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Hi Everyone

I have been working on a new site which is now up and running, so please have a look www.kmturner.daportfolio.com

Cheers

The Kiss

This is my favourite piece. it is by Gustav Klimt and is called "The Kiss".

First of all I should point out, this isn't the type of painting I would usually admire - though it is my all time favourite.

It is Art Nouveau and whilst I find this style of art very attractive and pretty, it isn't the realist kind that I would normally be in awe of. Art Nouveau works are generally flat lines and colours, which is not something I would aspire to recreate.

However this painting does something that I do admire and that is to make you go "WOW!" It has that special something that leaves you completely in awe, something that all artists should work towards producing.

When I first saw this I was in school looking through a book of Klimt's work and it was one of those rare moments when you look upon something and see beauty. It is a very gentle piece I think, the way the man in the picture is holding the woman is very tender and it is conveyed wonderfully by Klimt.

To produce something like this is what all creatives want to do, to provide their viewer, reader, watcher or listener with something that has the wow factor.

How do you do something like that?

Absorbing the Stress

This one has exhausted me. It was done in a day and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.

It is a graphite on A3 paper.

I just hope the couple like it when they recieve it on their first anniversary! When me pieces are being given as these types of gifts it really puts the pressure on, as they have to be top quality and of you let it, it can drain the fun out of doing it if you let it.

I often avoid this by giving myself plenty of time to complete the work, so I can then take my time and really let myself become absorbed.

Two New Pics

Just a quick post today. I am working away trying to get some more pieces done for Sunday's art fair this week. It seems to have come around so fast. This is all a part of my new plan (as mentioned in my last post) and the plan for this week is to basically prepare for the big day on Sunday.

Subsequently here are two freshly created pics!

Time to Plan!

At the moment I am finding work is wearing thin and I have the combined problem of a lack of self-motivation. These two problems can cause great issues, when trying to make a success of yourself within any line of work. In a tough market you have to break free of these opressive moods.

So what's the plan? How do I fix this problem?

Well as my English teacher was constantly preaching to the uninterested teenagers surrounding her, 'if you fail to plan, you plant to fail.' So quite simply, my plan is to actually make a plan!

My week is quite unstructured, with my general ethos being to work on whatever appeals to me most, whether that means painting or general business orientated work. I need to assign a certain amount of time a week to painting and the rest to promoting my work. Weekly work rate targets also need to be a part of this all important plan and also a to-do-list needs to be formed for me to be able to visualise where I need to go next.

How else can I self-motivate? I really need the enthusiasm back that came when I first had my vision of building on my talent and trying to live from it. Luckily I have great people with great ideas around me. Advice from others is always welcome and always helpfull. Opinions also help me re-evaluate, so I would really like to hear your views and advice readers.

A Moment In Time

The picture my latest piece was drawn from was a very old photo (actually taken in the thirties). The photo obviously holds great memories of the subjects fourteen year old self. Now in his early eighties, my client asked me to draw from his photo of the days when he was a young lad playing for the 'England School Boys'.

I am pleased with the picture and am yet to present it to the commissioner, though I hope this stirs some great memories for him.

Art encaptures a place in time through its style, subject, movement etc. The monochrome finish (graphite pencil on white paper) echos the era that the original photo was taken in, but most importantly the image itself captures the youthfull memory filled days of the now much older and wiser man.

In my opinion the images success will depend on how well he thinks I have illustrated his memory. When he looks back does this come close to what he remembers?

Animals

Over the past couple of days I decided I would try my hand at animal portraiture. First of all to see if I could do them and second of all to hopefully give me another type of portrait to display and hopefully gain commissions from.

I chose to start by trying to draw Man's Best Friend, a dog. So to the left you can see my pencil drawing of Oscar, the oldest of my three pets.

As I was in the mood for trying out new things, I chose to experiment with my materials as well. Choosing black, white, brick red and coffee coloured pencils on grey paper, recreating Oscar in a sepia affect.

I drew him first then shaded using just the black, adding in the white brought the contrast out more in the picture. I then added in the coffee and brick red colours.

I am pleased with the end result, though I feel that the pencil I used gave the image a sheen, so maybe I would use a softer pencil instead of graphite next time. I really felt the sepia affect worked though, especially on Oscar, as Yorkshire Terriers naturally have those coffee and 'reddy' colours in their coat. I also felt I captured his likeness pretty well too.

All in all I think for a first attempt it worked pretty well. I have found parts of the picture I would change and effects I want to play around with more. I think the next step for me is to draw a human portrait in sepia and see how that works out, so watch this space...

My Painting Process: Stage Five The Finish

Reviewing the work after blanking it for a couple of days worked and I can now show you the final piece. I am pleased with the final result and think that this picture certainly doesn't do the piece justice.

The parts that I found needed amending had simpler solutions than I originally thought when last gazing at it. Also, as I predicted in my last post; after coming back to the painting with a clear mind I found that it wasn't as flawed as I thought initially. Looking at something so intensely for so long does that to you I guess and a break from this monotony brings a sharper eye to study the problems.

So what did I change? Well I changed two parts of the subject to the right: One: I noticed that the top of her head was too flat, so I rounded this off adding the needed height and shape. Two: the definition around the cheeks was too severe, especially for a child's face which would normally have less definition. I solved this by washing over the defining points with a skin oil colour I mixed and this looked to be the finishing touch.

Overall this has been a satisfying project. The experience was capped of brilliantly when the client gushingly expressed his gratitude and how pleased he was. Which in the end is the best thing about the job and the reason for going through the process I have taken you through. It is a truly rewarding journey that I would recommend to anyone!

My Painting Process: Stage Four

To complete stage four I followed my rules detailed in stages one to four to finish my piece and to the right is the resultant oil painting.

At the end of the stage (as often happens when an artist attempts to pull a picture together) I felt it was not finished, I can see clear faults with the painting, but at I decide to lay down my brushes. I have been working for a number of hours now and need a break in order to be able to visualise where I go from here with the piece.

I know that I am happy with the figure to the left in the painting, however the child on the right just isn't up to a suitable standard in my eyes.

When this happens my method is to clear away, take the painting down and lean it against the wall; so that I don't have to look at it and be constantly trying to find where I have gone wrong.

After a couple of nights sleep, having not looked upon the painting for a period, you gain a fresh perspective when coming back to your painting and the solution becomes clear almost every time. Indeed you often come back and realise the problem wasn't as bad as you initially thought.

The final stage will feature in my next post and I will take you through what I realised and how I brought the painting to a conclusion.

My Painting Process: Stage Three

As you can see from the latest picture the painting is receiving the final layer of detail.

This stage is fairly simple to explain. It is basically layering on the colours in the face.

The skin on the face of a person is not just a peachy colour. If you look at a persons face you will see many different colours. Take a look at the child on the left, her face has been completed here. You can see oranges shaping the nose and the left side of her face (the right side as you look at her), there is purple defining the lower side of the cheekbon,e and blue highlights the top of her nose. These are just a few examples of the different colours in there.

If you looked at the same subjects face on a different day you would see different colours in these areas, as the lighting will be different and there will also be physical changes such as the flush of her cheeks, or the colours around her eyes if she was more or less tired. This is the beauty of the human face, it is continually lit with beautiful colours and these colours vary in different lighting.

Whilst this rule of colours in the face also applies to any other part of the human body (I will look for the colours when I proceed to the neck and shoulders in this picture), the colours and shades are more detailed and complex in the face, making them (for me personally) the most interesting part of a portrait.

I will take you through the finishing off stage (or the first finishing stage anyway) in my next blog.

My Painting Process: Stage Two

As you can see from this picture I have started the next stage of layering the oils.

You can see two layers of paint here on either half of my subjects face. The child on the left has one half of her head with the next layer from stage one, or mid-layer of colours blocked in (the right half and top of her hair) and the other side has a more detailed top-layer added in (the left and ponytail).

The 'mid-layer' (left and ponytail) brings out the shades that stand out the most in the face on the picture, i.e. the flush of the child's cheeks and the dark shades in her eyebrow/ponytail. These layers are added in before the detailed layer to make them show through in the painting just as strongly as they do in the photograph. An easy way of noticing which colours show through strongest is to squint as you view your subject - the stronger tones and colours will be clearly visible whilst you do this and other weaker notes will shrink into the background.

In the next couple of days I will post another blog illustrating the more detailed side of the painting and featuring a picture of a more advanced stage.

My Painting Process: Stage One

Okay, so here is a bit of a guide to the process I go through when painting. This post will cover stage one, which is basically the under painting and blocking in of the underlying colours. The picture I will demonstrate with is a commission of two grandchildren to be completed in oils on canvas.

Materials used:

• Oil Paints: Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, French Ultramarine, Titanium White and Black
• A3 Box Canvas, White
• Oil Brushes (small and medium sized)
• Mix of one part white spirit and six parts water
• HB Pencil
  

First of all I mixed a cream coloured paint to cover the canvas and take away the harsh lighting of the background.

Next I drew a basic outline of the two children. To do this I first marked onto the original photograph the head and shoulders of the children using the pencil. I then split the original picture into quarters and split the faces of the children into sixths (a line down the middle splitting the faces via the centre of the nose and then three horizontal lines through the eyeline the nose and the mouth of the children). This 'gridding up' process simplified the drawing process and helped me to add the smaller details on the faces, as I coppied across the grid I created on the photograph.

I always draw a very basic outline, this frees up my painting and makes the process less clinical. I mark out the shoulders, head, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and the collar and edges of clothes. I always take time with the outline however as any mistakes at this point can reflect greatly once the paint is laid on and can often be difficult to fix at the later stage of applying the oils.

Next I look at the underlying tones of the skin hair and clothes. These tones are usually strongly highlighted colours/shades that appear briefly in the images and appear to 'come through' from the background.

So for the skin a light cream colour shone in the highlights of the girls cheeks so I painted in a light cream colour. The same process was applied with the reddy brown color appearing though the hair and the bright white highlight illustrated in the girls' clothing.

The reason for doing this is to firstly create a base to paint on. Secondly to bring the colours through in the finished painting, to the same degree that they appear on the original photograph.

I also believe there is a third reason for doing this. It applies personally to me and I think it would apply to other artists; if you fill the canvas with these blocks of colour it starts the layering process and is the alternative to working from top left to bottom right as many artists do. I believe the layering process psychologically is a more satisfying method of completing a picture as it covers the canvas completely and slightly prevents the all intimidating blank areas of a canvas - it relieves the pressure of looking at what you haven't yet done!

So the first stage of painting is completed. Tomorrows post will cover the next stage of the painting process.

How The Market Went

So Sunday was the day of the market. I was nervous beforehand though excited at the same time. My pre-event butterflies where mainly down to not knowing where to go and if the setup and lugging about of my stall would be a struggle. But myself and my sister coped, especially with the gratefully received help my uncle gave me.

Rain washed out any hopes of gaining a potential sale or even a few contacts during the first hour or so, yet eventually the weather cleared and we were away!

A few promising enquiries came in with some great potential of orders from a few punters. A comment from one viewer told me of how thrilled she was to see some 'nice traditional portraits', which pleased me and gave me great encouragement. As these comments came in I was thrilled and it made the experience feel worth while

Yet whether or not these people follow through with an order at the end of the day would be an added bonus to what I gained as a creative from that day. I got some great inspiration from these guys, they were all artists like me, they had produced fantastic peices and enjoying the publics recognition of their precious work. There was so much talent on show that it would be very difficult to come away uninspired and not feeling the need to get back to a blank canvas or peice of paper.

Roll on the next events!

Piazza Art Markets

This coming Sunday I will be setting up stall outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. The Piazza Art Markets are to be held on a Sunday in each of the next four months (including this one). They were launched last year for the city's capital of culture, giving artists the chance to display, sell and demonstrate their work to a wide audience. They are back for 2009 and I am going to be there for all four of the events, displaying my work and hopefully selling and taking a few orders.

I am thoroughly looking forward to the days and experiencing the response that I get from the Piazza's punters! I very rarely get a chance to experience a reaction first hand from people; selling is a task usually undertaken by others for me, so this is a good opportunity for me to develop as an artists as well.

There is still time to apply if anyone else is interested in setting up stall and it should be a great chance to view the talent of the North West's creatives, so head down there and pray for the weather for me readers!

Artists in Common

Someone very special to me posted a blog asking a few questions of me. Mascarandy is the blog to be viewed and to sum the question up they were asking about the characters I paint. Do I connect with them as a character and how do I feel about them as I view them?

First of all though lets go back to Mascarandy. This outfit is designed to give you an inside peek into the world of all creatives whether you are a writer, musician, artist or whoever. The said article on the blog is looking at how people in general view other people and how Mike Appleton (Mascarandy himself and a published and talented writer) and other authors view characters.

For Mike it links into the creative process. Not only is the way others view him and the way he sees others a part of his consciousness when he is walking down the street, but it is something that I think helps him when he is scribbling away creating another highly detailed character.

Characters are evidently important to Mike, it is one of the things that struck me when I read his very first book Tony Hand, A Life In British Ice Hockey. Mike was the ghost writer on this novel and suberbly crafted the character of Hand in a way that a rare handful of writers can. When reading the audience immediately recognises a clear personality portrayed by Mike.

So the question Mike asks of me as an artist is do we work under the same format?

In a nutshell we do. When commissioned the task at hand is not only to get a good likeness for the client, but to translate their personality onto the image as well. Not only is it important to the customer, but it is an important skill that can set you apart from other artists. It is not for me to judge if I have this skill, but for a viewer to judge and I hope it is something I have.

The picture Mike highlighted was of my cousin Lydia (mentioned in an earlier post on this blog). Mike asks am I thinking about the personality behind that smile? As an artist you have just got to, and honestly it should come naturally to concentrate on these aspects of a subject, as it sets them out as an individual. As Mike rightly says you can tell alot about someone by just looking at them. So that first moments judgement for me needs to be suggested in paint or pencil.

So I am going to throw Mikes question out to the audience just as Mike did and ask, do other creatives do this? When musicians write a song about someone, do they bring out aspects of their personallity in their lyrics by sometimes merely looking at them, do actors do the same when playing a role? K M Turner and Mascardany want to know!

Where It All Begins

Where did it all begin for me? Well I first started doing portraits when I did my GCSE's. It was at this time that I was really starting to become a step ahead in school when it came down to art. Don't get me wrong I have always been with pencil or paintbrush in hand, but my 15th and 16th years really brought it out of me. I was thriving on this skill that I could easily be the best at and portraits being the most difficult subjects to capture, really started to enthrall me.

So from there on in portraits were my favoured subject. I started doing them all the time and was constantly striving to learn how to recreate a recognisable face on canvas or paper. Above is one attempt, an acrylic painting of Coldplay's Chris Martin. It was displayed in an exhibition I was lucky enough to have in Rennie's in St Helens last year and I gained positive comments from the public in the galleries book. These comments were greatly appreciated and spurred me on to work harder and create more. I am also proud of the early pictures, they are a personal symbol of me really becoming an artist.

Do you define an artist as someone who earns a living through their artwork? The answer is quite simply, no. An artist is someone who paints, draws or expresses themselves by creating in other ways.

I truly feel that at that point when I was fifteen years old and starting GCSE art, I became a real artist, and I am sure this is how others discover their love.

Learning All The Time

This was an A2 oil on canvas and was difficult!

It was painted from a proffessionaly taken photograph. By the time the image had got to me it was edited and smoothed out, which proved to be more of a challenge than you would expect.

It seems that, as I am used to creating from a raw image, one that was air brushed and digitally simplified was a struggle. The extra colours that make up skin tone weren't there when I was looking for them, so in my mind I made them up. Needless to say this didn't work until I realised what was going wrong.

Once I realised what was going wrong, I proceeded to create a picture with minimal detail and colours and that seemed to work for me. I learnt from this and next time I do a similar picture it should be better and I won't be re-painting sections of the picture, which always causes a compromise to quality.

I am pleased with the bride, I got the likeness pretty quickly for her. However the groom proved to be the struggle. The expression on his face along with the simplified image meant I became unstuck at one point.

Overall though I think the picture turned out to be successful and a good likeness of the newlyweds and at the end of the day that is what I am striving for, for my clients. To create a quality piece that captures something special and personal.

Portrait of Lydia

The painting to the right is my best to date. It is a painting of my cousin that I did a few months ago, an oil painting on canvas.

The likeness is the best I have gotten before and I am really pleased with the result.

I quickly achieved the likeness and once I had got the likeness in the outline (which for me can be the most challenging part of painting a portrait) it was easy to fill in the canvas and complete the piece.

Keep following my blog to see more of my pieces and read about the process involved in creating them.