Frances Bell UNDRAPED

okay so when you decided to go study at Florence Academy then um how did your parents respond to that because at that point you're obviously taking it pretty seriously yeah uh Charles Cecil because there'll be a minor Schism if I say it was a Florence Academy it was Charles Cecil so I apologize I I don't I don't know the whole Italian set up there [Music] Francis Bell welcome to the undraped artist podcast thanks for having me Jeff yeah it's my pleasure and it was great to meet you at the porch Society I wish we could have spent a little more time together I know so many people I really just I felt like I met a fraction of all of the nice people I could have met but that's the power of that conference isn't it there's so many people see yeah it's unbelievable and congrats on your award too you're painting was really incredible in fact I'm gonna I don't typically do this but I'm gonna start actually by showing people the painting that won you an award and remind us the award that you won the second and placed painting and that called it a portrait painter's painter because that man is Andrew festing who isn't as well known in the states as he is over here in the UK but he's a really wonderful Portrait Painter very well known over the last well 50 years or so in his 80s now it doesn't actually live very far from here I'm not in London I'm in the northeast of England near the Scottish border and he is also in Northumberland so I I sort of yeah because he was so nearby the world was kind of hibernating to go and speak to him obviously he was happy to have me and we did all the covert stuff and and um I got him for about two or three days and he's just the most interesting man because he's had this extraordinary career very very unlike a modern portrait painter's experience and so that was what was so interesting about talking to him and as I did I painted him and I actually took a friend of mine with me as well called Phil Wilkinson who made a little film of it so um trying to put a little bit down on the record on him because he's a typical 81 year old he doesn't like technology he hasn't taken very good foot of his work no kidding that's one of the reasons why actually he's not better known is that he's not very digitalized no kidding what a waste maybe I need to get him on the show although he may not understand the technology to do what we're doing right now or what would you say I have to I think I'd have to go and do it with him we'll have to talk about that because he sounds really interesting um but he doesn't even look 81 he looks I would have guessed like 60 in your painting it's that mean of hair isn't it yeah it's incredible it's a gorgeous painting I mean it was one of my favorites in the show no doubt I absolutely love it so congrats to your success because I think this was your first time even applying um I've done a couple I've actually now been lucky very lucky with the portrait society and I've had a first prize a third prize and a second prize so it's my oh uh I think I want to say fourth year oh my gosh I didn't even know no kidding congrats the first one was the lockdown year which disappeared and then it actually became the following year and then last year I went to Atlanta that's it and um got a third prize and so this year was the second prize so now I've got I'm sorry I missed you last year I mean of course I missed you during covet but I didn't I missed you last year well that's unfortunate well I'm great I'm glad we finally got together and we got to talk this is great so we're gonna let's back up a little bit now that we've talked about your painting tell me a little bit about your story how did you get into painting and well tell me a little bit about your childhood and how you ended up being interested in this and got into it it's a bit of a tangential move from my childhood I had a lovely childhood but it was quite kind of wordsworthy and Countryside type of childhood where I did a lot of rolling through the fields and not very much culture so it's not completely obvious that I would have got into art except that my mum is an artist and she does dry media mainly pastels and pencils and stuff and she went to art school but then she got married really really young and that was kind of that so we grew up really very outdoorsy um active really sporty kids and so the whole really dedicated interest in painting wasn't really in the stars at all but I really did have wonderfully supportive parents so when I met a good friend from home who had been to Charles Cecil I ended up speaking to her and looking at her folder of work and I would have been about 60 or 15 or something and I just thought that's ideal that's exactly what I want and there was nothing like that in Britain then it was very cool trendy Brit art kind of Tracy Eamon Damien Hurst I don't know if they've traveled the Atlantic but very trendy um conceptual and installation work and it really had more or less monopolies monopolized our educational art scene so if I try to find anything in the UK it would have been quite difficult just then so this place in Florence you know pre-internet you can just Google everything wasn't pre-internet but I mean no one really was using it um so honestly without this friend I don't know if I'd have ever heard of Charles Cecil in fact I'm sure I wouldn't have given how unconnected to the art World We Were and so luckily that was just a lucky bounce for me that I had a mate who was there so I went to have a look at it I thought perfect who wouldn't want to be in Florence anyway training there and um I set off when I was 18 to do three years at Charles Cecil okay and I I don't I see I'm so rude and I'm not politically correct at all so tell me about what the what date that was I'm just curious about what year that was that you went there I went in 2001. okay and left it for so so you've been done for 20 years almost now you've been doing this for 20 years professionally I'm 40 at the weekend Oh happy birthday yeah thank you so okay but as a child did you did you draw at all I mean you must have known you had some Talent it was quite late though I mean I was frustrated draftsman I would draw something and immediately be furious because I wasn't doing it how I wanted to and I was that sort of angry child and like well that's hopeless I hate that and throw it away and rip it off that kind of thing um I did have a really good art teacher at school who was very supportive again a lot more conceptual a lot less support for the traditional representative side of the art Spectrum you were encouraged to express yourself by sort of throwing things against walls and stuff like that which was fine he was very very keen on us being passionate about it though so I'm very grateful to him but I would have been really nascent interest in art was about 14. wow as I say we were we were Keen my brother actually I remember him winning art prizes when he was young but there wasn't there wasn't a lot of it in our water we were just we were much more of an outdoor sort but yeah I had an interest but I wouldn't put it more strongly than that okay so when you decided to go study at Florence Academy then um how did your parents respond to that because at that point you're obviously taking it pretty seriously yeah uh Charles Cecil because there'll be a minor Schism if I say it was a Florence Academy it was Charles Cecil so I apologize I I don't I don't know the whole Italian setup there so Charles Cecil is his own thing yeah yeah yes and Dan Graves is the Florence Academy that's right forgive me all the people in Florence I can't keep I got that wrong okay so Charles Cecil yeah no they were they were freaking out I remember my dad just reminding me that I wouldn't have any private means and that this was an incredibly risky financial decision and they were going to be really supportive but that this really had to go well um otherwise you know or else kind of thing um but I did I had their full support and I mean crucially as I'm sure you speak to a lot of people who didn't have this luxury I left without any debt you know they paid for me to go so I was very very fortunate and they were they were fantastic but they were really worried I mean this is just the most financially unsound set of decisions for a person um there was a certain amount of panic but actually a huge amount of of support so I'm very grateful to them okay so then what happens after you're done with Charles Cecil where'd you go well I did go back and teach every summer for about six or seven years at Charles Cecil and I started doing commissions and yeah though it was really fairly um un lucrative say least but I started very modestly nice people people who were friends charging virtually nothing um doing some pretty dodgy stuff I should think and just very very slowly beginning to understand the commission environment versus the studio environment which is quite it's a different sort of a thing you have a lot more control you have time and Leisure to pursue a project possibly for weeks you are suddenly in a commission environment where people have a matter of days to give you um you suddenly confronting the reality of having to use photographs for things that aren't important like clothes and you know so it was a very steep learning curve but I'm very grateful to those early patrons because it's a bit of a roll of the dice okay I want to come back to this but you know now you got me curious so maybe you could educate me a little bit about what the difference in your mind is between your education and what um Charles Cecil teaches and what obviously you didn't attend the Florence Academy what you perceived at Florence Academy to teach and why did you choose Charles Cecil what did he have to offer that really um in reverse order I chose Charles Cecil because it was as simple as having a point of contact there okay um as a teenager seeing it really liking it and thinking that's that's great okay um was I aware as fully as I ought to have been of the Florence Academy no um I didn't go shopping in that way I didn't go and look at all of the schools in Florence because there's also the angel Academy too so there were three that I would have known of and um and so on to the differences Charles has um possibly more happy to be contradicted by any Florence Academy die hard but possibly more of a focus on everything being a life-size we don't do bar drawings and um it's more life-size so we don't do apart from in the figure room much under life scale so I think the education was very heavy on endlessly doing very strictly site-sized heads right those were loads and loads whereas I see out of Thrones Academy I see more variety and that's obviously a plus for them but in my case I didn't actually mind that that we were very rigorous on life-size ads the repetition of that um endlessly and obviously larger projects you would do three quarter lengths and full lengths and things as you got going um the only underlive size things that we ever did was need to use and that was three hours a day um and and the rest of it was all life-size I think that's probably the major difference um philosophically I don't think there's much of one I think they stem very much from the same route and I've noticed I was looking at some of your drawings they're absolutely brilliant beautiful the gesture in your drawing and everything is gorgeous I'm curious what the approach to drawing was with uh Charles Cecil well um yeah I mean all of it was was very strictly site-sized so we had oh it was yeah yeah no we were always on a very very strict literally down the ear um you would spend 10 minutes kicking your easel so precisely and into place um every morning and so the the rigor on shapes was out of 110 all of the time um and the same would be for I mean for anything and the only time we weren't on life scale side size was in in the figure room okay so you would have your easel like right next to the model and then you back up because I never did site size so this is this is all a little bit unfamiliar to me so you have your you must have had your easel right next to the model and then you'd back up in order to get life size absolutely yeah no you you're two people per model usually in a portrait sense so you would have an easel on each side and it would you would be able to cite if you were to go alongside your canvas and look down the surface of it right into the ear of your model and what would count in Charles's version of site size would be anywhere where that scale locked in on the head um but you yeah right so then you're stepping back three meters probably more if you're lucky if you've got enough space and then you'll remembering what you see from back there keeping it in mind not looking up close really you might do a bit but not really remembering what you've done and then marching up to the canvas putting your brush down your mark down whatever and then retreating again so the whole thing is a memory trick from three meters back to represent what you've remembered from back there on the canvas so yeah you're doing that I can check it check if you remember correctly so what about when you get into value do you back your easel away at that point and start working from further back or do you still work from memory once you start rendering yeah and this is where there's so many different ways of describing the process but I have noticed that it's there's a sort of Atlantic difference uh when you say value do you you mean like the tones like the lights and darks right oh okay um yeah all of that from from up from the that original position oh I mean this is our day this is what we were taught in school now I think of site size as an exceptionally useful tool that can occasionally be um loosened uh or dispensed with entirely but in terms of the training the whole thing every almost Stitch of it um is done from that position and therein I think lies a slight weakness I mean there would be times when for example this is just one example but um Jamie routley and I were actually discovering discussing this at the conference when we were talking about our training there are times when you would paint in a very sharp side light so your model would be lit dramatically from the side so obviously that meant that your canvas was set up such that light was raking across it at this extreme angle so you basically didn't have much light on your on your work right and you work away for three weeks and then turn it round and see the mess that you had you know um because you had you had got on with it in that way and you know such was this the strictness of of being always side-sized that there were occasional uh issues like that yeah so the whole thing was done totally strictly along those sides lines yeah and then but now you're doing more complex stuff I mean you're doing multi-figure portraits you're doing portraits where you clearly if you do life-size you can't be next to the model because it's full length so tell me about how your process has evolved from that I described earlier how different it is to be in a commission environment yeah that's one of the things the the forces that starts pushing on you quite quickly when you leave and the other thing that is an influence is a desire to paint a greater variety of poses of positions to for example paint down onto the floor can't side-size that unless you have an extraordinary room um and a sort of weird stuff you have to hover above again [Laughter] um so this immediately Temptations start appearing where you don't want to be restrained entirely by this incredibly helpful I've never disowned it I've always said site sizes really one of the most incredible tools but it is like any tool it can be a bit of a tyrant if you're not willing to be very flexible so I very quickly started to break a few rules and that's fine I I think that this is the optimistic view there will be people who disagree but this is my view if you use it well in your training and you really do in a very disciplinarian way repeat your lessons with site size again and again we have three years you know however long you train for you are then hopefully robust enough with your proportions and your tendency to get scale roughly right and to break it from time to time and then possibly a lot and go out and use it as a tool rather than be committed to it as a kind of marriage and I think that is my view so I frequently don't site size now in fact I didn't even think about it there are times when I automatically find I'm side sizing away and then there are other times for instance I just painted and went to London to do a few commission starts and they were little children and I you know you don't really want to set them up in that way where they feel that you're wrong weirdly staring at them and they're up there on a pedestal it's best just here into the corner and not be there you're going to get a better you know so there's just so many reasons why in the real world faced with a number of different challenges you might decide not to use it and yeah so as you say multi-figures um different angles all of that stuff you find in Fairly short order that it's actually less useful than other things yeah yeah um so tell me about color in in Charles Cecil's school what did you learn about that part in your mind yeah I hope I won't be excommunicated for saying this but it wasn't very important Charles um color so he had this primary interest and you know if you would speak to him now I think he would say this that your values your tones as Brits would say that's the primary thing always never any point in thinking about color as a fundamental principle you might consider it later on but not really so everything I've learned about color um again very grateful for my training it was amazing but that's largely been a sort of post-educational interest um done it on my own I've done it on the hoof I haven't really ever gone into the science of it I don't think about it much it's instinctive thing um as for that's probably a difference you know between Dan Graves and the Florence Academy and Charles maybe they spend more time on color yeah so what is so where have you come in in that let me rephrase that so I mean so what are your feelings about color now I think most realists would agree that value is more important than color even a colorist would agree with that but then a colorist still really is interested in color on top of value so where do you lie on that now how how important is color in your work I think it's very important as long as it doesn't bully the values um or start replacing them um you know Sergeant called himself an impressionist but it's it's interesting how he always had his colors exactly under his Boot and yeah the values worked as well so if you can strike some happy balance between values and color that's great it's really hard though my personal view is that I inherited unsurprisingly a limited palette from Charles Cecil I mean literally what was on it Ivory black over million probably possibly an aliccerin if you were feeling incredibly Reckless okay okay white and then the exciting thing would be an ultramarine blue they were what people call them all the Zorn palette that um which is always odd because he seemed to have other things on there but what Loosely is called the Zorn palette that's what we had okay so what about you now well I'm looking over I've got the black I've got an ultramarine blue and a Listerine of a million ocher two Naples oh no sorry um yeah two Naples yellows are dark and a light uh White um a cadmium yellow and a Cerulean wow you are really Reckless yeah yeah [Laughter] with some greens which were just too much for me I have like 28 colors on my palette you you'd be so ashamed people always talk to me knowingly about color and I have to pretend I know what they mean it's it's quite it's quite limited yeah so I see other people's palettes and I see what a busy palette looks like and that is that's not what I have but um you know I think it is rather personal isn't it people go online yeah so yeah okay so when you left um Charles Cecil and you said that there were obviously some major um I don't know how you put it roadblocks some major hurdles some changes you had to adapt to can you talk a little bit more about that what it what that transition was like from going from student to professional yeah I think it's always bumpy because the hard realities of life really do come at you quite quickly everything from you know you have to pay tax um you have to suddenly communicate with people properly you have to be a professional you have to have a mobile Studio you have to figure that out you know what does that involve um you take a lot of time because you've just left school and you you aren't very quick yet and that's a bit Rocky and you know here's hoping you have some nice kind clients to start you off um I still very very very much depended on paintings from life and again for those of you who are younger Millennials it's impossible to imagine this but if you wanted to take photographs of things to cut Corners I would have thought of it then you know like um clothing or a hand or something it was a really agonizing business involving a really crappy digital camera that took Pauling pictures and you then had to actually go to a place and get them developed into you know it was just so it creaked and groaned My Method and it was laborious difficult and um I was actually I have to say very happy in my work I was loving it I always liked commissions I still do I love them now because you get to meet these amazing people and it's so fun you get to try people's lives on and and get to move into their world so it's really it's an incredible privilege but there's no question it wasn't exactly as smooth professional thing it took years for me to you know know what I was doing and how to do all that stuff it was yeah so I'd say what was that 2004 I do about nine months of that and then go back and teach again for a month or three months depending on what's going on and then back again to commissions and it just proceeded like that until uh 2012 I I got married in 2011 had my first child in 2012 and then another in 2014. so in that period we had a financial crash and that knocked me off the rails completely I just wasn't at all established enough to withstand that kind of economic turbulence um but by 2012 after I had my first child I was working quite hard actually that was that was the beginning of really regular work yeah so it had taken eight years wow yeah it's funny you mentioned the the recession because I started my career in 2002. which was a recession I don't know if that one was as much worldwide but at least here um and then I it's had a similar experience it was like oh my gosh the timing couldn't be worse it's like I literally leave school and there's a recession waiting for me fortunately things worked out okay but by 2008 I was um a little more established so I was able to ride it out but yeah but yeah so I yeah those recessions are can be scary for artists because we're a luxury you know a luxury item yeah there's nothingness I mean as much as I think art is the Pinnacle expression of a civilization there isn't actually in in the day-to-day moment for any one family anything necessary about painting unfortunately no so I I feel for people now I mean I'm not sure what it's like in the States but uh we've got what we're calling a cost of living crisis over here I'm not sure if it's the same wording over there but um people are struggling yeah so I feel that I've done it myself and it's it's really hard yeah so how did you find your first commissions when you got out of school do you know I wasn't nervous it's quite a slow burn I've never been nervous I get nervous about sort of short things like things that happened very quickly and like public speaking or something like that but I actually quite enjoyed it I enjoyed the interactions I didn't always enjoy the struggle because it is quite hard work you've got to really work at those likenesses and you've got to involve and this is another difference between education and commissions you are to a greater or lesser extent collaborating with another person about this picture or maybe two people or maybe even three and they are hugely invested in that person they may be married to them or they may be their parent or something and suddenly their opinion really matters and you know you've never had to think about that before you've just been thinking about chefs likenesses and there's a nose in the right place and all that kind of thing and then suddenly you are in a Thicket with parental emotions spouse emote it's it's quite dense territory um I have to say though on balance I quite like that in fact to this day then now and always the one that's a bit freaky is the institutional commission where no one really cares really that's been your experience what about the model doesn't the model care yeah a bit but you know I've only had a couple of these mainly yeah everyone cares but there's something rather Eerie about I don't know a person who's just the painting's never going to be involved with them it's just going in the boardroom yeah right right okay um as I say that's really really infrequent mostly people do care yeah yeah I just finished one and the client did care but the commissioner didn't right I think that's the difference it's like they care but does it really matter because they're not the one flipping the bill right the institution is just has to be happy um of course yeah of course it's nice to make the person in the painting happy too but yeah um funny that because I I've just done one and the people paying for it is a college and the guy I'm painting is he's amazing um he's he won the Nobel Prize and so I've really enjoyed painting him and he's fascinating and uh he cares and I spoke to him and his daughter and then the college I suddenly realized I hadn't involved them at all oh no kidding and I you know because I'd been they had more or less said that was fine but I I had said I'll liaise with this guy right direct and you know I'll let you know how I get on and I sent it through in the end and um they were happy but I tend to always Focus my interest on the person sitting and a few loved ones quite near to them because I reckon they're going to give me really good feedback but it is different for everybody on on how they go about it [Music] do you have any uh you know obviously you have to be sensitive to your clients but do you have any interesting experiences unusual experiences with portrait commissions that you could share yeah I don't know actually how you've got to be careful obviously yeah I mean nothing's springing out of the of the kind of wow that was an extraordinary experience Bank um I think if you can well yeah this is again this is so individual each artist is so different but I do involve them I take them with me they can see the beginning they can see the messy but you know the chaos at the beginning I don't mind that at all they can look at the lay-in and the madness and I will say to them if something occurs to you then tell me I'm not saying I'm going to you know leap to your demands and do exactly what you just suggested but it's certainly interesting to me um because these are people who love these guys setting for me you know and they've known them for all their lives possibly it could be incredibly deep relationship and they might as very often has actually been the case I don't know about you but the loved one the the near the you know spouse or whatever the the child will provide that little tiny puzzle piece that you didn't think you even needed but they've just said it and you think God yeah that's there's much more human now now that you said that so I mean you know speaking of you know Andrew fasting I don't think he did as much of that you know we're talking about this with him um but there are lots of people who do lots of people who don't so I don't think there's any sort of universal wisdom there at all but I do actually quite like hearing what people think um the only thing I've read is when a sort of 55 person WhatsApp group has set up and um then you're going to get far too much opinion oh yeah so you just say a couple of people just you know not too many uh and with any luck they will give you thoughtful considered feedback but now I'm really boringly I don't have any kind of hilarious anecdotes no it's okay it's okay I mean I I think of I the one of the funniest that I've had not funniest it was awesome but um a lot of times I feel like the client is really nervous at that ugly stage in the painting where they're like you know you put in five strokes and they're like why does it look like me yet I'm like because it's five Strokes right and then but this one painting I did years ago every time the client she was probably in her 70s sweet lady every time she'd come behind the canvas she she'd be like I'm exquisite or oh my gosh you've made me look so Regal or and and she's just like she was so good for my ego it could have been a mess and she's just loved it it was like I've never had a client like her she was just the most positive person I've ever worked with it was a trip oh well yeah that's go forth and multiply that lady that's um no seriously yeah she was great um so so you work I'm getting that you still work mostly from life now then yeah um it's a rule of thirds I'd say about a third from Life a third from reference photos and then a third without anything and um that bit's quite a big third actually that last part so at that point they um they'll be in a studio which is this shed here or I'll move them around the house or you know I like to see them in lots of different light I like to yeah I like to leave them up and out of the way somewhere and all the paintings not not them not the subject yeah yeah okay I'm like why are you moving the subject around you're like let's go outside it's cloudy we'll see what you look like in the cloudy day okay I'm not the sadist that would be awful um the the paintings they tend to then go on little field trips around the house just to see how in different circumstances and I might work on them under artificial light or under natural light just to make sure that they are communicating fairly consistently across a number of environments um but yeah no I do work from life I think it's still the best advice anyone could ever be given as a painter so I try to keep that up I certainly and this is rather heartbreaking because as I'm sure you can imagine the posthumous portrait thing comes up and I'm sure it does for you too and I almost always say no to those because I just know I'm not going to produce the right thing for something so incredibly uh deeply emotional for the people and so I I don't really do that but that's because I know that they're from Life bit is really really important well not to mention you didn't get to take the photos even if you did work from photos yeah yeah yeah yeah no I always reject those two which I always feel bad but they're just too much not too much there's so many emotions writing on it too and it's it's a it's really difficult thing to say no to but I I don't do yeah yes so tell me a little bit about that process the one third one third one third process um what do you do from Life what do you do from photos what do you do for imagination and and how and what's the order in that process usually a straightforward one two three start with from Life um that's something about laying in blank canvas going to a rough head uh the kind of thing that um those guys are doing in the portrait society that very quick work that you are you all doing at various stages um less finished than that it's not for sure it's really just foundational time from life it would be amazing if you also got another sitting at the end of the process in the from imagination part but chances are it's going to be difficult unless geographically they're near here which is online clean so let's assume they're not I'd hope to get somewhere around 10 hours on a good day with them so I've made a really nice one day oh okay a break no God they'd be yeah they'd die so it's broken up into whatever they can manage and it might as much as that but it should be something around there um then so you do that over whatever period of time you get them for then off it comes and it dries and I then will start thinking with my reference photos about everything else and at that stage at that very first stage there might be a bit of a hand there'll be a body and and outline of where everything is so compositionally it's all looking quite sensible but it will be very rough and mostly just the head so everything else is just kind of suggested with a kind of Mucky brush I mean it's really not important for me at that point then I take it away home here look at my photos and start building that point and lots of layers of I would start thinking about my colors uh start thinking about um where emphasis is going to be what I want to lose what I want to keep how is it going to look lifelike where is the movement coming from it's very important to me that people look like they are about to do something um in the process of something so I start thinking about that um and intermingled with the sort of Latter half of that second bit from reference photos I'll start doing quite large chunks without the reference photos at all to try and make it so that it lives a bit on its own hard to explain what you're really doing there okay before you go with this because I I want to try and keep an order I've got questions about that I've read the first part still so when you're working from life well you said that when you take it home and back to your studio and you're done you've got that 10 hours done you start thinking about color I was under the assumption that that was the whole point in working from life is to see the color or is there something else you're looking for when you work from life [Music] this color is there I could show you one um the color is there but I'm not I think this might be a Charles Cecil hangover I am thinking about shapes tones values and color as a sort of also ran it's not a major feature yet and almost certainly going to disappear and I'll refine my views on the color as it goes along I mean to the extent I should correct myself on one thing I'm thinking about color when I'm setting up a picture so they're not just sitting there in any old t-shirt you know I will have thought about you know whether this is going to have a dark background or a light background So to that extent I'm thinking about color in the beginning but I'm not obsessing over it in any way at all that's all going to come later what about flesh tones are you thinking about flesh tones in that first 10 hours yeah yeah I can show you this is it's not going to help you is it if I don't know it would be great I think people would love to see I certainly would these are much less time because they're very small children but I got there's a little okay yeah we got a pretty good shot of that very pixelated hang on yeah but I think we get the idea it probably looks better on my side than yours so that was for somebody who's five I really was happy that he sat there for two hours so that's two hours there and that is obviously a lot less than the ideal 10 but again he's five right right I've got obviously dark hair I've got his his uh pinkish cheeks and yes a warm ear but a lot of that's gonna change I say it might be that we have discovered a fundamental difference between ourselves so when you what are you doing and you're laying in face then you you're thinking about it I mean if I'm well for a long time for many years as my audience already knows because I've mentioned this a few times but I did everything from life like religiously um but the reason I ask is simply because I'm curious because now I do Implement photography some and um my instincts whether wrong or right are that photography seems like a good tool for drawing where working from life seems like the place to learn about sensitivity and subtle color shifts or even value shifts um so I would yeah so I would yeah I would lean more on drawing in with the photo getting a good likeness from the photo and getting good color from the from life so that's what I was curious that's why I was curious about that yeah I think we have an upside down approach yeah so I would I would go the other direction I'm going to get what I think of as fundamental blocks of proportion um quite rough not quite as rough as that but again when they're young it tends to be a bit more rushed and then um you take that away and then build obviously you might need to iron out the odd thing on proportions but then you build from there and color comes with the layering up of paint as I go along when you're working taking photos and Imagination that's when the color comes in so you must be drawing on past experience then just drawing on your knowledge of seeing so many faces and seeing that particular face back to why you don't do posthumous portraits yeah I a big reason for me is that if I haven't seen it and if I haven't drawn it from Life painted it from life then it's just not in there um yeah I can't resurrect any of those memories I can't reconstruct in my mind I can't do any of that stuff and I think we're very influenced by what we have seen and drawn from life there's a kind of bedding in that happens in the brain and that's not happening if you're just looking at photos it's just it's not there so yeah if I'm going along and I discover that I'm giving this person far too much I don't know that they're coming out to Olive looking or to kind of oakery then I will just know that I'm wandering off the path because it will I will remember what they were like and um the photos are always crab I mean I I just have iPhone photos they're not you're shooting with an iPhone really yeah I'm just snapping away like there's nothing I don't use photos I don't go with a proper camera and do it and so I'm I'm using quite a lot of my memory interwoven with all of this um and so yeah another backup for that argument is that I don't tend to have very good recall if I were to leave that little boy um it's got a sister too there are twins if I were to leave him six months and come back to him then having not looked or thought about him in the meantime a hell of a lot of that would have dripped out and I would I would be really struggling to recollect him um so I tend to paint them in within a six months period as well so that I have recall okay yeah I don't think our process actually is upside down I mean or opposite because considering you're working from a iPhone camera it would be completely irrational since it's a wide angle lens to try and get a like Miss from that it makes perfect sense to me that you're working those things out from the model and then using your memory of that experience to work out the color now that I know that yeah that's probably a cleaner way of putting it yeah yeah um yeah I think that's right no the iPhone photos are almost uniquely bad on color actually aren't they yeah they tend to exaggerate it I mean they it's it gets totally over done blown out not blown out that's the wrong word but exaggerated yeah it's it's a very odd thing you get but it's a reminder and that's what I need and I'm not going to be able to I don't have photographic memory or anything extraordinary like that so I'm not going to be able to remember enough anything like enough without those references in the time that's realistic especially with something that's you know somebody who's young like that five-year-old um so yeah there's a lot of memory in there but don't you think that's sort of everybody I think everyone I think so well anyone that works from life even in part you have to I think you have to have some level you have to depend somewhat on memory because even if the model sitting in front of you for the entire time um most professionals are talking to the model the model is not perfectly still I mean I was watching some of your videos on your channel and they were time lapse and it was it's always fun to watch those because you well for me it just is always a reminder of just how much the model changes because when they're time lapse it the models just like bouncing all around and you see how much they're changing as you're drawing so you really have to you really have to work from memory you kind of have to freeze them in a particular spot that looks right to you that you like and then keep on working from that position that's I think that's also the the truest dilemma of a commission painter especially is you have to talk to these people I mean very young children take them out of it but anyone else you've got to see these people animated and immediately into a problem with painting from life because they're all over the place so you're doing flexible interpretation as part of your from life Discovery process anyway and the fundamentals that are going down are vary from li-fi you know you're going to have little areas everywhere because you at no point let that person sit still so I mean I'd read a pause a silence in the studio when there's a model in there when I've got a client because I mean that really suggests that they are now settling into that static kind of TV watching face that happens people sit quietly in a darkened room and yeah I don't want that it's funny you should say that because for so many years while I was working only from life I got this same unsolicited suggestion over and over and over again because I would be doing like lots of children you know from life and um occasionally I would be like oh my gosh that was brutal and um someone would say why don't you put them in front of a TV as though that never occurred to me right I'm like gosh that's brilliant why didn't I think of that but then but the reality is you can't put them in front of TV because you just said it they'll get that TV face that terrible TV face where they look like they're sort of like half dead half alive not totally conscious you know I do use iPads now I have to say a bit full structure but it's vital that you get um you get to look at them talk to them play with them and again I I will involve the parents um because they know their children inside out obviously um and you hope that they'll give you something but it is that's the tightrope walk if ever there was one anything under the age of eight but it is fun and they are hilarious and adorable so yes it's enjoyable I had to cut my teeth on my own children who um yeah I've got one who'll sit perfectly and then another one who won't yeah yeah my children tortured me too it was tough but good memories at the time once I painted my daughter and I was literally almost in tears she was seven and I was begging her to just just not just walk away exactly it wasn't moving it was just like don't walk away don't bend down and tie your shoes don't pick your nose don't you know like it's like is it still only means have your bum on the chair exactly I said my friend where I had Hugh and he's meant to be sitting on a chair and his feet were over the back of the chair and his head is bottom of the chair he was like I am within the rules there is nothing you could say to me I am sitting there that's what he said that's good you said that was your kid yeah yeah see that only happens with your own kid because other people's kids are maybe they're too afraid of you or too respectable respectful of strangers but your own kids man they really push it they push the limits yeah so what so what is your favorite thing to paint or what type of client is your favorite to paint you've already said that you don't do a lot of official portraits is it families is it individuals is it children I actually really really profoundly like the mix so I would be much less happy if I were to get stuck on um I don't know uh yeah yeah I he went through a spell where this exactly happened to me just by the law of sod's law I had um a month where everyone was male and in their 70s and or two months even and honestly by the end of it I was just like you know what I'm fed up with gray hair and these lovely looking men available and I really wanted to paint them but they all came thick and fast in one bulky group and that that would be true of any group so I I like a real mix and I'm lucky that in general there is a mix there are a few institutions there are families there are celebrations of Life celebrations of anniversaries and you know moments that the Rites of Passage that people have um I had a really nice run of teenage boys recently that's a nice rather lovely tender time that I don't always see a lot of and so that's been really enjoyable and I've got um I've actually got a little rash of teenage a set of grandchildren who are all between the ages of 12 and 21. at the moment and that's that's amazing so you know if you can have variety I suspect that's great for me um I could always do with more variety in every possible Direction but I basically think I'm fairly lucky I don't just do Professor I don't just do children I seem to have a nice mix yeah and long may that continue yeah in fact let's uh now that you see that let's actually just look at your or scroll down your website we're going to look more at some of these individually too but yeah you really do have a mix yeah I mean from this military guy this a fisherman is that a fisherman here yeah it's a fisherman yeah yeah that's and then oh then you've got these adorable little kid this reminds me of John Singer sergeant that painting what's that those are mine there's that's my my children now oh yeah that's beautiful so you own this painting yeah um it's it's behind me yeah that's awesome it is gorgeous the British version of what you guys have the Royal Society of portrait painters so we've just had that now as well same time and this one one you're saying this won a prize there uh no it didn't know it was just exhibited it's a slightly different setup to yours where the members exhibit every year and there's a big open submission element to the show so there's about two or three hundred pictures in total oh so it's more like a salon yeah yeah very much so okay okay so okay so tell me a little bit about your process in composition choosing clothing you know I mean how how much I mean what part do you play what part does the client play I I don't know how it goes for you but I do tend to think that it's about 50 50. okay so there's a guy wearing Furs on the top left yeah um so that guy he's called Henry Conway and he's a fashionista over here and he's a lovely guy he's in London there was no way he wasn't going to choose his outfit you know he is yeah he is very flamboyant guy he loves his clothes and so this is this is not a circumstance where I'm going to pitch in with you know oh well no I'm not going to paint that and hey it was you know why would I because it was great he with these amazing kind of very old school clothes on um but B I think clothes are so intimately wrapped up in people's identity that you have to go with the flow a little bit so it would be more that I would forbid certain things um more than I would um tell someone what to wear though obviously some color that's just jarring with everything else I would say oh maybe not that one um and to that extent you just say in advance could you pick out you know a handful of things that you really like and we'll go from there that tends to be do it so they've got options everything they've brought you to see is something they like and you might do it that way I don't know how other people do it but I don't go all over the board yeah I don't go to a commission I don't know about you but I I do go in completely blind with a blank canvas and we build it right there and then so it's it's often quite spontaneous you go in does that mean that you're going because you'd said this before that when you left school you had to one of the things that was difficult was you had to figure out how to have a mobile studio and we never talked about that so is that what you mean that you're constantly on the go you're working in their homes in their spaces very often yeah um so I would and still do drive to somewhere I may not know what the light's going to be like again imagine this coming out of my strict and rigorous meaning right you could end up in the bathroom you know and getting the right light there oh you're kidding has that actually happened yep so you walk around their house and you're like oh the bathroom's got the best light let's sit on the toilet oh almost over not quite that extreme wow I yeah I've painted in all sorts of places but again it gives you a it's like a kind of exercise and exercising quickly working out exciting light angles etc etc and figuring it out I mean again it's a bit of a high wire act but it's it's really enjoyable I love that part of it so you don't bring all these professional lights and whatnot with you you just go to their space and work with what they have yeah I don't take any lights with me at all um I love this oh man about you Jeff I thought like I thought technically normal yeah no no I think it's I think it's awesome I there's something sort of liberating about it like it's just you the brushes the canvas you show up and just work with what you've got I mean there's something almost sportsmanship like about it and that goes back to your childhood you were you grew up in in rolling around the grass and playing sports you said so there you go the sort of spontaneity that has been built in but I do think it keeps you you were saying you know do you enjoy your commission I I really do enjoy them and possibly an element of that is that it's really actually great fun it's fun to do it you turn up you you've got people in their own environment that's important it's true to them you know they are they're at home and so you you can then actually there's a lot of latitude you can then do a number of things um occasionally I lament not having the lovely light I have here which is very high and very very pure of heart but also you know having the pressures of an entirely alien environment it's it's it sometimes throws up unexpected happy accidents that you can only get from nature you can only get that from working from life and those things are very rich and very giving generous elements of your painting process that in being too set me ways or rigorous you would miss that because you would never entertain it do you know what I mean what you mean yeah um also there is the flip side which is you know you have wonderful life for two sittings and then out Comes the Sun and ruins everything and you haven't you know it's just you haven't had enough time and now you're completely ruined because you you know so then you have to be very flexible and you have to have taken a lot of photos in those previous two settings um and you're in England too where it's cloudy sunny cloudy sunny it's so that's got to be a constant frustration it is and actually it's it's a problem here because we're in the north of England so actually when the sun is high in the summer it doesn't matter if you've got North light or South night half of the day it's coming in the north anyway so oh wow seriously because it goes so because we're so high up on the globe obviously we've got this lovely amazing light where it's light at three in the morning and it's dark at 11 at night so obviously if you think about how much of the circle of that kind of travel of the sun through the sky a lot of it's coming in the north anyway so it's I mean you've got so high in the sky that it's spilling it's not literally on the North side though it's just so high that it's creeping in if you're in your studio early in the morning or late at night it would be coming in North Windows yeah but um wow oh my gosh that is crazy oh that makes sense because it's it's east north and east or north and west as it's oh my gosh I've never thought about that it rises North Northeast sets North Northwest yeah but I mean it's not a big it would be overblowing it to say that this is a curse for painters here we mainly have very steady weather because it's usually fairly well not always overcast but you know you get your opportunities with changeable weather and certainly nothing like what some place and places are where it's just waterfall sunshine or whatever I mean we don't have that yeah yeah no kidding well we we do in in Utah it's amazing well all winter long it seems like it's cloudy but all summer long it's just endless sun it's so amazing my studio is so bright all summer long oh I love it yeah yeah I love it so you know it's funny this whole North light thing though because I interviewed um Carlo Russo quite a while ago and I think it was him and we started we got all hung up on the equator like what happened to the equator and that's even weirder because half the year it actually is in the north just barely it's high in north and half the year it's high in South and we're like okay that's a trip so if you're working on the equator you're or if you're working in Australia you've got South light that you're after that's what you want is Southland yeah yeah stuff we don't think about much I know but I mean if you're on equation presumably you've got blue skies a lot so it actually really matters because that wear of light marching across your studio is really annoying yeah it is yeah yeah maybe you have a lot of window well I what I do is I have a skylight so what I do is because it is so bright is my skylights are um frosted and that takes out the hot spot of the sun when it's directly above it's amazing it works beautifully so okay yeah that makes yeah yes well light is the backbone of it all isn't it it is it is so as you're moving around people's houses you're I'm assuming you're going your windows you're going you know under you know next to Lamps next to light in the ceiling just trying to find anything that looks good yep um yeah and then there are times when you accept for example something extremely flat likewise can you give me an example of that in your in your portraits here okay well that little girl in the middle at the top this one and that one yeah so she lived and lives in a house which had as quite typical of south of England they are quite low windows so if you're standing up like the windowsill is it's mid thigh they yeah the light's like right here it's like quite hot or quite low it's low and so it's I mean I just decided I would keep that and have her very very flatly lit and then just turn her turn her turn her until um we got some shading on the other side so that wouldn't have been my choice but actually I enjoyed it again it was it's amazing lighting though I think yeah yeah it's so flattering she's just beautiful can you expand more on that yeah so if if she were to turn to her right and start twisting towards the light you literally have nothing I mean there's the Darks of her hair and that's it and yeah you've got nothing to to offset those she just she had that nice pearly skin yeah and um so I I then start moving to her left you know I start corkscrewing around her and keep her turning away from the window so that she is as out of the light as she can be in that very very large windowed space um so I grabbed my darks by the back door as it were with that kind of light and again it's just that's what you have to think when you're in the environment and you have to think okay how am I going to get some definition on this very pale skinned little girl but um there is a solution there you know and that was it for that one okay so that was another example of me mixing up the the process and the model because I thought you meant turning her form but you literally are turned you're turning rotating the model in front of the window until you get exactly what you want yes but let's talk about turning the form though because I think I don't know are you a sergeant fan you must be based on the way you paint okay yeah so um because I mean to me you're like I mean you're a little bit different but you're almost like a sergeant reincarnated I mean you've just got a very similar aesthetic um and uh one of the things that is so amazing about John Singer sergeant that you are also so good at is just taking a flat form like this and with very subtle color shifts and even more subtle value shifts creating form um well that's the date you find that's the fun of it like I mean it is and the challenge of it the challenge of it yeah you how to turn a flatish surface like a forehead um I think I mean I wouldn't be able to put every single dot every eye and cross every t on how it's done I think a lot of it is feel but obviously the the subject of losing your edges isn't there um and on everything about what you've just said of Shifting colors and shifting tones um where to plant your accents and uh how to get that ribbon of light to travel in such a way that makes a three-dimensional shape without too many bells and whistles so it's kind of understated what you're doing or you're trying to and with greater or lesser success I think that one's gone pretty well I was happy with that one pretty well yeah it's brilliant yeah but it's really hard but equally you know that's why we keep doing it over and over again try and find solutions to these questions but yeah I think softening edges where where you don't want people to look but that has to still be it has to still stand up in terms of its structure and um so looking at her forehead that the bulb that children have especially in the top half of the forehead where they've got this big bit of extracranial structure there um you know you don't need that to be sharp it's not important where the edge is it doesn't matter it's disappearing into that little bit of hair there just lose it but you don't need it uh what's it saying it's not saying anything interesting so yeah and and it helps with that three-dimensionality um and there'll be other little passages like that in every one of the paintings where I try to make the right decision it's difficult but you know just lose something and say very little about it um like the edge rest that's another thing it didn't strike me it's important that the edge of her dress drifting into the light side right here oh no here being on the sleeve yeah yeah there's something I don't think I ever would have done and I love it um it's so soft it just Blends right into her skin well but then a little sharp bit of hair next door to it to take your eye the little dark part yeah that bit yeah that needed to be in in order not to make that area too soft because don't you find if you if everything is too soft then that in and of itself draws the eye right so so if you want the eye to gloss over something you've got to be quite particular about what you choose to lose you can't lose everything so people are going to ask questions well why is that looking so weird there and they'll ask that question and now they're looking at it you know yeah um so then you've got to pick your poison and I'm I'm fairly confident that half of every painting could be softened out and the right number of accents remain and it would work and there are people who do this so well and one of the other ones I like is um Olga bosnanska probably butchering the pronunciation a Polish artist a woman and you can Google her hands on Instagram and it's basically there's nothing there is just a couple of highlights on the old fingernail and you just think where the hell is that happening well let's it's really just curious let's do that let's Google her we've never done this on the podcast before but I'm I'm really curious about that so is this like what you're talking about a hand like this yeah that's just I love that particularly um uh here's one I'm sending them to you on Instagram oh you are okay um oh wow that that lower one is a slightly better image but that's that's my point I mean if anyone is teaching a lesson on how not you know not to miss an opportunity to say little and lots it's that I just love it I mean it's not exactly how you know I would paint but I just think it's so pretty yeah yours is so smooth and like um buttery and this is almost like harsh and gritty I love it I love them both but it it almost surprises me that you like this because it's so different I know but I I think taking the paints aside I would love to paint thicker actually I think but it's just the way she's seeing what's important yeah I love so little to say there's there's no upper knuckle you know yeah those are gorgeous hands man oh man yeah I mean I should be surprised I mean we all have diverse taste I love this I love your work I'm so yeah but um yeah it's gorgeous so let's go back to years again um I want to talk a little bit about what you said about the forehead so you had said two things you're like you know the kids have the bulbous forehead more than adults but you said you soften this Edge for two reasons one because you uh let me see if I remember this correctly one because you didn't think it needed attention like you didn't you didn't want to draw attention there that wasn't your focus and the other was that it actually helped describe the form am I getting that right so tree why do you say it yeah it sounds so good contradictory but that's why I want to talk about it because I don't think it sounds contradictory but I want you to elaborate a little bit more about that I think you're right about both of those things I mean of course you're right about both those things you're incredible but I do want you to elaborate a little bit more about on that if it's hard to no I think it is it's hard to explain it because what you're effectively saying is by doing very little in certain areas you're giving more information which doesn't make sense I think the root of it though is that given that the eye can't focus everywhere all at once you are having to make these decisions in certain places anyway so it's not that it doesn't matter the top of the forehead it's that in relation to her her right eye on our left eye and so we want some extent the other one it's just not important um and so I want the eyes to travel over that area not get particularly stuck there if possible and wind up back down happily in the region of the eyes again so it's a way if if you're softening things but there is enough information for us to buy it basically to believe it I think it's a way of shipping the eye back around the field of focus to where you want it to be so sharp things bright things uh high contrast that tends to be attractive to us we tend to look for those things that's what we want to see that's how the human eye seems to work so the top of a forehead within the field of vision that's on that face it just is is an area especially given that it's a soft turn floating away into the hairline there where you might find an excuse to say very little um people who do this really well obviously all 17th century artists Sergeant you mentioned but you'll find if you look at a Velasquez you know he is just cleaning everyone's clock on this uh there'll only be a handful of sharp lines in any given face and a lot of it is just not really there and yet it's incredibly satisfying and believable so he is saying very little but communicating much and it's that it's really difficult but I don't think that well but it is it's a very um it's I do aspire to that I aspire to have areas which are blank of information which are not busy as much as I aspire to have areas which are very sharp and captivating that's the hope so those areas where you really want people to look you have higher contrast more sharp lines more accents um and then other areas really quite nearby if necessary we're talking about the collar in our hair which are very blank comparatively I'm going to ask you up maybe a hard question here um maybe not if you want it hard Edge is where people look why here and why here there's got to be more than that it is a it's a judgment it's not a simple question of putting you know that vignette option you've got on Instagram where you can kind of just fade everything out from the middle right you're kind of you've got to choose and there's got to be a little language a a pattern of focus as it goes around the the canvas I mean again sometimes back to velasque is sometimes the sharp line he is decided upon is is the one under the Hat you know cutting across the forehead and then the entire face is faded out so it's not a question of it will be the eyes every time and then every feature that regresses from the eyes will be blurry it's not like that it's um of course important that that jawline is sharp plus I think there's a haughtiness to her which is best expressed by that jawline being sharp and I didn't see much character um what would be the word heightening re um possibility in having the forehead be as sharp it just didn't seem as important to me another artist would have made several different decisions and come up with a very lovely portrait of her and it would have been interesting to see what they would have done but for me I felt that that jutting jaw the fact that she's really giving you her 100 miles stair and she did she was very direct very of possessed little girl she was very striking about her actually that she was so Direct um and so those lines I've chosen selected are lines that I felt helped Express her character contributed to a pattern of focus that came and went in various areas and and um yeah the forehead is a soft line there um the jawline is a sharp line there uh you know I've turned I've done my best effort to sort of lose that far cheek going away into certain areas um but try to keep that lower jawline a bit strong again and I liked her jutting chin um not really that fussed about the back of the neck uh not that fussed about the sleeve so you know those are a few examples of places where I've decided to forget about areas of focus entirely and just lose the edges well the thought was just so that's that was just my set of the suit my isolated decisions came out that way okay I wonder if it wonder if I painted her now oh and I'm sure it would have been different if somebody else had painted her yeah so is it fair to summarize it this way that there are certain principles one being everything can't be soft and everything can't be sharp you have to kind of balance those two features depending on where you want to move the eye the eye is going to go to where you make it Sharp the second principle being there is no formula to what should be sharp and what should be soft that's the job of the artist that is perfectly put okay okay I just want to make sure I understand it and you know and also I want to um say that I picked these two out because I like them but I but I wanted you to comment on them because they're so bold and that's another thing um that I love about Sergeant is he would do those crazy sharp edge and Velasquez you know we did a podcast on Velasquez I have an art historian named Michael Christensen that comes on and talks about Velazquez you'll have to listen to that if you're a fan but I'm a huge fan of Velazquez and um I agree that's one of his superpowers to uh really do beautiful things with edges amazing yeah um well is there well I'm gonna look through and pick out a few of my favorites but if there's one that you would like to talk about that might have a story behind it story meaning your experience with them or maybe something significant about them um or then then please tell me but I this is one of my favorites here you choose well that's Flora my daughter I keep picking your kids I wonder I wonder why that's gotta be a coincidence they sit every year poor things they're getting they're getting used to it that was at the beginning of lockdown and actually the one you chose before of them both sitting on the sofa that's the end of lockdown and actually I think they have a similar Vibe because this was in a period where we were all locked up but I mean in the UK you were very much so for about two months in Spring as we all were 2020 so I couldn't go to my commissions um it was just a complete everything stopped uh so cue the procession of sitters uh in the family uh Flora went first she sits very well um and I did my husband and I did my son which ones are those yep uh so Rob is the one backlit a little bit dual light maybe down they might be down yeah so him second left next to the lady in the uh official outfit yeah ah that that's cool um just I like occasionally little trips into the world of dual light uh it's a fascination I find it really interesting to see how it affects everything and it really does for me it's just completely Bonkers but really fun that's beautiful so you must have quite a collection of paintings of your family yes they're not I don't think gonna thank me for it in the long run because um you don't think so there's gonna be hundreds there's already about 10. 10 least um anyway I wouldn't stop doing it because you know I Didn't Do It um I painted my family no I didn't I painted my family a little bit I painted my twins when they were two and a half I painted my my youngest son he's 16 now when he was 12. and that's it other than painting them in paint in paintings like multi-figure paintings I included them as characters in biblical scenes but I don't own any of those so for me it's always been a plumber sink issue it's like I can't I need to keep painting other people pay the bills and never painted my own kids and now I regret it but good thing I I do it partly totally selfishly to experiment on an idea um and uh also because they are available yeah and because I'm enjoying watching them grow up and they go through weird and wonderful phases the other thing is okay so I have the luxury of a couple of non-commissioned objects every year um and I might well do them in that time yeah so it is a luxury though exactly as you say and I I dare say when they don't live here when they're older I'll do them less because obviously they won't be around but for the time being yeah and get quite asked I think they'll love it my kids still they I think they appreciate seeing themselves in paintings even though they're not in my studio they're out and about like in different buildings and stuff and they're like that's me you know so they enjoyed it yeah and I think you I think you've um you've painted them and that's that's the important thing it's even better seen by people so you know mine are going to go into a tube at some point and live in the tube no they won't they'll end up in history books I guarantee it incredible um one second and then I don't know if Hugh is still he's this is the one where he decided to sit with his feet over the back of the chair one is that he's not up I have taken him off oh you have um no you're like you're going off the website um okay I love this one so this one appeals to me because there was a period of time where I did this kind of graphic thing behind with figures and that that kind of appeals to me and so tell me a little bit about this one well you're right you've you've hit your nail on it I just wanted to do something where there was lots of different pattern and no um I usually think of myself as putting surrounding people with loads of space and then I'll go to Great Lengths to explain the space around them and I just want that's a really really close friend of mine um and she was up visiting and I made her sit for me because I wanted to paint she's got this amazing red hair and I wanted to paint Lots pattern lots of light and dark absolutely no space I mean this is all compared to my usual thing to to breathe in terms of having lots of blanks so it's a little bit of a challenge to what I was just saying which is you must have as many empty spaces as as you do busy spaces in a painting and I thought is that true maybe we can have the busy background and the busy pattern then the busy cushion and the flowers and the dog and the woman all at once it works for me yeah it's one of my favorites enjoyed it it was so fun I was real like a holiday that I was great so this hand by the way is is incredible it's just like it's kind of like the ones you showed me from uh Olga yeah what you said um it's uh yeah I can't I wish I could zoom in but it seems like right it seems like there's very little information there and yet it's so convincingly three-dimensional beautifully painted that's yeah well I just think about to get rid of a few uh hiccup hiccup set for me not very well I have to say and I did take some photos of hiccups okay um she you know when you look at dogs so I mean I have dogs I don't know if you do I do if you give them then they just get off the lap and come and say hi to you so uh it was a bit of a challenge but we did yeah we we got what we could and took photos of of the rest of it yeah I was trying to just take photos of my dog just to sh just to just to have and it kept licking the phone I'm like will you hold still you know it's as soon as you'd give it attention it's like comes right up to it yeah they're brutal to paint oh it's it's really well done um okay and I'm gonna let's look at one more um again if there's any that well let's look at this one it's very simple composition but it's another one of those uh relatively flat lit ones very flat that's in my studio actually that's as flat as I can get um likewise and I did actually open I've got lower Windows to around the kind of normal window level and I seem to remember opening one of those I don't know why I I mean her skin is I think she almost has a thing where it's very Celtic where if she even goes out in the sun at all I mean any rays of sun she gets a kind of reaction so she's she's she's got a kind of albinism light type thing where she doesn't she can't show this extraordinarily pale skin to any sunlight at all but it was just a lovely color it was so ridiculously pale um so I don't know why those particular colors actually as it happens that's what she walked into the studio wearing um she is one of these five uh teenagers she's the eldest she's 21 and she's not teenager um that I've got from one family at the moment commission wise so she's a relatively recent commission and I just I just thought she had the most lovely expression she was wearing that color the skin tone is extraordinary very rare I don't think I've got it pale enough actually I think I've failed to communicate exactly how luminous she is um and yeah you're then trying to use a very pale end of the spectrum value-wise to say everything you need to say about the three-dimensional forms so a lot of as you say uh turning Corners with subtle changes and all that sort of thing trying to get that right um but also she just had this very nice expression direct honest open um confident young woman and so I just I thought we would go with that and they all of them everyone in this family has a Mane of hair so um I'm enjoying this this particular family they're all yeah do you find do you have a favorite flesh color to paint because I know you describe her as being so fair when I get someone that fair it's like it's like I'm in a candy store I mean to me that's the best flesh to paint because it's so translucent that you can see all this color in it you know you see blues and pinks and greens and but then you get someone who's been in the Sun a lot and they're just all orange yeah so I suppose it depends on your ethnicity doesn't it but I think yeah it's a very pearly marble-like quality isn't it we live in a part of the world with very little ethnic diversity so I actually limit I've got a friend I've got to sit for me and he's a doctor originally from Nigeria and I actually had a very similar experience with him with those lovely dark tones incredibly blue incredibly purples just Heavenly that would be nice that would be another favorite yeah really dark skin yeah so so rich and so I think everything um again is back to the variety question in a perfect world you would really just get every every available type but I actually agree with you that somebody who has been kind of on their holidays type turned mm-hmm it's quite a uniform I mean this is white skin I suppose a quite it's quite a uniform tone isn't it and you might lose some of the variety that would exist if they were just their natural Bedrock color yeah um because we get a tan and we've gone on holiday for two weeks and we've come back looking Browner you know it's not it's okay that's what happens to you when you go into the Sun so it's not it's a sort of artificial thing isn't it like it's it's not them and they're natural yes it's almost too even it's too even yeah it's sort of perfect um so yeah that's that's possibly not the best time and it's ironically I mean in the UK everyone would say I'd love you to come in the summer because we all look so healthy you're like no no well don't worry about it it actually Springs a lovely chunk I'd be like how about December of winter it's fine yeah okay so let me so one question that I ask everyone and if you've listened to podcasts you know what I'm going to ask you but that is if you have the if you have one piece of advice that you would give a aspiring Young artist what would it be this is so boring but it would be to work as much as you can from Life um I just don't think you can get a better education not always kind um you're going to have a few slings and arrows coming your way uh light will change models will move but you're not erecting a barrier between yourself and your inspiration and you're available to all of the strange hiccups and peculiarities that you'll only get if you're there looking at it from life and yeah it's basically the rich matter that you're extracting from the world that is going to make you a good artist so I I could not place a high enough value on that that's not to say be dogmatic and never ever paint from a photograph that's not really the point but the point is to value your from life work because I think it's the Bedrock of with painting even if like I say you're going to end up using references as well on the same picture even I have nothing against that I'm not snotty about it at all but I just think that if I was starting again I would I I would end up doing a similar training to that which I did which is to work a lot from I mean exclusively from live in order to get those fundamental principles really down yeah so I'm afraid it would probably be the same as almost everyone else you've asked I should think um no you'd be surprised aren't that many people I I might have had one other person say that um there's been a lot of diversity in that question and answers to that question so I really appreciate that I know my guests will as well but uh Francis it's been a huge honor to talk to you I'm a huge fan and even more now that I know you so thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you thanks for having me seriously it's great pleasure thanks for tuning in to the undraped artist podcast if you enjoyed it subscribe and if you could leave a comment or review that really helps the Channel please share this show with your friends and if you're feeling generous consider a monthly donation at the undrapedartist.com thanks again for watching we'll see you next week foreign

Channel: The Undraped Artist Podcast

Views: 4,724

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Id: AYOzLhOj4q4

Length: 97min 20sec (5840 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023