The artist’s way of seeing:1 - Is it just a matter of learning to see?

As an artist, I see the world physically as we all do but I have become intrigued by the phraseology ‘an artist’s way of seeing’, it implies that the process of art needs some sort of specialist ability, even magical!  I do wonder at my own sense of conjuring with lines, forms, shades and colours to make visual reality appear in what we call ‘pictures’.  Well I don’t remember becoming a sorceress but I do know I am curious about how my creative potential is in a large part due to ‘learning to see’.

As an art student, many a time I felt frustration at not being able to accurately represent what I saw when I drew or painted, I could not understand what blocked my co-ordination of hand and eye but I was determined to foil it. This led me to scrutinize what is actually meant by the artist’s way of seeing, is it really about learning to see?  

Easel and me - From My SketchBook

“Learning to see?  - Haven’t you been using your eyes all your life?”  I hear you say!  

Yes, but when I am at my easel looking at a still life arrangement, I observe the scene that is offered to my eyes and I record it. Observation implies close analysis with objectivity but I know I can be selective even easily swayed by self interest.  To see is to see ‘something out there’ yet I know that the artist’s task is to wrestle with visual experiences and play the game of capture. In playing the game you soon come to realize that the act of seeing can be overridden by the act of making, as you can only interpret what you are seeing in the terms of the medium that you are using.

The game only comes to fruition when you have successfully bridged the gap between what you the artist sees and what ends upon the picture plane of the paper or canvas.

Training the eye as I have found is a curious concept because if you take the evolution of the artist as the making of a resemblance of something, there had to be a starting point, a vocabulary of portrayal to articulate the world of visual experiences.  Was the first picture a configuration of marks that suggested an image to an artist for which he corrected, adjusted or adapted for the needs of his portrayal?  Is it possible that the starting point was simply intuition that fostered learning by perceptual trial and error? Art museums are filled with all the successful experiments of invention that have led to the discovery of appearance,  so we know that the act of ‘making and matching’ allowed the artist to build conventions that suggested reality upon a flat surface.  No wonder past artists were thought to be magicians but with hindsight we can judge how they directed visual clues towards their own artistic way of seeing.

Artistic Thoughts - From My SketchBook

The question of what is involved in ‘looking at the visual world’ has seen many a heated debate, none more so than when the Impressionist movement laid claim that they saw the world as they painted it.  This brings in the question of artistic style and intention which throws a curve ball into pictorial representation saying that visual subjectivity also plays a part in the artist's way of seeing.

It is here that I become aware that the topic of ‘seeing’ becomes a quicksand into masses of literature upon art and science but I found a real benefit in understanding why we see ‘something out there’ simply because seeing is so familiar to us that we hardly question it.

Beware reader, the path for inquiry now divides into theoretical areas that fill artists with trepidation but I hope to show that in exploring the various ideas upon artistic vision, it will bring clarity to artistic practice.  The only trouble has been how to translate my mountain of notes into the format of a blog. With the number of books stacking up on my desk, I rapidly came to the conclusion that I would have to spread this topic over several posts. You could say that the relationship between visual perception and pictorial representation is a matter of ‘more than meets the eye’, more complex than first imagined!

Part Two - Vision and the artist, coming soon!

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee: portraits portrayed every which way

This month sees the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne with last weekend marking a whole host of jubilee festivities to celebrate the occasion.  As part of the celebrations London’s National Portrait Gallery hosts an ‘unofficial’ exhibition of royal portraits entitled
“The Queen – Art & Image”   Having toured Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, this presentation of royal images has arrived in the capital for a summer long show highlighted as an inquisitive exhibition into portraiture. So curiosity led me to browse this collection to see if it had ‘a startling range of artistic creativity’ as per NPG press release.

Jubilee Celebrations  - an image from a big screen
on the Thames Embankment!

Well portraiture, I would have thought amongst the artistic genres need the least explanation, it’s a picture of a person, just the Queen in this instance with only a few painted images in this rather small exhibition!  It is true that today we see far more portrait photographs than we do paintings; who hasn’t got a likeness on Facebook, indeed I have mine as a profile picture. The act of commissioning a portrait is something few of us will do but what if?           Do we, like the Queen, have a public face?

The answer is yes!  How many times have we hated photographs of ourselves only to alter our appearance so that we stage a pose with our best side turned towards the camera. We are all vain to some extent and a camera records dispassionately whereas painters bring their own subjective response to a portrait, but are we willing to accept the artist’s own personal vision?

It something the Queen has submitted to as Her Majesty has sat for countless portraits and has presided over many changes in trends and technology which have changed the way her image is presented to us; this is very plain to see in the exhibition. Yet despite the differing artistic approaches very few leading artists have captured the essence of her character and appearance. There is no doubt that many have felt uneasiness with a sitter of such status but at the same time have we, the viewers become too familiar with the Queen’s image?

Walking around and looking at the display of royal pictures, you do sense a passage of time not just for the Queen but for your own perceived history. There’s a lot of “oh I remember that” as many of the pictures were reproduced in the newspapers of the time. It is as if we know the Queen but at the same time we don’t know her. We see her likeness time and again yet it is an enigma, we are so blinded by familiarity that we don’t really question the person pictured. Whether contrived or not, the regal distance is always maintained and I suspect that the Queen over the last sixty years has learnt the secret of just showing a public face. This barrier I suspect is the reason why very few artists, even photographers have overcome the painter and sitter dialogue to portray a successful conversation between sitter and viewer.

Thinking more as an observer, there are very few portraits of the Queen which I have viewed over the years that has captivated me as a viewer, none seem to capture her heart and soul, only fractions of her character. The 1955 portrait by the Italian painter Pietro Annigoni, which on display in the NPG’s exhibition, comes closest, although it’s a very conventional and formal. Idealized in some respects, almost renaissance in manner but there is too much empty space to the top of the work for my liking. Less ostentatious than past ‘ruler’ portraits, it gives a sense of regal continuity with a youthful likeness of the Queen thoughtful in her role of monarch embarking upon her reign. Annigoni’s portrait is probably the only work that we have some small inkling that the Queen actually liked this representation of herself. 

However, there is one work at the other extreme that is equally captivating but infamously unflattering. Lucian Freud’s critically divided portrait of the Queen which is also part of the exhibition, is an intriguing work although its small scale is a surprise. Artistically I found his portrayal most insightful and the artist has captured something beyond a mocking caricature. It holds the attention as there is a sense of tension between sitter and painter, the Queen’s top lip is a little too pursed, the look is almost haughty, did the painter getting beneath the public face or perhaps a sign of the sitter’s disapproval?

So how difficult is it to portray the royal likeness? I wanted to see for myself but I admit that portraiture is not my forte.  Consequently I put pencil to paper to sketch her Majesty so that I could understand more about the person that has reigned over us for sixty years. Facial expressions are intricate but drawing eyes, noses and mouths becomes more straightforward with practice. However portraiture is about combining them all into an appearance that expresses personality and subsequently a likeness. Easier said than done!

From My Sketch Book: Queen Elizabeth II -
"Congratulation Your Majesty on your Diamond Jubilee"

My experience has shown me that any portrayal of the Queen is a tricky task which I feel is due to her image being so familiar and to the fact she has perfected that public face. I applaud any artist who has tackled a royal portrait as she will never let that public face slip and her real persona will remain a mystery. However, when I was researching the topic of royal portraits I came across some commemorative images of the Queen made by children. Take a minute to follow the link and explore this fascinating look at how the Queen is seen by a generation used to today’s world of mass production images as it is an artistic insight into portraiture of budding Picassos and portraits portrayed every which way!

Further reading that may be of interest is an article entitled the 'reverential and the real' published by the Art Newspaper, excellent picture of the Queen sitting for the portrait by Lucian Freud!

©MRMansell 2012

Forget about the price tag, Edvard Munch’s artistic legacy is priceless!

Whilst the news bulletins last week reverberated with comment on the latest record breaking price tag for a pastel version of “The Scream” by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch  (1863 -1944), the question that many have asked is “Why pay millions for what seems to appear as childish scribble with coloured chalks?”

As an artist I often have to fend off questions such as these and find myself defending the whole array of modern art against such a backdrop of publicity. Seemingly the debate falls more on the monetary value of artworks that outwardly appear like the “Emperor’s new clothes”, pretentious with a collective denial when others only see a few drips of paint on a canvas. Put the whole of the art world in a room to discuss what makes a piece of art a masterpiece and there will be wholesale disagreement, we can’t escape bringing experience, knowledge and taste to the party!

So how do you judge the importance and influence of an artist?  Who are the great painters? Does it simply come down to auction prices?

My last post testifies to the influence of Picasso on British artists and there is no doubt that his originality and inventiveness is unrivalled by any other, hence the £70 million price ticket on 

“Nude, Green Leaves & Bust”, previously the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. Is Munch an artist of the same calibre to enter into this exclusive realm? Well the price tag for the pastel “Scream” confirms his entry and love it or hate it, Munch’s iconic ‘Scream’ is one of the most recognized images in Western art. Yet I ask myself does one single work make you a great painter? How do you evaluate the significance of an artist?  To help me assess my thoughts on the threads of artistic influence, a quote by Henri Matisse came to mind.

“The importance of an artist is to be determined by the number of new signs he introduces into the language of art”   

Matisse theorized much of his own artistic practice in terms of ‘pictorial signs’, stylized marks that could convey at once the essence of the thing represented. ‘New signs’ therefore are innovations of the pictorial language and as Matisse observed, the truly original artist invents his own signs.  Was Munch an innovator? Did he invent his own signs? 

Greatly Influenced Edvard Munch

If you bring Munch’s body of works into the spotlight, it’s clear that in order to give form to his inner visions, the artist had to push the visual language of art far beyond that he had initially experienced through Naturalism and Impressionism. As a young artist studying in Paris, Munch became aware of the highly charged personal representations of the artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, which encouraged him to paint with bold colours and radical simplification in order to convey a personal expression.

However, Munch was not a painter of symbolic ‘sunflowers’, he had a perpetually troubled background and the environment he expressed was the nature of his mind, life and soul.  Munch recreated his life’s events on canvas merging the observed world with his own intuitive perception declaring 

“I do not paint what I see, but what I saw”.

For the 1890’s this conceptual thinking seems shockingly early for what one might consider a current modern theme but Munch was the pioneer in developing what he called ‘the modern life of the soul’ in paint.

As a result, Munch’s quest for an explanation to the human psyche became an ever changing repertoire presented as ‘The Frieze of Life’.    A prolific search for an unique personal symbolism through the language of art using rough unfinished scrawls, scraped paint, visual distortions, figurative elongation, claustrophobic space with intense direct colouration whatever the media, whether oils, pastel or ink.

Amongst this ambitious mission for art, Munch produced the “Scream” a series of artworks that captured the essence of what he wanted to represent, the turmoil of a panic attack that he had suffered. To give form to his sudden overwhelming onslaught of anxiety, Munch portrayed his shockwave of emotion with a composition of brash colour using the simplest of marks to render a figure gesturing the internal sound of a terrifying howl of despair.

Consequently “The Scream” crystallizes more than any other work by Munch, what he wanted his art to express, the communication of powerful emotions rendered through the painted image. Stare at the picture and you can’t help but hear a shriek and feel a sense of dread. Extraordinary for a scrawl with coloured chalk!   Munch turned a personal trauma into a universal one creating a piece of art history, now with an astonishing price tag!

Gained Inspiration from the
 works of Edvard Munch

But forget the price tag, it diverts from Munch’s real legacy, his profound insight into rendering human emotions upon a canvas. Munch’s originality of representation provided a rich source of inspiration for long list of subsequent painters, who utilized and expanded Munch’s approach to expressive imagery. 

His inventive pictorial signs showed painters how to heighten the strength of their expression, significant and priceless!

Munch was committed to the idea of painting as an exploration of personal biography, follow this link for a closer view!

Picasso – An artist placed on a pedestal

A towering figure above any other artist in modern art is Pablo Picasso and this elevated position becomes very clear with an etching by David Hockney entitled ‘The Student: Homage to Picasso’ made in 1973. For Hockney, Picasso has been an inspiration, a role model for what an artist can be and what a painter can achieve in exploring the different facets of artistic representation. However, Hockney is not alone in his reverence for Picasso as I found in the exhibition ‘Picasso and Modern British Art’ I recently visited at Tate Britain.

Picasso’s influence on British art is made fairly comprehensible by the Tate’s show, considering how idiosyncratic Picasso’s work can be. By weaving an account of how both British artists and collectors responded to the modernist master ’s artistic inventions and innovations, I came away not only understanding a lot more about the great Picasso but with an insight into what it was like to be an artist in the shadow of his prolific aesthetic bravado. 

My Sketch Book Picasso
Based upon photograph taken by Jacqueline Picasso in 1957

Picasso’s creative energy is awe inspiring and of the seven British artists the exhibition features, I feel Ben Nicolson, Henry Moore and Hockney all emerged as better artists for their encounter with Picasso, taking the inspiration and turning it into something which was uniquely their own.

The inclusion of Francis Bacon was a surprise as I had always thought his works were more in the realms of abstraction but apparently Picasso made him aware of  ‘the possibilities of painting’. Wyndham Lewis appears from my view to have jumped upon avant-garde band wagon with an ego, seeing himself on the modernist pedestal rather than Picasso. Duncan Grant and Graham Sutherland were both befriended by Picasso and their art seems to reflect their involvement with the artist, totally submerged you could say in Picasso’s aesthetic styles. That was the genius of Picasso, he was a ‘stylistic shifting’ creative, what you take from him depends on the style that Picasso was working in at the time you discovered his paintings.  

It was a revelation for me that Picasso knew of British art long before Britain or British artists had heard of him. By all accounts, Picasso’s reputation was slow to make inroads upon the British art market, only a few progressive collectors snapped up his works. Very few galleries showed Picasso’s revolutionary art as it was deemed a ‘foreign intrusion of highly disputable merit’ with the Tate making its first purchase of a cubist Picasso only in 1949. British tastes it would appear were not accepting of modern art let alone a Picasso but finally the Tate mounted a Picasso retrospective in 1960, only then did Picasso start to climb onto the modernist pedestal!

Hockney recalls frequently visiting the exhibition and seeing the carefree attitude with which Picasso changed styles, questioning every angle of representation and translating it into painterly insurrection. It offered Hockney a way forward with his art and has driven Hockney’s own reflection on the problems of depiction, the student following up the master’s methodology but very much following his own instincts.

There is no doubt that Picasso is a giant in terms of modern art and it true “no artist can afford to ignore him” , deserving to be placed upon a pedestal but I should imagine that it is a lonely place. Picasso to me needed to butt heads with art and artists, it sparked his work and his inspiration came from working. Let’s not forget that cubism came to us not just from Picasso’s creativity but also that of the artist Georges Braque. The works of Matisse spurred Picasso in a prolific artistic rivalry and then there is the modern take on many of the grand masters of art!

Duncan Grant noted “In admiring Picasso a sense of contest is nearly always to be taken into account”.  

Yes Picasso’s shadow is very long and hard to shake. So who is ready to take on Picasso?

 

Well there is a fascinating book that reveals Picasso paying homage to an unusual friend,

a little dachshund called Lump. 

He featured in many of Picasso’s reinterpretations of Velazquez’s masterpiece “Las Meninas” and played a significant role in the history of modern art, he ate a Picasso! and stole the artist’s heart.

"Lump, the Dog who ate a Picasso" David Douglas Duncan

Thames & Hudson, 2006

"A great insight into Picasso at work from an unusual perspective"

Also worth a peek............ 
'David Hockney's Dog Days' Thames & Hudson, 2006


Picasso & Modern British Art - Tate Britain, London. 
Exhibition open until 15 July 2012  "Well worth a visit"

The eye, the heart and the hand

Three things are necessary to make a successful painting according to 

the artist David Hockney,

” the eye, the heart and the hand, two simply won’t do" 

and this is very evident in the latest staging of his works by the Royal Academy in the major exhibition, 

“David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture”. 

This must see show is now drawing to a close and has received a hotchpotch of reviews  but none can deny the crowds of people, myself included, roaming the galleries with nods of approval and pleasure. This is one exhibition the RA should think seriously about extending as its popularity demands a second visit.

I must admit I am a tiny bit biased as I have always admired Hockney’s work and his approach to painting. However I can see in that returning to the traditional genre of landscape, Hockney faces criticism, with comments of succumbing to hubris, being passé, even gimmicky and stamping on ‘modernism’ which I expect comes from the claim that painting is a dead art!  No it is very much alive and kicking especially in the hand, eye and heart of David Hockney!

If you take a moment to step away from the hype, you come to realize the content and methodology of Hockney’s artworks is all about the practicalities of picture making, the problems of depiction and the thrill of thinking things out.

Nature in all its grandeur isn’t an easy subject to capture but Hockney’s pictures reveal that the artist was up to the challenge and the exhibition shows the passionate investigation into landscape with the ever-changing scenery and light of his native Yorkshire countryside.                                                 

Why revisit a subject that many artists of the past have tackled and produced great masterpieces from?

The answer I feel is that Hockney has thought about how we see our surroundings and has taken his pictures to a scale that makes us visually move around a multitude of canvases to see a ‘bigger picture’. In essence he has tried to recreate how the eye sees making the viewer move through his works. Hockney wants us to question that fixed point perspective that our eyes have become accustomed to, the photographic image.

Today we are smothered with images and really do not question them but Hockney has spent a life time questioning image representation, both artistically and photographically. His quest does appear to have been long and complicated but it has enabled Hockney to examine the nuances of space, scale and colour, searching for that elusive key of depicting reality of vision in a more vivid way as a two-dimensional representation.

The intriguing question is how do you bring that eye, the hand and the heart together upon a canvas?

Look harder, look longer is Hockney’s message, examine your reactions, sensations and memory, which is exactly what Hockney has done but as an artist his hand has translated his eye and heart into painted images. The catalogue of artwork reveals for me a process of observing, questioning and finding solutions to bring the three factors together. Hockney, the craftsman makes it look effortless, but you can’t help notice the energy, enthusiasm and commitment of his search for representational answers within the pictorial space.

All artists have faced at some stage the age old query of how to capture the infinity of nature with its multitude of colours, shadows, textures and complexity? Why is Hockney so different from past landscape painters? 

He embraces all media and technologies. There is no doubt that Hockney benefits like all artists from the diverse array of superior media and colours available today. The sheer brilliance of colour is something which is very immediate in the exhibition. Computer-aided construction has helped the artist cope with the scale of paintings and experimentation with video cameras has aided Hockney to interpret further the ‘Cyclops’ photographic view, but surprisingly, it is a newer technology which solved the issue of capturing nature’s transience. Faster than watercolour, the iPad has enabled Hockney to sketch more speedily in the unpredictable outdoors, capturing light and colour at the touch of the hand. Monet would have been envious!

Seemingly the hand has many tools and the eye can look closer and further, what of the heart? Hockey’s underlying sentiment is that we see with memory, individual and different, influencing how we see, revealing our bias or prejudice. Time effects memory, in turn shaping vision and Hockney’s vision is now very public, so is he making us all aware of that old idiom “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I feel he is simply saying look closer at your surroundings, beauty is there but it is up to you to see it. Hockney’s landscapes resonate to this outlook, his eye, heart and hand working together and in my view successfully creating an impressive portfolio of paintings. Thank you David Hockney for the journey through your landscapes, it was a pictorial thrill!                 © MRMansell

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture  Thames & Hudson, 2012

(Available through Amazon at a reasonable price)

Next Dates for the Exhibition

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao    

14 May - 30 September 2012

Museum Ludwig, Cologne       

27 October 2012 - 4 February 2013

Marks, lines, smudges and smears, oh my!

While thinking about mark making as a topic for this post, I began without realizing it, scribbling thoughts of lions, tigers and bears, except it came out marks, lines, smudges and smears. 

A chant from the 1939 film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ had popped into my head. It’s the scene where Dorothy, having met the Scarecrow and Tin Man proceed down the Yellow Brick Road through the dark forest. Frightened by what they might meet ahead, they mutter “lions, tigers and bears, oh my!” only to be surprised by a lion, albeit cowardly!  Why was I thinking of this? Well it reminded me that I felt a bit uneasy about writing. I do feel more comfortable with a paintbrush, visually making images rather than composing descriptive text.  Intriguingly this popular adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s novel ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, unfolds as a story about the characters expressing regrets about not having the abilities to fulfil their desires, not realizing they already have the qualities they believe they lack. 

When people know I am an artist, I often hear them express their regrets of not being artistic and I have often wondered why there is such a feeling of inadequacy. Maybe it is similar to the ‘Oz’ characters, they believe they don’t have any ability to draw or paint because they feel they lack creative potential. Do they think they need to negotiate a Yellow Brick Road to see a Wizard or is it simply finding the key to what they already have?  

“Every human being is an artist...” was famously declared by the enigmatic artist Joseph Beuys, an influential figure in European avant-garde art during the 1970’s and 1980’s. It is difficult to consider Beuys words without mentioning how controversial and passionate this artist was about delivering his message on “creative potential”, possibly a candidate in the artistic wizard category considering his mantra. Beuys believed that creativity should not be seen as the special realm of the artist but that everyone should apply creative thinking to whatever they are doing, claiming creativity could role shape politics and society or as he termed it “social sculpture”, an Emerald City? 

Putting aside the enigmatic personality and the rhetoric, Beuys is a case in point of an artist who developed his creative potential through his drawing practice. He saw his mark making as an act of showing his thoughts, promoting drawing as “the form of the thought, the changing point from the invisible powers to the visible thing....”  He later said that the years spent making his drawings, numbering thousands, unlocked his creativeness for his art making.

As I look at my drawings, I remember the trepidation I felt at starting a new sketchbook as an art student and that ‘oh my’ sigh at the first drag of the pencil as I wondered how I was going to fill page after page with creative ideas. It is daunting, taking those ‘invisible powers’ and changing them into something visual. The decision is whether you daydream like Dorothy as to what is ‘over the rainbow’ and wonder ‘why can’t I’ or dare to dream and make the dream come true.

I found marks, lines, smudges and smears unlock the first doors into learning to draw and paint, by simply experimenting with different tools and materials I created a way to overcome that awkward feeling. It allowed me to gently ease into creative thinking and encouraged me further as I became less self-conscious. I now regularly use mark making as a warm up exercise and the bonus is the self- assurance gained for observational studies. But as in all things, it’s about practice, making small steps in a bid to take longer strides, making a personal discovery about what can be achieved. Dorothy eventually realized that she always had that ‘inner spark’ to make it home and I, the words to write this blog. So follow the pencil lead road and discover your creativity.         ©MRMansell

Making marks on a surface defines drawing but can it be said of painting?

Anything that makes a mark and any surface that accepts it underpins the basics of drawing but thinking more it could also be said of painting. There’s a quote that I noted down from the French artist Henri Matisse that helped me put some clarification on the matter.

For me, my mark making is the initial act of a creative thought, the first marks are my artistic intentions that I will eventually translate into brush strokes. In other words my drawing is my shorthand to painting, the fulfilment of my original observations. So in some respects my drawings are paintings with reduced means however drawing is a more direct and economic way to express an idea or feeling in pictorial terms, painting as Matisse puts it has more to it. So yes, painting does have more contemplation assigned to it as broadly speaking paintings are considered ‘finished’ works. Technically the gap does widen here between the two mediums as those ‘finished’ painted pictures take time and a degree of know-how a must for any successful endeavour.

With drawing, the only requirement is one simple mark making tool and a plain surface. That impulsive physical action to pull or drag a pen or pencil across paper unfolds expressive marks which makes visible any artistic thought. The writer and critic John Berger in his book entitled “Permanent Red” noted that for the artist “drawing is discovery” and that every mark made on paper is a stepping stone from which you proceed to the next until you have crossed the subject like a river and you look back to see where you have come from.  With painting the stepping stones are longer and the river wider with the view much more public. In a way drawing relates to my own needs as an artist and it is a personal discovery. In my method of working, I find that my preliminary studies help me discover ways of seeing subject matter and how to convey my ideas into paint.

 Drawing is essentially about mark making and it’s all about variation in pressure and weight, giving every mark character and quality. Experimentation promotes knowledge to what works, what does and what needs more practice. I read somewhere that the sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes, the sooner you will be able to correct them. Each mark brings you closer to expressing the subject matter but this for me can be said of painting.  I need only to refer to a very good tutor, Vincent Van Gogh. For him drawing was the “root of everything” and you can see this in his unique graphic style and the expressive nature of his mark making. I suggest taking a look at Vincent’s drawing 

“Wheat Field withCypresses” 1889 and then to the painted canvas of the same name displayed at the National Gallery in London.  The works are simply inspirational showing an artist mapping his artistic thoughts and jumping into a flow of creativity, exploring and extending his approach by making marks to test the sweep of the brushstroke. You can’t help but feel that here is where drawing and painting simply connect as one. 

Van Gogh used drawing as an inextricable part of developing more as a painter, something which I am following upon.  It doesn’t matter how much artistic experience we have, with simply making marks on a surface, it opens the mind to many more possibilities. Make your mark today, rediscover creativity through drawing, I am.

Recommended Read:  for both artist and those who want to discover drawing

 “The Confident Creative: Drawing to free the hand and mind” by Cat Bennett, Findhorn Press, 2010

Just a little more..... Today's post is dedicated to my Welsh background and family "Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus' 

(Happy St David's Day) 

Here is my little 'Ddraig Goch' (Red Dragon) painted just with fingers and a rag.

So a 'Dioch yn fawr' (thank you) for reading my art blog. 'Hwyl' (Goodbye) till the next post.

Just a simple shape but such powerful visual expression

There is something curious about how a simple shape of a heart ♥ drawn onto a two dimensional piece of paper can evoke such associations of love, romance and passion, be it all in the name of St. Valentine’s Day.  How many of us have made a doodle of this shape whilst thinking of a loved one?  If we colour the shape red we are thinking of passion but what if it is blue? Cold hearted?  Funny how this ♥ shape has us such has instinctive effect upon us!  Now the commercial love fest of Valentine’s Day is behind us and the 160 million plus ♥ cards litter waste paper baskets, the question has to be asked as to why this iconic ♥ shape packs a punch.  

You would no doubt agree that the heart shape does not have any resemblance to the real thing and what the traditional “heart shape” actually depicts is debated with supposition because nobody really sure of its origins, even its connection to St Valentine is mysterious. The ♥ shape has appeared to have represented a variety of things across different cultures over the centuries following various paths of ancient pagan festival, religious devotion or medieval poets simply eulogizing the excitement of their hearts when in love.  So when did love become heart shaped?

Visually speaking its origins may lie in Ancient Greek pottery painting and with the depiction of ivy tendrils as shown in the image of a Maenad, a Dionysus maiden devotee rendered in 490-480BC. 

[ source: Maenad @ wikipedia]

Ivy leaf was fabled to aid regeneration and had also the association of constancy such as faithfulness, affection and needless to say love.  

As the heart was not fully understood biologically speaking till many centuries later, the blending of this enigmatic organ with sensations of love into a heart shape representation progresses confusing. Notions of carnal love weave in and out of fields of worship may it be spiritual piety, fertility ritual with particular associations with features of the female body or mythical herbal custom.  The ♥ shape it would appear entangled itself with the association of strong emotion and over time it has filtered down to us in various guises through crafted images, so much that its stylized ‘cardioid’ shape has become deep seated our visual perception which grasps the associations of love instantaneously.

We accept without question a flat picture, even if only a doodle as our vision actively grasps at tiny bits of the shape and line pattern. Within milliseconds the brain makes sense of these marks and subject to our experiences and imagination, rings a bell of recognition. We mentally note what we are seeing as our brain has stored countless images, patterns and associations that we have encountered and hey presto a heart shape expresses love.

I remember the countless ♥ doodles I did over a teenage crush on the back of an exercise book, the boy is no more but the love of art began. Aimlessly scribbling away is the first art form we encounter and the trigger in learning to draw. It is a way to be creative without trying and by using simple shapes leads to the foundations of drawing and painting.. One of the most famous remarks made by an artist is that of the advice given to the young artist Emile Bernard by Paul Cezanne “Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone”. 

In essence Cezanne urged Bernard to look at shapes as building blocks for his art and when on to say “When one knows how to render these things in their form and their planes, one ought to know how to paint”. 

Shapes ○ ð ◊ ▲ or simply a ♥ can be cast as absently minded design but essential to imaginative thinking of the artist. As an avid doodler I have provided myself with many creative ideas and there is one quote I love which evokes further doodling: “A line is a dot that went for a walk” from the artist Paul Klee.  

Start a doodle today you never know where it might lead!

Look out for " National Doodle Day " Friday 2^nd March 2012

Drawing a line through epilepsy......

 to know more just follow this link

To be an art blogger or not to be, that is the question?

Well since I am publishing my first post I guess I have answered my own question!

Wanting a place to jot down my creative thoughts, an art blog looks to be the ideal outlet so I have pitched up here with The ‘Art Loaded’ Blog. However, it’s not long before you find out that you are not alone as there’s a whole host of art bloggers, many well ahead in the art blogging game. As you surf the blogosphere you come across differing styles, varying opinions, some short and sweet, some heavy with artwork or some just stopping off points for information. What can my blog add I asked myself?

I decided to turn to an old friend in the “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”. Vincent’s letters are glimpses of an artist passionate about painting and they simply make you feel part of the process in which he creates his great works. In the discussions he had with his brother Theo you could say Van Gogh was an art blogger of his time, his letters forming a creative frame of reference. For me it’s inspiration for communicating the many aspects of painting and art.  I can’t say that this blog is going to live up to the debates the Van Gogh brothers had but it is a starting place to where I can unleash my voice as an artist.

My Recommended Art Read...........

The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh   

De Leeuw & Pomerans                               

Penguin Classics  1997                   

( e-version available for iPad via iBooks)