Bloomsbury Inspiration

Having lived in Sussex for nearly 8 years I'm rather ashamed to admit that, until last week I had never made it into Charleston House. I've enjoyed coffee in the tea room, Alain De Botton's philosophical ruminations at the Charleston Festival and occasionally wandering through the beautiful walled garden. However last week, I was introduced to the charms of Charleston House, East Sussex...finally and without disappointment.

Nestled between Eastbourne and Lewes, Charleston House tours can be booked on Wednesdays and Saturday's with a guide and it was certainly a very worthwhile £7.50. You can't book in advance so be prepared to wait a while, (an hour and 15 minutes in my case). Prior to the tour commencing I took advantage of appreciating the vibrant canvases of Maurice Cockrill RA and a meander through the shop (not your average tourist shop, there's some lovely pieces of textiles, object d'art, Bloomsbury books etc but do expect to pay more for the privilege).

The August sunshine brought a number of visitors on the day I visited but Charleston House maintained it's unique atmosphere that seemed to radiate throughout: an enigmatic 'Englishness'. Whilst waiting I also enjoyed a good sized, tasty, salad for £5 although at busy times (and 25 minutes later), a larger kitchen and more staff would be an advantage for what is I expect the busiest time of the year.

Janet was my group's guide for the 60 minute tour and her knowledge and enthusiasm were impressive. I felt a genuine warmth for the place from the staff at Charleston. The curator has achieved a wonderful show of what life was like at Charleston for the Bloomsbury set and their inspiration - standing in the sitting room I could smell the tobacco and hear the passionate conversations of some of this countries finest artists, poets and writers including Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, David Garnett and Maynard Keynes.

Inspired by Vanessa Bell's desire to create a home for her two boys and this amazing house where every surface has been personalised with paintings, textiles, mosaics, ceramics, like many visitors I expect, I set to work on bringing at little bit of Charleston into my home. After my visit I really felt in the age of cheap fast interior design, perfection on a budget, that we're missing that homely feel, so prevalent at Charleston House. Living on a budget is wonderful for getting my creative juices flowing and the boys are always enthusiastic about 'personalising' their space....with permission this time.

Enlisting the help of our 4 and 7 year old neighbours, we set to work on transforming some garden hard core and our old kitch ceramics into homegrown object d'art. Here are the results: not perfect, not to everyone's style or taste, not ready for the pages of 'Elle Decoration' but everytime I look out onto our painted bricks and shattered ceramics it isn't just the blast of colour they have brought to the garden I enjoy. I also remember a fantastic creative afternoon with the kids - and you can't buy that in B&Q.

Dodge and Burn Baby

As a fairly pedantic artist I'm on a mission to create a series of images, created in just a few hours every week. Last week saw 'Emerge' this week's offering is 'After Erin' (click the image to see a larger version).

A lazy Sunday afternoon saw me monoprinting in the August sunshine with a variety of materials including random papers, oil paints, acrylics, Indian ink and a lot of water. The results were pretty nice textures perfect for 'Photoshopping'. I'm addicted to finding a variety of textures, patterns, photos etc for use in my digital collages. No matter how simple the image, the subtle addition of a found texture can add a definite depth.

I wanted an almost 'chiaroscuro' effect but with loads of white space to create something that was still very clean. Taking four elements, a pen and ink drawing from my sketchbook, a photo, a pattern (in this case a vector pattern I drew in Illustrator) and a monoprint I set to work last night conducting another Photoshop experiment. Armed with my Wacom Intuit A5 Tablet, the kids plonked in front of Star Wars, I set to work.




I'll be teaching Photoshop this Autumn at Sussex Downs college so I'm also focusing on various tools each week. The past few weeks have seen me experimenting with Photoshop Channels but as a painter I wanted to use my tablet for well um... a more painterly purpose. Intuitively this has led me to the smudge, blur, dodge and burn tools.

Working in a structured manner designing websites, over the years has made me a little stale and reluctant to leave my comfort zone. Like many Photoshop users I'm a big fan of blending modes in the layers palette to create the depth of effect I've wanted and also with looming deadlines, they always offered the quickest results. However I've found the dodge, burn, blur and smudge tools have been an excellent way to create subtlety in specific areas (this week, especially the around the eyes) and have whet my appetite to consider creating an entire painting in Photoshop...we'll see...

Anyway, if you are used to working with paint, chalks, pastels etc these Photoshop tools offer the flexibility that you would have with traditional materials ie using your fingers to smudge or blend a line, and more. Dodge and Burn will lighten or darken an area without altering its underlying marks or composition. The sharpen tool, whilst useful can sometimes leave areas a little pixelated.

Moving beyond the familiar and working in a new way has been quite liberating and set my mind alive with new ideas. Looking for new elements to include in images has suddenly made the everyday pretty interesting. As always with Photoshop, experimentation is the key and corny as it sounds, my best discoveries have been my mistakes.