Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

I have printed out some of the characters that I managed to take with my camera, these people stand out and might be included in the final image. In Lowry’s painting The Cripples from 1949 there are a number of identifiable Manchester characters in the painting including one known as “Johnny on the Boards”. Some of the figures are homeless, workers, shoppers, street entertainers, beggers looking through all the images there were more elderly people then I expected. As the images were taken during in the week and not weekend they won’t be as many teenagers and children of school age, this isn’t a factor I took into consideration when I was choosing the best days to go down. Some of the charactors are below:

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People of Manchester

Happy Homeless Guy
There was this one character in Manchester which stood out for me which can be seen below:

There was this street entertainer playing some sort of instrument and from out of nowhere this guy started dancing and waving his hands in the air. It just reminded me of the Manchester Happy Monday’s era; the guy looked stoned and was really happy. He was properly one of the nicest could have come across, I would like to refer to him as the happy hobo. In the quick watercolour painting below I didn’t get the characteristics of the man so I did a portrait of him with pencils which shows more of the features I wanted to show in the first place. I’ve never done a portrait before it needs a lot of more work and a few things are wrong but as this project isn’t about portraits I will finish the drawing off another day when I have some spare time on my hands.

 A quick small Watercolour Sketch which didn't show how happy he really was.

I did a pencil portrait of the guy which turned out a lot better, as this was my first portrait it didn’t go to bad but I can see a lot of mistakes which need refining which I will do another day. Please double click the image for a larger picture.

Below are some more characters from Manchester City Centre, these were done in Acrylic on Acrylic paper The first seems to be a homeless guy, you don’t see as many homeless people in Manchester as you use to do during the day. I’ve included backgrounds which you would see in Manchester, a standard black cab and a back of a bus. All the homeless drunks use to all congregate in Piccadilly Gardens before they decided to redesign that area. The second image is a sight you see in the centre of Manchester nearly on every corner which is people giving out free copies of the Manchester Evening News which is a daily local paper. For the background I’ve included a rough painting of a tram which was also in the original photograph. I’m going to have a look at a couple of more characters and then get back to looking at Manchester buildings. 

 

 

The below image sticks out for me because he was playing pans and buckets as his instruments, I can’t remember what the music sounded like but he seems happy enough. This image was produced in around 20 minutes; the mediums I have used are Conte Crayons and Pastel Pencils just for a change. Dont forget for a larger picture of the drawing please click the image again once it has loaded (IE)

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

As I was down Manchester I decided to take a camera with me and took loads of photographs around Manchester City Centre and around Stockpot I also bought a small A5 watercolour hardback pad which I bought from and art shop near Stockport College which is where I did a Graphic Design course a few years back. I don’t like sketching outdoors so I got the smallest book I could get; I sketched on location and later on added some watercolour. I’m only just getting use to using watercolour as I prefer acrylics but it’s a lot of mucking around taking all my acrylics with me on location it’s a lot easier with watercolours. For most of the of the  sketches I have also taken a photograph for reference from a similar position which I have also shown. I didn’t really do a lot of sketching as I wanted to get as many photographs as I could so I could work from them when I got back home. I have decided I will go to Stockport and the galleries today and I will head into Manchester and take some photographs tomorrow before coming home. I’m not sure what type of photographs I need so I’m just going to take loads.

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Princess Street, Stockport



Blackshaw’s Cafe, Stockport.

 

 

Stockport Air Raid Shelter Tours.





Stockport near Bus Station





Exchange Square, Manchester.



 

Entrance to the Food Court, Manchester.



Where have I been?

Unfortunately my mother passed away out of the blue three months ago and it has taken me awhile to come to terms with it, I didn't give up my art college I just took some time out. I haven't updated the blog since my mother passed away; I have now finished college and it is my intention to spend some time practicing with the oil paints. I have two projects that need to be uploaded to the blog and hopefully this will be all done in the next week or two. Hope everyone is ok that follows the blog, for people that are in the UK the second series of Show me the Monet started last week and is worth a look, it’s on at 3pm on BBC 2 during the week.

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

As well as researching artists that are known for their paintings of Manchester and surrounding area I decided to go to Manchester and Stockport and collect some photographs. I even went to Manchester Art Gallery where they had a lot of work on show by Adolphe Valette all the images below are what I have taken, I haven’t uploaded everything I went a bit mad and took absolutely loads these are from the Gallery.

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Manchester Art Gallery:

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

The new project started a couple of weeks ago but I haven't really got very far with it, I’ve managed to get most of the research out of the way. However I need to go to Manchester and Stockport on Wednesday to produce some preliminary studies and shoot plenty of photographs. Last year I did a similar brief to do with a building study which I also did in Stockport, I can always use some of the photographs from that brief as well as the new ones. The full brief for this project can be viewed here in pdf format. Whilst researching I came across some wonderful artists, some I have looked at before but others are new to me which I'm very glad I stumbled upon them, below are the contemporary artists I’ve researched which all have done paintings around the Manchester area.

William Ralph Turner

Alan Knight
Liam Spencer
Adolphe Valette


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Other artist which are also well worth looking at are:

Angela Wakefield
Steven Scholes
Martin Whittham
Jackie Wagg
Stacey Martin

I really enjoyed looking at William Ralph Turner's work as this artist is new to me, he has only recently become better known within the last few years. Turner knew Lowry and did a couple of portraits of him; he recently stopped painting a couple of years ago due to his 92 year old body letting his hands down. I enjoyed Turners work so much I did a quick painting from one of his; however I did leave out cyclist though.