have looked quite funny. To me it was frightening. I shuffled downstairs on my bottom, rang work, and settled down for another long day on the sofa.

Thankfully it passed during Tuesday evening, and I was back in work yesterday. We’ve all got over our sickness, I think.

Wednesday evening, then, was Artist’s Group. This is where I’ve got to. 

I’m not saying that I won’t do anything more to the background before the painting is finished – the tree trunks on the bottom right could still do with work, I think, and I want to give more definition to the sandy area between the grey road and the foliage. However, considering my usual inept attempts to paint foliage I’m not at all unhappy with this at the moment. Painting in the elephant now, especially all of those prominent wrinkles – now that is really going to be the tricky bit. Time spent so far – about 8 hours.

As a bit of a postscript, we had to take a couple of hard decisions in Artists’ Group last night. Put in simple terms, we’ve lost a couple of members over the last year or so. However the price of hiring the room has risen in the same period. We took the difficult decision last night that from now on we are only going to meet once a fortnight, until such time as we find a couple of new members. It’s sad, but at least we’re keeping going by hook or by crook, so there is always the chance we can entice a few more people in. I’d be heartbroken if we folded completely.