Cotman and Van Gogh: shades of grey

I have noticed that the half-pans in my favourite Cotman Sketchers’ Pocket Box are starting to show obvious signs of use. In particular, the Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna paints. This is not a surprise, as thanks to the leaflet packed with my Pocket Box that included a brief watercolour tutorial, I soon learnt that when Ultramarine and and Burnt Sienna are mixed together in appropriate proportions, a lovely grey results. And by using more or less Ultramarine in the mix, a cooler or warmer grey can be obtained. I have found this mixture to be indispensable when tackling landscapes. (Others think so too: the artist Jane Blundell mixes up her own tube colour which she calls Jane’s Grey, and it is now produced by Daniel Smith.)

I suspect that I come across as something of a Winsor and Newton Cotman watercolour fan, but I do like to evaluate other paint ranges from time to time to see whether these might convince me to abandon my Cotman paints! Given that I use up more Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna paint, it makes sense to try this pair of colours first of all, as I have certain expectations about how they should behave when mixed together. Also, the pigments used in Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna tend to be less expensive than others, so these colours usually feature in all watercolour ranges.

In the last couple of years, the Royal Talens Van Gogh line of paints had appeared on my radar, and I had bought a number of 10 ml tubes to see whether these might be used in my usual palette. In particular, I was interested in some of the colours which were only available in other more expensive artists’ ranges. But how did the Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna combination perform?

To find out, I took a small piece of practice paper and drew around an empty half pan with a pencil to make two rows of rectangular swatch spaces. Using a ruler, I drew lines between some of the swatches, with arrow heads to indicate where the pigment had come from. Then I had fun mixing up paint and colouring in the swatches! (See the image on the right.)

I did the Cotman colours first when the daylight was starting to fail, so the intensity is a bit inconsistent. Having read comments about the weakness of the Ultramarine, I was a bit surprised with my swatch: I put three drops of water in the half pan and left it for a few minutes, and then picked up the paint on a No. 6 round brush and transferred it to a mixing palette, where I added another drop of water from a pipette. Then I painted the swatch. Wow!

The Van Gogh swatches were done the next day when the light was better, and I took more care to make them more even. The paints mixed as expected with no surprises. Even when I mixed Cotman Ultramarine with Van Gogh Burnt Sienna, the outcome was exactly as I hoped for.

So a successful result from both ranges: several lovely shades of grey!

What’s in my palette?

 Some months ago, I mentioned my use of a watercolour secondary palette of six paints in preference to the apparent dogma of a split primary palette. But my well-used Cotman Sketchers’ Pocket Box has 12 compartments. So what do I have in the other six compartments? (I know this is a popular discussion subject on Internet forums such as Wet Canvas.)

As supplied and after shuffling paints around to make the top/far row the secondary palette, the Pocket Box would then contain Sap Green, Lemon Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber and Chinese White. Of these, I keep all but the Lemon Yellow and Chinese White.

Even though it seems a little weak, the Sap Green is a good starting point for mixing other foliage greens in landscapes. I like all the earth colours and use them frequently, even though other people have criticised the pigment load of the Burnt Sienna. They suit my way of working.

My current replacement for Lemon Yellow is PY129, called Green Gold by Winsor and Newton, and available by different names in other ranges. (Van Gogh have it as Azomethine Yellow.) It is a darkish green-yellow, and I thought it would be useful for mixing more landscape greens.

I couldn’t see the point of including Chinese White as a palette colour, as you would use white gouache if you needed to paint white areas, surely? Therefore, I have replaced it with Payne’s Gray to provide a convenience dark paint. But I rarely use it. At least it is there in case…

Up to now, my few paintings have used no more than a maximum of ten different paints on each, nor have I needed a colour that I have not been able to mix. This probably says more about my subject matter rather than the suitability of my palette, but it has worked for me so far.

Liquitex Medium Viscosity acrylic paints

As far as I can tell, these were the original artists' acrylic paints, having been introduced in this format as far back as the mid-1950s. Somewhat surprinsingly, they were re-branded as Soft Body Acrylics around 2005 and sold in tubes like the Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylics. However, a decade or so later, the small bottles are now back, but a little taller and redesigned to have a nozzle.

The original format bottles were widely-sold. I bought examples from WH Smith’s in the UK; in an office supplies store in Montreal, Canada; and a local art supplies shop in Oxford, England. They were (and are) excellent paints, being heavily-pigmented and ready for immediate use. (No shaking or stirring necessary.) The screw-on cap with flip-off lid made them very convenient to use. There must have been a large number of colours in the range at its zenith; appealing to artists, crafters and model makers. So why did they disappear from the shops?

Probably only Liquitex themselves know the answer. But I suspect that there are a number of reasons. Cheap imports, competing ranges and more specialised paints.

One other point. The selection shown here includes colours that no longer appear in the current Liquitex ranges. To be honest, I can't think of an obvious use for Christmas Green, but Taupe appealed to me as a scenic colour, and Polished Steel is very useful on models and miniature figures. Christmas Green sounds like a craft colour, and Polished Steel sounds like a hobby colour, so I am guessing that Liquitex stopped producing their craft and hobby colours in order to focus on their art colours?

Malayan butterflies

I was recently given this book — Common Malayan Butterflies by R. Morell — as a gift. It is a fond memento of a time that is now starting to seem a long time ago, because more than 50 years ago butterfly collecting was my first proper hobby. At the time, I was living with my family in Singapore. A friend of the family had a copy of this book and I must have been captivated by the colour illustrations, so thanks to my kind parents it seemed no time at all before I had my own personal copy. For a boy of seven this was a grown-up book with some words that I didn’t understand (and even some Latin), but it was accessible enough and before too long I knew about the biology of butterflies and caterpillars. More important, I could readily identify most of the species I saw flying around my world.

It might seem totally environmentally-unfriendly today, but in the late 1960s butterfly collecting in what we called the Far East was considered to be acceptable, albeit a little eccentric! A number of people I knew were keen, including friends my own age. I suspect that the Singapore of those days was less densely populated and developed than it is now, so there were more green spaces to attract the insects.

As a family, we travelled quite widely around Singapore and Malaysia by car, so on longer trips invariably my butterfly net, supply of specimen envelopes (kitchen grease-proof paper!) and mounting board(s) came with us. I kept no written records of "finds" whatsoever, so it was all by memory. If there was a butterfly that I didn't think I already had in the collection, I would attempt to catch it. Once caught, at that age I was quite happy to dispatch it with a quick pinch in the head/thorax region so it didn't suffer. Then it was into the specimen envelope until I had the opportunity to set out the insect on the mounting board.

 

Lest I conjure up a vision of a young, lepidoteracidal maniac, I hasten to add that I normally caught no more than two of any species. The main reason for this was a lack of display space. I used to have glass-fronted butterfly frames, which were like picture frames and hung on the wall, but were much deeper and they had a thick fibre board back which would accept the butterflies mounted on pins. I was definitely attracted to the larger and more showy creatures for obvious reasons.

The family made two visits to Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, no doubt attracted by the novelty of a more UK-like climate for a few days. Amongst the butterfly enthusiasts, a certain location near there was known to be a place where the stunning Rajah Brooke's Birdwing could be found. My parents obligingly took me there, and I know I caught at least a couple of fine specimens -- the pinnacle of my hobby, I suppose!

The butterfly collecting all came to an end in mid-1970, when my family returned to the UK. I brought my collecting net and mounting boards back with me in the hope that British butterflies would hold a similar fascination -- but the limited number of species, small size and short summer soon put paid to that idea. My net and mounting boards eventually disappeared after a number of house moves, but I believe the butterfly frames may still exist somewhere in the house (loft?). Heaven knows what sort of condition they will be in now.

My original copy of Common Malayan Butterflies (the first edition with a dust jacket, I believe) was stored for many years in the loft of my maternal grandparents' bungalow in Tankerton, Kent. When my mother went to sell the property several years later, a number of items had vanished from the loft, my butterfly book with them. So it was good to be able to finally revisit what had captivated my imagination all those years ago.

Origami

In many ways, I was brought up like my parents were — especially when younger. They were children of the 20th century inter-war years, long before television, computers and mobile phones were common in most households or even invented! In those days it was generally expected that children would make their own entertainment. They were encouraged to read books, take up hobbies and play outside when the weather permitted. Thousands of British young people were raised in a similar way. Were they deprived or disadvantaged because they didn’t enjoy the trappings of the UK in the 21st century? No, far from it! They have since been called our Greatest Generation, because they brought us through the trials of the Second World War and its aftermath, and thanks to their achievements we enjoy life as it is today.

In the early 1970s I could already list things like reading, Airfix kit-building, Lego and stamp collecting as hobbies and pastimes. (I even had a spell as a butterfly collector!) It must have been my friend John in Junior School who introduced me to Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. Like several things in the 1970s, it was a bit of a thing at the time, no doubt encouraged by a programme on television hosted by Robert Harbin.

What appealed to me was that all you needed was a simple square of paper and a few minutes of time. And the ability to follow instructions carefully and make accurate folds. There were at least two books published at the time as a companion to the TV series, which were a great help. It was even possible to buy special Origami paper in bold colours, but I seem to remember that it was relatively expensive on my modest pocket money budget of the time!

Nearly half a century later, I can still remember the important folds and bases, and produce an acceptable Flapping Bird in a few minutes! Once upon a time, I could even make the amazing 3D Jackstone (by Jack Silverman of the USA?) from memory; but that was nearly three decades ago and my brain has been filled with other things since!

Spitfire at RAF Biggin Hill

On the 80th anniversary of Battle of Britain Day, I thought this would be an appropriate subject. Back in June 1992, some family friends who were stationed at RAF Biggin Hill at the time invited my mother and I to experience the Biggin Hill Airshow from the RAF side of the airfield. Despite its history and association with the Battle of Britain in particular, I was sadly aware that RAF Station Biggin Hill was due to close in October of that year. This was my opportunity to record something of the Station before closure.

The weather was perfect for an airshow, and armed with camera and films I soon shot through my colour exposures on the aerial displays. I still had rolls of black and white Kodak Plus X Pan, and carried on shooting that as the day came to an end. The colour film was duly processed and when I treated myself to a flatbed scanner in 2010, some of those photos became part of my Flickr stream. However, the black and white exposures were put away in the fridge to be processed at a later date...

It was August 2016 when I decided that I ought to do something about the exposed and unprocessed films in my fridge! The film itself would have expired in early 1983 (bulk-loaded), and I had not recorded when it had been exposed, so I picked one at random. This turned out to be the Biggin Hill film from 1992. I had it commercially processed in Oxford rather than doing it myself.

When I received the negatives, the good news was that there were images on the film. The less good news was that they were of low contrast and showed some fogging due to age, so it would be a challenge to extract usable images from them. Although the de facto standard software for doing this is Adobe Photoshop, I prefer to use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) due to licensing and cost reasons. I don’t have a record of how many hours I spent experimenting with both scanner software and GIMP settings, but I now have a better idea of how to get the best results from my scanning! Eventually, I found that repeated use of Layers resulted in a smoother and brighter sky.

Had I captured a historic moment? Was this the last time that an iconic Spitfire was serviced at RAF Biggin Hill? (Probably not, as this would have likely continued till the end of the air display season.) The hangar to the right is no more, but remarkably the concrete surface on which the Spitfire stands and the walls behind it still exist (as of early September 2019). I believe these are what remain of the Belfast triple-bay hangar that was demolished on the orders of the RAF Biggin Hill Station Commander on 4th September 1940, after a number of devastating Luftwaffe air raids during the Battle of Britain.

Some 80 years later, Biggin Hill Airport as it is now, still occasionally reverberates to the sounds of Spitfires. We are most fortunate to live in more peaceful times. And we should still be grateful for the young men and women who gave their best (and in some cases gave their lives) when most of the free world needed them.

Pro Arte Sablene brushes

I suspect that if I counted up my paint brush collection I would find that I had more assorted Pro Arte brand brushes than any others. I have been using them ever since a friend of mine brought them to my attention around 20 years ago; and Acrylix, Connoisseur, and Prolene Plus brushes all now see regular use.

Within the last couple of years, I noticed that Ken Bromley Art Supplies has been selling a Pro Arte brush called Sablene. Tantalisingly, little additional information seems to be available about it, and few people seem to have tried one and posted their reactions. I wondered whether Sablene might be the response to the Escoda Versatil and other synthetic brushes that claim to give a more sable-like experience when painting?

What is even more mysterious is that as of late July 2020, Pro Arte’s own Website makes no mention of Sablene whatsoever! (Or of Sablesque, which appeared about the same time as Sablene.) Odd.

Ken Bromley's only supplies these brushes in wallets containing four or five different brushes: you cannot (yet?) buy brushes individually. Also, there are some wallets described as Scholar, which are a little cheaper but the brushes have silver-coloured ferrules rather than gold-coloured. (Guess which sort I bought?...) Yes, I chose the Scholar 38WA pack containing Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8 round, and a 3/8 inch flat. I hoped that the cost would be saved in the handles and the hairs would be the same quality as in the more expensive wallets...

The brushes arrived in the same order as the Van Gogh paints I mentioned previously. To start with, I thought I would add to the test of brushes I made in February 2015 to get some idea of performance.  As I said back then, this is totally unscientific, and is simply a crude way of seeing how much paint a brush will hold and how well it releases it onto the paper.