Postcard From France
This holiday I packed half of Cass art shop, hoping to squeeze in as much painting as possible. It's an advantage of not flying that I can bring extra materials to entice friends & family to join in.
We took the car on the overnight ferry Portsmouth-St Malo, then drove south through France to meet friends in Girona (stand by for Chapter 2 from Spain 🤞🏻)
Louerre
Docking early in St Malo, we hit the road and got to our first stopover by lunchtime - a beautiful rural village, Louerre, near Saumur in the Loire Valley. “Le Manoir” is being lovingly restored by its current owners. We arrived hungry, so they kindly rustled up a lunch featuring homegrown tomatoes, homemade jam, and hens’ eggs.
I retreated to the shade behind the henhouse to sketch. The aforementioned hens and tomatoes had to feature, although I took artistic licence to remove the scaffolding. Note to self, need to watch those verticals on buildings.
The following morning, after a hearty breakfast sharing lamentations on Brexit, our respective childrens’ ambitions and vineyard tally, we said goodbye to this delightful couple. Given the extent to which they had overdelivered on hospitality, I risked surprising them with the sketch as we left. I say “risked”, because it always feels a bit presumptuous… and what if they don’t like it? Luckily, Dominique was amused to see all 4 chickens included, and François very happy to see the place without scaffolding.
Brive
We hit the road with full hearts and bellies, arriving in Brive at dinner time. This beautiful town is full of domes, squares, gardens…
A classic painting location? Give me a cemetery any day!
… but Marcus let slip there was a cemetery, so before you could say ‘pain au chocolat’, the family were obligingly trapesing my kit to the outskirts of town, through avenues of tombs, looking for the perfect vista. To their credit, not an eyebrow was raised, and here they left me, happy as a ghost in a castle.
Within a few minutes, the graveyard keeper Jean came to find out what on earth I was up to (that would be presenting myself ‘saignant’ to an airborn herd of mosquitos… he offered a sympathetic gallic shrug, apparently you get used to it over 30 years). We discussed the rhythmic beauty of graveyards, and allotments, then he left me to it, returning occasionally to check on progress. That mustard building is his office, so I included an impression of Jean stepping through the shady doorway.
Why, though?
While painting, I was thinking about the purpose of art. Not that it has to have a purpose. For me it is still about learning: Less an enquiry into the subject (if only I was that selfless), but more into composition, plasticity of paint, and the pinning down of my ‘visual language’. I look at each new subject with befuddlement as to how to represent it/them, but tell myself to just start, and trust that it will emerge through the process.
Then there is the hope of connecting with others, hoping to prompt them to recognise something (concrete or intangible) from their own catalogue of experience. Having learnt what I can from the painting process, it feels unimportant to hold onto the physical work. I figured the person who would get the most pleasure was this kind man, lovingly tending other peoples’ ancestral family tombs. Spurred on by yesterday's reception, but not without a dose of trepidation, I went for it - Jean was delighted, and very happy to pose for a picture. His expression says “I’m fine to smile, but now the camera’s doing an odd beeping countdown”! Nb1 to self, this is no way to run a business; Nb2, wear clothing with full coverage options 🦟 Nb3, doing the underpainting in oil rather than acrylic means final scratched lines can be whiter👌🏻.
What Jean actually said, in all earnestness, was “nobody has ever done this here before”. I cannot recommend cemeteries enough as a painting location. Peaceful, beautiful, rich with humanity, and great shapes.
Vias
Another long drive, and we got to our destination rest spot for the week: Vias, in Herault, on the south coast.
Between our place and the beach is a short run of shops and restaurants. The Mediterranean is surprisingly refreshing, and the area is suitable to give our kids some freedom to roam.
The beach
Despite identifying as a portrait artist, and doing a shitload of life drawing, I still balk at ruining a decent seascape with figures. But there were so many vignettes of humanity in front of me that it would have been rude not to. On this very small canvas (8x8”), the figures were practically miniatures. I tried to use them to demonstrate the depth of the water, and of course do a bit of storytelling. As we were packing up, Tom (as you do) shook out his towel, upwind from me. So the painting has an authentic stucco texture from a waft of sand!
La vie morte “Foraged figs, fennel and filthy lucre”
Anyone who paints still lifes will tell you they’re always on the lookout for good ‘stuff’. It’s hard to define, and quite individual, but as a perfect example, the place we’re staying at has a really cool tray. Simply made, with good visible structure, to my eye it has great proportions, pics up the light beautifully, casts good shadows, and contains things in a really appealing way. In an attempt to build an exhibition-worthy collection of work, I’m trying to do more ‘series’, so did two still lives on the same size canvases (18x14”) using the same tray.
I set the first one up in full sunlight, with my seat and easel in the shade. My plan was to rotate the whole arrangement as the shadows changed position. But that just didn’t happen. Although blocking in shadow shapes is a common element of underpainting/compositional frameworking at the start of a painting, in future I think I’ll leave outdoor shadows until the colour goes on, as that will reduce the time window in which I’m ‘chasing’ them. After an hour, I was predictably half finished, in full sun. Cue a dash inside to smear myself in a heady mix of oil paint and suncream, and rush back out to finish it before the light changed even more. I made a small change to the bottom right hand area of drapery the next day, to bring the tasselled edge more in line with the way I’d done the stripes.
2nd still life “Stuff that was around”
Once, I had a short term piano teacher, who was helping me with my nemesis Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’. As a typical girl first child, I have always done my best to tick boxes and follow rules and instructions. Give me a bar, I’ll work to jump it. So when learning music, I had always taken care to play as evenly as possible, observe the composer’s markings, etc etc. After hearing me play the piece, he gave me two priceless pieces of advice, which revolutionised my approach, and I think translate to painting: 1 - learn it by heart so you’re not reading the score. 2 - ham it up.
So this still life was an exercise in hamming up the composition. In a fit of recklessness, I didn’t even do a composition sketch 😱. Normally I work observationally, but the floor area just wasn’t working. The colour was killing the whole painting, as Izzi pointed out. She mocked up several different versions on her ipad, with flat colour. Having used flat ultramarine as background on the recent ‘squid still lifes’, I’m open to the slightly surreal contemporary feeling that gives. So I wiped the background. But I couldn’t bring myself to paint it red (the front runner), so I decided to leave it like this. I didn't even put the shadows on the floor, they were pretty diffuse anyway.
Calligraphy
I love pen and ink, but this holiday was a chance to experiment with digital tools, using a tablet, Apple pencil, and the Procreate app. I learned to configure brushes (you can draw the nib shape you want, and set a myriad of properties, including the tool's respose to pressure and rotation, and the extent to which you want it to even out your wobbles). Working in layers, and with the ability to freely select, cut, paste, move, and resize everything certainly advances the calligraphy process, whilst still ultimately being shaped by your hand. It is exactly like using a digital piano for the first time, complete with benefits and losses.
Playing with new digital nibs
Sketchbook
A lot of reading, and video watching happens, providing ample sketch subjects:
In preparation for tomorrow's car journey we excavated to the bottom of the laundry basket, trying to start next week with a clean slate. I laid out the oils to bake dry in the sun, and washed my brushes. As I write, we’re on the road, looking forwards to meeting our friends, here's hoping they've brought lots of books and games to hold them still 🥰
Luckily oil paints are fine with a bit of direct sunlight
Thank you for reading, I hope that gave you some sketching/tourism inspiration. Leave a comment, including if there’s anything you’d like me to cover in future blogs.
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