As we were to all paint a still life in the afternoon, Charles did another demo of a still life. The set up was the usual vase of flowers (vase a deep royal blue this time), the ever present duck and a blue bowl of fruit (apples, lemon and a lime), a couple of pears and two tubes of W & N paint, plus a paintbrush. These items were all placed casually on a checked cloth. Charles started by spotting where his vase would roughly be in the composition and having got that about right, set about drawing the flowers. He did his usual large shapes of a collection of flowers (all the white in the front of the arrangement were drawn as a massed shape) and only drew the odd individual leaf shape. Any spiky shapes of flowers were just a single up stroke with a squiggle to denote the flowers on the stem. He then connected the vase shape to the duck, which was to it's right, and worked his way around the drawing, lifting his pencil only when he really had to, relating one shape to another until the drawing was complete. He started by painting the flowers, looking first for some negative shapes to define some of the white flowers in the front. When I say he looks for the negative shapes, he doesn't do it like most flower artists in that the whole flower is clearly defined (petals and all, etc) with a solid dark behind it. He puts touches of dark here and there to just suggest the white flowers and the effect is very loose and expressive. He worked his way upwards through the arrangement, using his dilute combination of cad yellow orange, cobalt and a touch of raw sienna to give some tone to the white flowers. He never paints shadows per se in blue or purple on white flowers but contents himself with just adding this tone in places to show light and form. The tone shapes look pretty random but when you stand back from the painting you can see that he is cleverly hinting at the actual shape of the flower in question. He painted a flower shape in alizarin and then decided later that he didn't like it. However, it stayed as it was and all he did was add a bit of cobalt to make it a more interesting tone, (don't correct - modify!). He moved onto the dark blue vase and used his brush in the way I described before for painting larger passages. His loaded brush (cobalt/ultramarine violet) went this way and that, never lifting off the paper until he had completed the vase. The effect of him moving his brush like this meant that he didn't get a solid blue all over the vase, but achieved a variety in tone and colour by varying the pressure on the brush to allow more or less of the paint to flow. Charles then painted the same blue bowl that he had used yesterday, once again finding the negative shapes behind the fruits to help define them. He used burnt sienna with a touch of ultramarine where the shadow was strongest. All the time Charles is painting he is connecting the objects he is painting to the background. He splashes on a little paint to the background and works it out a little to add some tone so that the background is part of the painting and not an afterthought. The fruit was painted as I described yesterday - put the brush on the passage and then moving this way and that on the paper, only lifting it to charge it with more paint. He was sure to leave highlights on the fruit of white paper but to make them seem more natural and less stark he took a damp brush across the centre of the patch of light to blur and soften it slightly. This avoids the 'cut-out' look. He made sure the local colour (colour that the object actually is) was strongest on the shadow side of the fruit and he added touches of ultramarine in places where the fruit met each other at the base of the bowl in shadow. Then he went to the duck. I was expecting him to paint is exactly like he did yesterday, but he made it more blue this time, using cobalt with some ultramarine violet and burnt sienna. He made the tail of the duck, where it met the blue vase, slightly stronger in tone which made the vase stand out. He moved on to the pears which were a combination of cad yellow deep (for lighter parts), alizarin and cad red light. They were painted as usual in a dynamic and expressive way using his brush to describe the shape to give the fruit roundness and making sure that he changed the tone to show the light side. The wine bottle was painted more lightly than in yesterday's demo - using weak cad green deep (an unusual colour made by Holbein). When I say weak I stress that I don't mean watery. Charles takes some pigment and works it out on his palette and then takes a very small amount of worked out paint on the tip of his brush. The water in the belly of the brush flows through the pigment on the tip and by varying the pressure and the angle of the brush, Charles can control how strong or weak the colour is. A little ivory black was used for the cap of the wine bottle and also added to the section at the base of the bottle under the label. The light was actually coming from above and slightly to the left, so the right side of the bottle was in a light shadow. Because of this, Charles lost the edge on the right hand side of the bottle allowing paint to blur over the edge of the white label. One of Charles's golden rules - there should be less tonal contrast on the shadow side of an object where it meets something else than on the light side, where the tonal contrast should be stronger. That takes some thinking about! After leaving the vase to dry during one of his breaks, he went back in and added more depth of colour to some sections - to break it up a bit he said. The patches of paint looked a bit scary to me, as if they needed softening, but miraculously, when the vase dried, it looked just perfect - good variety in colour and tone and interesting as well. Charles moved on to painting the tubes of paint. He said that sometimes he paints them well and sometimes not so well - every time is different. Not many artist would admit this I feel! The paint brush was last and was painted very simply - burnt sienna with a touch of burnt umber at the tip for the hairs of the brush, a couple of darker lines down the metal part leaving a flash of white paper for the reflection and then a stroke of ultramarine/burnt umber to give a strong dark down the handle of the brush, also leaving a flash of light, finishing with cad red on the very end of it. He finished by adding a loosely defined check pattern on the cloth, pressing more on his brush in some places and lifting it to make a light mark in others. Not every stripe was painted to ensure that the loose and casual look was maintained. This was the day that it was my turn in the front row and as I was to Charles's left and he is right handed, I could clearly see what colours he was using and exactly how much paint he put on his brush, etc. Sometimes he only picks up a tiny amount of paint, other times he digs right in. He likes to have his paint 'gloopy' so that it is the consistency of soft toothpaste to allow him to have a good dig in should he need to. He has a horror of people using dried up paints and says that you can't achieve good results that way. In the afternoon, we all chose a still life set up (there were five on offer) to paint. I started my drawing but got sucked into drawing more flowers than I really wanted to but I found the whole 'just draw shapes' approach difficult to achieve. I managed to do all the drawing though and was quite pleased with it (apart from the too defined flowers and leaves). I got stuck right into painting the flowers, using some of Charles's colours and all of the advice that I could manage to apply. He came round as I was painting and said that my flowers were 'very pretty' although I rather felt that this wasn't quite what he wanted me to aim for. He asked me if I was a tidy person and I said yes, almost to OCD level. That makes it very hard, he replied and on balance I have to agree with him. My nature fights my pull to paint loosely - a constant dilemma. I carried on with my painting but it was obvious that I was beginning to suffer from a bad case of stage fright as I found myself doing things that I normally wouldn't do and although the painting turned out ok (only just ok though) it is probably the worst still life I have produced in the last year or so. The flowers were in a glass vase and I usually avoid anything glass like the plague, but I had a go and although my vase isn't that good, it is just about ok. It is hard when you are trying to learn new concepts, remember new painting techniques and painting in the presence of a maestro - enough to rattle anyone I think. Charles is extremely kind and helpful, but it is still difficult not to be over-awed at times. I took my still life back to the cottage we were staying in and finished it. It was dreadful light, but I did want to end up with a finished painting. I will post it on the gallery tomorrow when I have photographed it. So what did I learn today? I learnt about differing tonal contrasts depending on whether than object meets light or shade, you can go back in if a passage is dry to add more tone or vary the shapes of the patches of paint to add interest, draw large shapes for flowers and not individual flowers and leaves, put cast shadow shapes under objects to anchor them down, connect objects by adding a line of the cloth or a shadow shape so that objects are not isolated, paint in your background as you go along making it an integral part of the painting - no adding a background after finishing the painting, you can paint an object many time (i.e. the duck) and make it different every time, you can paint the same object many times and not always get it right (the paint tubes). I did ask Charles if he ever ran out of inspiration because he must have painted just about everything by now. ' No', he replied, 'never, as I paint everything like I am seeing it for the first time and it is always different'. That certainly made me re-assess the thought I had before coming on this course that I had painted enough boats and race horses. I don't think I need to change the subject at all, but I do need to paint every one as if it was the first time. Actually sounds quite exciting.