Graeme Skinner » Articles

The Truth About Faeries

Graeme — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:38:59 +0000

An exhibition everyone should visit, and here’s why…

The Truth About Faeries from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Lord of the Rings

10th July 2010 to 12th September 2010 – Tullie House Art Gallery, Carlisle

“From the Golden Age of illustration from the 1860s to 1920s up to the present day, this exhibition explores the prevailing interest amongst story tellers, artists, film makers and illustrators in the world of fairies.”

When I first heard about this exhibition my intent had been to visit on day one, real life of course has a way of putting small hurdles in our path which means plans sometimes go out of the window Anyway, today we managed to visit this exhibition, and I’m glad we did. My main reason for visiting had been to see some of Alan Lee’s originals; I’ve been looking at his work in printed form for years but this was my first chance to see an original or two.

We’ve seen quite a few exhibitions at Tullie house now, some of them I had to leave fairly quickly before I fell victim to pretentious-crap-syndrome, that horrible condition where you start to think the artist really did have something in mind when the gathered together a load of old junk and called it art. The Truth About Faeries exhibition makes up for all the bad experiences we’ve had there.

What did surprise me was how some of the paintings affected me, I was looking forward as I’ve said the the Alan Lee originals, what I wasn’t expecting was how Brian Froud’s works would hit me. Staring at Brian’s Green Man and Bluebell Fairy made me realize how far I have to go with a paintbrush, I must admit that looking at Sword by Alan Lee gave me a slight sinking feeling that I’ll never be able to paint moving water in a way that I’ll be happy with now

As much as looking at the delicate works of Brian and Alan made me want to sit down with some watercolours and paint for the rest of the week, looking at The Source of the Anduin by Paul Raymond Gregory made me want to run out and buy some huge canvas and vanish whilst I found part of Middle Earth hidden there. When you enter the gallery to view this exhibition you are greeted by a combination of faeries and green men, turn to your right and look down the length of the room and you are faced with this huge canvas by Paul, it took a fair amount of self control to visit the paintings in turn and not walk straight to this oil painting.

So, why is this a must see exhibition, well really look at the list of exhibitors to start with and then if that does not stir you to action think back to your childhood, did you ever read a Ladybird book, The Elves and the Shoemaker perhaps, well tucked away near the doorway are a small collection of original illustrations from a number of Ladybird books. They are quite simply a delightful glimpse at the art that affected so many of our childhoods.

This is an exhibition we’ll have to visit again, it’s so rare to see art like this in the far North of England that to miss it would be a shame, and once you’ve seen it once you’ll want to visit again

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

More Loneliness

Graeme — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:31:34 +0000

Okay, I had to have another go at the Lonely Mountain, I’m still not convinced about what I’ve done and feel there are parts which are okay and others that are just plain wrong Before I start the next version I may build it in clay to see how it looks in three dimensions, the river is not bubbling enough, it needs some more rocks and life about it. Anyway, this version is done with for now…

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Still Lonely

Graeme — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:43:32 +0000

Yesterday I uploaded the Lonely Mountain sketch here, today after much hair pulling I finished a quick water colour of the mountain.

As the theme I was painting for was cloud orientated the clouds needed to be prominent, sadly my first clouds looked a lot like a load of blobs and held no resemblance to any clouds I’ve ever seen.

My solution was to paint another sky and photoshop it into place, not something I am prone to doing but it saved me painting the whole piece again.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Lonely

Graeme — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:34:59 +0000

When I think of the phrase “head in the clouds” my mind turns to mountains with their tops disappearing into cloud. This afternoon I sat down to sketch a mountain or two with their tops hidden by cloud, but which mountain to sketch…

Okay, the decision was not that hard to make, my mind has been lost in Middle Earth for a few days and so the Lonely Mountain was a fairly obvious choice. The sketch was just supposed to be a rough outline for me to work from in paint, but I was enjoying the sketch process too much that I had to fill the sheet (if you’ve not tried the Derwent Pencils Onyx range you should, they make sketching so easy). Now that I’ve started with this one image of the Lonely Mountain I really want to try it in paint, maybe later.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Stranded

Graeme — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:31:44 +0000

It’s nice to live in a rural location, and it would be hard to imagine living in a town after spending so much time looking out over the green fields of the Eden Valley. However there are times when I question the sanity of it.

As many people will know it snowed recently in many parts of the UK, which is all nice and seasonal; looking out over the snow covered Pennines certainly puts you in the mood for hiding inside by the fire and watching terrible Christmas TV but there are times when it would be nice to get in the car and go for a few essentials. To many people this is a fairly simple task even in winter, because for many people the council have been around and treated their roads with layer after layer of grit. Outside of the UK where people have snow on a regular basis then they know how to handle a bit of snow, either their local authorities clear the roads or they have snow tyres or snow chains on hand. Anyway, back to Cumbria and the lack of action on behalf of Cumbria County Council.

For some reason there is a policy in place within Cumbria County Council which states they’ll clear priority routes first and then secondary routes when they get round to them (I don’t know the wording, I have more interesting things to do with my time other than reading through reams of legal speak from the Council). The upshot of Cumbria County Councils policy is that small roads are ignored; yes, they provided a pile of grit some time ago, but this grit has been subject to weeks of rain which washed half of it away, flattened by farm vehicles, used as a toilet by every passing dog, and finally covered in snow.

This is the view up and down hill from our lane end…

It would not be so bad if you thought the Council were actually trying to deal with the roads and would get round to these little roads eventually, however you only have to read the Council Chiefs comments in the local newspaper “…but also that people moving to rural Cumbria know what they are letting themselves in for.” So essentially everyone that lives out of town should be prepared to look after themselves as the Council don’t want to know – they do want to know of course that we’ll all be paying our taxes to keep them employed, I’m sure if everyone who lived in these rural locations that Cumbria County Council actively ignore decided to withhold their taxes then they would soon notice we existed again. Perhaps that’s the solution, someone should work out how much of our taxes go towards services that we’ll never benefit from in rural locations and we can have a rebate. After all why should I pay for the Council to clear roads if I can never reach them?

Perhaps all the people who live in rural locations in Cumbria should contact Cumbria County Council and ask for the Council Chief who made the above comment to explain themselves, or maybe our local MP’s could spend some time in the area and put some pressure on the Council to actually recognize that routes other than the priority ones may need some attention at times. Oh yes, before anyone says I should grit the road myself, the grit pile is now totally flat, no one is answering at the Council to request more grit (and the last time I spoke to someone, last winter funnily enough, it took two to three months for the grit piles to be replenished).

One quote of a rural resident on the News & Star website regarding the Councils inactivity says it all really “When we complained to the council, they told me we shouldn’t have moved in here if we weren’t going to be able to get out.”

It’s my last rant of the year, honest.

Quotes taken from News & Star
Photographs were of the road between B6412 and Stagstone Road, Penrith.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Changing

Graeme — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:14:10 +0000

The first new growth for 2009 is coming through, it’s a good time of year…

It probably does not mean that too much to the majority of people these days, but looking out of the window I can see the buds developing nicely on the Kilmarnock Willow and the Snowdrops starting to spread beneath the trees.

If we were to go on the astronomical definition, spring starts on the Vernal equinox and ends with the summer solstice (in the Northern hemisphere this equates to 20th March to 22nd June). An astronomical view of season is not a bad one to take when you consider the reason we even have seasons. Thanks to the Earth’s axial tilt (around 23.44° from the orbital plane) half a year we have the Northern hemisphere tilting towards the Sun and for the other half the Southern hemisphere tilts towards the Sun; the transition from one tilt to the other does not happen over night of course and so we get the gradual change from winter to summer via spring and summer to winter via autumn. This is all well and good, knowing that science has defined it so well we can sit back and wait until the 20th March for Spring to drag us out of the winter doldrums. Well maybe not quite

Just because we’ve hit a certain point on the astronomical calendar does not mean that Spring will erupt around us, nor does it mean that plants will sit around waiting for an exact date – for some reason they never look at a calendar before starting to bud or put forth new growth. So how would our ancestors have known Spring was upon us? The Celtic tradition Imbolc is one of the main festive times on the Irish calendar and was celebrated amongst Gaelic & Celtic cultures. Imbolc was either held in early February or the first local sign of spring.

Imbolc is thought to be a forerunner to the American Groundhog Day, as it was often seen as the day when Serpents or Badgers would leave their winter den for the first time. Their is a (Scottish) Gaelic proverb:

Thig an nathair as an toll
La donn Bride,
Ged robh tri traighean dh’ an t-sneachd
Air leachd an lair.

Translates as:
“The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bride,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.”

Which uses the term Day or Bride to bring Brigid (the Gaelic goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft) into the festival and time of year. Brigid is associated with sacred flames, and healing – the lighting of candles and fires at the festival is a celebration of returning warmth and Sun to warm the Earth. In Gaelic folklore we see Imbolc as the day the Cailleach (a divine hag of all things) would gather her firewood for the last days of winter, not wishing to gather firewood in wet and windy weather Cailleach would ensure that Imbolc was a nice sunny day if she intended to gather lots of wood (if she gathered lots of wood she was going to extend winter and delay spring). Therefore many would hope for foul weather on Imbolc to show that Spring was close at hand.

Many people however will use a phenological definition of Spring, when they see certain plants spring to life or animals in the field they’ll know that Spring is upon us. For myself, when I see Snowdrops in the garden I know that we’re not far off the end of winter and better weather is almost upon us.

The etymology of Spring is apt too…
Spring “season following winter,” 1547, earlier springing time, (1387), spring-time (1495), spring of the year (1530), which had replaced O.E. Lent by late 14c. From spring (v.); the notion is of the “spring of the year,” when plants “spring up” (cf. spring of the leaf, 1538). Other Gmc. languages tend to take words for “fore” or “early” as their roots for the season name, cf. Dan. voraar, Du. voorjaar, lit. “fore-year;” Ger. Frühling, from M.H.G. vrueje “early.” In 15c., the season also was prime-temps, after O.Fr. prin tans, tamps prim (Fr. printemps, which replaced primevère 16c. as the common word for spring), from L. tempus primum, lit. “first time, first season.” Spring fever was O.E. lenctenadle; first record of spring cleaning is in 1857 (in ancient Persia, the first month, corresponding to March-April, was Adukanaiša, which apparently means “Irrigation-Canal-Cleaning Month;” Kent, p.167). Spring chicken “small roasting chicken” (usually 11 to 14 weeks) is recorded from 1780; transf. sense of “young person” first recorded 1906. Spring training first attested 1897. (from Etymology Online)

Well, we’ve Snowdrops in the garden and the Willow is budding nicely, for me I know Spring is just around the corner

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Getting Lost

Graeme — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:18:51 +0000

I’ve been planning a painting, and it’s driving me mad!

First of all I had a problem with perspective, basic perspective is fine but this was something else. Lines going away, lines going down, lines going off at 45 degree… it’s all too much for someone with a brain that’s never been upgraded from version 1.1 beta So, I tried using Google Sketchup, but it was too slow for complex layouts; my usual route of mocking the layout up in 3DS Max was no longer available to me so I sat down and sketched, and sketched, and sketched a bit more. Lines went everywhere and none of them looked right, so I went to have a look at the Autodesk website (they produce 3DS Max) that option was certainly out, unless someone wants to send me near £3K for the full version. In the end I downloaded a trial version of the software which lasts for a month so I could mock up the scene.

Once the mockup was completed in Max I made a tiled printout of the scene (I was planning on painting the scene just over A2 in size); then I cut and pasted the sheets together, which was another stumbling block as the sheets had not all printed out the same size for some reason. Now all the pieces are together I started to transfer the lines that had caused so much hassle onto a sketch, I think I’ve been working at the scene too long as once I started transferring the lines I no longer wanted to finish it Rather than give up I tried sketching another part of the painting, this did not help. My inspiration had fled leaving me somewhat blank, I’ve put the whole piece to one side now, it’ll not work when I’m not into the painting.

I’m not totally lost though, I started a smaller piece just to keep me ticking over

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Time for a dragon (I)

Graeme — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:25:21 +0000

I’m starting on a few days/weeks of drawing and painting dragons; I like dragons, well as long as they’re not sitting in the garden trying to burn down the house. Anyway, I’ve read the required manual on dragon creation (Forging Dragons, by John Howe) and I have scribbled in the margin of a few pages so I am fully prepared for dragon creation

There are a couple of reasons that I want to paint my dragon, first of all there is the theme of the month to work on over at John Howe’s website and then there is a dragon to draw for the logo of La Communauté Fantastique. I’ll post the sketches and work in progress pictures when I have some.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

My Mind’s Eye

Graeme — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:01:39 +0000

This is a poem my Mam wrote when my Grandfather had Alzheimer’s.

My Mind’s Eye
I see a shuffling, unsteady confused old man wandering along corridors towards locked doors.

In my mind’s eye,
I see a straight back,
strong legs striding through woods, along fields,
wind on his face, his dog running beside him.

I see thin, clutching hands constantly searching for ‘jobs to do’.

In my mind’s eye,
I see strong hands sawing heaps of logs to warm us all on a winter’s night.
I see careful hands, mending broken toys.
I see gentle hands, stroking, stroking his beloved dog’s head.

I hear mixed up, disjointed words and sentences, in a muttered and mumbled tone.

In my mind’s eye,
I hear the strong, tuneful voice as he ings in the choir,
or recites a poem, remembered from a long ago school day.

I see the blank look, the uncomprehending stare,
as his family visit, longing for any sign,
a sign that he knows and remembers us.

In my mind’s eye,
I see a family man,
proud, in his own quiet way of all of us,
loving, in a way that his generation often did, without words.

I thank god for my mind’s eye.
For its ability to remind me of a different Dad,
A Dad not lost to us forever in this living hell they label Alzheimer’s.

poem by Mary Skinner

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Trying hard

Graeme — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:50:50 +0000

I’m not an artist, that’s not to say I don’t keep trying. Recently I’ve been reading Dante’s Inferno in order to illustrate a couple of scenes from it- it’s all the fault of the Theme of the Month over at john-howe.com and consequently I’ve been having visions of hell wherever I look.

The trouble is my studies, or rather the amount of time I now have to study in. For quite a few years at work there was enough time to study in through the week which meant when I came home I could do whatever I wanted to. Now at work I’m considerably busier than this time last year, add to that the amount of studying I have to do has increased means that my days are virtually restricted to nothing else but study study study. This would be fine if I did not want to do anything else, or if the studying was to enable me to get a better job, but that’s not the case. Studying was something to keep the grey matter ticking over on subjects that interested me. This years course can have me pouring over an equation for an hour or two, and at the end I still don’t really know or care why I’ve been trying to decipher it.

For a couple of weeks it’s not been too bad, but there have been definite signs that it’s not doing me any good; stress levels have been rising steadily, and time to do anything other than study has been decreasing steadily. So it comes down to this, do I want to kill myself trying to study, or do I want to spend my time doing something I actually want to do? Bit of a no brainer really. I’m now taking a study break in order to concentrate on painting, and perhaps writing something – all for fun of course. I decided two days ago to stop trying to study, and since then I’ve sketched quite a bit, read a book or two, and generally enjoyed myself. It’s a pity I still have to pay for my course, but hey, that’s life. I will return to the study books, but not for a while.

So now I want to learn how to be an artist, any helpers want to lend a helping hand

Bookmark It

Hide Sites