KING PUCK

Hello everyone! My name is Puck, King of the Stupid Sock Creatures, at least the ones that live in my house. They don't know I'm their king but I don't care.

Wild Flowers Prints

Wild Flowers 
a series of watercolour limited-edition prints

 Apple Blossom

This apple blossom wasn't wild - it came from my garden. I felt bad for the apples that would never grow on the branch I snipped but the petals were flying off anyway so I thought it better to paint them while I still could.
It wasn't too tricky - although I did make a false start and had to begin again as I made three mistakes on the first attempt with my waterproof, indelible pen which would have made the painting less than up to scratch. The cloth under the jug belonged to my great-great-grandmother, who came from Madeira. My great-grandmother left Madeira for England (with her manservant!) and this, and many other cutwork cloths, came with her, so they must have meant a lot to her.
The jug comes from a large discount retailer, so although it's lovely (I bought the big one too, see an earlier post with hyacinths and white tulips) it was probably made in the thousands in China somewhere. Then again, some Chinese person may have carefully wrapped it and sent it off on its journey to a far-off land...

Bluebells

These bluebells, or, more accurately harebells, were growing on the roadside along a country road near my house. There is a most incongruous car sales place next to the little clump of bluebells, which seems very wrong in the setting. Anyway I felt bad pinching the flowers but I figured the pouring rain would deter anyone from gazing thoughtfully out the window, never mind making an appearance.
Again, the cloth belonged to my great-grandmother Florence. She was a watercolour painter too. Her work was exquisite. She painted many views of her fabulous house and its beautiful gardens in Nursling, Hampshire, which is now a boarding school. I wonder did she have the ambition as a painter that I have? She would never have had the chance to do anything or go anywhere with her painting, in spite of her privilege. Thank God for less privilege and more opportunities.

Cowslips

These were truly wild. We did not invite them to live in our lawn, but they have made themselves very much at home. I can't even say they are domesticated as we try and chase them off whenever possible - with the lawnmower. But they are so pretty. The lace came...from Madeira. It was tough to paint but I quickly got into the swing of it and discovered the trick (which, obviously, is to paint the holes and not the lace). Most of the clumps of cowslips I found had sedge growing right beside it. They are obviously bosom pals so I decided not to separate them and to paint them together. I think the sedge is cute too.

My brand-new e-commerce website, www.roisincure.com, will be up and running in a few days and you'll be able to purchase prints from there. I'll make updates on progress on this blog.

HOUSEWIFE

DRAWING  CHEATING LESSON: 

How To Make Beautiful Paintings With No Skill Or Effort

Here are four lilies and a rose that I did for my husband's cousins, who lost their very aged mother, my husband's aunt, back in February. There are seven cousins, all but one of whom I have a card-sending relationship with. So I had six cards to paint.

 That's a lot of cards. So I needed to get a system going. I decided that I would do them using my trusty light box.
This is what I did, with the exception of the beautiful rose you see below, which was done from life, in my garden, on a hot June afternoon, a few years ago. I used an ordinary pencil for this one and the inks I describe below. I do love this painting - it takes me back to that hot afternoon, and we get few enough hot afternoons round these parts. The painting had been sitting around on a shelf for years - four at least. I am exceptionally fond of the particular cousin I sent it to, so I sent it with love, which is saying a lot for me, as I am like a dog with a bone when it comes to things I've painted. I never want to give them to anyone. What's the point of keeping them if no one will see them? There's no point. And I especially don't want to give them away if they've come out particularly well. But years ago I made a kind of rule for myself: ONLY give them away (or better again, sell them) if you cannot bear to do so.

But back to the lilies. I went to Google Images, found four pictures of lilies that I liked, printed them off at the right size and popped them onto my light box. I drew directly onto watercolour paper, in a waterproof fountain pen. I used a Platinum pen with black carbon ink. It only takes a second or two to dry and then you can lash nice wet watercolour on top. 

 I used Dr. Ph Martin's Radiant watercolours which are really intense but are not lightfast so you can't sell work done in this stuff. A year down the road and the image will be noticeably lighter.

There you go! Five cards. 

Now, there was a sixth...this cousin lived with her mother and to my mind deserved the fanciest card. I'm very sorry if you like this image the best of the lot because I can't take the credit for it. It is a lightbox rendering (ie tracing) of a stunning painting that I found on a plain greeting card a few years ago. I had always planned to make a copy of it. I used regular watercolours with this one so it won't fade. I really enjoyed painting it because my normal style is very tight, and this painting forced me to be really loose and not worry about "mistakes". I shouldn't really have signed it at the bottom because it's not my image. When I find where I've put the card I will add his or her name.

The last bit: the light box is called a Light Pad and I use an A3 size which is still tiny, the useable areas being much smaller than A3. But it serves its purpose for most things. I bought it online and I use it all the time for my illustration work. However, I wouldn't DREAM of using it for my "live" on-location sketching...I don't even touch up colour or anything else once I've left the location, to me that would be lying - and probably mess up the image too.

Good luck with your paintings everyone. With this "cheat's" method I can guarantee you will have hours of fun using the method I've described here, with none of the frustration of useless drawing!

Dun Guaire Castle, Kinvara, Co. Galway 

(as it might have been in 1600 or thereabouts)

Here are two parts of one long panorama painting. I only have an A4 scanner at home so it's the best I can do for now. I feel uneasy about this painting because it goes down a treat with the public and yet it is the very antithesis of what I promote - painting from life. This is done from a composite of photos stuck together and traced. I don't care in the slightest if that is cheating - if I want to make a nice image of something then I just do it, whether that means sitting in front of it in God's fresh air or struggling with a pile of good photos and a lightbox. It happens that I was trying to make an image for a kids' book at the time (useless at making up stories so it went nowhere) and so I wasn't fussed as to how I produced the image. But that was two years ago: I don't think I could face a pile of photos now, it's such a boring way to draw...

Oh, one other thing - the reason I said it is painted as it was in 1600 is that I got info on what it would have been like at that time, and one of the things was that there was no spit of land from the castle to the shore then - it was a little island. Very cool, no? Easy to defend I guess! Must have been lovely...

How to Paint a vase of Flowers

with waterproof ink and watercolour

Setting the scene
1. Make sure you like the surface it's on - I don't like if it's crumpled (much) or too elaborate as you've usually had enough by the time you come to the end of the flowers. Then again, that can make for a very rushed tablecloth or whatever, and that can be lovely.
2. Do you like the jug or vase? Will it set off the flowers nicely? Choose one you like. A jam jar can be gorgeous, if it's clean.
3. Are the flowers sitting nicely? Then begin...

Positioning the subject on the page
1. Even if I don't do much in the way of pencil sketching, I always make sure the subject will fit on the page as I'm always leaving too little room. So I rough out a shape in pencil.
2. I do rough ovals for the flower heads, and rough leaf shapes, and a nice rough jug or vase shape.
3. Here's the crucial bit.
Look.
Look, and look again, and again. In fact, you won't stop looking for so much as five seconds until you're done. The answers are not in your head, they are on the page. Don't bother photographing your subject, because the answers aren't there either.

Finding the answers
Ah...but what are the questions?
Here are a few:
What shape are those leaves?
How does that one relate to that one?
Is that stem in front of or behind that one?
These can be drawn in a 2B pencil but with a very light line - no gouging heavy black lines on to the page because...
(a) they will be impossible to remove
(b) if they're wrong, they will make the picture look horrible, especially if you can't remove them (see (a) above)
So, where are we? We are looking, and determining, and looking, and paying attention, and not looking for answers in our heads, but in the subject in front of us.

Inking your lines
When you are happy that you have a more or less correct rough pencil shape, it is time to switch media.
I use a waterproof Carbon black cartridge pen by Pelikan. It has a nice smooth nib, which is vital for fluid lines.
This is the tricky bit. It's easy for me because I am very confident but the pencil line will lend you this confidence, especially if it's correct.
A word about correct lines:
All the lines occur in their own space and as long as you don't move them they have a fixed position with reference to the line next to them. It's up to you to look carefully and make sure they are in the right place.
There is NO SUBSTITUTE for a correct line. No amount of splashing pretty bits of colour around, no gimmicky techniques, nothing will make up for a wrong line.
"But I can't get my line right," you say. There's only one reason for that - you're not looking hard enough.
Tip:
Start with just the one flower. Try drawing it a few times till you start to improve. A whole jugful might be a little strenuous.
Good news: it doesn't matter at all if you make a mistake. heaven knows why, but it doesn't seem to make the drawing look worse...AS LONG AS you paint only the correct one. You must tell the viewer which one is the correct one.

In the end you should have a really nice drawing in ink, and it should be good-looking enough for you to think, "Will I bother painting it?"

Tomorrow: Painting it

Cottage in Maree, Co. Galway, early Spring

It was a very cold afternoon. A young boy of about 12 footered about tending his sheep, wearing a pair of navy overalls, in a field across from me and my fellow sketcher, Fiona. Eventually he fiddled with a few things near us and then he struck up conversation. "Wooooowww," he said. "Do you like to draw?" I asked him. "Yes, but I can't draw like that," he said, and added, "I did a project on that cottage." This was great: I might find out something about it. "Well, what can you tell me?" I asked. He thought about it and said, "The old man who lives there is eighty. He has never looked through another window nor walked through another door." I wondered what on earth he meant. He struggled slightly to explain but eventually I realised he meant that he had lived there all his life. "And he has never sat at another kitchen table," he added."That must have been a well-made table," I commented, rather lamely. Anyway he was charming.

The lambs were adorable and their mothers were very nervous. The babies leaped over hillocks and generally expressed their joy to be alive. The old man made a few brief appearances and walked around the outside a bit. If only my place was as immaculate as his. He has good neighbours: two ladies called into him while I was there and his daughter did too (I found out who everyone was from one of the good neighbours, who was happy to stop and chat.) I told the nice neighbour that I would be making prints and that I would drop one into her, and one into the old man in the cottage. Better get onto it so.