Month: February 2020

Drawing the Ponte Vecchio, Florence

/ davidrpharmer / 2 Comments
Reference photo with grid

I have used the grid method of transferring an image before, but was reminded of it when I went to the Hockney exhibition at the Lightbox in Woking recently. It is very useful especially when you want to enlarge a picture as I do with this one. This is how my drawing has turned out

Drawing of Ponte Vecchio from the photo

I have now doubled the image size so that it is about the usual size that I paint, ie 30×40 centimetres. I have traced the drawing now and am about to transfer this image to watercolour paper

The nice thing about using this method is that once the grid is in place on both images, then there is very little, if any, measuring to be done. Drawing or copying within each small square is relatively simple, and gives you a check on perspective so very useful for anything architectural

There is no restriction on size so if you wanted to paint a mural and make it ten times or twenty times the photograph, then you could. You can work the other way, of course, and reduce the size of an image too.

I shall paint this when ready and probably use a completely different colourway than shown in the photograph. Not sure what yet, possibly an evening colour, and may even do two different colour ways from the same drawing, which will save me some time

We’ll see how it turns out

David Hockney Exhibition at the Lightbox, Woking

/ davidrpharmer / 3 Comments
David Hockney’s WinterRoad near Kilham

There is a very good exhibition on at the Lightbox in Woking at the moment, entitled David Hockney:His Ways of Working. I hope that I’ve remembered that correctly as I didn’t make a note, although I did manage one or two pictures, shot from the hip, in case I was seen by a wily attendant.

As we know, Hockney throughout his career was fascinated with different media. A superb painter in the traditional sense, not that I liked all of his work, he also embraced new methods of recording art such as ipad drawing, print, fax machine, photography and collage

The exhibition at Woking is not large but it is representative, and as always skillfully displayed. I know the Lightbox is my local art gallery, and it is easy to become partisan, but the Lightbox has come on in leaps and bounds since it was founded both in quality and quantity of local exhibitions

The print shown above for example, is where Hockney utilised his own digital photography and Photoshop, drawing with a stylus on an iPad in front of a computer monitor. As Hockney himself explains “you are drawing directly onto a printing machine. One draws with the colours that a printing machine has, and the printing machine is one that anyone can have.”

Parc des Sources

This is the other painting that intrigued me. Very large for a start and changing the perspective so that the lines of trees met like a triangle. The seated figures are Peter Schlesinger, his lover at the time and Ossie Clark the fashion designer. I think they were having a boy’s weekend in Paris. The empty chair is for him, Hockney. He was standing whilst sketching.

Alongside the painting is Hockney’s drawing showing that he used the grid system for enlarging an image, which is how he produced such a large painting as the one I have shown. Many well-known artists use this system. I do too, but I am not well-known

I am currently using this system to enlarge a small photograph, to twice its size as a drawing, in preparation hopefully for something worth painting. The subject is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. I was there a few years ago and took some reference shots, but haven’t got round to doing a painting yet.

That will probably be the subject of my next blog