Town Mouse

‘The Tempest’ and ‘King Lear’ at the Globe

thetownmouse — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:31:25 +0000

Every year in summer I spend a couple of magical afternoons amid the mob of the Yard at the Globe Theatre. For an incredible £5 you get the best view (I think) of the action, as long as you can stand for three hours and bring several layers and a rain coat just in case. A couple of years back I reported on All’s Well that Ends Well and Dr Faustus. This last week I have been to The Tempest and King Lear (about to tour and absolutely worth catching). Here are some sketches.

Last time I was here I drew more of the architecture of the surroundings. But on these visits I was more interested in the actors, sorry I mean players, themselves. I have been drawing and painting a lot of portraits recently, which often involves people sitting still for a long time and thus having fairly blank faces. In fact, I think I’ve never actually had the opportunity to draw emotional faces before. The joy of these few hours drawing at the Globe is being caught up in so many emotions and expressions which are hard, and thrilling, to try and draw. Focus, fury, madness, joviality, confusion, horror, are all on display as the players criss and cross the stage and Yard. I only wish I could sneak backstage and make some closer studies of all the interesting faces and characters! I’ll be back for more sketching over summer, many more plays to come…

The Tempest

Colin Morgan as Ariel

James Garnon as Caliban

Roger Allam as Prospero

King Lear

Joseph Marcell as King Lear

King Lear battles the storm

Rawiri Paratene as the Duke of Gloucester (having had his eyes gouged out) King Lear stumbles around in his long johns, now mad, with Gloucester

A Giant Galápagos Tortoise

thetownmouse — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:58:27 +0000

Recently I was fortunate to be allowed behind the scenes at the Oxford University Natural History Museum to draw this giant Galápagos tortoise.

If this tortoise was over a hundred years old (some lived over 200) that would mean he would have been pottering around a remote island, happily munching vegetation and growing big and strong, as far back as the early eighteenth century. It made me uncomfortable to think of him and his kin being slaughtered for meat or to fill the curiousity cabinets of European collectors, in the same way I feel guilty admiring all the beautiful things in the V&A Museum collected from our former Empire. Looking at his cracked shell, slightly battered skulls, and crumbling toe bones, I though of the thousands of Oxford scholars that must have poked and prodded and measured these bones. But the experience was also humbling as, although he was obviously long dead, it was like meeting a messenger from the past, a reptile ambassador from the age of the dinosaurs. And what a nice place to meet him -within the same building that had held the key debates on evolution between Huxley and Wilberforce in the 1860s. No wonder his skeleton seemed to be grinning, his kind had lived through all of our phases of Homo sapiens and didn’t need change much compared to us.

He was spectacular to draw, one of those occasions where I find myself having a conversation with the subject in my head as I explore his shapes and shadows and character. But hopefully the staff didn’t hear me talking out loud. I took a bit of licence in removing the rather savage-looking slice through his shell that must have been made after he was killed, so scientists could take him apart. I’m not sure why, other than a piece of me felt that this tortoise deserved a little bit of his dignity back. The drawings are on A1 paper, which was as big as I could easily carry to work and on a train to Oxford, but I left feeling that I’d like to make bigger drawings, life-size ones, to show even more detail if possible.

Thank you very much to the staff of the OUNHM, and to my lovely friend Emily for putting me up on my much-needed escape for London to a world of ivory towers.

The tortoise’s Victorian label

‘Testudo elephantopus guntheri’

‘Baur’ refers to Georg Baur a vertebrate paleontologist who in the late nineteenth century classified different sub-species of Galápagos tortoises.

Hiding in the Conservatory at the Barbican

thetownmouse — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:14:32 +0000

Every Sunday the magical Conservatoryof the Barbican is open to the public, fight your way through the concrete jungle to a ‘proper’ jungle inside.

Bayham Old Abbey, East Sussex

thetownmouse — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:09:12 +0000

Sketches from Bayham Old Abbey

Studies for a print or painting

Pick & Mix from the Archive

thetownmouse — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:36:43 +0000

I’ve been putting together a portfolio recently and it’s been a good excuse to tidy up my plan chest and discover some things I’d completely forgotten about. And happily these ones are better than I remember them being at the time, so I thought I’d share them with you.

River view from Wapping.

A quick sketch oil I did on a misty but bright morning. In the process of learning to paint I made some horrendous images, but I recall that this small painting came from large painting I cut up afterwards, and liked using the rough, alread-painted-but-rejected surface to create something new. Reminds me that I really should go and do some more outdoor painting…. as soon as it warms up!

St Stephen’s Church, Walbrook, City of London.

A large charcoal drawing from my phase of a ‘fish-eye’ approach to capturing the whole space. I never finished it, but now I think I should, in some ways I think the church deserves many more studies as Wren put so much time into the wonderful arches and recesses working with each other.

Building site, Aldgate.

I returned to this site after making these drawings, and made some more studies from the top of the workmen’s’ hut. That same afternoon, high on brick dust, I took my sketches to the print room and made this etching. It feels quite dark and eerie, like the machines are feasting on the carcasses. Ironically, it used to be an RBS building!

Male Figure.

A monotype I made not long after discovering the medium. I liked the indention of print plates on paper so much I made myself a round one, it somehow felt more like a stamp or seal or portal, and was interesting to experiment with composition with after being used to so many rectangular shapes.

Jacob and the Angel

thetownmouse — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:52:15 +0000

In the mood for playing with paint, I sat down and made this from my head the other day. It was first inspired by the Botticelli Mystical Nativity I sketched at the National Gallery, that has men being helped by angels. I loved the weight and force in their embrace, and it reminded me of a Gauguin ‘Jacob’ in his painting Vision After the Sermon. The historian in me wanted to do some more research into the topic, but instead I decided to go with my impulses and just paint and have fun, and see what happened. It’s only about eight inches square, but a satisfying process to paint straight from my head and not be tied to a source or observation.

Now I’ve finished, I sit back and wonder a little at where it comes from, what my instincts are, or what they’re inspired by. I’m not sure I believe in ‘pure’ instincts that haven’t been shaped and moulded into the subconscious by experience. I’m sure that many of the things I’ve been studying and enjoying few years are now embedded in me, and bubble up and mix as I develop my own ideas. I recently quoted Picasso’s advice ‘Good artists borrow, Great artists steal’ to some Foundation students I’ve been teaching as part of a painting transcription project. I’ve not yet tried to deliberately steal, but in hindsight looking at this I’m sure I’ve borrowed plenty…

The angel is probably still Botticelli’s.

The colours red and blue may be taken from him but also feel quite Japanese.

The strong contrast of tones, and enjoyment of the right shadowed leg could be borrowed from one of Daumier’s graphic paintings, particularly The Burden.

The muscular figure of Jacob reminds me of a painting of Soldiers’ Backs by Edward Burra that I loved at the Pallant House show.

But it could also be an echo of the bodybuilders that I loved drawing just over a year ago.

To Florence (via the National Gallery)

thetownmouse — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:35:57 +0000

Several years ago when reading Art History at University I managed to get away with not studying a single painting from the Italian Renaissance. Shameful. At the time I was into all things Medieval, and got myself far more wrapped up in the wonderful politics and religious troubles around the Northern Europeans such as Durer, Cranach and Holbein. Happily I’ve been on a mission of late to fill in the gaps of my education by reading about the period and when possible, supplementing it with drawing. The mission started with making new acquaintances in the National Gallery, and has more recently been encouraged by discovering the historical novels of Linda Proud. Set in fifteenth-century Florence, she tracks the lives of artists, writers and philosophers caught up in the web of the powerful Medici family. I’m only a couple of books in so far, but already enjoying learning about the period of history through the ‘eyes’ of Filippo Lippi, Allesandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi.

After finishing A Gift for the Magi I went to ‘meet’ Filippo Lippi at the National Gallery and see the two door panels painted for Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici that Linda describes. Whilst the Annunciation is well-known and beautiful for its humble angel, afraid to cross into Mary’s realm, I was also taken with his ‘Seven Saints’, showing the patron saints of the family. Instantly it brought to mind her description of the birth of the new Platonic Academy, as supported by the Medicis. These saints, set in a group discussion chaired by John the Baptist, yet distracted by their separated debates, or in Cosimas’ case, turn to heaven for an answer, could just as easily have been a group portrait of Cosimo amongst the artists and philosophers of his own Academy.

Botticelli’s The Mystical Nativity is a new painting to me, and blew me away. There is so much to be read and wondered on its purpose, painted when the artist clearly felt the end of the world was nigh, that I can’t go into now but you can get started here. But the most moving characters are the set of angels raising men at the front ground. Three in sequence gradually are pulled up from the cracking earth and supported. The angels appear to meet them face-to face, mouth-to mouth, as if resuscitating them. But the three pairs also have a sense o struggle in them, of a struggle much like I’d expect to see in the story of Jacob wrestling the Angel. Perhaps this half-embrace of life, half-wrestle, is appropriate given they were apparently heretics that twisted and turned their own version of Christian truth.

The Garvagh Madonna
about 1509-10, Raphael

Elsewhere, I enjoyed getting to grips with the intricacies of triangles, arches and hierarchies of Raphael’s composition in this relatively small painting. Annoyingly I haven’t caught anything of her face right, but the more important aspect of the painting is the relationship between the three, the space within of Christ’s and John the Baptist’s hands meeting, passing a carnation, and the weight of the Old Testament being passed onto the New.

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
completed 1475, Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo

I’ve always had a soft spot for St Sebastian pictures, and that probably started with seeing this years ago, it’s one of my favourite paintings in the gallery. It’s also great fun to draw, to dissect the picture into half, quarters, diagonals, and chart the movements of the archers, who mirror and turn on each other as if the artists, a pair of brothers, had drawn from the same model, but each working from different sides. Sebastian its set so high that he’s practically ascending to heaven before he’s dead, but in the meantime his upturned face has the effect of being like a sun, and radiates over the rolling hills and landscape behind.

Sadly, I’ve never been to Florence. But I have a feeling I’ll have to go very soon…

Winter’s morning in Wapping

thetownmouse — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:11:46 +0000

Travels and new aquaintances

thetownmouse — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:56:01 +0000

The last few months have featured a lot of travel, exhilarating and exhausting in equal measures. The downside of moving around lots is that there hasn’t been much time to draw, but that’s the price for seeing lots. Since this is an art blog and I’m not a serious photographer, I’ll leave off travel snaps and simply introduce you to a tiny selection of some artworks and design that have caught my eye in Berlin, New Zealand and San Francisco.

Gothic ruins by Friedrich August Elsasser, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

No surprises why I like this, so much detail yet the voice of the piece is its colour, eerie and mystical, full of romance.

Die Familie des Malers Fritz Rumpf – Lovis Corinth, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1901.

This picture is stunning for its ambition: bringing a busy, fidgety family together at once, and placed against the backlight of a window. I get the sense that they were painted individually, but imagine that the rest of the family were busy coming and going in the kitchen as the painter worked.

Detail of Medieval retable, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

I wish I had the skills to read this, I’d like to know what each of the lions are being instructed, and explain their reactions. I love that they are painted so simply in crisp line over gold, yet each has an individual character.

Detail from a Medieval retable, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

I fear that this painting has been rather over-enthusiastically restored by the Victorians, but the fluidity of the soldiers still shines through, as they slink and slide in sleep as Christ rises above them.

Portrait by Lucas Cranach

I love Cranach’s pictures, and the boldness he has in accentuating features until people almost become caricatures of themselves. s as much confidence of the artist and his vision embedded in them as the sitters he records.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

I can’t find the name of the painter now, but I loved how this picture seems more about the joy of the animals, harmony in Paradise, than about the ongoing of Adama and eve behind.

Portrait by Holbein

Holbein portraits are always mesmirising to draw, his drawings are infuriatingly flat and stripped to their bare essentials, and yet from these and life his paintings are hyper-realistic in a way that can only be made from observation, he’s the main reason I can’t abide many of the photographic-quality paintings at the NPG Portrait Prize.

Wall of five Holbeins, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Dragon relief on the outside of Dunedin’s Fire Station, New Zealand

I love dragons, lions, griffins, and any beast that’s reminiscent of a medieval bestiary. This one must be from the inter-war period, but I loved the idea that a fire-breathing dragon might still symbolise the enemy for modern fire-fighters. Though given New Zealand’s re-incarnation as Middle earth, its now more appropriate.

Late afternoon sun over buildings in Wellington, New Zealand

Lions’ heads holding up canopies, New Zealand

Cast-iron fern designs on a porch fence, Dunedin

The lucky students of Dunedin seem to reside in the most gorgeous Victorian houses in the heart of town. This was appropriately near the city’s Botanic Gardens, and reminded me of my past drawings of Kew Gardens and their white cast-iron staircases against green foliage.

Building signs at Napier, New Zealand

Bear on column, San Franscisco

Virgin and Child – Dieric Bouts

Northern Renaissance Madonna and Childs often feel more realistic than idealised Italian ones. It might be just my interpretation, but I can’t help but feel that this Virgin Mary looks worn out and ha;f asleep having been kept up overnight. Jesus, by contrast, looks like he’s going to try some cheeky at any moment.

Musicians by Edgar Degas, San Franscisco

I’ve only seen this painting in a book, so it was amazing to see the real thing. As ever, looser, freer and sketchier than I anticipated.

Portrait by Franz Hals, San Francisco Legion of Honour Museum

Early 20th Century print of Boxers

An amazing graphic piece, reminding me of my brother.

Detail of The Adoration of the Magi – Rodrigo de Osona the Elder, Legion of Honour, San Franscisco

A Head in a Hat beers

thetownmouse — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:47:31 +0000

Many moons ago, I designed some limited edition labels for Meantime Brewery. Though I’ve drunk all my bottles since, a happy consequence of the job was meeting the delightful Peter Haydon, who has since gone on to become the brewer, and now owner, of the Florence Brewery. Operating independently out of the back of the Florence pub in leafy Herne Hill, Peter starts brewing first thing in the morning to supply thirsty drinkers across South London. He has many strings to his bow (as well as being one of Britain’s first accredited beer sommeliers, he has spent many years as a beer critic, campaigner, and published the wonderfully titled An Inebriated History of Britain.) He also wears and suits many hats, hence the inspiration behind his own brand of brews ‘A Head in a Hat’.

As I’ve journeyed from student to professional, Peter has been a great supporter. It’s been fun to supply him with an array of characters for his beers, which adorn the taps at the pub. Like one of those Victorian-style paper dolls that you dress up, the illustration is simply a headed character (looking as much like Peter as I can achieve at the moment in half-an-inch’s worth of paper) who receives a different set of clothes with each brew. I’m especially excited that many of his beers take inspiration from history and travel, re-creating a 1914 Great War era IPA, or an 1805 ale designed for import to India, and so on… you can read more about these, and Peter’s story, here.

The Tommy tap at the bar

The brewer at work

Peter’s latest incarnation as a ballet dancer

Concentrated stirring = tasty beer