Chris Fothergill - Architectural Artist and Illustrator » Creative Projects

Creating a Japanese album sketchbook

Chris — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:10:00 +0000

Creating a what? A Japanese album is sometimes known as an ‘accordion’ album, as the pages are joined zigzagging continuously throughout the book. This means that the whole album can be folded outwards to form one long strip of paper. Moleskine make them as small sketchbooks but I wanted to make my own for a very particular purpose. As from this month I have been invited to be the Artist-in-Residence at the Theatre, Chipping Norton for a period of one year. Having held a solo exhibition of paintings there early last year, I am very excited at the prospect of a cultural partnership with such a lively and vibrant creative centre as the Chippy Theatre! I know that as a part of this experience I want to record regular drawings and notes in a sketchbook to form a ‘diary’ or journal over the coming months, but in what form? It occurred to me that if I made a sketchbook in the form of a Japanese album then at the end of the year it could be unfolded and displayed as a whole which would surely be very dramatic. (Theatre-dramatic-see what-I-did?) Awesome thought. But the Moleskine ones, lovely as they are, are too small. The answer – as our house has always doubled as a Blue Peter studio – make my own! First of all the cover – two pieces of 2mm thin scrap mdf board cut to 190mm squares (that’s 7.5″ in old money). Cut a square hole in each and cover them (as shown in the first photo) with cotton fabric cut out of the back of a shirt that doesn’t fit any more. (Also it’s just the right colour for the Theatre!)

Next produce two little pen and watercolour drawings to insert into the windows on the front and back cover! In this case a view of the Theatre on the front, and a view of the Chequers pub next door for the back. I also cut some clear cellophane film and stuck that in first, to keep the sketches from getting grubby over time.

I backed the pictures with white card, and then covered the inside covers with local maps including Chipping Norton and Oxford. Fear not! I didn’t cut up Ordinance Survey maps, just used an old cheap motoring atlas such as you can buy from garages. TIP – a double-sided tape gun is brilliant for making stuff like this, but if you don’t have one, you can get double sided tape from craft suppliers and art shops.

This is where I made my first purchase of the project – a visit to Hobbycraft (Oxford) en route to taking Henry back to Uni in Salisbury! I bought 4 sheets of A1 size cartridge paper, and I calculated that each sheet would give me 15 pages in my sketchbook if I cut them into 160mm wide strips and scored and folded them carefully. I used a long metal ruler and tore them along the top edge to give a ‘character’ edge to each page. It’s not a difficult operation but should be done carefully for a nice result. The paper was medium weight – 120gsm, heavy enough to take a light watercolour wash, but not as clumsy and thick as card would be, I joined the folded strips together and then taped each end on to the cover, No secrets here, but again the more care you take the better. One small indulgence was a roll of self-adhesive tape in spotted dark green, but it makes the spine and the inside cover sooo nice! Total cost from Hobbycraft £1.10 per sheet of paper, £2.99 for the roll of tape (Lots left over) total spend £7.39.

As you may have noticed I have only put in some of pages, about 14 to start with. I shall add in more as need as the book fills up, and if it gets too full I suppose I can take some out from the beginning temporarily – it’s mine and it’s home-made so I can do what I like with it! So there. And finally, to keep the album from falling open and all the pages fanning open all over the floor I need some sort of enclosure. This stumped me for a while, and then I thought – shirt buttons! Better still cut the cuff off from one of the sleeves and use that. Just tuck the ends into the windows with a bit of glue stuffed in and Bob’s your uncle. Works better than it should considering what a wild idea it was.

No excuses now – just one thing to do, get my drawing stuff, go down to the Theatre and make a start! Watch this space.

Do you know Chipping Norton Theatre? It’s a wonderful place for a night out, whether it’s for a play, film, stand-up, pantomime, drama workshops, or even just a coffee and visit an exhibition on in it’s Gallery. www.chippingnortontheatre.com

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CHEDWORTH ROMAN VILLA – an unusual commission.

Chris — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:11:00 +0000

When a letter came through my door last Autumn inviting me to consider painting a wall in one of the most important Roman Villas in the country I was somewhat taken aback. What did I know about Roman Wall Painting?
A major transformation project has been carried out at the Chedworth Roman Villa by the National Trust during the winter and as a part of the refurbishments a purpose built educational facility has been added on behind the café area. This will be known as the ‘Salway’ room and will provide schools and community groups with a dedicated and inspiring area in which to explore Roman life and culture at the Villa. It is having a recreation of a Roman Kitchen at one end, and an ‘eye-mat’ is being fitted on the floor digitally recreating some of the mosaics from the dining-room. That just leaves the walls and that’s where I came in.

It was with some trepidation that I agreed to meet up with eminent Roman historian Professor Peter Salway and Dr. Rupert Goulding (National Trust curator at the Sherborne Park Estate), both consultants to the improvements on the site, along with Jane Lewis, the learning officer at the Villa. I had already bought a wonderful book I’d found on the internet ‘The Splendor of Roman Wall Painting’ by Umberto Pappalardo so I had done some homework, but the meeting was a steep learning curve. However they were all very encouraging and the exchange of ideas was stimulating, not to say a bit mind-boggling! I knew at this point that I had my work cut out.

Examples of actual Roman wall painting:

Unlike my preconceptions the Romans loved bright colour and bling. Never mind less is more, they loved reds and golds, intricate borders, mixtures of styles, fake marbled panels, friezes and painted scenes from ceiling to floor. I could see the styles and colour schemes in the houses of Pompeii from my book, but how was I to translate these as relevant to Chedworth, and how to do it in the time allotted?

When I arrived the room had no doors windows or heating, but the wall was as shown above, divided into three by two timber supports. After consultation we decided to have three central panels surrounded by borders, edged by columns, a dado rail below and a frieze along the top. The left hand panel would depict a hunter returning with his catch, the central panel would show the Chi-rho, a Christian symbol found at the Villa and the right hand panel would be a painting of the Villa itself. My mock-up drawing of it was as follows:

Painting Workshop Days at the Villa during July & August…https://www.fothergillsgallery.co.uk/contents/en-us/d72_watercolour-painting-workshop-days.htmlind out more!

Once I had bought some tester pots of Farrow and Ball paints and had done some experimenting on the walls of my studio, I began the more straightforward task of measuring up, masking off and blocking out the areas of colour on the wall. At least it should have been straightforward. Due to technical problems with the building work the doors and windows failed to arrive at the room during the week I had allotted to making ‘a good start’. Arriving on the first day the temperature outside was minus 4 degrees! Not much warmer inside I nevertheless drew out the initial designs on the walls but coming back the next morning some of my paints were frozen solid! So I had to adjourn for 10 days or so, during which time I decided to paint the inner panels in my studio on 4mm mdf to save time and hopefully get a better result.

The hunter panel was inspired by a small stone carving which can be seen in the Villa’s museum of artefacts showing a hunter-god with a hare, dog and stag.

He also features on part of the dining-room mosaic clutching the hare. I worked up my sketch showing the hunter wearing a hooded cloak or ‘Byruss Britannicus’ and a blue tunic with embroidered stripes or ‘roundels’, striped leggings and simple shoes. Also some Roman snails as they liked filling up empty spaces in their pictures!

The central panel depicts the principal Christian symbol in use at the time of the Villa, the Chi-rho incorporating the two letters X and P, the first two letters of the word ‘Christ’ in Greek. My initial sketch for the panel also shows other symbols around including the fish, peacock, pomegranate, dove and two-handled urn. Along with the laurel wreath these are all interpretive symbols, against a background of a garden setting.

The finished Chi-Rho panel with a distinctly Roman border, taken from one of the mosaics.

The third panel depicting the Villa as it may have looked in c.360 AD was more or less copied from the publicity painting supplied by the National Trust as I had no other reference from which to work. I have simplified it rather and just shown a small hunting party making their way home into the Villa.

But then back to the room itself, and when the doors and windows were fitted and the room was finally warm I had the task of painting all the rest of the wall. I got through an awful lot of masking tape to achieve the clean edges of the borders, although I deliberately painted some of them freehand to give the design some ‘liveliness’ here and there.

The borders took the most time, particularly the ‘egg and dart’ one, the inspiration which came from a house in Pompeii, along with the colours surrounding it.

A natural sponge was useful in giving texture to the panels – I know that ‘marbling’ is a skill unto itself but economies of time dictated certain of my methods. I didn’t worry too much about the authenticity of the columns with their ‘Corinthian’ capitals as it was the spirit of the Roman wall painting I was trying to capture. The wall painters of ancient Rome and Pompeii mixed whatever styles they liked and often lapsed into complete fantasy with their columns!

The ‘frieze’ saw me up a ladder painting with the barest of stencilling with a signwriter’s brush. The design was inspired by yet more of the mosaic in the Triclinium, or dining room of the villa. It was almost the last day of what by now had become something of marathon paint. I rather liked the colour which was ‘duck egg’.

I couldn’t resist signing the wall and dating it by ‘carving’ on the podium below the furthest column.

And thus I put the last brushstrokes to the ‘Salway Room’ of the Chedworth Roman Villa.

Here is a photo of me having just finished, but the eye-mat with its digital mosaic surface was not yet in place. If you wish to see Chedworth Roman Villa and its amazing mosaics, and have a coffee in its newly refurbished café, visit the website here for details:

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chedworth-roman-villa

The Salway Room is used by schools on weekday mornings but is available at other times. You can find more details on the website or by phoning Chedworth Roman Villa on 01242 890256

Painting Workshop Days at the Villa during July & August…find out more!

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Use of masking fluid in watercolour

Chris — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:38:00 +0000

I’ve started a painting this week in my ‘classic’ watercolour style! By that I suppose I mean that the painting is carefully composed, with a preliminary pencil sketch (not shown here) to work out tonal values, composition and atmosphere. I love this view; of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and have drawn and painted it before several times. But now I wanted to do something different, and it occurred to me that if I darkened the sky to have the buildings lighter than the sky, I could get feeling of strong late sunlight at the end of the day.

I rarely use masking fluid, but here it comes into its own. By masking off the outline of the buildings, one can do more than several strong washes of colour in the sky, with no dabbling about, and the buildings will really stand out in front, as they would in a bold flash of sunlight.

I didn’t do any preliminary drawing apart from the silhouette before painting the sky, just in case it all went pear-shaped and I had to start again! That’s from bitter experience! This time I was OK, and as you can see in the right hand picture, whilst waiting for washes of colour to dry, I have drawn in the gondolas in the foreground, painting one in first to work out what I liked, before committing myself to the rest.

I’m looking forward to continuing tomorrow; its not in the bag just yet.

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Van Gogh’s Boots

Chris — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:52:00 +0000

Where better to start ‘Travels with my Art’ than with Van Gogh’s boots? I know from experience how weary his feet must have been when he’d finished a day’s painting ‘en plein air’.

The picture here shows a copy I made of Van Gogh’s original painting (from a postcard). I have just started painting in acrylics, after many years of watercolour as my main medium. Seeking inspiration one day, I saw the postcard on my wall, and made a copy. I did it in less than two hours, but am convinced that Van Gogh would have done it quicker. The brushtrokes are bold and quick, and I became bogged down in copying them all; he would have simply painted the boots. It gave me a good insight into his painting techniques.

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