Now you see me, now you don't!

Gracie

Well that was odd. At around 11.00 this morning my whole blog disappeared. I had an email from Blogger to tell me so. In fact the email said that they had removed my blog because they believed it violated their terms of service with regards to phishing.

I looked for it. All six years worth of content vanished, nothing in it's place.

I was indignant - I'm not a scammer! I'm just a humble artist posting drawings, paintings and random thoughts.

I looked for a phone number, a helpline, an email address to contact... none of the above. Just a little 'click here' type button on my blogger dashboard where my blog once stood saying 'appeal'. 

I clicked appeal. Then waited, and wondered what else I could do. Nothing.

I wondered how long I would have to wait, and would my blog come back, and would all that historic content ever come back or had it been banished into hyperspace forever?

I did the only thing any reasonable person could do in such a situation - I put a little pity post out on Facebook. Help! Nasty google! Has anybody else experienced such a thing?

I did confess that it was a first world problem, but Facebook friends are so good at making you feel supported in times of modern angst such as missing blogs, computer viruses and the like.

And then I got on with life, because I am finishing framing 36 paintings this week for my March exhibition at the Russell Gallery in Putney - exciting!

Roughly five hours after my blog disappeared I received this email from Google -

"Hello, We have received your appeal regarding your blog http://haideejo.blogspot.com/. Upon further review, we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process. Thank you for understanding. Your sincerely, The Blogger Team"

Hoorah! And the whole lovely blog came back, with an apology too. And so to celebrate here are a couple of sketches from this week.

Welcome back blog and welcome back lovely subscribers! Normal service can now be resumed. Whatever that is.

Oscar in the car

Holiday drawings

My Dad now has a halo...

I always find the Christmas holidays such a great time to sketch... so many models around and so little need to do anything else... other than eat and drink... lovely :-)

Drinking red wine on the sofa

'Listening to football on the radio'

Mary in the school nativity play

Yes that is a dog/neck warmer

The three graces?

And a reindeer

Talking to his grandchildren

Summer sketches

Sara

Some of my favourite recent sketchbook pages here. Currently my favourite sketchbooks are the Frisk LayFlat pads. If I want my drawing to spread across two pages as it has here with Sara and Playing Billionaire the book opens completely flat and the seam causes no nuisance whatsoever. It has a nice surface for pencil, slightly textured, my marker pens can't bleed through the thick paper, and its also a sturdy enough paper for watercolour washes if I am in the mood for splashing around.

Queuing for ice cream

Teenage boys feet 

Playing Billionaire

French landscape with cows

Sunset sketches

Sketches from PAC

Sometimes in the convention I was multi-tasking, sketching and listening and drinking coffee! Apart from the sketches, which help me to remember events, I've got pages and pages of notes to read through - I haven't had time to look at them yet! Maybe I should take my notebook up to bed with me tonight. 

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the event...

Carolyn Anderson "Once you take fruit from the kitchen and into the studio, it ceases to be fruit"

C.W Mundy "The power of the suggestive is much greater than the statement of reality"

C.W Mundy "I just want to see what I can get away with"

Quang Ho "When I do a painting there's an assignment, there's something I want to learn, there's something I go after"

Quang Ho "At the heart of painting is abstract design"

C.W Mundy "I'm willing to go out on a limb"

BBC Big Painting Challenge

Heather

Have you been watching the BBCs Big Painting Challenge? I've seen lots and lots of criticism of it on Facebook. I'm really enjoying it, and think it's great to get to see some painting on TV instead of cooking and baking and sports.

People feel that the judges have been unduly harsh and should only say positive and kind things to the contestants, but it's a competition not a painting holiday! The judges have to choose which artist to eliminate each week at the end of their painting and drawing challenges. Some of which are extremely challenging by the way.

Besides which, we are only shown the edited highlights. Of course the judges may have made many positive comments that have been cut out by the producers.

I'm enjoying sketching the brave contestants anyway!

Anne

Jan

Alison

If you're in the UK you can watch the episodes so far on iPlayer here.

Sketchbook peek

Since Christmas I have filled a whole sketchbook with portrait and figure drawings, and I'm not going to stop yet. These are some of my favourites from the book. Some days I only spend five minutes, others half an hour or more. Sometimes a linear drawing, most often I draw in tonal values with shading because I think that gives me more help for my paintings. I've been using soft pencil, charcoal or graphite sticks and I'm enjoying the subtleties possible after years of shunning the simple pencil in favour of bold pen marks.

How do I find my subjects? Well some days I can sketch from life and that's preferable. Otherwise I sketch from photos that I've snapped on my phone during the previous week, or from paintings or photos I've seen online (Pinterest is a good source) or I pause a video on my iPad and sketch from that. That's a great way to sketch groups of figures in conversation, and I particularly like regency costumes so I tend to go for a Jane Austen TV/film adaptation! To be honest I'm not too fussy about the source for the sketch, and it's better to just get on and do it than to hunt around for ages for something special. The sketch always has its own life and takes on its own importance. 

By the way, they don't all work out and sometimes I have to break off when I'd like to have gone further. But I know there'll be another chance tomorrow.

Pond sketches

Pond sketches
Watercolour and pen

In a quieter moment in between either painting with oils or cleaning oil paint off brushes and palette, I worked on these preparatory sketches in watercolours and marker pens. I have a lovely huge and chunky watercolour paper sketchbook (two inches thick) which you can see here. 

These sketches are thoughts about possible large oil paintings of the pond at Lincolnshire's Gunby Hall.   My idea is to start a large painting in the studio with an underpainting, then take it out on site for the main painting session, then work on it again in the studio etc. Not sure when this will actually take place as I've got so much else on the go at the moment, but it's always good to have ideas stacking up!

Masking fluid in action on the lily pads

Sketches of ladies

Oil sketch of friends in repose

Then I took the high key colour palette and used it to paint these small sketches in oil, based on my line drawings from the day spa and using a little artistic license regarding backgrounds etc. I just can't wait to be able to paint like this outside in summer. I just need to find willing models. 

In the meantime, if you're local and willing to spend a few hours sitting around in your dressing gown for me please get in touch!

Oil sketch of friends in repose

What I did at the day spa

Ok I have a confession to make - on my day off at the spa I did rather a lot of sketching. There, I feel better now that we've got that out in the open. 

Also I haven't planned my local workshops yet, apologies if you are waiting for the list I will get on to it soon.

On the plus side, tax return is complete- yay! And most of the sold paintings from the exhibition have now been delivered and posted to their new homes. The kitchen is now free from polystyrene sheets, bubble wrap, brown paper and tape.

And I've discovered how to use Pinterest ....finally! Why didn't you tell me how much fun that is? So nice to have a place to gather all your favourite paintings, like an ever expanding notebook! Look me up if you're on there and then I will be able to follow your boards. Fun!

Red red sail

Red sail in Paimpol harbour

At the risk of boring you I'm sorry but I'm not done with this subject yet. This is a small oil painting on Arches huile paper distilling the subject down to it's basic elements. It's based on a sketching trip one afternoon in August to Paimpol harbour which I did tell you about at the time. I was waiting to meet my friend Lori Putnam off the train and couldn't believe my luck to see a few boats with their sails up in the harbour.

Here's my first drawing of the day, I was struggling to make sense of the lighting conditions and I think you can see my confusion in the sketch...

As I was finishing this one the red sail went up! I was SO excited, but I got to work quickly because I didn't think it would stick around....

But it was still there, and I thought I could do a better job so...

Yes! I was happy with that one. By this time the front of the buildings were in darker shadow which was making my life MUCH easier, and I veered towards green-blue in the shadow colour to help that red to sing out :-)

But as I was leaving I saw a better view, with the red sail on the right of the white sails so I had to sit right in the middle of the pavement there... it was awkward but it had to be done and the people who stepped over and around me seemed to enjoy the spectacle too...

Now please don't be getting sick of the red sail just yet because I'm working on a BIG one now in the studio, and I'm just hoping I can keep the same vitality.

I find if I'm working 'en studio air' it's best to tackle up to half a dozen at the same time and flit between them. This helps ward off the possibility of an unhealthy fixation forming with a rising pressure level, tense shoulders and a disposition towards tightening up. I also chant 'Just because it's big, doesn't mean it's got to be special...' (repeat to fade)

Tonal key studies on a very cold day

It's turned very cold and wintry again. I worked from my studio all day yesterday with the cats and we were extremely grateful of the underfloor heating! All of us lying around on the floor with snow whirling and blizzarding all around us.
I started work on a painting based on a series of photos taken on the beach on the ile de Bréhat one delightful summer evening. The beauty of working in the studio is that you can play around to your heart's content with preparatory work, whereas plein air you are usually in a rush to get started.
In these sketches I had already decided on the composition and was trying to plan which tonal value range to pitch the painting at. Using lovely chunky ProMarker pens in a range of warm greys I tried a low key palette, high key palette, mid range palette and finally using the whole extent of tones from light to dark.
Which do you prefer? I'll let you know soon which one I went with...

Sketching workshop

Milly aged 7

Milly aged 14

Sketch from Staithes

Today was my drawing and sketching workshop and I would like to say a huge thank you to the fabulous Hare and Hounds pub in Fulbeck for accommodating all eleven of us for the whole day when we found ourselves unexpectedly locked out of the village hall! Please eat at the Hare and Hounds whenever you are passing between Grantham and Lincoln - you will love it! 

Thanks also to Pipa for providing quick poses when we were working on gesture drawing - which was the highlight of the day! We also did a little line and contour drawing, tonal values, notan sketches, upside down drawing and gridding! 

I had a ball yesterday looking through my old sketchbooks, they are such a treasure! Especially lovely to be able to see your children when they were little, there is nothing so tender, so personal, as a drawing.

Tomorrow I am going to be painting antiques... watch this space, as they say! :-)