Spring Paintings, 1.

i think given we're into march and april we can call these spring rather than winter paintings. . .

so here goes with what we'll call the first of those, given that most of the 'winter' paintings had gestation periods that went back months and months and these were more of the moment - often based around or directly drawn from drawings done during that dark period of october and november, including this first piece.

so. remember this?























. . . from november. and a recap of what i said about it here:

'This one's REALLY sketchy. Mostly I was approaching transferring a vague image I had in my head to paper in a different, more relaxed approach than trying to commit it to the white in very deliberate lines and found that this way came a lot more naturally. While not precisely as I was visualising what I wanted to put on paper, it's a close approximation. And it didn't end with me getting frustrated and scrunching up numerous attempts. . . Mostly with this, I was just determined to have full figures in a drawing. Instead of my old, over-cropped stuff. And again, arhitecture, no matter how vague. . .'

*

it was, undeniably, an image that had stuck before i even drew it and which was going to continue to stick until it was painted. one or two - bronwen and emma spring to mind - have pointed out how familiar the image looks, and i have drawn similar images in the past which i think i'll dig out another day. . . but i think the composition itself was and is very typical of me and the way i make images. put together figures. something i'll be writing a blog about soon. . .

in the meantime, from that drawing and some months later, came this:























now first up, you can see some obvious alterations - the tall mesh fence has been replaced by a smaller more rustic post and wire fence, which makes the base image immediately less foreboding but also breaks the image up a little more nicely. the posts are crooked, unevenly spaced - i thought this and the very pale, sandy ground would be nice in contrast to the solid, dark urban skyline. likewise, the church building has been made less elongated - again, i wanted some degree of contrast between background and foreground, and the figures are pretty elongated, aren't they?

the poses, specifically emma's are also slightly tweaked. the original rough drawing had been hashing an idea out, this was more of a refinement of the original concept i hadn't quite managed to produce in that drawing - so the pose is more graceful and a little more natural.

as i've said a dozen times the last couple of months, having full length figures in my work was something i had to do, and had to get used to - and i think this one came out really nicely. proportionately, it's her. which i sometimes find hard to achieve - i think i have this subconscious programming to draw and to paint women in particular proportions, and having spent a few years drawing and painting curvier women, going onto a model who couldn't be more petite doesn't really come naturally. to quote sarah, 'she's teeny weeny!'

anyhow. the birdman figure has also been given more to do. instead of being a shadowy half-drawn mess off to one side, he's a part of. . . whatever's going on (imaginations people, use them), even if only as a spectator. his darker clothing keeps the very colourful arc the other two figures make unbroken.

at a little larger than A3 this is a smaller piece than those i've been painting, and also came a little more naturally. it was painted entirely in acrylics - some colours straight from the tube, such as the grass - which as ever, made its completion a lot less drawn out. there is even some matallic silver paint in there, which. . is a first.

it's not finnicky and i didn't strive to make it 'perfect' as i'd once have done, but i like it - what more can i say?

Action!

From the sublime to - perhaps - the ridiculous,

At some point early in February I made the following, what was initially to be kind of an oddball Valentines Day gift for Emma, but I was never happy enough with it to hand it over, even though she - inevitably - loved it to bit, it was my first attempt at taking bits and pieces of old action figures and putting them together then sculpting additional details out of VERY fast drying putty, in this case the cardigan, pants, the hair and, well, her bosom.

I then painted the whole thing from scratch with acrylics which had mixed results, mostly because the plastic didn't seem to want to TAKE the paint until you'd put about four coats on. . .

It stands a little taller than five inches, so the first picture's larger than actual size. . .

I don't think it's a bad first attempt at something, I'm just overly critical - But I thought it would be a fun addition to the Blog. . .

That and Emm threatened to publically pants me if I didn't. . .

Big, 1.

So.

We're onto November into December now in this 'Catch Up' summary drawn over however many entries, and I'll do the same again rather than bombarding you eyes with a gajillion images at once.

But before I get too submerged in another x-number of entries of drawings, I thought I'd post something painted to break things up a little. There's quite a bit of painting to post, but I think thi, an soe of the others I'll slot in between the remaining work from 2009 I have to post, fit a little better than any of the more 'realised' full colour stuff.

This one is. . . Kind of an anomally. And huge, those figures are life-sized. On paper. I had started it months before, abandoned it, worked over it, disiked it, repainted parts, abandoned it some more. It was always a BIT sketchy and while a lot of it remains pretty sketchy, the figures became more fully realised, and thus the focus, and that was what I went back to and worked on until I declared 'done'

The backdrop again is sort of vaguely Dundee. It should really be Edinburgh, but I guess the architecture of Dundee is more ingrained into my sychological source material when it comes to drawin buildings. Especially Perth Road, a long road I must have walked thousands of times my four years at art school. . .

I liked to think of this as not two people standing in front of some distant buildings as two people standing in front of a painting of some distant buildings. And again, bear that in mind, it's an element in some of what I go on to paint next. . .

I like it. The depiction of Emm is far more 2002 than 2009 - rounder face and so on - but i chose not to get finnicky and correct that. Actually, I kind of like that about it. . .

Leftovers.

. . . . right.

so where to begin. the start, i guess. dozens upon dozens of pieces to upload and post that tell some kind of a story of going through a dark period last october into november, drawings for the most part but which - i think - don't necessarily make for easy viewing.

someone you love deeply almost dying kind of has. . . an adverse reaction on your work. and work into that other things going on at the same time - they were some pretty dark times. 'pretty' pictures' are not made on darker days. . .

thus, we'll begin with some leftovers - some rescans, some unposted stuff, some from as early as last spring, a couple of others from early october. before, you could say. . . and again, some i like, some i'm posting because emma - the subject, as ever - likes them, and some are better than others. . .

a note - i work from my imagination. i don't use photographs, i don't draw from life. i used to do both, but, especially working from photographs for a few years led me to a place where i became VERY dependant upon reference material and when it came to drawing from the top of my head, once my favourite way to work, i became overly critical of everything i produced, and that. . . bled into my other work. the decision to NOT work from source material has pros and cons - sometimes for example, the likeness of a person is lost a little in favour of capturing more some essence of them. i couldn't say whether that's a pro or a con, it's just something that is. some of what i do comes off very stylised, some doesn't. my brain decides. it's. . . i think, as honest a way to draw, or paint as there is.

so. some of it is better than others. but even the weaker stuff has elements i like. as you'll see when everything 'kicks off' in the next entry, the aesthetic goal of everything looking 'right' sort of goes out of the window in favour of expressive, visceral purging. and it does very much become about imagination, and abandoning old, finnicky, realist habits. . .

these, meanwhile, mostly speak for themselves, though some liner notes might be helpful. i'll post those at the end.






































































































































































































'liner notes':

1- the 'very short-haired emma' drawing is an oldie. about a year ago she had her hair cut almost - but not quite - that short, something she immediately regretted and fortunately her hair grows almost freakishly fast, the progression of which can be seen over the course of the other drawings, although it's often hard to put older stuff in chronological order because i - to appease her unease over how short her hair was - more often than not drew her with LONGER hair. . .

2- the dark, inky 'sleeping emma' piece that follows is one of my favourite pieces from last year. acrylic/ink on board, this kind of thing i feel i'm 'in my element', it's messy and loose in places (okay, most of it) and then finnicky in others like the hair. i also really liked that wing / shadow because it could be either, but wouldn't have worked with the usual, standard owl's wing. and more on owls, later. . .

3- the single, colour piece is me messing around with watercolours, not especially liking it and then inking lines over the whole thing. and yes, i know her head is disproportionately large. her head isn't that big in real life, i promise. i should also point out that she doesn't wear that cardigan ALL the time. i'm just especially fond of it. . .

4- the three panel piece. this is from the 'book of emma' and dates back to about the same time as a similar, almost comic book page. i like this a lot, even though as emma pointed out before i was even finished drawing the thing, the third panel looks more like sarah from 'chuck', which we'd not long watched. that's the subconscious for you. some you win, some you lose. . .

5- ears. some of those are emma's, some of them are mine. and some of them are composites. i was clearly a bit OCD that particular day.

. . . and the last two were the last two done BEFORE everything went. . . dark. the humour and prettiness of these is all but missing from what follows.

so these were as good a place as any to begin all this again . . .

Two Colour 'Studies'

I'm not sure how to classify this pair - they were both done in much the same vein as the black and white pieces - scrap pieces of cardboard, A4-ish, acrylic over initial pencil sketches and quite stylised, but rather than work over the usual white gesso base, i used a flat block of colour, one orange one a pale blue colour and THEN drew, THEN painted. . .

The results are maybe a little more finished looking to some degree than the other small pieces I've been doing, particularly the rather warm looking orange piece which features the return of Emm's oversized wool cardigan complete with 'Watchmen' badge. the original orange basecoat can be seen in the 'halo' and behind much of the other details.

The blue piece, which looks by comparison rather cold is completely different. It's less stylised and probably the closest to realism I've come in any of these Emma pieces so far - So the two combined kind of showcase both sides of my work I guess. The stylised Expressionist side, and the lesser showy side which is all about being precise and which I dip into much less. . .

Anyway. Enjoy.

Coming soon, an all singing, all dancing, all Puffin blog. Okay, there may not be singing and dancing, but there will be puffins. . .

Black and White, #3 & #4

. . . two further black and white pieces, one - the second here - more stylised, while one is a bit more realistic than the other three have been and maybe isn't technically black and white because i used some buff titanium acrylic which is just an essentially colour for anyone who paints people.

buff titanium. the absolute best base for fleshtones there is.

admittedly here it's used to make things a bit more subtle, and thus i'm maybe going to rework the 'ode' paintings i've done thus far including #3 to incorporate it - i like the way it works with the black and white, it adds. . . . SOMETHING.

anyway, i think this much more realistic little painting - again, about A4-ish and done on a scrap of cardboard and left rough in areas while worked tightly in others - is one of the best things i've done recently, it has some lovely quality. it's simple and uncomplicated. simple and uncomplicated is good. . .

Ode #2

lots of images for you today.

first up, the second 'ode' painting, again done in acrylics.

this one was tougher than the first, more small details that proved to never be quite right, such as emma's right eye which i finally just covered with hair, and her right hand which gave me the biggest headache of anything i've worked on lately, however they turned out alright in the end and i like this mroe than 'ode #1' in spite of those niggling details. the composition is very much aligned with a lot of my older work, stuff i've always liked, and the design of the crazy never-the-same-twice came out really nicely with the addition of an odd little barb towards the end of the nose. . .

i also thoroughly enjoyed painting em in her pj's :P

then next up, some obligatory details, which i'll probably repost at a later date - the weather's bloody awful today and thus photographing ANYTHING is proving pretty difficult.

and - aren't i good to you? - after those, just to be a completist, the original concept ink sketch for the painting, done in about ten minutes. it wasn't intended to be a concept for the second 'ode' painting, i was just doodling and the idea stuck. . .

and that's your lot for now

-iain

'Ode', #1

sort of the beginnings of a completely unplanned series, but sometimes you start something and you can see avenues and directions it could go in beyond a single image. . .

black and white - and a little blue - acrylic on canvas, 24" x 24", detailed in areas and left intentionally unfinished and sketchy in others which used to be kind of my schtick.

a few other noteable iain-esque inclusions which should speak for themselves. . .

some details: