Rum and Bones…A new font by Joseph Dawson

A new font!  This has been recently uploaded onto daFont and fontspace.  Feel free to check it out.

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A sight size sketch after a Bargue Plate

This plate was taken from a now available reprint of Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gerome’s Drawing Course.

If you want to learn how to move from general to specific forms, understand values and modeling, to understand the site-size technique, then please, get your hands on a copy of this wonderful publication.

A good, strong drawing with clean, clear lines is the best foundation for a good painting

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A drawing after the English master Wright of Derby

Wright of Derby may not be the most famous painter around but despite that, he did produce some remarkable work.  “A philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery” or “An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump” are perhaps some of his most famous works.  The above sketch was made after the painting he did of “The Reverend D’Ewes Coke, his wife Hannah and Daniel Parker Coke.”

Copying regularly from the masters can be a whole school of learning unto itself.  I would encourage everyone who loves to draw and paint seriously to follow this practice.

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A sight size sketch of Vanderpoel’s charcoal

The original drawing was done in charcoal.  Mine was done in pencil.  I feel that I drew the hip a little too high on the right side but overall, I’m pleased with this little study.

The illustration was taken from his remarkably useful book: The Human Figure.  I would recommend anyone who is serious about drawing to pick this little gem up.

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A sightsize sketch of Jupiter embraces Io by Corregio

I have always felt that Ingres must have studied this painting before executing his own wonderful masterpiece…I’ll leave you to guess which painting I might be talking about!

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Allegory! A new font by Joseph Dawson.

Allegory, the first of an initial group of fonts that I have designed. It is presently available on fontspace.

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In search of the miraculous

I had just finished reading a collection of short stories by Mark Samuels and though I was able to appreciate them, being fine examples of the weird tradition in the current literature of this kind, I cannot say that I enjoyed them particularly.  Yet threaded throughout were a number of well considered thoughts wonderfully expressed.  One “pseudo excerpt” in particular, the author having attributed it to Thomas De Quincey, is still rattling around my head.  It runs thus:

“We continually regard what is miraculous as merely commonplace by virtue of extreme familiarity.”

In short, for those in search of the miraculous: look no further but rather, Look!

The author is of course concerned with language, something that is suggestive of great mystery; a proof, he says, that this cosmos is not easily explained!  It’s occurred to me that, perhaps coeval to speech, was the desire to make pictures.  Between what is written and what is painted there has always been a relationship; a constant since antiquity if I am not mistaken.   It was in those days the poet who determined in what manner a thing ought to be represented – its secondary detailing and embellishment alone being left to the creative powers of the artist to suggest.

I believe that the concerns of both Artist and Author are closely united.  Each unveils in a manner appropriate to their mode of expression a facet of the common place heightened to the imminence and reality of experience renewed; a peak experience as Colin Wilson terms it, divested from the short sighted preoccupations of immediate physical and emotional concerns.

Words and Pictures help to cultivate our curiosity and wonder without which, the world slips into a boring and benighted procession of catalogued forms pointlessly self repeating.  Not only is our will sapped when an unbalanced view of this kind prevails but we soon find our depth of experience prey to the emptiness of promised novelty and distraction.

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Solitude, Intellectual Honesty and Friendship

Artists need solitude.  Too much time is wasted on the pose, playing the part, attempting to seduce the world at large with a glittering surface.
Solitude is necessary if you wish to cut through the noise of expectation, self image and desire.

An effort must also be made to avoid the false echo of private romance. It may charm but indulging it will only serve to hamper if not entirely prevent the possibility of forming an authentic relationship between the observer and the observed.  In its place we would have every kind of conceptual shackle foisted upon a world that would otherwise freely yield, without coercion, a host of conceptions and ideas, harmonizing the many facets of its own nature to our own level of understanding and ability as painters.

Artists also need one another.  They need friendship.  They need criticism that can be learned from and admiration that strengthens rather than corrupts.  This becomes especially important when one’s work is critiqued as there is no guarantee that it will be assessed by highly competent and constructive critics.  It is more likely that you will be either pointlessly trashed or stupidly celebrated. 

That being said…

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Studio and Paints

  

When not found painting, I’m in my chair reading.  This is the bookish end of my studio and it’s a lovely place to be during a sunny day which is often the case here in Andalusia.

I paint chiefly with filberts (soft bristles, long handles) and favor linen canvasses with a tight weave, though I do enjoy painting on wood as well.

Now, Windsor and Newton produce some fine oil paint but my favorite manufacturers are Old Holland, Rublev and Michael Harding.  Hands down, they produce some of the best paints, mediums and varnishes available.

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Paintings from back in the day

A friend of mine suggested that it would be a good idea to show some of my older pieces feeling that much of what I had painted in the past can still be enjoyed.  So, short of putting everything up I thought a small sample would do.  Here it is.

      

When I painted these, I used quick drying mediums, cotton canvasses and soft flat brushes, building up my paintings in a manner closely resembling that of an Alla prima painter. (Alla prima means “at once”, a painting style that is done in a quickly-executed wet-into-wet fashion for faster results)

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