Some progress made but I need to darken the hair and refine the face, it needs to be pinker and the eyes aren’t right yet.
Category: Portraiture
ISTANBUL
Visiting Istanbul with a camera has been one of the most rewarding experiences for me. I have been establishing which kind of images I really want to capture and have come to the conclusion that although the architecture is of course sublime, it is the people that have drawn me in.
Here are a few of my favourite scenes, some may inspire me to write stories others are simply enough in themselves.
Visiting South Wales
I had the pleasure of accompanying Sally Moore to the opening of her latest exhibition in the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff last Thursday. An exhibition of just 16 intensely worked paintings, tremendously detailed and full of dark humour and reflections on the absurdities of life. I loved Sally’s self-portrait version of a Vermeer – already sold.
We stayed in Barry Island and enjoyed walking around the area and despite the poor weather, I was inspired to record some of the absurdities of Barry Island life.
A crop of some wild, persistent and fantastically yellow flowers made a striking foreground for the pewter coloured lowering sky and the old brick chimney stack.
The local council dilligently sweeps the beach each morning with a tractor leaving an array of textures in the damp sand, overwritten gradually through the day by the imprints of birds feet, dog paws and footsteps. The rows of sweeping are so regular, the patterns recalling those of cable knit jumpers.
This poor forgotten boat seems to have become a victim of its own name.
On Sunday in Swansea, the weather was at its Welsh best, not so “Flaming June” more of a flaming nuisance. Fine and very wet rain blew horizontally across the bay all day misting up the windows.
The Photograph of Peter c. 1938
I had meant to post the photograph which inspired me to paint the watercolour of my uncle, who sadly I never met, or if i did meet him I was to young to be cognisant of the fact. Here in this tiny black and white poor quality print, he sits in the back of a boat perhaps somewhere off the devon coast with my mother and an unidentified relative.
Portraits of Peter
I have been looking through all the versions I have made of this watercolour painting, of course I wasn’t organised enough to date them as I made them but they are roughly in the correct order below.
There is one more day left to either frame this most recent one or paint yet another version before I deliver it for a competition.
The first four are mere practice versions, testing out technique, paper quality and colours. The nose looks very frostbitten in the first one.
I think on balance the most recent one has in it that I am happy with than any of the others, it feels like I made a big leap forward in the last two or three versions, I felt I knew the contours and how to handle the paint the way I wanted. I tried a faint wash over all the background in No. 8 but decided I preferred the cream paper left alone in No. 9, although I have lost the bright edge to show the sunlight falling on the top of the hat. I think I might just add a little more shading to the lower lip and try to define the tip of the nose better.
I have enjoyed doing these paintings so much, I don’t think I will mind when I receive my inevitable letter of rejection! It’s all about the doing not the winning. . .
Sally Wakelin - Studies in Creativity 
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