Mr Nail

spot on! theres a couple of litres at the bottom of an empty tank, thats why i giggle when people think that running the tank low will suck in crap, the pickups always in the crap zone so makes no odds where the top surface of the fuel is

you may find that a bottle of meths from the chemist( or the next isle in frauds) is cheaper thats a tip from some of the guys on here and on 2cvgb

a pint now thats a challenge for the next international who can drink enough to stop an idling deuch with an open filler neck

once pissed into a genny at a meet cause the incosiderate fellow wouldnt switch it off and had it runnng all night ....actually thinking about it, a stream of electrolyte loaded water aimed at 240v not the brightest thing ive done

Sean

Well it's been a miserable day so far weather wise which has prompted me to put the heating on and stop indoors so far. The postman called with my high level brake light so pretty soon I'll let you know how effective that is once installed. As it was so dull today I decided to make a start on that painting in the style of Alexandar Millar. Here are the stages I've done so far with a little explanatory text.



First up, you'll notice that most modern painters including Millar paint on a white ground and not the grey toned one that I used for the previous painting. This is a white ground I'm using by the way, it's just so bloody dull outside that it looks grey. The technical reason for a white ground is to ensure the luminosity of colours, as oil paint darkens over time and the white ground is said to counteract this. Modern painters know this, so they use a white ground - and then they paint on it so thickly that any beneficial effect from the white ground is completely lost!



Using a photo of a 2cv for reference I begin to mark out in charcoal the rough positioning of where I want the image to be. I'm using a canvas panel, as the panel offers more rigidity than would stretched canvas, which will hopefully prevent the thick paint from cracking due to movement.

The first image shows how I began, the second one above shows the reference picture included. I use charcoal for this stage as I haven't done any preliminary drawings for this painting which Alex Millar would have done, and charcoal can be easily wiped off if a mistake is made in the drawing.



As I begin to draw in the 2cv I find that the angle of the one in my reference photo isn't quite what I want, so I adapt my drawing a little to turn the car around slightly. Exact representation isn't an issue here anyway so I'm happy to do that, note also on the picture where I have made an initial placement mark much higher than the car, and an 'I' shaped one to the left of it. The scrunched up kitchen roll is my eraser!



This is the part where I really begin to wing it! I imagine what a roof rack might look like on this car and then draw it on, complete with an imaginary suitcase or old trunk, a box, and a beach-ball. I put those in because I have decided that the theme of this painting will be 'setting off on holiday'. The case just reaches up to my estimated placement mark. I also wanted to add a splash of colour, hence the beach ball, as Millar uses quite a restricted palette of colours which tend toward the cool.



I discovered when researching Millar that he actually employs a model to dress up in a baggy suit in order to pose for the figure in his paintings, I was quite surprised at that because they are usually the most vague of forms at best. In the photo above you can see that as this will be a Millar style painting, I've included a similar type of figure. This is positioned where the markings were made earlier, and will be lighter and more faded than the car, thus making him appear further away. That's the easy bit, what I'm wondering now is how to make him appear to be wearing a beret and smoking a fag!

So that's it, 30 mins in we're ready for paint. I told you this modern painting technique malarky was quick and easy didn't I? You might have noticed that on the last photo the sun has come out, so it's time to nip to Halfords and maybe fit my rear brake light. I'll pick up the brushes tomorrow and continue with this demo using the same materials and techniques used by Alexander Millar.

James, should O-N find something 'unusual' in his tank, the task will then be to identify what it is. I'm sure he'd send you a sample if you agree to taste - sorry, test - it for him.

Sean, the image of you trying to piss faster than the speed of electricity has made me have to clean my keyboard again.

Old Nail - your lessons as so clear and easy to follow that I've managed the first two steps.

ill pass.

James I once drank a pint of piss at a rugby do, it was either that or stand on a table and sing mate - and believe this, me drinking the piss was better for all concerned.



Are you having a go at it DA? Good on yer!

That abysmal singing contest program is on in the front room which has driven me out of there to post a bit more.
Earlier this evening while there was still enough daylight I did the first wash-in with paint, I'll describe what I've done after the photo.



Using the two colours that Alexander Millar uses for his first wash in (which are raw umber and cobalt blue) I first delineated over the charcoal drawing with raw umber thinned out with turpentine. This was handled quite loosely and fluidly as detail doesn't figure much in this type of painting. Rather than the careful depiction of detail as was the case before, this type of work depends entirely on the suggestion of detail. Any attempt to carefully 'draw' in things here would be counterproductive.

Ordinarily the artist would also have done much more preliminary work then I have here, at the very least he would have done a few sketches in order to play around with the basic composition and to settle on the pattern of light and shade within the picture.

As I didn't do those preliminaries because I'm a lazy git, one of the first things we now need to know is 'where is the light coming from? On the answer to this question hangs the whole appearance of your finished painting so make no mistake this is a biggie. If you look at my 2cv reference photo in the post above you will see that it has a flat, even lighting - the worst possible for 3-dimensional effect! I need to decide where the sun would be in relation to my objects because only then can I start to imagine where the shadows would fall. The choices of direction are directly above, above left, above right, up-lit, backlit, side or frontal, with degrees anywhere in between.

I settle on the light coming from above left around 11 O'clock-ish and indicate the areas of shadow to correspond with that. I very quickly rough in the Frenchman, (can you tell he's French yet?) and put in one of Millars 'Gadgie' characters as the driver of the 2cv (although he's difficult to see at the moment you may just make out his right ear). Ok, so now using a large brush and mixture of cobalt blue and white thinned out with turps I loosely brush in the background. I emphasise loosley for two reasons, firstly the visible brush strokes don't matter - Millar works hard to keep them, and secondly I will be going over this area again so no need to have it perfect.

Notice that I've stopped short of the brown bits, that's because the raw umber is also still wet and I don't want to pick any up on my brush otherwise it will mix with the cobalt blue and produce a muddy, greyish brown. I do as much as I can safely without picking up any brown and leave it to dry overnight, this way the colours will stay clear.

OOh i hate those 80s/ 90s new glasgow boys

was a conteporary of them and spent time with Howeson, cant stand Stephen Campbells work it was all styalised concepts and very little skill theirs was a very fast climb to the top, mostly fuelled by speculative money from a few NY galleries, their fall from grace was spectacular and thay seem to have suffered huge personal issues

Sean

I hear that Sean, Howson's work only appeals inasmuch as he has trodden a similar path to myself and seems to have inherited similar demons.

As for the money aspect of it all, well just look at the guy I'm talking about now. Hit on a subject, do variations on the same theme until your eyes bleed - then retire. The only practitioners of painting to make any money these days are those that pander to the whims of the moment.

I'm not bitter by the way, honest I'm not.

Seems to be the case with many people who suddenly get picked up, fawned over, generally have their egos wanked by mega-monied patrons with short attention spans... and then get cast aside. Brutal... and not exactly the fault of the artist.
The epithet "the new rock and roll" really does apply to all the bizarre hyper-inflated artworld shenanigans, and brings to mind what Pete Townsend (at least I think it was Pete Townsend) said many years ago, when he described the music business as being like a never ending line of people queuing up to throw themselves on a bonfire.

Quite so.

Interestingly, the people to make the least amount of money from paintings are the ones that actually paint them. They are way behind the dealers, auction houses, and if my experience is anything to go by - ice cream sellers in the worlds galleries.

Eric Hebborn was a decent enough artist that ended up a forger. When he was caught he did time for it, but the number of forgeries that he had sold to national galleries in NY and elsewhere was never revealed, simply because they had paid big money for them and didn't want to-

A: Admit they had been fooled.

B; Give up a work 'valued' at XXXX million dollars by exposing it as a fake.

The worlds galleries are full of modern fakes such is the perversity of the dealers, money matters more than art, art has become the servant of money. No wonder we artists occasionally bite back.

I'm a lover of cartoons, and satirical drawings in particular. My favourites are the drawings of Hogarth:
and Ronald Searle (the genius who invented St Trinians, Molesworth, etc). Here's my favourite, which for me sums up the work life/home life contradiction that many of us have to face at some point in our lives.