Autumn approaches

It seems that autumn is on its way.

 There's a chill in the air in the morning and sunsets are creeping earlier too. Rowans are red with berries and our beech tree's deep green leaves are fading to a yellowy ochre.

Up in the woods the fruiting bodies of fungi are pushing themselves up through the ground and through the bark of trees. Chestnuts are growing in their thorny cases along with beech mast and ripening hazelnuts. In the patchy heathland of Covert Wood common heather is flushed pink creating a hazy carpet through the woodland floor while the floating seeds of rosebay willowherb drift across your path. I enjoy this time of year, the late summer and early autumn, where the autumn colours are on their way and you can go out blackberrying. 

I headed up to Covert Wood to try and photograph the heathland at sunset. I had hoped that the sun would fall nicely on the heather creating a warm backlight however the surrounding trees meant almost all the heathland was in shadow. I saw a small path of heather behind a pair of trees caught in the sunlight, the only patch I could see, and ran over to photograph it. I only managed one photograph before that too was in the shadow of the trees.

After what had been a cloudy overcast day it turned into a pretty sunset. Later on, once dark, glow-worms would be lighting the track back to the car from the woodland edges. But there's something about the noises in a woodland at night that spooks my mum so we headed back before it got dark.

Picking paintbrushes

So this week I thought I would talk a little about paintbrushes: what I use to paint with as well as bit of the ethics of paintbrushes.. yes it is something to bare in mind if you are concerned with animal welfare and easily overlooked.

For painting there's a pretty simple rule to follow: larger brushes for larger areas, smaller brushes for finer details. Obviously it is quicker to fill in large expanses of canvas with a larger brush, which can hold more paint, than use a small brush that's better suited to finer mark-making.

I have brushes that I use that were acquired when I was in art college about 9 years ago that are still good to use. These are larger brushes that see less demanding use than my small brushes which need to be replaced fairly often as they start to fray.

If there is one type of brush I would recommend it would be a fan brush (see above). These are made for blending and create softer-looking areas which works fantastically for creating softer 'out of focus' backgrounds and helps bring your subject more sharply into view because of the contrast.

A note on animal welfare. 

Many art paintbrushes that are suited to oil points are made with animal hair. Hogs' hair is commonly used for large art brushes as well as for DIY and seems to be a by-product of the meat industry or can be harvested in some cases(unfortunately it's not that clear). This may be an issue to people, such as vegans, who do not want to use animal products at all. I do have hogs' bristle brushes from college but now the uncertain nature of their origin would mean I would be reluctant to buy them in future.

More of an issue for me as an animal painter are the finer detail brushes. Many are products from fur-trapping and fur-farming, a practise that I personally am not okay with. Animal hair such as sable and kolinsky sable comes from martens and weasels so it is important to check your brushes if you don't want to accidentally purchase an animal hair paintbrush. 

There is an alternative in the form of synthetic brushes. I always make sure to use these  brushes although as they are plastic-based they are more quickly eroded through the mediums used for oil painting. Currently I use the synthetic Pro Arte brushes and have just picked up an acrylix one to try out.

Please don't think that this is a blog post where I tell you what you should do though. Ethics are a personal thing and people have their own priorities and reasoning; but awareness is different. I think it is important to be aware of the circumstances around what you are buying as a lot of information simply isn't readily available when you are buying products, from chocolate to paintbrushes and much more. I just hope this makes you more aware of the surrounding issues so that you are able to make an informed choice.

Childhood art

"Yes, that looks.. great," my mum said to my 5-year old self as she blu-tacked a scribble to the wall.

It probably didn't though.

I recently sorted through my old school work, all the way back until I must have been about 4 years old and even I can't tell what some of my pictures were of. I did get better pretty quickly and I think the spurt of improvement during my early years and the praise helped me continue to draw and be creative where so many children give up on their drawings and paintings; which I feel is a real shame.

As kids we grow at different rates and the art-related 'parts' of my brain just happened to kick in earlier than average so I was seen as quite 'talented'. Personally I don't believe in that, practise has had the biggest impact my far on my artwork, which came about as I enjoyed being creative and people praising my artwork. I think that if most children carried on in the same way they would be just as good.

There are elements of art that can be taught to do with colour mixing, perspective, composition, and history but the vast majority of the learning is not something that can be taught but only learned within through experience and self-criticism. Probably far more than most other pastimes.

I thought I'd share some of the early work. It is interesting that I was drawing pets even back then, although I was really into cartoons then so a lot were very anthropomorphic and I wrote a lot of little stories and comic strips involving characters I created.

Here are a couple of cartoon versions of two of our family pets, Holly (the labrador) and Oscar (my cat).  I did a lot of cartoon-like pictures and used to type up stories about characters I made up on an old typewritter and illustrate, like the one below.

This is the earliest, and strangely enough the most traditional, drawing I found (I even dated it). This of one of my grandparent's dogs Toby in their garden. They had a 1/2 acre of land which they largely used to grow crops and I remember always running around in all that space. 

For comparison here's a more recent pet portrait from a few years ago, also of a Jack Russell:

My point is that it was only through practise that I got any better and I don't think there's any secret to artwork that anyone can tell you, nor do I think 'innate talent' is important or even true. I have had people ask me in the past for some art tips. Obviously there's a method I use to get from A to B based on how the medium works (especially oils) but other than that it's just personal taste and practise.

Give it a try and a year from now have a look at your artwork and you'll probably see a vast improvement.

As they say: 

Practise makes perfect.

I'm still practising.

Wasps!

It's getting to late summer now and we'll soon be at the time of year where wasps can really make their presence known at your picnic. Until now it seems like there aren't many around and now they seem out to pester you as you sit eating an ice-cream.

Of course, they have been around, it's just that they seem more common. Perhaps its best to have a look and see why this is the case and understand the wasp a little better too.

It is generally only two species of the social wasps (Vespinae) that cause us grief: the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and the German wasp (Vespula germanica). These can be aggressive and may sting you should you attempt to shoo them away from your sarnie. The other social wasp species generally will only sting if disturbing their nests. 

The Common wasp can be identified by a black anchor-shaped face marking where as the German wasp has three small black dots.

In early spring the queen wasps emerges and builds a small nest and lay eggs. From this the first of the workers emerge. All workers are sterile females, in fact the sting is a modified ovipositor (used for laying eggs) which is why only females can sting and male drones are stingless.

Wasps actually provide important pest control to gardeners as well as acting as pollinators. As adults they will catch insect prey that includes caterpillars and aphids with which to feed their carnivorous larvae. The adults themselves have a sweet-tooth feeding on pollen, nectar, and a sweet excretion provided by their larvae.

During this time you may see wasps at your fences or shed walls as they collect thin strips of wood to build their nests with.

Its only in the latter stages of the wasp's life cycle that they become a nuisance. Towards the end of the year the queen stops laying eggs that produce sterile workers and instead lays the few that will become new queens and drones that will mate and then the new queens will begin the cycle anew the following year. Less larvae to be fed in the nest means less food for the workers as there's little larvae around to produce the sugary secretion. Instead they will seek out other sources of sugar and starch such as apples or perhaps your ice lolly.

Weekend woodland walks

.. now that's a lot of 'W's!

This weekend the weather was looking particularly good so we (my mum and I) took the dogs and visited a couple of woodlands local to us.

First we visited Covert Wood, a stone's throw away from where I live in Barham. With the willowherb and fleabane out in full flower it was a great time to look for woodland butterflies along the rides. Peacocks and tortoiseshells were plentiful and must have relatively recently emerged there colours were so vivid. Amongst them were gatekeepers, meadow browns, and ringlets, and the odd red admiral. 

As we walked along the devil's bit scabious, its flowers 'ripening' like a bunch of grapes, we caught a glimpse of black and white, almost like a white line in flight. It was a white admiral, a specialist woodland butterfly. These large butterflies are strong fliers and usually spend there time high up in the canopy but come down occasionally where you can see their colouring; black with a large white bar running across both wings and its underside a beautiful chestnut with white patterning. Their caterpillars rely on honeysuckle as a food plant although I've never been able to see one.

A little further on we saw another woodland specialist, one of the fritillary butterflies, the Silver-washed fritillary. This is a bright orange butterfly with numerous black lines, spots, and crescent markings. The male has noticeabley long dark scent scales (sex brand) used during courtship. When the wings are closed you can see the pale, almost greenish, wash of colour on the lower wing that gives the species its name. This was only the briefest of glimpses before it sped of round and high into the sweet chestnut canopy.

The next day we headed to Yockletts bank. A site well known for its orchids but at this time of year only the Broad-leaved helleborine remained in flower, the rest of the orchids having already gone over.

In the open glades of the woodland bees and butterflies were busy on the wild thyme and knapweed. Whilst in the shade of the woodland under the impressive beech trees the lords-and-ladies (Arum maculatum) were ripe with scarlet berries, a sign of the approaching autumn along with the ripening hazel nuts.

A couple of buzzards made themselves known with their mewling call and lazily soared just above the tree tops. A feather lay near a tree from where one took flight. I'm not an expert in ID but its broadness and barring suggests it is buzzard to me. A good reminder of our woodland walks.