International Guild of Realism

 My painting "Ghost Station" is now available online in the International Guild of Realism's 2022 Fall Salon Online Exhibition which runs from 20 October to 20 December 2022. It can be found in the Landscape & Architecture section on the homepage of the show.

"Ghost Station" is one of my paintings in my ongoing series"Roadside America" (and indeed "The Big Sky" too). Oil on linen 30" x 20".

https://www.realismguild.com/2022FallSalon/

Rick's Café Américain

 

This idea has been on the back burner for a while and I decided to go ahead with painting it as it could be a nice one to show at IX next week (!) as it is bit different to the others although within the Orientalist themes that I have been painting recently. It is of course based on the Bogart/Bergman film "Casablanca", a favourite film for a lot of people including myself. The idea occurred when I was in the middle of painting a few Orientalist pictures of busy souks and medinas when it dawned on me that I could kind of bring them up to date (well 1942!) with an imagination of Rick's Café Américain as though it really was in the casbah of Casablanca.

I did see what Midjourney could come up with and although it did somehow get me started you will see that I used very little of it, I just liked the look of it. I found a still from the film that showed the exterior of the Café and used that (apart from the second set of doors) and then set it in an imagined relatively scruffy street with night lighting.

I will be taking this over to IX in my luggage as it was finished after I had sent the main boxes and it looks like they have had Customs clearance and will be delivered to GoggleWorks today which is happily very different to my previous dealings with US Customs!

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Midjourney

Film Still

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 7

 

Hmmm this seems to be quite a fiddly painting, for the number of hours it is taking to paint I will have to charge more than I normally do for this size.

I think I have worked out a way of doing the lettering so I have painted a transparent desaturated blue over it today ready for the first layer of white tomorrow. Otherwise I have been going over the painting refining things as well as putting in the brightly lit shopfronts. I decided to make it a bit dim inside Rick's with a suggestion of a woman sitting at a table by the entrance.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 6

 Just working over most of the painting, resolving issues as I go along. No new colours used. Need to make a start on that lettering soon...

Rick's Cafe Americain -stage 5

 Still throwing some colour around and seeing what works and what doesn't. 

New colours used: Ultramarine Violet, Cobalt Teal, Cadmium Red and Naples Yellow.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 4

 I have roughed in some colour based around the original Midjourney piece but having second thoughts so have stopped here and will decide what to do next over tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee.

Colours used: Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green, Permanent Orange, Yellow Lake Deep, Cadmium Yellow Light and Zinc White.

IX!

 Approaching with scary rapidity is IX being held in Reading PA from the 19th to the 23rd of October. I am now in the middle of packing up the paintings for shipment to the USA later this week by FedEx. I had nine framed up and then Pat Wilshire contacted me to ask if I wished to have a larger space on the ground floor due to a couple of artists cancelling for health reasons so I have sorted out some more which I will hang unframed as there is not enough time to get them framed. I am also hoping to take the painting that I am working on now, "Rick's Cafe Americain" with me which I will pack in my luggage as it is quite small.

Despite my current panic I am looking forward to meeting up with my fellow artists and collectors and indeed friends over there in the USA. There is one other Brit attending to my knowledge, Ralph Horsley as two other Brit friends have had to cancel.

I am thinking of sending the boxes on separate days as I feel it might be slightly safer but still worried about the Customs delays that have dogged all my recent attempts at taking paintings to the USA.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 3

 I decided that I would just finish off the tonal underpainting today including putting in the market stall at bottom right and a couple more figures - I think it still may need a few more figures yet.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 2

 

This is the initial tonal underpainting which I will work on more tomorrow as well as starting on the sky with some colour. I used my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush for the underpainting.

I have been looking at it this afternoon and realised it's looking too spacious at the moment; a casbah/medina would be a lot more crowded and enclosed so I am going to introduce the front of a market stall at bottom right with a few more people walking around too. This is compositionally better as well as it needed something in that corner anyway.

I'll worry about how I'm going to do the neon lettering later on...

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 1

 I have had this idea on the back burner for a while now and finally decided to go for it as I thought it would be a nice one to show at IX as it is different to the others (in some ways) and a lot of people love this film including me. It is of course the Bogart/Bergman film "Casablanca". The idea occurred a while ago when I was in the middle of painting quite a few Orientalist pictures of busy souks and medinas and it suddenly dawned on me that I could kind of bring them up to date (well 1942) with a painting of Rick's Cafe Americain as though it really was in the medina of Casablanca. I want to make it moody and somehow have a feel of a still from the film but in colour. I am not looking forward to painting the neon lettering in perspective but hey ho it has to be there otherwise there is no point to the painting.

This stage is the basic "drawing up" with a small bristle brush using my usual Burnt Sienna/Dioxazine Purple mix thinned with Liquin. I am going to attempt to put in the lettering tomorrow when the paint is dry with a sanguine chalk pencil as I will have more control than a brush. I will also put in some figures as I do the tonal underpainting with the same paint mix.

I am including below the Midjourney piece that is the basis of the painting although as you can see it is considerably changed. I am also showing a film still of the set in the movie.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

Midjourney

Film Still

The Pharoah's Barge

 Another small painting heading for IX later this month ( I'm going to have to take a couple of small ones with me in my luggage as I have to send the main batch off pretty soon) this one is based on an Ancient Egyptian theme which I don't think I've painted before. This one somehow came out of the last painting "Flight From Atlantis" but I can't pinpoint why..

It is not based on a Midjourney piece this time and is kind of based around a memory of the amazing light in Egypt in the late afternoon when I was there in 1984. I wanted to try and get that incredibly warm light that happened around 5-6 in the afternoon and for some reason decided to paint some Ancient Egyptian buildings with a boat going by on the Nile. It is kind of meant to be Karnak but as it is a Fantasy painting after all, I have incorporated elements of buildings from a few different sites along with quite a lot of invented detail too. The barge is based on the one used in the Taylor/Burton film "Cleopatra". I was also trying to get some of the feel of Edwin Weeks' Orientalist paintings too but only partially got it, he was so good....

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.