Oil Painting 10 - Gapstow Bridge over the Pond, Central Park

This site was a private commission, for friends who got engaged on Gapstow Bridge. The Pond is lovely, full of terrapins and surrounded by greenery, the park holds back a wall of old buildings and is one of the most recognisable views of New York. 

To see old, attractive skyscrapers like this is a delight because Britain never built as high as this during this period. Art deco buildings set off newer glass buildings and this mix is pleasing. 

The design of Central Park works very well, with the sudden change from Manhattan’s grid format; the curvy paths are disorientating, meandering and this encourages relaxation. During the time of producing this piece we staged an impromptu painting class with some friends that had flown over to visit, and we achieved an enjoyable sense of escapism from a potentially intense citybreak.

I condensed the view slightly to bring the bridge into the same image, which leaves people at the very left hand side looking at the view with us. 

This painting has been left in a looser state than the majority from this trip as it reached an unexpected state of satisfaction for me, after two short sessions. I had been looking at the landscapes of Paul Cezanne in the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have been enjoying how he can summarise the majority of a landscape in a patchwork of patterned brushstrokes, and only give a different treatment to the point of focus. I am attempting a similar treatment with this piece, directing our eyes quickly past all the framing foliage of the park by representing it with broad repetitous pattern, and holding our interest in the very different, vertical treatment of the city and pond.

Oil painting 9 - Grand Central Terminal, New York

For the first few days in New York City, we walked around everywhere from the East Village to Central Park in order to get a sense of possible locations around Manhattan. This was the first location I settled upon, celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2013. 

People are constantly streaming in and out of the station and it was exciting to be walking down 42nd Street with all the office workers at 9am, comparing my career to theirs.

The usual iconic view of Grand Central is from the inside and the spectacular main concourse. This outsider’s view, in a smoking area for office workers, is full of movement and colour, points of focus and different height levels. 

Working within the tall avenues of skyscrapers meant their shadows were constantly shifting with the sun tracking round,  giving short windows of opportunity to paint each section in full light. While the sun was on my side of the street I painted the people and yellow taxis in the foreground, then as it shifted over I’d paint the light first catching the station. 

Using an Indian yellow for the first time worked well with the reflected sunlight of the golden stonework of Grand Central Terminal. 

This was the first time we had moved paintings around using public transport as we had been in walking distance before. I learned to position myself in the centre of bendy busses, a dead zone that gave me storage. 

The Vegas Sketches

Las Vegas Sketch 1 - The Strip

We were only going to be based in this wonderland for 2 days and 3 nights, and so time constraints meant I switched to sketching and watercolours in order to capture and experience more of the fabulous Las Vegas. It also meant it was easier to produce work inside the casinos, cocktail bars and cafes, and work done outside in the extreme desert heat could be compiled quicker.

I first learnt to paint with watercolours, sat alongside my grandmother, Mary Pointon, who ran a watercolour group in Caverswall, Staffordshire and studied under Potteries artist Reginald Haggar.

So here's the first Las Vegas sketch, produced in a bar that overlooks the Bellagio, but i was facing more towards the Cosmopolitan. I wanted a view of the traffic continuously queuing through this heart of the strip. The bar had some shade, misters and kindly kept me hydrated with water but still the desert sun at 42 degrees made it difficult work, I was working through sunglasses because the reflection off the white paper was so bright, and I was beading sweat in no time. I am quite pleased with the results though, having not used the medium for so long, I think this method of colouring a pencil sketch is a good method of capturing the subjects and communicating the information whilst building up my skills with watercolours.

Las Vegas Sketch 2 - Starbucks, Las Vegas

After retreating from the desert sun, I was hunting good subjects in shaded or air conditioned space, and found this great moment of silhouetted people overlooking a good view onto the main strip of Planet Hollywood and the Paris casinos (complete with fake Eiffel Tower).

The medium of watercolour really came into its own with this piece, I knew the subject was mainly the people and had limited time with them so, just drew and painted them until they moved, and then worked up the background. This is the opposite way of working to oils with which I only get chance to define people at the very late stages of a painting when the background has been developed.

Las Vegas Sketch 3 - Karen at the Bellagio

Of course, this body of work demands some interiors of the gaming halls in casinos. This is a view of Karen playing the machine on the bar inside the Bellagio after we had watched the famous evening fountain display. The Bellagio was our favourite casino somehow retaining an air of class in amongst the funfair. There were piano and double bass musicians playing within earshot, along with the clicks of poker chips. I like the macabre feeling to this drawing, Karen's incidental pose of the hand supporting the face, makes a great reflection on the casino experience. I am very pleased with this composition and subject, I feel it would make a great painting or series of works should the opportunity arise in the future. For now though, due to time constraints, it remains a light pencil study.

Las Vegas Sketch 4 - 'New York, New York' Casino

We stepped inside the plastic version of New York before our visit to the real thing. I wanted to represent the glowing lights of the endless rows of slot machines that make up all the casinos gaming halls. The darkness in these halls  that are shut off from the outside world and time, when you know just how bright the sun is shining outside i found unnerving, as a guy that spends a lot of time studying light cycles. Still they are a spectacle, like no other, and worthy of a visit.

I was up against it with my choice of medium trying to get glowing lights in a dark space using pastel watercolours and starting on a white background but I think the result has captured something. I used conte crayon over the watercolour and pencil which added some needed harsh contrast. The sitters on the machine in the foreground left so I asked Karen to model in their place. Whilst modelling she put a dollar in the machine and won a $34 jackpot!

Las Vegas Sketch 5 - Fremont Street

Fremont street is the downtown edgy little brother of the uptown Vegas strip. It is where we stayed and enjoyed the buzzing nightlife. This sketch is of a magician performing in the daytime. I was sat in a bar overlooking and witnessed his act 5 times over and think I have figured out all his secrets!

Next stop New York!

San Francisco - Las Vegas Road trip

We hired a car and drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas, the drive was one of the most spectacular road trips I have done, stopping off in Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite National Park. Here are some of our photographs ...

Oil Painting 8 - Pool in the Napa Valley

We drove from San Francisco to Napa Valley expecting to produce one image of a vineyard, however, on arrival at our 'garden' accommodation I was more taken with the pool as a subject. After a few weeks of urban subject matter in San Francisco I knew a water study in a private space would be relaxing and link back to our previous life aboard a boat -

This is the first swimming pool I have tackled and I would like to do more in the future. Of course, any attempt to paint a swimming pool in California, and you need to be prepared for the shadow of the great pool paintings of David Hockney.

David Hockney. British, born in 1937 Portrait of an Artist ( Pool with Two Figures) 1972

The challenge with this piece was speed of execution, we were only at the hotel for one night, so this was begun at 3pm for about 4 hours into the evening and finished the following morning between 9am and 1pm thanks to the understanding hotel owners who let me continue despite having checked out.

The main problem with this, is the dramatic shift in light half way through. What was spotlit by evening sun was completely in shade by morning and vice versa.

I worked into a Venetian red base in this painting which sped up the process. With an attractive mid-tone you are then painting what matters rather than filling the white of a blank canvas.

Oil Painting 7 - Happy Donut Cafe

I was aware a lot of my takes on San Francisco had been big, large vistas and I wanted to start a piece that gave more day to day intimacy, that reflected the immensely rich cafe culture, and that was an interior that involved some human interaction. The Happy Donut Cafe, a 24hr budget coffee shop and bakery kindly allowed access and so we started our very own window display of painting Karen whilst she worked on the laptop plied with beakers of coffee. I liked the vantage point of being lower down than pavement level so the pedestrians strutting past would tower over us.

The American cafe paintings of Edward Hopper and his uses of the compositional device of a window in separating two worlds were a major influence on this piece.

Edward Hopper - A room in Brooklyn 1932

Sketching with the San Francisco Sketchers at the Merola Opera Program inside Yerba Bueno Gardens

A friend recommended the 'Meetup' website for activities in New York. The website looks like it could be a very useful tool for very quickly meeting some of the active local art community in foreign destinations. I joined the SF Sketchers group and requested to come along to this meeting, sketching a superb open air opera performance in Yerbs Bueno Gardens.