Byzantium Endures

A few days ago, I went with a friend to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the exhibition of Byzantium treasures that were on display. The time frame was the start of the split of the Roman Empire into East and West halves. The western side succumbing to the various invading migrating tribes, but the eastern half surviving into the 15th century before falling to the Ottoman Turks and a some non help from the west.

It was one of those exhibitions that tried to raise your awareness of the past. The large chandelier that hung in the first room and showed a timeline of the period. It was wrought iron work, looking delicate, but heavy as well. The show developed in a chronological time line. The first few rooms showed how the world of Eastern half of the Roman Empire developed out of the Romans' culture and developed over the period. I was taken with how the paintings of the earlier period began to change from a stylise portraits to more realistic, yet would then veer into icon images.

It was like watching western art grow up, but then follow an entirely different line from the perspective of the Renaissance. Was Byzantium a dead end? Maybe history suggests that it was, but is that more political than artistic? Looking at some painting that had been surrounded by riveting pieces. I was unusual and I would have liked to have know more about it. Seeing a painting on the door, which was surrounded by metal pieces, in a way it was using the metal as they might have used gold leaf around icons or the marvellous books that were presented.

Travelling around the exhibition with my friend, our minds were not focused on what we were seeing, but what we had experienced lately with all our trials and tribulations in the book industry. We looked at the books created during this long period, using our experience to think how we would produce them now, using our expertise.


I like this image of the ladder to heaven with people progressing up or being tempted or fought over by devils. I think it is the black lay down of the ladder crossing the image frame and the strong diagonal going from corner to corner that effects the way you look at this picture. The two halves are split between heaven above and hell below.

This reminds me of a Francis Bacon picture at Bolton Art Gallery, I saw on my foundation course, that at first looked like a human figure. We were asked to consider the the black pillars either side and how the arms looked as if it stretched across the frame, linking black to blackness, is this all life is? Yep, a typically bleak Bacon, but it was the first time that I was shown how a painting that at first was just a straight forward nude could have something more read into the image.

Concert

This sketch I did at my daughter's concert has caused ripples outside of my own limited audience. It has started a process of re-assessment of what I should be doing whether for good or bad. In the pass, when I have been to concerts, it has been usually 'bonus' reading time and listening to music, whilst reading in just another form of multi-tasking. Nevertheless, I knew I was not going to get away with that at this concert, so I took my sketch pad along. I was pleased that I didn't take a book to read as the hall was filled with parents and pupils who sat at the back.

When I decided to sketch, I decided on using 'rotring felt tips' and I focus on the back of the hall with the marvellous organ pipes. I will layout a light pencil guide for proportion before starting. Then using a thin point, before gradually using heavier tips as I moved across the page. If I am unsure about an area, again I will work from light to heavy.

This takes me back to my printmaking days at college where the plate or Perspex engraving would start with a light line layout just to see how the print would look. Then I would add details and proof up in several stages. This I found would give me control over the medium and I could correct a defect or incorporate it. Putting a blowtorch to a Perspex plastic engraving nearly knocked me out with the fumes. Yet, it gave me a wonderful textured pockmarked surface. Then it cracked going through the etching press and made a wonderful white line throughout the image. I was at the time influenced by the wonderful Arthur Boyd etchings.

My concert drawing was not the first rotring one I had recently done. In some ways, it was because one of my ipals liked a street scene that I had original drew in broader felt tips as I wanted to 'do something' that day. Less than 20 minutes, stood in a crowded the High Street and at the time, it felt average. Yet it got a great response and made me reconsider the drawing and pushed me into doing more street scenes around where I work.

Bryan Talbot's The Adventure of Luther Arkwright is a forerunner to the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' ground breaking graphic novel, The Watchmen. It is a stunning sequence of black and white imaginary and the use of 60's progressive film techniques in a comics form. Bryan's technique of using rotring pens to draw the story held my imagination ever since and it is to this graphic story that inspired early attempts with rotring pens. I will return to this graphic novel in a later post as Bryan Talbot and his work.

The concert drawing took over hour and quarter and although there was a change of pupils during it. I was able to get eldest daughter in the picture. What surprised me the most the joy I had drawing the musicians and wish it was something that I done soon. At one time, I had hoped to draw theatre productions, but I never followed through with it.

I was v. pleased with the concert drawing, scanning and jpegging it to daughter. She then forwarded it onto her house mistress, who in turn sends it on to the Music department. So when we were at parents' evening, it was a case of, 'Hi, we are H's parents', then in reply, 'Are you the Artistic one?' She then called the head of the department who was engaged in another parents' conversation over and we had a brief couple of words. Both were v. impressed, the head of music said how the jpeg was printed off and now displayed in the music department.

I was later praised from elsewhere for the sketch and told this might be my forte. So that one day I picked up a copy of Near Myths with the cover featuring the Prussian Helicarrier in St Petersburg from the Luther Arkwright serial as echoed down through the years. I am thinking of how to do more 'polished' work with these rotring felts.

Book of Day Continued......

This is from the 10th January after the snow and frost have gone. Unfortuantely, I did not get any images with the snow or frost, there is a little on the ground. I was trying to get a half way shot of the snow and the earth speckling each other.


This image is from today, 17th January. Again, we have heavy rain this morning and I had thought that I might get a pool from the let over rain. Some of the leaves have moved either blown down or slivered over in the wet. The leaves create a dilemmas as the place I have chosen is in the sheltered position and it is likely that the book will gradually bury it self under a blanket of leaves.

Do I remove them or should I leave them?

My instinct is to leave them there; then wait and see what happens. How much should I intervene? Again when you draw, which parts should you take out or put in. It took me a while to realise that the pictures or sketches in the past. Where not necessary a true of a certain point of view or that the artist had altered them to give the image, a dramatic feeling.

This leaves open the question of how realistic pictures should be.

Tertal - Tangled Heart - Part 1

Sometimes, when I sit and start work, the lines flow. I have scoured the Bare Bones (post to follow) and I need to go on. This is the second image from the series and for some reason, my eye is draw to the small black mass that looks like a comet. At first, the curvy right angled court my attention. Yet as I drew, this small round spot snared me.

The branches of the bush, look like separate part, but tangled as a whole. One of the other elements is the very strong horizontals and the two halves of green between the brown-red threaded with tangled lines. Who is trapped in this tangled weave? Two words combined to suggest a phrase. Do we have the start of something . Bare Bones, Tangled Heart.

Some how I worry that I have used this phrase, Tangled Heart, before and am I repeat myself. This worries me that I get stuck in a groove and can not jump tracks. Yet, sports people are striving to reproduce the same feat again and again. Maybe better, if it can be achieved. Do artists strive to repeat the same picture again and again? Or is it some new within the same element like a child's prism with the shift in kaleidoscopic changes that may look like repetition, yet to their maker there is something different.

Tertal - Bare Bones Part 2

The picture has added a lot of colour and reminds me of Blood Red Soil, one of my very first successful lithograph. This is a strong link between blood and the earth. One of the first lessons in colour was of the complimentary colour between red and green. Of course, green is used for vegetation. The blue of the sky is only been filled in slowly and will be lightly added to as the main ground is the point of concentration.

I have 'lost' the page in the thicket of the left hand tree, but I want to bring it back into the image. This I will do, by having using charcoal on the trunk part and then 'carving' into the page with a rubber and then pulling the paper away. If I change my mind, I can add more text pages on top of the and then re-carve into the trunk. This I hope will give it some texture on the page and will probably concentrate with the eye toward this part. By adding white pencil, although I prefer white Conte crayon to cut into the image and tear at the charcoal.

The alternative as I look at it might be to have a layer of pages across the page and these pages lost in the back ground detail of the earth. Hmmmm. Something to consider later.

There are six of these photos from this place, each is slightly different in their lay out and the remaining five will be reviewed. Now I have a set of photos, I will let my ideas flow along how a sequence might work. As I wrong in an earlier post Tertal Part 1, the idea of bones in a landscape and we are quiet close to the Uffington White Horse, one of the majestic chalk figures that are etched into the landscape. There are various theories on the whys and wherefores. The other ones chalk figures, e.g. The Cerne Abbas Giant, The Long Man of Wilmington are not as old as people originally believed, but the horse at Uffington does appear genuine.

Peter Greenaway's film The Draughtsman's Contract is a firm favourite of mine. It uses a series of drawings by an artist view to put clues into the picture about the mysterious goings on at the country estate. Part murder mystery and part mediation on the nature of view an image. It showed me that film can use an artist eye to create a mood with imagery and the stylisation of work. I have the start of the piece with Bare Bones and will look at using anatomy of the bushes as a prompt for this series.

Shorten Days

Monday was the arrival of snow in our village. This is highly unusual as we have had three or four incidences of snow over the decade plus years, we have been living here. This made me excited to go down and photo the buried book. Would it be sticking out of a layered blanket or fully covered?

As I work long hours, up at early and back late. I realised that the darkness might make it too dark for photo, as I don't have a flash. I was had a quick check and felt I might get something. I trudged gingerly round to the back garden. There is always something special about stepping across new snow. In a way, it is a blank page, waiting for the world to emerge from the wrapping.

I found the book, partially covered and hope that there might be enough light being reflected off the snow to get something. Unfortunately, nothing registered, so I am going to have to wait for the weekend to get an image. I am wondering what will happen to it and how the snow, frosty ice and water will affect it.

This finished off a frustrating weekend, when I with daughter in tow, tried to visit the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain. Having to go the long way round via Hamleys and the South Bank. Then losing my travel card and getting caught in a jam, probably due to a protest march. Arriving late, tickets were booking at least 3 hours ahead, so it was just too much time to wait.

My only consolation was picking up the Bacon catalogue from the Library, which is sat waiting for me to turn a page after reading the latest choice of Belle De Jour Book Club . Last year, I found in the Tate Modern a very early Bacon picture from before the Second World War, this had not been included the exhibition rather oddly. What intrigued me was the image was a landscape and ran parallel to one of my inspiration, Graham Sutherland. Bacon also did a series of paintings based on Van Gogh, similar to the Velázquez and the Screaming Pope.

I have only heard Robert Hughes link these painters, Van Gogh, Bacon and Sutherland in his programme, The Shock of the New. There might have been a comment in the Roger Berthoud's biography of Sutherland, but I do not have a comment to check.