Travel Sketches

On the Great Wall of China

Margaret and I have been travelling in China over the past ten days, after she expressed a wish to “walk on the Great Wall of China on my birthday!” Her birthday was on the 25th April, so on the 24th we found ourselves aboard a British Airways flight to Beijing, with our boots, cameras and sketchbooks with us.

The Great Wall is around 5,000 kms. long, but actually most of the sections that are still intact are within a couple of hundred kilometres of the Chinese capital. There are quite a few myths about the Wall, one being that you can see it from space. You can’t, apparently, but that doesn’t stop it being one of the wonders of the world, built with sweat of millions of labourers over hundreds of years.

Over the course of our visit we walked on several sections of the Wall. Some were completely original, and often not much more that a pile of stones dotted with the ruins of watchtowers. Others had been totally restored, or maybe even over-restored, and looked a bit shiny and new. The best section we visited was probably at Jinshaling, where there has been some rebuilding but there’s still a lot of original stonework preserved.

Sketch of Great Wall of China 1
Nine watchtowers on the Great Wall of China. This section is between Jinshaling and Simatai. Ink on cartridge paper, A5 size.

Sketch of Great Wall watchtowers
Two of the watchtowers near Jinshaling. Ink on cartridge paper, A5 size.

Stephen Martyn sketching
With the sketchbook on my knees as the Wall snakes into the distance. A blue sky day near Jinshaling.

When you climb the steep path to the Wall for the first time it is a breathtaking sight. The stone pathway is wide enough for five horsemen to ride abreast, and it winds it’s way into the distance, peppered with huge fortified watchtowers every few hundred yards. At Jinshaling it is very hilly, so the wall plunges and soars over the landscape like a huge stone roller-coaster. There are many, many steps to climb when you walk the Wall, it is certainly not for the faint-hearted. You must have good knees!

As is often the case on trips abroad, I didn’t find much free time for sketching, but I did manage a couple of quick ink drawings in my little A5 sketchbook. I will use them, together with photographs, as a reference for some larger works in the the next few days. Hopefully one or two of those will feature in my solo exhibition coming up in June. See the previous post for full details.

It was a great trip, and all the arrangements were very well handed by the trekking company Explore and their local leader Bobby Yang. However, after ten days of Chinese food for breakfast lunch and dinner, and the delights of some of the rather rustic hotels, we were quite glad to fly home!

Art Events

Exhibition fast approaching

This year I am celebrating twenty-one years since I took my first tottering steps on the road to becoming a professional artist. Back in 1993 I chanced upon a programme on Channel 4, presented by Alwyn Crawshaw, who was already well known as a TV artist. As the weekly programmes rolled by I became more and more fascinated with what a bit of paint, paper and a couple of brushes could do. And so, I had to have a go!

I duly got some materials and set about trying to emulate the great man. But I soon found out that I couldn’t draw, couldn’t handle the paint, in short I couldn’t do anything with watercolour. Luckily, I found an adult education class, tutored by an encouraging and skilled teacher, Mike Tuddenham. Little by little, Mike gave me the skills I needed to make at least a reasonable stab at a painting. Several years of practice later, I found myself standing up at an easel with twenty students watching me. The wheel had turned full circle.

To celebrate my twenty-first anniversary, I am having a solo exhibition of my work, old and new. Entitled ‘Stephen Martyn at 21’ it will be held in the largest gallery at King’s Lynn Arts Centre, the Shakespeare Barn. A lovely venue with plenty of room on the walls. I’ve got over fifty framed works already and am working hard on new pieces, so I’ll need plenty of space.poster for June 2014 exhibition

You can see the poster for the exhibition here, and I’ll send out formal invitations soon. The dates are Saturday 7th – Saturday 21st June, and there will be a Private View on the evening of Friday 6th. I hope you can make it along to the show at some time, it would be good to have a few visitors after all the work!

Art Events, New Paintings, Uncategorized

Off the Page

A new exhibition by the West Norfolk Artists Association opened today in the Red Barn gallery, King’s Lynn Arts Centre. The theme for the exhibition was works inspired by a piece of poetry or prose, and what a popular theme that tuned out to be. Nearly forty artist members submitted nearly seventy works.

The exhibition continues all week, until Saturday 29th March, although unfortunately not on Sunday. Otherwise it is open every day 11am – 4pm.

Painting of holkham Beach
Where the Wave Draws Breath. Watercolour 50 x 32 cms.
My own entry for the exhibition is this watercolour which I entitled Where the Wave Draws Breath. A poem by Algernon Swinburne was my inspiration, being a verse featured on an information board in the dunes adjoining Holkham beach. The painting itself is a little unusal as it had been on my pile of “the ones that didn’t quite make it” for nearly ten years. I unearthed it, completely reworked the sky, the sea (there was none) and the beach, and was quite pleased with the end result. Never throw anything away – it may take years for a work to finally be complete!

The verse that inspired the work is:

A land that is thirstier than ruin;
A sea that is hungrier than death;
Heaped hills that a tree never grew in;
Wide sands where the wave draws breath.

The Salt Marsh – Algernon Swinburne

Art Events, Tutorials, Uncategorized

Pen & Wash Demonstration

If you look back to my last post you’ll see that I recently ran an ink workshop at West Norfolk Arts Centre, Castle Rising. One of the participants on the course, Fay, very kindly sent me some photos of my demonstrations during the weekend, some of which you can see here.

I always appreciate it when people take photos or even video of my demonstrations, because I can’t, being at the coal face with brush in hand!

Pen & Wash Demonstration 1
Here you can see the inkwork before any colour goes on. I did this with a Faber-Castell Pitt pen, with a medium nib. The size of my paper is approximately 40 x 30 cms.

Pen & Wash Demonstration 2
I’m now applying the Rowney FW coloured inks, using plenty of water. You could do the same with traditional watercolour, but the inks give more vibrant colour.

Pen & Wash Demonstration 3
Nearly done, just a few more clouds. That’s a 3/4 inch flat brush that I’m using.

Pen & Wash Demonstration 4
Ta-da! A mount or mat round the work always helps.

Art Events, New Paintings

More Thinking Ink

From time to time I’ve shown paintings here that use ink in addition to or as a substitute for watercolour. Last weekend I ran a workshop at West Norfolk Arts Centre, Castle Rising which was devoted to these techniques, which can just add another dimension to your work. I had a good time with a group of nice people, and I got paid too – what more can an art tutor want!

Cley Mill painting in ink
Cley Mill. Pen and wash using Rowney FW acrylic inks. Approximately 40 x 30 cms.

Burnham Overy Staithe. Pen and wash
Burnham Overy Staithe. Pen and wash using Rowney FW acrylic inks. 40 x 30 cms.

Part of the weekend was spent looking at traditional pen and wash, but with the added twist of using acrylic inks rather than watercolour. The inks were kindly sponsored by Daler-Rowney and you can see them in the two paintings here, which I did as demonstrations. The inks are Rowney FW acrylic inks and they are available in a wide range of colours. They have a very high tinting strength and are waterproof when dry, so that you can paint over the top without disturbing the initial wash. The inks look very garish when straight from the bottle, but well watered down and carefully mixed the results can be more subtle. Rowney supplied a boxed set of six inks, called the Primary Colours set, which consisted of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, which are the colours typically used in inkjet printers, plus three additional colours of Scarlet, Emerald Green and Sepia. It was quite a challenge to generate traditional watercolour hues from these but it was fun and good colour mixing practice. The underlying drawing in both paintings was done with a Faber Castell Pitt artist’s pen, containing black waterproof ink.

By the way, spot the flying boat in the painting of Burnham Overy Staithe. A quick “how to draw a boat” sketch that I did while working on the main painting!

Over the weekend we also explored using Indian ink from a bottle and water soluble pens, so there was quite a variety of techniques. My thanks to all the course participants for being so pleasant and fun to work with, to Daler-Rowney for supplying the materials, and to Richard and Ros Cartwright of the Art Centre who were as welcoming as ever. They do a great lunch too!

I will be back at West Norfolk Arts Centre in August for an outdoor sketching weekend, so why not join me working in pen and wash and other sketching media in the picturesque village of Castle Rising, Norfolk. You can find full details, including how to book, on the Arts Centre website westnorfolkarts.co.uk

New Paintings

Steam & spray

Here’s a strange coincidence. I was recently commissioned to paint a view of a steam train travelling along the old Great Western line at Dawlish, where the line runs right along the sea wall. Imagine my surprise when, just a few days after completing the work, the line was washed away in the recent floods. It will be repaired of course, but for the moment there will be no trains at Dawlish, steam or otherwise!

Steam train at Dawlish Wall
Steam & Spray. King Edward VIII heads west at Dawlish. Watercolour 15ins x 11ins.

Paintings of this type require a lot of care in the research and in the actual work. I was fortunate to know someone with a large collection of railway books, and from them I found several examples of King class locomotives which used to haul the Cornish Riviera Express in the days of steam. I selected a photo of a train in full steam, but of course it wasn’t at Dawlish but elsewhere. So, I turned to the internet, and found some video on YouTube of a steam train at Dawlish, with a rough sea crashing over the tracks. But, it was completely the wrong type of locomotive. With careful drawing and a decent knowledge of perspective I managed to combine the two images, but there was a fair bit of artist’s license needed to make the scene into an effective composition. I had to think carefully about the tonal values of the work, to give prominence to the train but also convey a feeling of a dark, stormy day.

It took several sessions of work in my studio before I was happy with the end result, but I enjoyed doing it. It’s always good to be taken a little bit out of your comfort zone with an unusual subject. The lady who commissioned the painting as a gift for her steam enthusiast husband seemed to be delighted and that made it all worth while. An old artist once said to me “you can never be sure how a commission is going to go down when the client sees it for the first time. But, if they say they like it and they pay, you’ve done a good job!”

My students, Tutorials

January paintings

The year is already twenty days old, where does the time go? I have been busy here at the studio, working on a commission for a client which I’ll show you in another post. In between times, I’ve had visits from several artists who like to come here for tuition from time to time, so I thought I’d show you what we have been doing.

So, here are a couple of watercolours which I did as demonstrations for some students earlier this week.

Tree landscape in the style of Edward Seago
A sky and a tree, what more does the landscape artist need! This is in the style of the East Anglian master Edward Seago.
Buttermere painting
A view of Buttermere, in the style of William Heaton-Cooper, a well known Lake District artist of the 20th Century
You will see that they both use a very limited palette of colours, which I hope gives them a nice feeling of harmony and atmosphere. Never worry about making your colours too true to life, try and keep things simple because it makes for a more effective painting.

Both these works are based on paintings by well known artists of the 20th Century. You can learn a great deal from studying the masters, but you must never copy their work and pass it off as your own. Make sure that you add “after Edward Seago” or whoever to the title, so that everyone knows where the original composition came from.

My students

A New Year a new painting

Happy New Year everybody! I thought I’d kick off 2014 by showing you a scene of Ely Cathedral which I painted recently with my two students who come to the studio on occasional Saturdays, Chris and Pat. We spend a few hours sploshing in watercolour about once a month and they are both doing really well.

Ely Cathedral in Springtime
Ely Cathedral in Springtime. Watercolour 14 x 10 ins.
If you would like to come to my Dersingham studio and have some tuition with me, then do get in touch. I have a small group on occasional Tuesdays, which is a “drop in and out of” group, and I also have groups of friends who come, as well as one-to-one students. There’s more information about both group and one-to-one tuition on my website Learnwatercolour.com There’s a link to the relevant page here.

It’s worth mentioning that I can also travel to you for art tuition, if that’s more convenient. Again I can tutor one-to-one, small or large groups, or give demonstrations and workshops for art societies. Do get in touch to talk about your requirements. My details are all on the Contact page of this blog.

Art Events

A Christmas Candle

Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful, prosperous and healthy New Year. The painting shown here is one of my Christmas Candle series, which was last featured on my Christmas card quite a few years ago. So, I thought that it was time for a return visit, to convey my good wishes to you all.

I’ll be back with more from my artist’s blog in the New Year, with new sketches, paintings and tuition articles. Meanwhile, Happy Painting to all artists wherever they are!

Travel Sketches

Travels down South

Usually the autumn finds me hard at work teaching groups of watercolour students. Indeed, I have been doing that, but not on a regular weekly basis as before. Early this year I made the decision to retire from teaching weekly groups, to allow more time for painting, walking and travel. These days I tutor more occasional groups, usually here at the studio.

With a bit of free time available, Margaret and I decided to head down to South Africa in early November, for three weeks of game watching and walking. A great country and I hope that the recent passing of Nelson Mandella will not cause any difficulties there. We were certainly made very welcome by people of all different races, during our stay in Kwazulu Natal.

sketch of the Drakensberg mountains, South Africa
View of the Drakensberg Mountains, near Cathedral Peak. Edding pen on A5 cartridge paper sketchbook.

If you’re expecting to see paintings of the rhino, elephant and giraffe that we saw, you’ll have to be patient as they are still in my head, not on the paper. I took a lot of photographs though. There was certainly plenty of wildlife to be seen, although no lion or leopard regrettably. There was no opportunity to sketch on the game drives, as we were in a group, but when we got to the Drakensberg Mountains, I managed to do a few quick sketches in ink. Here’s one, and you can see why the Drakensbergs are so called – the Dragon’s Mountains, with peaks like sharp teeth. Some great walking, but steep, phew!