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By Heather, on September 8th, 2009
My bodyclock still hasn’t caught up with my course, so I’m still feeling very tired. I’ve been working on my project all day today, and I’ve got a few great ideas for a couple of the projects. However, I’ll hold back on them until I’ve done the pieces, and then I can tell the stories behind them. They are great stories – part of the folklore of my home that I’d completely forgotten about.
So for tonight, I will show you the first experimental piece that I worked on in day one of my course. I’d forgotten about it until my tutor mentioned it today, so I brought it home and will be adding it to my sketchbook.
By Heather, on September 7th, 2009
Today, I was working on lino prints, which was pretty cool, but sore on the forefinger! I managed to make a print of Newark Castle, which stands on the banks of the River Clyde just 2 miles from where I was brought up. I haven’t got the work to show you as it is on the wall at college.
This afternoon was life drawing…AND we had a nude model! I was told by my painting tutor that because there are people under the age of 18 years old in the class that we wouldn’t get nude drawing, but we did! I was painting my skeleton that I started last week, and I saw the model. I thought he would be clothed, but no, he stood up and removed his housecoat to reveal nakedness. I was really pleased, and I think we all were. The model was in his fifties but he had a fantastic body to draw from. So our job today was to fit the body over the skeleton we had drawn. I was really pleased with how I did, and my tutor said I’d done a great job, so that made me feel really happy, and confident! Our tutor is so encouraging to everyone in the class. That makes a huge difference. He focuses on the positive, giving gentle nudges where he thinks you could make improvements. Although, he cracks me up because he can’t say skeleton. It’s a skellington! It gives me the gigglies but he can be forgiven because he’s such a lovely little guy.
I was exhausted when I got home. Direct observation really takes it out of you, and there’s all that standing at the easel. My arm feels like it’s going to fall off, but thankfully we get a break in between poses, as the poses are generally half an hour long.
So, I had to come home and work on my ‘My Space’ project. I have to do 10 images in total by next week, and I’ve managed to get 7 done already, so I’m not doing too badly.
The first was an image of crayons that I stuck onto my page, then I marked out some swings on them in pen. I then drew on some oil pastel and added Quink ink and allowed it to dry. I finished it off by painting the swings using white acrylic.
The next piece I painted in acrylics. It’s a self portrait in a Picassoesque style. I like how it’s turned out. I sketched it this morning while sitting in the college canteen before the start of class. When I came home I blocked in the background colour using Cerulean Blue, then scumbled on Phthalo Blue. I then worked on the individual elements by blocking in each colour then blending them. My only disappointment is that acrylics dry far too quickly and I couldn’t achieve the blending result I was looking for, but you have to make do with what you’ve got.
So, tomorrow I should be working on my Painting project. I still haven’t decided on a theme but I’ll decide tomorrow. For now, it’s bedtime!
By Heather, on September 6th, 2009
Ok, so today didn’t go according to plan. I intended on spending the whole day working on my next project and I failed. My young cousin Stacey is up from Port Glasgow with her baby daughter. She’d been staying at my dad’s for the past few days, and my dad forgot to tell me! So I had to go see them both. I have always adored my little cousin. I used to babysit her when she was young, and she would come stay with me when she was older and I had my own house. They go home tomorrow. It’s just a shame I didn’t know they were here earlier!
Anyway, I was out all day, we all went shopping. This meant that I didn’t get much work done but I don’t get to see my family often, so I think I can be forgiven.
I started working on the My Space project tonight. I’ve already said that this project would be about my inner child, and my tutor suggested that I do some self portraits. She said that I should look at artists like Picasso, Munch, Marc Chagall, Ernst Kirchner and Matisse for inspiration. So I was looking through Picasso and Portraiture by William Rubin and found some absolutely fantastic paintings and drawings – I’m a huge fan of Picasso’s work. I did a self portrait based on Picasso’s Sculptured Head. His drawing was done in charcoal, but I used a graphite stick instead. I was intrigued by the shapes and the play of light on his drawing, so thought I’d have a bash at something similar. It was a great exercise in shading, and I’m quite pleased with how it came out. It’s a fairly strange looking piece, but then isn’t most of Picasso’s work!
By Heather, on September 5th, 2009
I’ve been ransacking the internet for inspiration. I don’t want to stick to one style for my sketchbook, and there’s only so much you can do with Quink, glue, and bleach.
My gouache paint arrived this morning, so I thought I’d try something my tutor mentioned. I was to draw in shapes with charcoal, then fill in the shapes with gouache. Once that was dry, I was to cover the painting in Indian ink and allow that to dry also. Then I was to run it under water. All of which I duly did. The idea was that when you run it under water the ink would wash away leaving fragments of the paint showing through and also the charcoal. It didn’t turn out as I expected. In fact, very little washed off. There had been waves, lots of line and fish, albeit very abstract, but very little can be seen. So that was slightly disappointing. You can’t really see the colour in the photograph, but the colour that remains is quite nice.
The next painting I did was fairly expressive. I created an image of the sea with swirling waves. This was fairly simple. I just used black, titanium white, and Prussian blue gouache paint for this piece. It took me about half an hour to complete. I quite like this one, as it is more my style.
My final piece today, is of the Waverley Boat. The Waverley is the world’s last sea-going paddle steamer, which was built on the Clyde, and was named after Walter Scott’s eponymous novel. It sails around the West Coast of Scotland, the Bristol Channel, the Thames in London and the Irish Sea on day excursions. The Waverley is very distinctive looking and is famous for its black, white and red funnels.  I remember it, as a child, going up the Clyde on Fair Saturday, which is during the Fair holidays (or trade holidays). It was always jumping with people on Fair Saturday and while standing up to several streets from the shoreline, you could hear the music blasting from it. It was one of those things were everyone booked a trip on it on this particular day. Nearly everyone I knew went on it. However, my family was too poor to afford to go on the day trip, as it was quite expensive, so we just had to make do with watching it from the house, or from the beach. It was always a beautiful sight to see it sailing up and down the river, which is still does every Fair weekend.
Anyway, I decided that I would paint the most distinctive part of the boat – its funnels. Well, one of its funnels. I cut out an image of a heraldic crest, and glued it onto the page. I then painted over it with the colours of the funnel. I wanted it to be quite bold, even though I particularly dislike the three colours together, but I was trying to make it stand out. Now, the colours look really washed out and dull in the photograph because the light was quite poor. They are much more vivid on the page, and the white is actually white, not the yellowish colour here.
 Tomorrow I’ll be working on one of my other projects – My Space.
By Heather, on September 4th, 2009
I mentioned last night that I was working on something for my ‘Coast’ project. I decided to interpret the theme Coast as ‘West Coast of Scotland’ – my home – and particularly the River Clyde. Well I put a couple of pieces in my sketchbook for you to see.
There is a story behind these photographs and painting. The town where I was born and grew up, is situated on the River Clyde, which had one of the largest shipping industries in the world. It was famous for James Watt’s steam engine, the building of the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, the QE2 and the Royal Yacht Britannia. The Waverley, which is the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world, was also built there. It was also one of the most important rivers for shipping and trade through the British Empire. The Clyde was not navigable for the largest ocean going ships trying to get to Glasgow, therefore they emptied their cargo at Greenock and Port Glasgow, which is pretty much the Tail of the Bank. Trade came to and fro the Americas, Jamaica, the Indies and other such places. Latterly, Her Majesty’s Naval Base and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot became, and still are, based at Faslane and Coulport – both on the Clyde, which also houses the United Kingdom’s Trident-armed nuclear submarine force. There is a long and rich history there.
Port Glasgow is my home town. It looks over towards Helensburgh, and further down towards Faslane, Coulport, and in the backdrop, the Lomond Hills. You can access the the Highlands and Islands from ferry terminals a few miles down the road from my home.
I lived practically on the beach of the Clyde. It was my playground. When you look at the river, especially at low tide, you can see the mudflats and sandbanks. There are quite a number of them. When I was 1 year old, there was a boat called the Captayannis, which was waiting to enter James Watt Dock with a sugar cargo one evening. She was dragging her anchor in bad weather and hit a BP tanker. The tanker was also at anchor, and it holed the Captayannis, causing the intake of water. The captain tried to take shelter but realised it was taking in water too quickly and so he headed for the shallower waters and sandbank. The boat hit it hard and started to keel over and by morning the ship was completely on its side. No one died.
I’ve grown up with this wreck just off the shore of the Clyde, but it has always been known to us as the Sugar Boat. It has never been removed. There were plans to blow it up, but it has become a bird sanctuary, and there were fears of driving the bird population away, so there it remains. During the Fyfe Regatta, the yachts navigate around this wreck, sailing very closely to it, with many strange looks from foreigners but it has become part of our local heritage.
I decided that I would base my first piece on this, since it happened not long after I was born. The first image has a picture of the boat in full working order, followed by the story of its capsize. The painting is that of the boat today. I used candle wax, oil pastels, acrylics, drawing ink and bleach. I also added a little barnacle and other shellfish, which I got from a card-making kit.
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About Heather 
I'm a student artist, and have just finished my first year at college. I work in all areas of art, specialising in abstract fine art, but I love experimentation and am willing to try new techniques and style. Follow me on my journey, as I progress through my studies.
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