Peter Brown - Making Introductions

it's very um to me it seems very sort of mechanical it's not um i don't see myself as an artist i see myself as a painter i just look at things and try want to capture we're in london today i love painting london it's it's been a a sort of ongoing thing for me painting this city all the little bits looking for for a a view there's no rules really you just know it when you see it so it's really it's kind of almost the most annoying bit of the whole process really so the answer is i don't know what i'm looking for in a nutshell but i know when i see it and it's a mixture of just having a bit of detail of an idea of depth i think in space and action and just all sorts of things that kind of occur to me when i see them really [Music] and then there's like um it's trying to find a view and trying to find look in terms of formats as well so uh i quite like this corner don't know why i just do um and i just look at i'm just trying to look at the things i want to get in it you know where does the painting start and when's it finished sort of thing and so that's why i bring like all these these boards here they're kind of varying sort of shape boards for kind of you know do i want is it that sort of painting isn't that sort of painting i often land on this sort of thing this here which i'm looking at here [Music] that's all things falling apart completely but my brother gave it to me around 18 years old so i'm trying to keep it going [Music] once i've wandered around and found what i'm going to paint and i've got the right size board and i'm on site that's kind of a major issue that finding what to paint and being in the right place at the right time with the right stuff once we're there there's things in the view that i want to get and so i try and kind of what i call map out really is try and work out well i want to get that tree in on that side but i also wanted to get that the top of that spire in that side of the painting over there so i try and work out and check i can fit it in and also check out where things are painting starts with a sort of what i call a mapping out because it's not a very tight drawing really at all so i'm using that this here is that car that audi there behind that guy i'm just using that to just help with the drawing and make sure that i get in the spaces right it's trying to work out where things are and i go sort of left to right in the painting and right to left sort of drawing one way and then drawing the other way and trying to sort of check i'm more or less getting it getting it right and checking my drawing so i paint um a paint on mdf board and canvas um i don't know why but on the whole and i think it's probably because of um of brush marks and yeah mark maker and i love painting on board because every mark you make and all the scratches are visible so when it's smaller that sort of smooth surface is lovely to work on uh i just sew them so that they're mdf i'd put three coats of acrylic gesso on them and then i usually put um a ground on it which i call sort of end of the day sludge it's usually kind of when i clean my brushes or something i sort of stick that on the on the on the board and it just ends up being a kind of slightly mid-tone um color which to get rid of the white so next time i'm painting i'm painting on i've got a mid-tone to work on and then very quickly because i find it very hard to work um with line working out how big things are by delineating them um i prefer to work with a block so a block of gray i can work out i can look at it and go well no it should be bigger than that or smaller than that so very quickly i get into putting in sort of blocks of color and tone and and the drawing gets is constantly being reassessed really through the painting [Music] i think i'm using my memory a lot more and i think that that really crystallizes in in figures and i've learned to trust that a bit more and now i do i'm happy just staring at something so when a figure's doing something quite interesting they're in quite quite an interesting pose then i'm happy just staring at them and trying to remember it and fix it in my head just sort of trying to get the angle of the hips or whatever it is and trying trying to to crystallize it in my head and so a lot of that drawing of that figure can happen sort of slightly after the event if you like and then there's a point i think where i get where i really do try and zoom in on a bit of detail and focus on something and i think today i think i do it on a car um but there's a point where i i kind of zoom in and then and then that tends to then sometimes rescale a drawing yet again so i do the car what i think is site size i think it probably is slightly more than sight size but um and from that the drawing end gets amended so that car's that size so that tree can couldn't be that size because it'd be a giant tree or whatever you know so i don't have to change things yet again so there's constantly a sort of fiddling with the drawing of fiddling around going on and inevitably i never nail it so there's approximation going on and you know i might have to stick an extra window in every now and then or something to make things make sense um so it's not perfect but it's it's it's good enough for me you know to for me to be happy i think um but my experience is that the best thing to do is to [Music] not think about it too much beforehand but just to get out and and and see stuff and that's where the inspiration comes from so if i think about you know where i'm going to go then that doesn't particularly work so the trick is not to think too much um but just to do it and then you know i end up doing going somewhere i'm not really very inspired by them and maybe doing something there isn't that great well that's fine i always think that that's you know you you do some dirge and then hopefully the next one will be all the better for it sort of thing so it's all part of the process really just getting out there and doing it so i think yeah if it reveals any tip or bit of advice i don't understand patronizing but it is to constantly be asking yourself to constantly ask yourself um is that what i see i mean this isn't new this is you know this is this goes way back you know this is people artists always ask themselves this and but you have to keep reminding yourself that is am i going for an emotions here am i doing a pete brown painting here or am i am i really looking [Music] right so it's about what's about four or something now and um it's getting really lovely and twinkly out there but uh light sort of changed for this so i i suppose what i could do is bring it all down and go with a twinkly light but i'm going to try and stick with this i'm going to stick with this light so i'll call it a day there because um please completely change the lights from the shops are sort of taken over and stronger than the lights that just you know the natural light so um so i'll be at that stage where whatever i did now i'll be undoing what everything i did earlier on sort of things um so i'll pack up but actually like anything as soon as you start doing it you realize why you're doing it and it's and you realize it's the doing it's getting up and going and doing it which that's what it's all about so the finished items i have little interest in it's the process of doing it and it's it's the it's the little conquest you have along the way when you kind of nail something or something works out and particularly when things go wrong and then you manage to get out of it again when you have problems you know it's the problems that kind of and getting through the problems or knowing that perhaps you can get through the problem one day that's that's the interesting bit that the fact that in my life i love to have things done but actually it's a process of realizing that actually in painting [Music] is knowing that you always have that problem that you will never nail it that will always be there and all you can do is try and get better each day hopefully and get closer to to the perfect painting which you'll never achieve and that's in a way that's kind of the frustrating bit and the bit which gives you a sunday night blues but also it's a bit is the most enjoyable bit the fact that it's not ending fans over there i'm going back this way now you

Channel: Messums Productions

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Id: xHU1fNvpbP4

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020