Some of my best friends are artists. Or rather\u2026 some of my best friends are really good artists who can draw and doodle at the drop of a #4 Red Sable brush. Some of them are also pro artists and even exhibit and regularly sell their own paintings. I wish\u2026The only time I sold a work of art was by accident when I painted a portrait of my sister which made her look like a long-nosed dinosaur with huge scary eyes and hair covered in pink custard. Very \u2018Jackson Pollock\u2019 I thought, although my sister was not impressed. A graphics illustrator from Leeds bought it for twenty quid and used it as inspiration for his next horror cartoon magazine. If you turn to page 12 of \u201cShazzam Monster Animator Monthly (January 2014)\u201d you will see why my sister was so upset. Apologies for scaring the living daylights out of any of your children.
\nWhen proper artists paint a watercolour of\u2014say\u2014the River Axe at sunset, it looks great. It looks like it\u2019s supposed to look\u2014i.e. a river, a rowing boat, reed beds, a bird or two and a beautiful evening sky. My attempt at the same scene resembles a splodge of blue and orange with blurry black bits (supposed to be ducks) and in place of a boat, there\u2019s something that looks very like a dead vulture poking out of the water. My arty endeavours over the years leave quite a bit to be desired and rather more to be imagined, but I keep trying.
\nI used to be part of an art class run by one of my good friends (she\u2019s a seriously good artist and can even tell you the exact shade of yellow of the inside of a daffodil\u2014Cadmium Yellow Pigment 37, in case you were wondering). I kept going for years without ever achieving even a minor masterpiece but, as she told me, \u201cI must keep experimenting\u201d. One of my so-called experiments was an oil painting of Sutton Bingham reservoir. It wasn\u2019t too bad but I got bored with it one rainy afternoon and in a mood of complete frustration I added a German submarine to the foreground which failed to improve it. Probably the only reason I kept going to art was because I was the only man in her art class. It was much more interesting to sit and experiment with pencils and brushes when surrounded by attractive ladies.
\nTo be a good artist, it helps if you\u2019re a little weird. Picasso carried a real gun around and if you asked him about his art, he\u2019d pull it out and threaten to shoot you. Salvador Dali kept a pet ocelot and stole the pens of all fans who asked him for autographs, while Michelangelo may have painted the Sistine Chapel, but he was a right stinker\u2026 he never bathed and only rarely changed his clothes. Despite a lifetime of painting ballet dancers and young ladies combing their hair, Edgar Degas was a dedicated misogynist who hated all women. He preferred racehorses apparently. Perhaps I\u2019d be a better artist if I too cultivated a few weird behaviours like wearing a pair of underpants on my head or walking a live lobster around Bridport.
\nDegas once famously said: \u201cPainting is easy when you don\u2019t know how, but very difficult when you do.\u201d This is SO true and it partly explains why my ten-year-old granddaughter is so much better at painting than I am. She looks at something and simply draws it. Voil\u00e0! Poetry on a page\u2026
\nOn the other hand, I first have to choose the medium: watercolour or acrylics? Today, it\u2019ll be acrylics because water colours are too difficult since you can\u2019t erase a brush stroke if you don\u2019t like what you\u2019ve done. Next, what type of paper? This means going through all my pads of paper\u2014white, grey, dark red or buff yellow paper, or maybe acrylic canvas board? Some of them I\u2019ve never ever used, but I like to have them there just in case. It\u2019s strangely comforting. Then I can start to get ready. Firstly, I remove last week\u2019s brushes from the cold cup of coffee, rinse them thoroughly and then dry them for no particular reason particularly as I\u2019m about to wet them again. Repeat this rinsing and drying routine. Then I sit down, pour a fresh coffee (because the last one had traces of Burnt Sienna in it) and spend ten minutes contemplating. This is a very important moment artistically. I have to allow time to relax and let the image of what I intend to try and paint sink inside my brain\u2026 Deep breathing to help bring on the \u201cinner me\u201d etc. Then I remove an orange from the \u2018Still Life Arrangement\u2019 and eat it.
\nFinally, I draw a couple of lines (horizon or something) and then dabble a few round blobs of green paint to give the impression of some grapes. Then I make them too big and turn them into apples. My still life of \u2018an orange with a bunch of grapes\u2019 looks OK but it\u2019s somehow missing something important. Ah yes\u2026 the orange. That\u2019s why I lack the patience to ever become a great artist. I\u2019m sure you get the picture. Or rather, in this case, you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of my best friends are artists. Or rather\u2026 some of my best friends are really good artists who can draw and doodle at the drop of a #4 Red Sable brush. Some of them are also pro artists and even exhibit and regularly sell their own paintings. I wish\u2026The only time I sold a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-laterally-speaking","tag-humphrey-walwyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}