14.11.13

Gwilym John Blockley
























This biography of John Blockley is taken from a blog by Joe Hargreaves, from March 2011 … this blog is dedicated to all the G John Blockley (and would be) fans out there who are looking to show appreciation to the late great artist. Please add your comments and any stories about how John's paintings make you feel, and how it reflects in your own style …

http://gjblockley-blog.blogspot.co.uk/

It appears that no one has left any comments or stories, so here are a few more items of information that I've gleaned from various sources, either from his books or from the web, about John's work and methods of painting … 

John Blockley recieved no formal arts training: yet he painted nearly all his life. He trained as an engineering draughtsman, progressing to designer, then exhibition designer and subsequently became head of the exhibition design and construction department of the Atomic Energy Authority.
     Much of his work was in oils, acrylics, watercolours and pastels and concerned with painting his impressions of various forms of projects under construction or in operation, and, on one occasion an eight-metre long mural entitled “Progression of Mankind” for an exhibition in Japan. He exhibited throughout the UK and received a number of awards over the years including the ‘Winsor and Newton Prize’ at the Royal Institute. He was particularly drawn to bold saturated colours that evoked special places or atmospheric conditions, often favouring intense reds and oranges such as in the paintings that are in the RWA permanent collection.
     As well as being a member of the RWA, John Blockley was also a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, The New English Art Club and was a past President of the Pastel Society. He was author to a number of books on painting techniques, a well as an illustrated account of a year in his life: A Personal Record.
     He died in January 2002 and an obituary in The Times appeared soon after …

John Blockley became well-known as an artist in watercolour, pastels and, in later years, acrylic, despite having had no formal training in the subject and not starting to paint full-time until he had reached the age of 52.
     Born in Knighton (1921) on the border of Shropshire and Wales, Gwilym John Blockley left school at 13 and, at his parents’ insistence, served an engineering apprenticeship. He then had a series of engineering jobs in the North of England before joining the UK Atomic Energy Authority again in a technical capacity, in 1952.
     In a remarkable change of tack, and even by his passion for drawing and painting, he became head of the authority’s design studio. Several of his pictures illustrating atomic power and desalination were displayed in the British Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka, one stretching to the full height of the pavilion. His painting of the prototype fast reactor at Dounreay was exhibited at the Royal Academy.
     But Blockley was unhappy at UKAEA, and for several years he devoted virtually every weekend to painting outdoors, in all weathers, to capture craggy mountains, bleak moors and industrial subjects. An exhibition of his work in 1965, ridiculed by his boss, astonished both the artist and his critics when virtually everything sold.
     Emboldened by this commercial success and, as ever, with the staunch support of his wife, Margaret, Blockley finally took the plunge in 1974, at the age of 52, giving up his well-paid job to paint full-time. He never looked back, devoting his prodigious energy to painting and the obsessive search for the essence of his subjects.
     He loved the ruggedness of the Cumbrian and Welsh mountains, the Pennines and the singular mood of the Pembrokeshire landscape. All the time he experirnented with new techniques, developing a style which continued to evolve but remained unmistakably his own: experimental and progressive, with no boundaries; somewhere between abstract and representational, stark but richly patterned.
     His talents were not confined to producing distinctive and technically accomplished work. He was also an inspiring teacher, running courses every year from 1967 until illness forced him to retire last summer (2001).
     He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1967 and served on its council for many years. But it was at the Pastel Society, an organisation whose aim is to promote the medium by means of exhibitions, tutorial workshops, demonstrations and lectures, that he made the most impact. He joined in 1969 and showed a sense of purpose as its president for two terms (1981-83 and 1988-93) which helped to revive both the medium and the society. He was also a member of the New English Art Club and of the Royal West of England Academy. His energetic leadership, outgoing personality and dry wit made him a popular colleague among artists and students alike.
     After retiring from the Atomic Energy Authority he moved to the Cotswolds (though he sometimes complained that the area was “too pretty”), where his wife managed their successful gallery in Stow-on-the-Wold. He shared a studio with the artist Moira Huntly, each benefiting from the other’s criticism.
     Blockley also wrote seven books on watercolour and pastel techniques, the last of them appearing last year. Among the most popular was Country Landscapes in Watercolour, in which the artist explained how to achieve a strong textural interpretation of the countryside by mixing watercolours with gouache, Indian ink and other mediums. The text also demonstrates how to handle different terrains, buildings, close-ups, lighting and weather effects. Another popular book was A Personal Record, an illustrated account of a year in his life.
     He is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1949, and, by their two daughters, one of whom, Ann, is also an artist (see http://www.annblockley.com)..

Several artists have been influenced by John’s textural style – these names come to mind … Michael Morgan, Malcolm Edwards, Naomi Tydeman and Ron Ford … I will include relevant links in future posts.

Copies of John's A Personal Record published by Ferguson Wells Publishing, 1998, appear on Amazon and eBay from time to time and are usually priced from £200 and upwards … this is a gem of a book which encapsuates the essence of John Blockley in his sketches, blots, scuffs and all. Whist not in itself instructive, nevertheless gives an insight into the mind working of a very good artist. It is a book to treasure.

The following links have examples of his work:
http://www.paintingandartists.com/contemporary-watercolorists


















The following notes are taken from The Challenge of Watercolour,
A and C Black, London, 1979 and Watercolour: Practice and Progress,
A and C Black, London, 1985 …


Colour selection
Paint manufacturers produce a wide range of colour to choose from. I have beside me a chart of watercolours containing nearly one hundred colours. My selection is:

Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, Lemon Yellow, Aureolin, Indigo, Payne’s Gray and Pthalo Blue.

I can mix most colours that I want with this ‘main’ selection, but I also carry, for occasional use Hooker’s Green Dark, Cobalt Blue, and sometimes I add (for me) a ‘way-out’ colour such as Cobalt Violet. Sepia is a lovely brown, Burnt Sienna is a lovely reddish brown. In past days there were doubts about fading, but most colours today are reliable. The colours listed here can be relied on not to fade.
     This is my paint box, shown here rather less than exact size: it is, in fact, about the same size as this book when opened out (440 x 275 mm). Starting at the bottom left corner the colours are: Cobalt Blue, then a ‘spare’ place, Light Red, Cobalt Violet, ‘spare’, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Red, Hooker’s Green, Pthalo Blue, Indigo, Payne’s Gray, Lamp Black, Aureolin, Lemon Yellow, White (rarely used), Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber. The ‘spare’ places are for trying out new colours, and occasionally previously disliked colours.
     It may seem more logical to keep colour families together and many painters would be critical of my casual arrangement. The Cadmium Red looks startingly displaced from the other reds. My arrangement probably came about through early ignorance, or impatience, but there is some sense in it. I frequently modify Cadmium Red with Yellow Ochre, and Aureolin with Lemon Yellow, Indigo with Payne’s Gray and so it is convenient to place them as neighbours. Sometimes I simultaneously pick up harmonious neighbouring colours with a flat wide brush so that one brush stroke across damp paper produces subtle blending of two colours.
     The box has large wells for mixing colours. I clean the largest of these frequently while painting, but the others are never cleaned. These dried previous colour mixings might be criticised as dirty and untidy but I would be inhibited by starting with an immaculate colour box. For me, these spillages of yesterday’s colours are exciting and stimulating, and I can almost read ‘beginnings’ of paintings and landscape suggestions within them. They are helpful in overcoming the initial anxiety of starting work on the sheet of white paper. The dried mixings have practical value also, they can be picked up with a wet brush to provide subtle colour touches in today’s painting.

Colour extracts
A number of colours can be mixed from only a few colours and to illustrate this I have taken extracts from my paintings. These are reproduced same size as the originals and are intended to identify some colour mixtures and show them in the context of actual paintings rather than as mere specimens.
     These examples indicate that a variety of colours can be obtained by mixing and it is constructive and fun to experiment with colour mixtures.

Scans to follow

Painting with a few colours
I do advise those just starting to paint to proceed systematically. Aim to get to know a few colours at a time, and then gradually add to your vocabulary. Paint some simple landscapes, or indoor things, with just a few colours. Delightful results can be obtained by painting with one colour, say Indigo, and then towards the end of the painting introducing a hint of another colour, only just noticeable, perhaps Raw Umber, or Raw Sienna. Some of the early water-colourists achieved delightful results with almost monochromatic work.

Mountain light
This painting is about a mountain side speckled with light reflected from boulders, where eroded scree is scattered down the slopes.
     The mountain side is clothed with trees and it was important to paint them as a mass rather than individually. Lots of separately painted trees would detract from the sparkling light. I painted the trees with one wash, shaping the top to describe rounded tree tops. Branches and trunks were stroked with a brush into the damp wash.
     The painting began with a wash all over of Payne’s Gray mixed with diluted Alizarin Crimson. The trees are Payne’s Gray with additions of Burnt Umber in places. So, mostly only one colour, Payne’s Gray, is used, with occasional additions of the other two colours. The larger reflected lights were blotted out with my finger wrapped in a rag, and the small lights with a stick (the end of my brush) wrapped in a rag.

Warm and cool colours
Colours close to red are termed warm colours. My landscape sketch (below) shows a landscape painted with warm colours, all of them being closely related to red.
     The other sketch shows a landscape in cool colours, all of them being related to blue.
     These little sketches are inventions of mine to illustrate the idea of warm and cool colour, but in nature, warm and cool colours are rarely separated quite so definitely. They mostly exist together.

Recession
Colours in the landscape tend to cool with distance, they lose their colour and incline towards blue or blue-grey. Try an experiment. Paint a small simple landscape with a building in the foreground and a building in the distance. Paint the foreground with Burnt Umber and the distance with Cobalt, very pale. Paint the roof of both buildings with the same red. You will see that the distant roof will jump forward and not sit properly in the distance. The distant roofs should be cooler.

Tone
We have discussed how objects become cooler with distance. Objects also tend to become paler with distance. So, in addition to our use of warm and cool colour to obtain recession we now have dark and light, known as tone. In order to become familiar with this it is a good idea to forget colour for a while and paint in monochrome. Try a painting in any one colour – I suggest Payne's Grey – and try to suggest recession by painting distant objects with paler washes.
     It is not always easy to judge tone when working with colour. This is proved by seeing colour paintings photographed in black and white; often a part of the photograph appears to jump out of its surrounding, showing that the artist, when considering the colour of that part, had not considered its tonal values and has painted the passage too light or too dark.
     A very old trick is to look at the subject through closed eyelids to eliminate details and simplify the scene into broad tonal masses.


Tonal sketches
These sketches were painted with Indigo watercolour as simple planes of tones. They indicate how distance can be implied on a piece of flat paper, by regulating the tonal values. This tonal recession is known as 'aerial perspective'.
     Such small sketches are enjoyable to do, and can be effective in themselves. They certainly help towards an appreciation of painting in tonal values.

Colour and tone combined
The combination of colour and tone is extremely useful in helping to convey a sense of distance and space on a flat piece of watercolour paper.
     My colour sketch with warm brown trees and the blue trees beyond, gives a sense of distance. This has been helped also by painting the trees successively smaller, but the effect would have been even greater by painting the diminishing trees in successively  cooler colours. The tone of the nearest, larger group, might also have been slightly darker.
     My sketch 'Mountain sky' has dark blue in the distant left mountain and in the foreground. Is my judgement wrong? In fact, the foreground blue is slightly darker than the distant blue, and is also made to appear darker by contrasting it with a very pale foreground tone. But perhaps I should not have used blue – though I wanted it as a kind of link with the background. So it should be even darker, or a warmer blue? How do I make it a warmer blue? I could obtain it by mixing a warm colour with blue, or, preferably, paint all the foreground red, then glaze over it with a glaze of blue.


Tonal scale
In terms of painting, tone extends from white to black, with all the shades of greyness in between. Some painters use this range of tone in their paintings, to give strong dramatic effect. Others work over a limited scale ranging from white paper to a grey tone for their darkest tone.
     Paintings ranging over the darker tones are referred to as low key, and the lightest scale of tones as high key. I have heard the latter type referred to as 'wishy washy' but the truth is that such paintings can be beautifully rendered, suggestive and containing nuances to be savoured and relished.
     The important consideration is that whatever key we wish to work in, we have to avoid scattered, abrupt changes of tone. Strong tonal contrasts should be placed in important areas to which we wish to draw attention. If they are scattered indiscriminately over the painting, the result will be busy and confusing.
     Busy tone, and incorrect tone can be the most irritating faults in a painting.
     The small study opposite started with a wash all over of pink,

       


Bridge, North Wales, p72, The Challenge of Watercolour

Stage 1
Using a pencil, I draw the outline of the bridge only. I would find further drawing inhibiting when painting, and in any case the bridge is the only positive shape I need to recognize in the preliminary stages. The mountain is the only other positive shape in the painting and this I paint in later.
     With masking fluid I mask out the boulders in the immediate vicinity of the bridge. I also mask out the light parts of the bridge itself.
     I mix a dilute wash of Raw Sienna and a little Cadmium Red and paint the light part of the sky. I extend a stronger mixture of these colours down to the bottom of the paper. While this is still wet I blend French Ultramarine modified with a little Black into the upper sky and into the foreground.
     At this stage the paper is covered with traditionally applied washes which represent the lightest tones of sky and ground, into which I have blended some darker tones. There are no hard edges. The foreground on the right appears very pale, but remember it represent the palest part of the ground and only small fragments of it will remain in the final painting.

Stage 2
I strengthen the foreground even more, leaving a diagonal passage of the original wash in the centre leading towards the bridge. As the wash dries I draw and stipple stiffer pigment into it with a brush to create an uneven tone. I let the painting dry.

Stage 3
I dampen the sky with clean water and blend in blue-black mountains. I also wet the foreground and add Burnt Umber and Brown Madder separately into it. Then I hold the paper horizontally in both hands and rock each edge up and down so that the wash sweepsbackward and forward over the paper surface and the paint pigment deposits out of the wash to suggest a textured foreground.
     I strengthen the skyline, tease long grass out of the ground wash and indicate some stone walling. I let the painting dry and rub away the masking fluid to expose white paper in the rocky area next to the bridge.

Stage 4
I strengthen the mountain, tint in the rocks and define them further with lines drawn with a fine brush.

I will add some photos, scanned from the above books, at a later date.














5 comments:

  1. I am a huge fan. Eager to see the scans in the blog.

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  2. So much wonderful content. A new fan....

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  3. My favourie watercolour artist, brilliant, brilliant

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  4. I absolutely love his work and have a copy of 'The Challenge of Watercolour' - I can now happily run a tap over my work and have been encouraged to experiment more with different techniques.

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