A peek into my creative process.

Big Stormy Sky

I have been re-engaging with my painting practice recently. Over the last few years I have predominantly created one of a kind monotypes, which I often work into with other materials. I keep a sketchbook and like to explore different techniques in there, however, I love to work bigger. when I completed my MA in Fine Art and Education I worked on large format canvases, which were well over 1m. I loved the process here and enjoyed working to such scale, but I don't have the ability to store or transport works of this size at the moment.

I have found a happy medium in working at about 50cm square for paintings. Big enough to get my teeth into, but easily storable and easy to ship and transport.

The Estuary

I continue to work on my Seaspace series. My style has changed quite a lot over the years and I try to capture more of the feel of the place than trying to capture a pictorial representation. As such, my paintings often go through several stages. Today I'd like to share the development stages of one of my paintings. This one is called 'The Estuary' and is based on a view I pass regularly on my daily walks, just a couple of miles from my home on the Northumberland coast. It's painted with Acrylic paint on a standard edge canvas. Most of my acrylics at the moment are Daler Rowney System 3.

This is the beginnings of a new painting. I'd just finished working on another piece and decided to use up the paint I'd already dispensed to block in my composition. At this stage, I don't worry about detail, I just apply the colour quickly and try to get the shapes I want and get rid of that blank canvas feel. Then I leave my work and think about it for a while.

Originally, I thought that this might be a quite realistic painting and I began to apply the underpainting in the right sort of colours. I love bright colours and have a tendency to want to use them everywhere - reign it in Claire!!! So here we have the shape more clearly defined - you can see the beach and sea and river quite clearly.

As I progressed with this, I started to add details of the buildings in the background and more detail to the sky. These are the rough shapes and not supposed to be fine details. It was going ok, I took a break and spent some time looking at it. I do this a lot. If I'm unsure about a painting I will often pop in on the easel and have it on display so I can look at it and see how it wants to be developed, sometimes just a few hours, the longest I've left something like this was about 6 months.

I wasn't feeling it, it seemed too still. It was starting to look like the place rather than capturing the emotion of the place. I swapped out the small brushes for the big ones and began to make more gestural marks. I stand up for this, often using my whole body to create the marks needed (I can be quite messy at this stage and often work outside during the summer months). You can start to see the brush strokes and movement of the paint.

It did not quite capture the feeling and movement of the place, so out came the pallette knives, cardboard and the biggest brushes I have. Paint is scraped over the surface or dry brushed, allowing some of the previous layers to show through and create that ellusive personal sense of place that comes through painting. At this stage I slow down - just so I know when enough is enough. It's so easy to overwork and miss something. Just a few minor careful adjustments and I decided that it was where I wanted it to be.

I'm often asked how long it takes me to create a painting. It takes a lifetime. It takes all the training, skills, knowledge, experience, fails and successes to create each one. To construct the physical painting can take anything from a few hours to a few days, but sometimes, months or even years. Sometimes I don't create work for months, but I'm constantly thinking, considering, collecting visual source materials and ideas, which eventually coalesce into an idea which eventually becomes a series of works. This process often takes two years or longer. My current series has been in development for about 18 months and I'm still not done with it yet.

I hope that you enjoyed this glimpse into my creative process. I'd love to hear about your creativity too.

Both of these paintings have been sold, but open edition prints are available on my Saatchi shop and Gifts with these images are available to buy on Redbubble.

Going Wobbly - how I'm getting my head back together (and a new top)

It's been quite a week. I don't know about you but I thought I'd got settled into a new routine in lockdown and a new way of working. I spent mornings working, from early until anout 12.30-1pm. Then I'd have lunch; walk the dog; do a bit of housework/ garden stuff; do another hour or two working and finish by tea time. It was all working fine up until Monday.

I'd had a productive weekend. I painted on the bank holiday - out in the garden as it was so nice. - working on a big 120cm square canvas for my painting based on Newbiggin bay. Saturday I pulled out weeds and took it all to the tip, Sunday was church and a long walk with the dog and Boris' announcement!

I didn't sleep well and woke in a poor frame of mind for Monday. I worked - starting at 7.30am and I don't think I really rested from it until tea time. I didn't become a teacher to sit all day at a computer, and by the end of the day my back hurt and I was still left not really know what was going to happen with schools. Many questions and very few answers.

Tuesday was much the same. Worked to the point where my back hurt and the lack of sleep made me completely ineffective. Still no news on how schools would return. I decided that on wednesday I would work on exemplar material for my students and did a bit of painting and designing for some of my modules.

As the week has gone on, it's been harder to keep my chin up. I have felt demoralised by all the teacher bashing going off in the press; the arguments and lack of clear plan. It's become apparent that children and teachers are just subjects in the goverment's latest Covid19 experiment - guinea pigs if you will. I want to teach - I am a professional and do a good job. The children make me laugh, and I love seeing them grow as individuals. I want them to be safe and all our staff to be safe. I just don't think the plans in place are safe. I could feel a level of anxiety creeping in. I even had my work stress dream - you'll laugh at this one - I dream all the kids have left unwashed pallettes, paintbrushes etc in the classroom sink and I have to clean it up. It's stupid I know, but it's what I dream when I'm stressed about work.

I decided to stop reading, listening to or watching the news as it was seriously affecting my mental health and late in the week I started a couple of sewing projects to boost my mental health.

I had a piece of spotty viscose left over from my Solina dress. It was from Minerva. I decided to make my ever faithful top. I have made so many of these I have lost count - It's Burdastyle #116 07/2012.

I've made a few changes to the pattern over the years. I joined the shoulder pieces together to make one piece for each side. It's supposed to be a double layered top, instead I make this a single layer and bind the neck and armholes with bias binding.

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To make it super easy I lust leave long bias strip ties at the opening and tie in a bow.

I also made a button necklace. I had a supply of craft buttons in bright colours, so I strung them together interspersed with smaller buttons, the bright colours make me happy.

I've also started on a vintage pattern. It's a Brooke Shields jumpsuit pattern from 1984 - watch this space for more on that one.

Gelli printing - finally getting to grips with it

Earlier this week my daughter asked if we could have an art day. She took Art at GCSE last year but hasn't really done much since. Initially, she wanted to join me in printing. Then she decided that she wanted to overpaint a portrait she did last year. However, when she saw I had some big paper she decided to draw a simple outline portrait of her favourite member of the group 'Road Trip'. (It's a teenager thing!)

So off she went with her drawing, asking for a bit of help now and again and I started with my printmaking. I think if I were to go and do my Art education at this point in my life I'd do print. There is something so immediate and unexpected about the outcomes and with mono-printing it a far more painterly technique - which suits me down to the ground. I think at some point I would love to find out more about local artist Rebecca Vincent's technique as its very controlled, she uses many layers and a big printing press. I work on the dining table and I don't have a press!

I usually use oil-based block printing inks, which have a long working time but can also take several days to dry. I was drawn to trying a Gelli plate as I had read that you can get a really nice print from them just using acrylic paint, but they are not suitable for oil-based inks. So a couple of years ago I had a Gelli plate for Christmas and give it a try, unfortunately, I was rather disappointed with the results. I used a lot of paint and it dried so quickly it was almost unworkable - this was a real shock when I'm so used to the long working time you have with oil-based inks.

Last year, when on a course for work I was introduced to block printing medium and textile medium. The block printing medium is added to the paint in equal amounts and extends the working time and gives a better print consistency. I tried this out with traditional monoprint techniques and a small press and it worked very well. My mum bought me some of the block printing medium for last Christmas and today was the first time I've given it a go. It was the perfect day to print with this technique as it was warm enough that I didn't need the heating on, but cool enough so that the paint wouldn't dry out too quickly.

I had no plan for what type of prints I was going to make. It was purely an opportunity to experiment with techniques and materials.

I set up my work station with a range of different papers, collage materials, rollers, spatulas and cloths. I also set up the clothes airer to dry the prints on.

I found that it's quite easy to layer the prints - mainly as the paint dries quickly. I also quite like that the paint can layer on the plate and this can create some interesting effects. I used a few stencils and other items for masking out areas but found that they're not as effective as my normal method. What I did like was the painterly quality you can get with this type of printing. and I liked being able to draw into the ink with the spatulas and create different effects.

Overall I'm pleased with the results and I created over 30 prints. Most of these will form collage materials, which will be layered and cut to create other artworks. One or two of the pieces work well on their own and some of the others will need working back into with other art materials to make them into something I'm happy with.

I still think I like the oil-based inks best, but I can clean this lot up and have it all away by the end of the day - which is a bonus when there are 5 of us in the house and space is at a premium. Which of these do you like best?