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Selection Time

There is just a week to go until I deliver the paintings to “the gallery on the corner” in Edinburgh, ready for my exhibition, “Highland walks” which opens on Friday 7th August.  This of course means that I’m currently in panic mode!

 To be included in "Highland Walks "exhibition

To be included in “Highland Walks “exhibition

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks slowly deciding which paintings to include and panicking that I might not have enough work…..despite the fact that I know that I have ample.   I always want to include the newest pieces and so have been trying to finish several paintings and drawings and get them framed ready for the delivery date. After much thinking and looking I’ve got it down to 29 framed pieces of which I’ll probably take 25 in the end.  It’s so difficult to decide and I find the best way is to copy images of the paintings into a separate file on my computer and then just keep on viewing the selection.  If helps me root out pieces that look great on their own but might not work with others in an exhibition.  It’s very time consuming and I’m a terrible one for changing my mind!  I put this down to the visual impairment but in all honesty I’m just terrible at making decisions!

 To be included in "Highland Walks "exhibition

To be included in “Highland Walks “exhibition

Selling three pieces over the last month has actually made the decision making process slightly easier and I now think that I’ve got a good selection.  When I last had an exhibition at “the gallery on the corner” a few years ago, the emphasis was probably on the more traditional landscape views.  In “Highland walks”, the emphasis will probably be on the slightly more abstract work.

I’m also planning to include a good range of sizes of work, from one of my 125 x 85 cm graphite drawings of Glen Rosa, to five of my small post card size, (210 x 148 mm) paintings.  In between, there will be several of the 30 x 30 cm pieces, two 40 x 40 cm pieces and a number of the long thin 76 x 23 cm paintings.  Finally, although I haven’t yet decided which, I’ll be taking three of the 80 x 80 cm works.

341  'From Gael Charn, the Drumochter Hills.jpg', Acrylic  & Pastel, 2015, 210 x148 mm

To be included in “Highland Walks “exhibition

As well as the framed pieces, I’m also creating nine small graphite drawings on board which we plan to display unframed.  This is another cause for my current panic…..I have completed six of these but still have three more to do!

Thankfully, Paul the gallery assistant manager, has said that he is happy hanging the exhibition and so once I’ve delivered everything I can start to relax.   That said however, I’ve agreed to saying a few words  on the evening of the Preview and as I don’t want to say the same thing as I did at my previous show, I’ll have to write something fresh and then get it into my head ….. I can’t read notes, so any speaking at events like this, has to be done without them.

 To be included in "Highland Walks "exhibition

To be included in “Highland Walks “exhibition

I’ll probably start wrapping the work early next week so there is no mad rush on Friday.  All I need to do then is send out the email invitations to the Preview on Friday 7th August.  This always takes a lot of time and I usually call in my secretary Nita to help.  As you are aware, Nita has lots of different hats, including those of art critic, frame painter, secretary, and chauffeur among many others!  She tells me that the pay is awful but is always there to help.  I really couldn’t do all this without her….so a big thanks to Nita.

Next step

 ' A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran'

‘ A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’

As any of you who visit my Face Book page will know, I’ve been doing some more drawing this last week.  The drawing, to be titled, ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is small than the last few pieces and is square as opposed to rectangular.  I wanted it to be similar in size to the 80 x 80 cm paintings I do and so cut the paper to this size.  As you know though, I do like my drawings to have a rough edge and so the actual image size on the paper is 70 x 70 cm, ….give or take few millimetres, leaving a white border all around..

When we were over on Harris last month we had, to our surprise, one day of heavy sleet and snow.  The following day we did a great little walk through a glen between the hills.  The snow was really quite low on the hillsides …less the 100 m and after a few kilometres the path reached a bealach at about 130m.  Even at this height there were several centimetres of snow on the ground and everything looked quite wild and wintry.   By this time though, it was thawing and the streams were really full, cascading down their rocky beds in a mass of white water and it struck me how similar it looked to the patterns made by the snow lying on the rocky hillsides above.  We spent a long time wondering and looking and I decided that I’d have to do some drawings based on this scene and idea.  ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is my first attempt and I’m already working on a second piece that will be more abstract, more about the patterns of marks.

'Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013'

‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’

Anyway, this first piece is finished I think and I’ve decided that it might be fun to enter it for the forth-coming North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition.  As you can enter up to two pieces, I’ve decided that I might as well enter one of the other recent graphite drawings too.  Of course, the next step is to decide quite how to have them framed.  I normally use a distressed ‘York’ silver frame with a simple mount behind glass, for my smaller paintings and I had at first thought I do with this.  However, I wasn’t sure whether the silver would work with these quite stark graphite images and so went to my framer at the Waverley Gallery in Prestwick seeking some advice and ideas.

I’ve always found selecting a frame very difficult and so to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to this part of the business.  Amazingly though, Tim had the perfect solution …a very simple charcoal coloured frame.  The moment he put it down against the drawing I knew this was the one and although we tried several other options we came back to this first choice.  To retain the ‘rough’ edge of the drawing, there will be no mount, just the glass sitting directly onto the paper.  I’m quite excited and am looking forward to seeing the pieces framed in this way especially as the second piece I’ve chosen is one of the large Glen Rosa drawings.

Well then, that’s about it for this week.  Nita and I are finally starting to get over the nasty bug we’ve had although my voice is still very rough.  Needless to say there have been a few jokes down at the studios about my needing to take up singing the blues instead of painting!  Of course though, we haven’t been out walking for over three weeks now and have been missing all the fine weather which has been most annoying and now that we’re starting to plan our next outing ….the rain is back on!  Hopefully by next week we’ll have made it out onto a hill and my next blog can include a few nice photos of the Scottish Highlands.

Seven drawings

1-early-morning-rannoch-moor-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘Early morning, Rannoch Moor’

Earlier this week I took the seven new graphite drawings down to my framer in Prestwick. I’ve asked them to mount the drawings only as there won’t be enough space in the gallery to hang them. The drawings though will be on display in a stand and will be available for sale should anyone take a fancy to any of them.

It’s now about 07.15 and I’m rushing to get things completed on this computer as I have to get down to the studio quite early today. Over the last few weeks or so I’ve been posting odd photos of some of the drawings but I thought I’d take this opportunity to show them all together. Of course this has the advantage that I don’t have to write much this morning ….it’s one of those ‘picture blogs’ this week! Anyway, I hope you find them of interest.

2-east-over-rannoch-moor-early-morning-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘East over Rannoch Moor, early morning’

They’re all done on thick off white paper …I think it was 220 g paper and I’ve used soft graphite pencils scribbled down in over lapping layers. I’ve also cut back through the dark areas using a soft rubber and have tried to control some of these marks by light applications of fixative at points throughout the drawing process. They are all A2 size, so not huge …but I think they may well deserve to be taken to a much larger scale.

This is just a thought at present but it would be nice to do something on the scale of the large drawing I did when I was in Speyer in the summer of 2010. That drawing was just over 4 m long by 1.5 m high! It would certainly mean using a lot of graphite sticks.

Anyway, here are the rest of the drawings ….if you can get along to see them for real they’ll be on display at ‘the gallery on the corner’, 34 Northumberland St, Edinburgh EH3 6LS throughout March. The gallery is open, Tues – Sat, 11.00 – 17.00. I must dash now…..

3-east-from-ba-cottage-early-morning-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘East from Ba cottage, early morning’

4-fresh-snow-the-ochils-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘Fresh snow, the Ochils’

5-winter-patterns-beinn-dorain-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘Winter patterns, Beinn Dorain’

6-winter-slopes-blackmount-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘Winter slopes, Blackmount’

7-in-the-luss-hills-graphite-stick-on-paper-2013

‘In the Luss hills’

-o-o-o-o-o-

A day of small drawings

'Canisp & Suilven, Assynt', Graphite on wood, 2012, 148 x 210 mm

‘Canisp & Suilven, Assynt’, Graphite on wood, 2012

As the title suggests, today has been a day of graphite pencils rather than paint and brushes.  It has made a good change and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my few hours at the studio.  Yesterday I started playing around with a few ideas for drawings about Ailsa Craig and spent my last hour in the studio scribbling in a sketch book.  I quite liked one of the small drawings and today decided to try and do another version …..this time using a graphite pencil on board.  It made for some very nice marks and after doing one I got into it and over the next few hours did another three small pieces in this manner.  One of them based on the idea of looking across to the hills over on the Isle of Arran and the other two based on sketches I did up in Assynt a few years ago.

2 'Ailsa', Graphite on board, 2012, 148 x 210 mm

‘Ailsa’, Graphite on board, 2012, 148 x 210 mm

It is surprising what interesting marks can be made working onto wood as opposed to paper and in a similar way that the pastels I use pick up the surface of the paint, here the pencil picked up the small ridges in the primed surface. I was using a fairly soft graphite pencil most of the time – 6B, but for finer marks I worked with a 2B.  Each of the drawings are quite small …just A5 size and I may include several of these in a local exhibition next month.  The exhibition organiser asked especially for small pieces at the lower end of the price range.  I’ll post full details about this in a few weeks time.

'Assynt skyline', Graphite on board, 2012, 148 x 210 mm

‘Assynt skyline’, Graphite on board, 2012

Of course, now I’ve done these small pieces I’m already wondering quite what a larger piece would look like done in the same way?  As I already have several boards cut that are either 60 x 60 cm or 80 x 80 cm, I’ll probably try something at this size.  However, I’m getting a vague thought that perhaps something considerably bigger might work really well …perhaps 90 cm wide by 160 cm high.  Using the same scale of mark as the small pieces would be very time consuming on a large area but would be very interesting.  If I do try something like this then I think I’ll have to buy myself a good audio book to listen too while I’m drawing.

When I was in Speyer two years ago I worked on a fairly abstract painting that was I think 80 x 140 cm and I scribbled very fine marks into the whole of the surface.  This took me a couple of days of very slow work …and I was thankful there of having a good book to read while I worked.  Oh well, I guess it’s just a case of watch this space ….I’ll hopefully have time to try something like this soon.

'Across to Arran', Graphite on board, 2012, 148 x 210 mm

‘Across to Arran’, Graphite on board, 2012

I’ve just heard from ‘the gallery on the corner’ in Edinburgh that they’ve just sold one of my 76 x 23 cm paintings.  As they also sold one of my 30 x 30 cm pieces not long ago, I’ll have to get some replacements to them soon.  I have work going to The Strathearn Gallery for their Christmas Exhibition as well as several pieces going to The Framework Gallery in Troon for their pre Christmas exhibition too.  As I say, full details of both of these exhibitions soon ….the point is, that I’ll have to get a few new small acrylic and pastel pieces done ….it’s all go…..but very enjoyable!