Postcard from France
Travelling with a variety of toned, ribbed, and white paper, plus a pad of linen canvas gives me the flexibility to work fast or slow, loose or meticulous, with subtle or rich colour. Plus, if the muse takes someone nearby, I can easily manifest them a kit of materials to suit their whim!
Two precious weeks in the sun with family and friends. Time to chat, sleep, swim, play games, draw, read… sometimes noisily, often in silent conversation.
You can watch process videos on my instagram/youtube, but for those of us who prefer longform, here is a diary and catalogue of all the work I produced - all from life. But first…
Packing
So there we were in Bristol, the night before holiday, faced with our modest pre-ordered baggage allowance, juggling books, clothes, 6 almost-empty bottles of suncream, and my easel. I now know it weighs 6kgs, and if I take the side legs off it just fits in a medium suitcase… I really should have bought a lightweight pochard box ages ago, but was overwhelmed by choice and cost.
After all the excitement of the Society of Women Artists show and the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize show, I was looking forward to some spontaneous sketching, and some navel-gazing (my own, planning my next big painting). Packing a really pared-down kit, I addressed an imaginary airport inspector by bagging up my oil paint tubes in a plastic bag, marked “artist pigments in vegetable/seed oil”, and decanting a blob of Liquin medium into a labelled jamjar. Plus my trusty sketching kit. I bought white spirit from the supermarket on arrival, and promised my brushes a proper good clean on return home (Liquin is great for speeding up drying time, but brutal on your brushes).
Sète
Now the children are at school/work/uni, time together as a five is increasingly rare… and more like going away with friends than taking a boisterous circus on tour.
We had a few days in Sète, just the 5 of us, staying close to a beach. The shady balcony was a great place to relax, eat, and sketch. Hanging washing there to dry, clothes could stay out overnight and still be wet in the morning, but an hour of the warm daytime breeze would be enough to dry a pair of jeans.
The local grocer had piles of delicious still life subjects; I raided the kitchen cupboards for vessels to put alongside. Doing still lifes became my evening routine, it was nice to be able to leave drawings out overnight and not find pawprints on them in the morning! My daughter Izzi also draws and paints, so it was a lovely way to share time together.
One afternoon, Izzi was embroidering a football shirt on the balcony. Inspired by Curtis Holder’s brilliant drawn approach to the movement of makers I tried to embrace and capture her arm movement. Having sat for me so often, she is minded to set a time limit, so my drawings of her are a bit more vigorous than the other portrait sketches this holiday. My takeaway from this is that the hinge (in this case elbow) area needs to be much more vague and suggestive for it to read properly.
Plein air oil painting
Pencil is my comfort zone. I’m still a bit scared of oils - probably always will be. But having lugged all my painting gear to France it seemed important to get out and paint the coast before moving on to the next location. So I perched on a high path overlooking the beach, and had a most enjoyable couple of hours painting, with many passers-by stopping to offer compliments, encouragement, and conversation.
Top comment was prompted by a group of teenage boys on scooters, who stopped to chat. As they were heading off, one of them turned back, and politely (I thought!) offered me a tip about some French grammar that I had got wrong. An unrelated man who’d been listening and watching me paint chastised him in no uncertain terms, saying (in French) that when he could speak English as well as I could speak French, THEN he could correct my grammar! The poor boy protested that he was just trying to help, and was then told (at length) that his tone to me was disrespectful. I get the impression that the French have a bit more reverence for artists! Meanwhile on the beach below, Izzi was approached by a woman who was enthusiastically viewing her sketchbook.
After Sète, we headed to Montpellier to rendez-vous with friends, for a week staying in a converted glassmaking factory. Luckily for me, there is always a steady stream of people willing to sit and be drawn.
A3 pencil portraits
I’ve been reading a bit about meditation recently and have been struck by the similarities with the experience of drawing someone in person - complete focus at the exclusion of all else. It is also a lovely gentle silent conversation. These portraits were all about 30-50 minutes from life, on A3 kraft paper.
I do find it is a different experience being in or outside. The breeze, the fluctuating light, the distractions, all make for a looser more spontaneous result when the portrait is done outside. That is something else I would like to develop in future work - the figure outside. Dame Laura Knight being an inspiration.
The more the merrier
It was extra special that Izzi and Ted joined me when Daisy volunteered to sit, producing wonderful sketches of their friend and sister respectively.
Gouache workshop
Known traditionally as ‘bodycolour’, gouache was used to great effect for opaque light highlights by Turner, Cotman, and other watercolourists. Gouache can be diluted for washes, layered, and also applied in a very even flat opaque way. Favoured by graphic designers, illuminators and miniaturists, it takes overdrawing very well, having a very slightly rough surface, possibly caused by the coarser gound pigments and chalk fillers used in the paint. I brought them as an easily transported media for our annual holiday painting session.
We had a brilliant couple of hours at the kitchen table, experimenting to see what we could do.
Mini exhibition
On the last night of the group holiday we embellish the evening cocktail routine with a ‘Private Private View’ displaying all the work created over the holiday. It was wonderful to have so many personalities represented, both as artists and as sitters. There was even a dedicated ‘Daisy table’. I usually try to do a representative oil painting of the group holiday, and hold a draw for the original. I give the portrait sketches to the sitters and the rest will be listed in my online shop soon.
Inspiration
Three works of art really struck me this holiday:
Fontaine du Pouffre (Octopus Fountain) in Sète, commissioned in 1985 from sculptor Pierre Nocca. A reminder of the importance of quality and dynamism in contemporary realism.
The Unicorn statue, part of La Fontaine des Licornes (the Fountain of the Unicorns) in Place de la Canourgue, Montpellier, was made by sculptor Étienne d'Antoine in 1773. I would love to include horses in my next big painting - this is a great demonstration again of quality and dynamism, but also I love the fantasy element introduced by the unicorns.
Finally, the one that got away - I nearly bought this beautiful 19th century oil portrait in a market in Montpellier on our last day. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling well, so a trip to the pharmacy was a necessary alternative plan. As well as being painted brilliantly, as a knitter I really love that she is using four fine double-ended needles (probably making a sock).
What next?
Thank you so much for following along. All comments welcome. I’m delighted to be back home, with several brilliant portrait commissions lined up, and a very exciting project that I will be announcing in detail very soon. Here’s a clue!
