HMS Imogen (D44) Destroyer at sea en route to Norway 1940

 This painting is set to become a sort of family heirloom! My dad graduated from the RN college at Dartmouth shortly before the second world war and went to sea in 1940 as a crew member of the I class destroyer HMS Imogen. It was his favourite ship and he often spoke of her and destroyers in general.

I came across a photograph published by the Imperial War Museum of the ship. The photograph was taken in 1940 from a troopship en route to Norway. I realized that my dad would have been on the ship at that time, and decided to make a painting out of the image. This proved more tricky than I first thought.

The voyage of the Imogen

The actual voyage of the Imogen was quite eventful. Apart from serving as one of the escorts for the Home Fleet, an aircraft carrier, and hunting German ships in various fijords.

In the latter part of 1939 Imogen had been in action against their traditional enemy, the U Boat. In company with their sister ship Ilex, they had sunk the U Boat U-42, and taken some of her crew prisoner in the process. They also rescued 239 French merchant seamen from lifeboats, they were survivors from two ships (Bretagne and Louisiane) torpedoed by U Boats in the area.

Imogen was accidentally rammed and sunk later in 1940 off the Scottish coast.

The painting (W&N Artisan on canvas board, 50 x 76 cm)

I started with a poor quality photograph of the ship at sea. Using it as a basic outline I created a drawing of the ship on A3 drawing paper.

This gave me an outline and the hints of various details but no clear resolution of what the features I could make out were. At this point I referred to a number of books (see references below) with period photographs and plans of the ship and other ships like her. In the end I built a small paper and card model of the ship to figure out what went where on the deck from the viewpoint of the original photograph.

With the model to clarify where and what items were visible from the viewers position I was able to develop a more complete and I hope accurate drawing of the ship

The oil painting started with an under-painting where I mapped in the ships outline and shapes with blocks of colour. The sea and sky were also indicated with suitable glazing.

I then painted in the waves, a seascape and sky. This was new territory for me and the first rendition was an attempt at creating a typical northern sky of low dull grey clouds. The result was an unattractive image as you can see below.

I subsequently started taking figure drawing lessons from Paul Birchall, a local artist. He provided me with his views on the painting and gave some suggestions for its improvement. He went so far as to provide a mock up of how he would deal with it. As he pointed out, it’s a painting not a precise record of the photograph. I cannot say the sky or sea was a precise anything, just my attempt at painting something I was not particularly familiar or comfortable with.

However, I took Paul's wisdom on board, followed his advice and completely reworked the sky in the painting. I also made some changes to the sea to create a better feel for depth of view between the viewer and the ship. The result is the final version of the painting below.

HMS Imogen (D44) at sea

References

These are the books I used to refine my understanding of what the ship looked like.

Brown, L (2009) British destroyers A-I and Tribal classes. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN9781848320239

Greentree, D and Campell, D (2018) British destroyers vs German destroyers, Narvik 1940. Osprey Publishing. ISBN9781472828583

Haarr, G H (2009) The German invasion of Norway, April 1940. Naval Institute Press. ISBN9781591143239

Haarr, G H (2010) The battle for Norway, April – June 1940. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN9781848320574

Haarr, G H (2013) The gathering storm. The naval war in Northern Europe, September 1939 – April 1940. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN9781848321403

Plevy, H (2006) Destroyer actions, September 1939 – June 1940. The History Press. ISBN9781862274639

South African Air Force Avro Shackleton

 Whilst spending time at home doing a daily drawing of the human form out of my head, my other art class once a week was spent working on an oil painting of the South African Air force Avro Shackleton.

The work is based on a photograph of the machine that I took several years ago at an air show here in Cape Town. I used the image to develop a drawing – tonal study – of the aircraft.

Avro Shackleton A3 pencil drawing

After figuring out the tonal range of the image, I repeated the exercise in watercolour. This created a lovely tranquil looking image of the aircraft.

Avro Shackleton A3 watercolour

Up to this point the image was not particularly adventurous, in fact it was little more than the recreation of a photograph in different media. Something that computer packages purport to be able to do these days! I wanted to go for something a little different in the oil painting.

My first idea was to place the aircraft over the sea with a drifting rubber dingy of small lifeboat in the water, thus depicting the aircraft in the air sea rescue role. I looked at some paintings of seascapes with small boats in them and found one by JMW Turner. I used some of its background to create a mock up of what a painting might look like.

Avro Shackleton rough with lifeboat - A4 watercolour

The mock presence of the boat created some issues with composition and perspective which was a distraction from the main point of the image, the aircraft. So I tried again without the boat and more defined storm clouds.

Avro Shackleton - A4 watercolour rough

Then I looked at one of Turners most iconic painting, the ‘Fighting Temeraire’, and in particular the sky behind it. I began to wonder how Turner would approach and paint this aircraft. Another rough watercolour followed. This proved more acceptable so I used it as the starting point of the painting and created the first glaze of the painting on the canvas board.

Avro Shackleton final watercolour and first oil glaze

As the painting developed the sky went through a number of iterations such as the one below. Here the suggestion of a horizon can be seen in part of the image.

Avro Shackleton Oil glaze - intermediate stage 

I decided to enhance the horizon suggestion without making it too explicit, the idea is to leave the background to the viewers imagination whilst the foreground (aircraft) is realistic and explicit.

Avro Shackleton Final oil painting - 20 inch x 30 inch

I hope you like the final result.

Learning figure drawing

I guess most people think that to learn figure drawing one spends each day at an easel confronted by a naked person. Your role is to observe and draw. I have done some of this, perhaps twice in the month, but it is not where the workload lay for me.

All the material presented in this month’s blog entry was drawn on A4 scrap paper. I used various pencils and found that the easiest to work with are ‘Staedtler tradition’ and a normal plastic eraser, and a decent pencil sharpener.

Paul challenged me to draw a person based on my mental model of the human form. The purpose of this is to establish my understanding of proportions. So I began, drawing the standing man without any reference material in front of me.

Drawing out of my head became a daily activity, early attempts revealed significant problems between what I thought a person looks like and the reality. I think most of the problem is not a faulty mental image so much as an incomplete image held in the brain.

Once I realised my problem, I began reading and studying human anatomy. Apart from several books on anatomy for artists, I also found 3D anatomy models (apps) that I could refer to via my phone! With these supporting tools, and with Paul pointing out various failings, I started to focus on specific parts of the body, such as how the knee looks.

The next hurdle was to overcome the stiff lifeless appearance of my ‘little man’. By now I was drawing this figure each day and would by the end of the month have clocked up about eighty images of ‘him’. To loosen up a bit Paul suggested drawing a curved line and then fitting the form to it. This proved to be great fun, I love it!

Then it was just little men from the imagination – it remains a significant challenge as you can see from the last few I have drawn. These examples are about the sixties or seventies in the count of my drawings based on the mental image.

The standing man becomes a little too tedious after three weeks so I began to look for different poses, each presenting their own challenge as different parts of the anatomy come into view. What I found was a little loosening up by swirling the pencil to get a feel for the shape to be drawn helps as a starting point. The image below illustrates this process quite well I think.

My interest in animals and in Paleontology led me to start exploring how to represent the animals of the Permian period. A little research into their skeletons and works by other artists resulted in the image below.

With a prehistoric animal under my belt it was time for the little man to pose in different positions; my next effort was to put him on all fours.

Then I began to just doodle with both animals and the human figure.

My imagination began to take hold.

I started to try and tell a little story with my little men.

In conclusion, after a month of effort I am able to draw a recognizable figure in a variety of action poses. Much remains to be learned. I think the majority of the knowledge I need lies in knowing what and how the different parts of a person fit together and the relative proportion of the various parts. For example the hand is three quarters of the length of the upper arm. The forearm is longer than the hand but shorter than the upper arm.

Figure Drawing

One of my ultimate art goals is to develop the ability to draw figures in my paintings to add interest and also I feel it is a form of ‘product differentiation’. Many contemporary ‘hobby’ artists avoid the human form and face because it is difficult. Difficult sounds to me like a good reason to try to master the art!

I went to a set of five morning sessions delivered by Paul Birchall. It was part of the local university summer school; I think it was at the start of 2019. After I retired I returned to classes with Paul with the intention of developing my figure drawing skills further. That was at the start of 2020, Covid 19 then came along and art classes were put on hold.

Paul suggested a few practice exercises I could undertake during the start of the Covid period but with time the isolation and distractions of dealing with the new reality ended those efforts.

Paul has started providing tuition via zoom with a new arrangement whereby he acts as coach. I enlisted a week ago and began a new venture into the tricky realm of representing humans by drawing a skull.

Ø  

Drawing of human skull

The work shown here is on an A3 sheet of 60gsm layout paper. I used Lyra Art Design pencils ranging from HB to 9B. I usually start by getting the overall shape and proportions right with an outline drawing. On this occasion I then sent a quick snapshot of the outline to Paul for comment.. Once the master had approved of that stage, I followed up with an exercise in shading to define the form by delineating areas of cast and form shadows.

The initial outline work uses the point of the pencil and a putty rubber (extensively). The definition of form requires the use of the side of the pencil held at about 30 degrees to the paper. I find that during this process any error in the form drawing becomes apparent and so some putty rubber and line work is still required.

Following the skull drawing I was assigned the task of drawing figures from my head without any reference material. I tried a few, disaster! Following that I was to cast a photograph of an artist model up on a large flat surface. Then, set up an easel and draw the model form ‘life’. I have completed two of these so far.

Ø  

Pencil figure drawings

The image above shows the first figure I drew on the right and the second attempt on the left. Both are A3 drawings created on 60 gsm layout paper. The first drawing was created using the Derwent Graphic pencils, the second Lyra Art Design pencils. The Lyra pencils work better on the smooth and slippery layout paper. Each image required about eight to ten hours effort. I spread the time to produce these drawings over two days for each one. Constantly comparing the drawing to what is on the screen in tiring and requires concentration. As soon as I catch myself working the image without direct eye contact with the feature I am creating, I stop. I will explain my reasoning for this practice below. The model was photographed and made available to artists by 'Pose Space' on the Internet. 

A number of texts that I have read discuss the issue of drawing what is visible, not what our mind thinks the subject should look like! This is the perception versus vision problem that one has to overcome to become an artist of real world subjects. My interpretation of what the various authors say is that our eye acts like a camera and creates a digital image. Our conscious mind looks briefly at the image projected from the eye, and then it searches for pre-existing models of the displayed image. Once the mind finds the ‘right’ model, it uses this model, updated with a few new details from the image on the eye, and acts accordingly.  The problem of course is that when it comes to people, and particularly portraits, the viewer is as conversant in the reality as the artist! This results in viewers’ ability to judge the ‘truth’ of the artwork. This is what makes figures and faces so difficult to represent.

This is a list of some books that address the issue of perception versus vision.

Edwards, B. (1988) Drawing on the artist within. How to release your hidden creativity. Glasgow: Fontana / William Collins and Sons.

Elliott, V. (2007) Traditional oil painting. Advanced techniques and concepts from the Renaissance to the present. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.

Jacobs, T.S. (1986) Drawing what the eye sees. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc.

A third Addo Elephant drawing, and a Pink Elephant

The drawing below is the third in the series of Elephant images I am producing. On this occasion I returned to the format of the first drawing and decided to try out a different background. Utilizing the idea Paul Birchall put forward to develop the ‘Letter from Earth’ painting I rubbed graphite around the outline drawing of the Elephant. Once I had established the background ‘grey scale’ I drew the animal with that as a reference tone.

I chose to adopt the dark background so that the light falling on the Elephant would be more clearly depicted. In fact the background had another effect, directly on my artistic rendition. I was so conscious of it that once the drawing was completed with HB, B, B2 and B5 pencil, I skipped straight to the softer B8 and B9 for my darkest darks. Most of the shadow areas of the Elephant are paler than the background. I think this has given the image a more ‘3D look’, the Elephant head certainly looks to me like it is emerging from the paper.

 

The drawing is on A3 size 200gsm paper. Pencils used were Lyra Art Design and there is probably about 16 to 20 hours of actual work involved in its creation.

Pink Elephant

At some point in the process of creating the third Addo Elephant drawing I was overcome with a need to do something else! So I used the same image outline on a small, A4, watercolour paper to splosh some colour about.

I was actually testing out a piece of old board to see if it would sustain a watercolour being stretched, without staining the paper from behind.

Not regarding this as a serious exercise in creating an artistic work, I thought perhaps painting an Elephant in Rose Madder (W&N Cotman) might be entertaining. To create a dark background I mixed Pthalo Green with Rose Madder to create a grey wash. I am still adding colour to the painting but the image below is where it reached as a two colour rendition.

A second Elephant from Addo National Park

I received some feedback regarding my earlier work on the Elephant subject, mainly about including the rest of the Elephant. The image below is the result of a new A3 work that addresses those comments.

My personal view on this is that the inclusion of the legs changes the overall symmetry of the composition to its detriment, I prefer the earlier approach, and it just feels more intimate and pleasing.

I used a set of Lyra Rembrandt graphite pencils for this one. I used a photograph I took in the Addo NP several years ago as my reference. I see that there are numerous comments on the internet about artwork that fails to give proper attribution and confirm permission from the original photographer. I am fortunate to have a lifelong obsession with taking photographs, consequently I have a large collection of my own images to work from.

Addo Elephant No2

Addo Elephant Portrait

 I have an intention to do some art every day. It never really works out that way... L but I try. One approach is to have a sheet prepared and waiting with an outline of a subject on it. Then I can spend an hour, or a few minutes, with pencil and putty rubber developing the image. I did this with some of the locomotive drawings I mention in previous posts. I thought that living in Africa made wildlife a logical subject. I have hundreds of photographs to draw on (Excuse the pun).

This work is intended to be a bit of a departure from the – what I see as traditional – view of an Elephant with big tusks, facing the viewer, with dust and so on around its legs. I decided to focus on the face alone, and so I have merely suggested the forelegs and left everything else out. See what you think.

Portrait of an Elephant in Addo NP

The drawing is on A3 paper. I used a set of Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils and 200 gsm drawing paper. To date these are the best pencils I have worked with for drawings of this kind.