Pareidolia

Pareidolia is the phenomena of perceiving some kind of pattern in an image when there really isn't one, leading to the image being interpreted in a certain way. I find it interesting how few visual triggers it takes for an image to read as figures. At first glance this could pass as just such a piece. However, there are plenty of pretty strong hints and suggestions in it. For example the 'figures' are all similar in shape (long with a bit of a head at the top), all are upright, stood on the ground. They appear to be in some sort of landscape, and there appears to be some degree of perspective, suggesting that they are all a similar size. This wasn't necessarily what I had originally intended, but at some point during it's painting it started to take on the appearance of figures. This often happens when I'm painting abstracts. Still, at least I haven't found Jesus in my toast yet.

The Greeting

Encaustic

Second Hand Sources

Destined to Sit and Gather Dust?

I don't really like using second hand sources (someone else's photos), but there are odd occasions when I do. I painted a view of Gormire Lake a few years ago from someone else's photo, which sold within minutes of an exhibition opening that I put it in. There was a painting of The Shambles that I did from a postcard, which may have sold, but is more likely buried one of the (many) stacks of canvases in my studio. The piece below is an A2 drawing demo that I did for year 10 this year, using a photo of Sir Anthony Hopkins found on-line. I screwed-up the photo, something I was encouraging the pupils to do, and drew from the results using compressed charcoal and adding varnish to selected areas. The whole idea was to get them thinking about selection and distortion. I didn't particularly choose Sir Anthony, I just wanted a contrasty black and white image. I quite liked the results so I glued it onto board and worked into it with wax at home. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma; what to do with it (and pieces like it)? I'm not sure it is one for the gallery when I rotate my pictures, which leaves adding it to the (growing) stacks of paintings in the studio. I only have so much storage, which may well become less if we knock down the studio and move it to the where the garage currently stands to open up the garden, as we are considering doing. As my parents used to (regularly) say, we'll see.

Distortion and Selection

Charcoal, varnish and wax.

The Temple of the Four Winds

This was done after a walk with Sara and Hector during the Easter holiday. The walk started at Welburn, and went past the mausoleum and this folly, to Coneysthorpe. It is a lovely walk.

Temple of the Four Winds. Castle Howard.

Graphite and Wax.

Castle Howard

Mausoleum 

Graphite and wax

Graphite and Wax

This holiday I've done several mixed media encaustic pieces. Some of these are of Helmsley Castle, and  I've done a couple of the follies at Castle Howard. They are not what I had in mind when I said that I am going to paint some of the North Yorkshire castles, but they have been fun to do. This one is powdered graphite and pencil, with hot wax worked into it. The drawing is much tighter on some of them than I usually do, but it lends itself to the subject matter. However, I will try to loosen right up when I try some of these scenes in oil.

Helmsley Castle

Lens Flare

This started out completely different to how it finished up. I like that that happens.

Lens Flare

Encaustic.