Category Archives: Cafe Racers

Submit your work to a local art show.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
1

small water colour 19cm x 16.5cm for Soulcraftcandy.

Every couple of years here in Ealing, there is a local art show hosted in the Gallery of Pittshanger House, in the northern corner of Walpole Park. It’s called the Ealing Open and it serves as an opportunity for local artists, both amateur and professional, to exhibit an example of their work. You are allowed to enter one piece of work for the show and the great thing is that there are no barriers to entry other than the work must have been completed in the last twelve months by a person living within the borough. As a consequence there is a huge variety of different styles, abilities, media and images on show. It’s great and is a fantastic chance to see not just how creative people are but, how many creative people there are all around us. I submitted one of the Cafe Racer biro drawings last time, back in 2012.

This year I’m submitting again and the image above is the one being entered. It’s a small piece, done in water colour, ink and a touch of gouache. Two weeks ago I was reluctant to submit it, I’d fallen out of love with it completely and was finding it hugely difficult to summon the energy to finish it. I’m not exactly sure why but, I think it had something to do with the amount of colour in it. Every time I looked at it, it just looked far too dense, too much blue, too much green and lacking in a depth of field that I thought I’d worked hard to achieve. But things change, and sitting down last weekend having taken a break from it for some time, it jarred much less and finishing it off took surprisingly little time and brought much relief. I’ve called it “Tom, Dick and Harry”.

My partner is submitting some work too, though her style of painting is much more abstract than mine to say the least, a grasp of which is seemingly beyond my comfort zone. It will be fun to enter such different pieces and to see where in the vast collection of entered works our paintings are hung. I seem to remember that last time there were in excess of three hundred entrants, so plenty to entertain the crowds for the month the exhibition runs for.

The Ealing Open, PM Gallery, Pittshanger House, Ealing W5 5EQ, 24 May – 21 June.

Trying something new.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Stoppie©JonTremlett2014

Most of the fabrication work on the bike refresh is now complete and, as I mentioned before, the last big bit of the jigsaw puzzle is coming up with a new paint scheme for the fuel tank and spraying it up. I’ve got something I’m pretty keen on and it’s sitting in the “mulling” section of my brain right now while I have a final think about the colours.

In the meantime here are some pictures in way of an update of what else is happening in the creative microcosm that is Soulcraftcandy. The first is a little sketch I knocked out a while back which immediately demanded a finished version. I’m unsure as to why it sent such a strong signal but I think it’s got something to do with putting the pink bits into the drawing as well as the stance and angle of the whole thing.

Stoppie_prog_1©JonTremlett2014

Needless to say the pink hasn’t survived the move to a more finished image but the idea of using bright colour has, and I’m hoping for quite a punchy little picture when it’s done.

Soulcarftcandy art by Jon Tremlett

These two progress shots show working up the main part of the bike, painting and inking as I go. I find this a good way to work as it enables me to keep an eye on what I’m doing and keep things in control. I find that bringing focus to the picture as it moves along helps me see what I want to do with the next bit, rather than leaving it all rough and inking in everything at the very end. From here I’ll move on to doing the rider figure and then finally the background. Excuse the odd hue of the pictures, it seems to be a consequence of photographing these things in daylight as I can’t fit the backing board onto the scanning bed.

Soulcraftcandy art by Jon Tremlett

This last one is a slightly different animal, an image on which I’m trying to do something new (for me anyway). Firstly I’m trying to paint much more of a complete scene and this is forcing me to think harder about background, middle ground and foreground and the focal relationships between them. In all honesty I’m finding it quite difficult, but it’s rewarding to try and rise to the challenge. My difficulty probably stems from all those years of design drawing where one is not expected to create any sense of depth of field, presentation visuals being very two dimensional in nature, and so it all feels a bit alien and intimidating. So in order to help myself as much as possible I’ve divided the image into three planes, big bike at the front in focus, two smaller bikes on the second level and then the landscape on the third, mainly. The desire to try a bit of freer brush work, which I’ve mentioned before, now gets a chance to play on the background levels and will hopefully minimise my chances of making a muck of it all from the outset and build some much needed confidence in being a bit more loose with how I apply paint to the paper. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Creative energy spreads.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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102_Cafe_smoke©JonTremlett2014

With all of the making happening in the back garden and in the makeshift workshop that is the garden shed, it would have been so easy just to forget about the artworks for a few days. But these things never sleep, whatever’s on the drawing table in the studio lets you know it’s there every time you walk in the room. The hope was that some making activity would bring a fresh spur to the drawing work and so it proved. By splitting my creative time in this way, both fed off the energy that was now available seeing as I wasn’t going to be working for a few days.

This picture above was started a while back but was taking ages to finish. Procrastination had set in as a reaction to my being a little daunted by pushing it along. I wanted to see how I’d get on with some heavier textured water colour paper, and whether I could hold the detail given the rougher surface. It was also a challenge to figure out the best way of rendering all of that smoke, something I’d not had much success at in the past.

In the end the detail concerns were pretty unfounded, the technical pen worked out ok on the paper once it was fully dry, though I would say that it does tend to get a bit “hairy” if you labour the pen too much. The smoke bit on the other hand was a tad more tricky. I had kind of promised myself that I’d have a go at being a bit more free with my brush work a while ago and saw this as a perfect way to get some practice. Smoke being of a very “wafty” nature I thought it would suit a more loose approach. What I didn’t reckon on was actually how hard it was to do. I take my hat off to all those whose water colour style is more conventional than my own, the impressionistic feel they give to brush work is a hard won prize indeed. Initially I was far too deliberate, the cloudiness needed just wasn’t there and no amount of blending the marks I’d made seemed to work. In the end I plumped for just loading up a No.4 brush and smearing, can’t think of a better word for it, wash all over the required area and trying to blur it all with more water whilst still wet. It kind of worked but I failed to achieve any consistency across the whole area. Not wanting to overdo it I left it at that, though I will be having another few tries at getting the looseness I’m after on some other pieces which are coming along behind this one.