Summer's Here!

Oh wait, no, it's gone again. But boy was it nice whilst it lasted.

Yes, the sun made a timely appearance last week - just when weeks of seemingly nonstop rainfall were on the verge of breaking the spirit of many good men - bringing with it a proper taste of summer. Or at least the type of summer most of us long for in Britain.

Knowing deep down that there was no way it would last, I made the most of it, leaving my canvas and paintbrush inside and venturing out, camera in hand for lots of  long walks around the Warwick and Solihull countryside.

The following photos were taken in the footpaths of Berkswell Village, where the wheat fields were in full bloom. I took most of the shots between 8pm and 9pm when the sun was setting, using a tripod and some long exposures (some longer than others, with the aid of a built in ND filter). This has brought out the natural light really well, with some interesting colours and shadows.

I'm really happy with the way they've turned out. To see more of the set visit my Art By Luke Bennett Flickr page. As always, for more original artwork, fine art prints and photographs, or to commission a portrait or pet portrait, visit my website, artbylukebennett.com.

Reeeead Alllll Abouuuut It!

I managed to get myself into the local paper - The Solihull News - last week after suggesting a story about me seeking self employment as an artist, post redundancy. Given the media's obsession with these Harsh Economic Times™ and the country still In The Grip of Recession©, they gladly accepted my story. Which was nice.

The more exposure I can get, the better, and with any luck there will be plenty of new people in the Solihull area alerted to my services by the article. Those service being pet portraits, human portraits, original artwork, prints and more, in Solihull, Warwickshire, Birmingham and beyond. Ahem.

Welcome! Again.

Welcome to the new look Memoirs of a Visible man. As regular readers (I suspect I have a few) may have noticed, I've revamped the presentation of this blog, bringing it more in line with the look of my new website, visually, as well as the URL. Formerly known as lukusaurus.blogspot, it is now artbylukebennett.blogspot.

After weeks of hard work the website is now live. Please check it out- www.artbylukebennett.com
It's full of original, high quality artwork to buy, as well as fine art and photographic Giclée prints.

There's also a commissioning service where people can arrange to have a nice picture of themselves painted. Or their pet cat, or their dog, or their horse, or their pet crow, or their hamster, or their granny, or their baby, or their house, or their car.

Basically, anything legal, I'm willing to paint it. For money.

Before and After

Sadly, before Christmas, Lucy, one of the two family cats (sister to Minnie) passed away after struggling gallantly with heart disease for several months. She has been sorely missed as she was part of the family for over 16 years and a constant joy to be around. I always looked forward to seeing her when returning home and she always made me laugh and smile. She had one of the most gentle, sweet, playful and loving characters I've ever seen in an animal.

As a tribute, of sorts, I have revisited an earlier painting of Lucy I'd previously 'finished', with the intention of completing it properly in her memory.

This link shows the original blog post I made a few years ago concerning the initial painting. Below is a side by side comparison of the two cat portraits.

Spot the difference! Which one do you prefer?

The medium is acrylic paint on canvas textured board. The painting has been framed and given as a gift to my parents who have it hanging in their dining room.

Slow Work Days

We all have them from time to time. Slow work days that is. And towards the end of my employment in my last job I had many of them. There simply wasn't enough work coming in to keep everyone busy, even after the company tried to run on a skeleton staff. So before the day of redundancy came, I spent my notice period occupying myself by carrying out what seemed like futile and menial tasks for the company's owners and secretly doodling in my sketch pad.

The latter part was great. I felt like I was finally getting paid to do something I enjoyed. It would have been even better if I wasn't doing it alone in a dark, windowless room measuring no more than 2 or 3 meters in either direction. (For some reason, the powers that be decided that seeing as we were to be made redundant, they might as well make the last few weeks of our employment there as unbearable as possible; separating everybody up, restricting our internet access and being thoroughly unpleasant at any given opportunity. I think they were hoping we'd walk and so save having to pay us...) But still, you can't have everything.

Below are a few of the sketches I did during that period, as well as some Whale-phant/Ele-Whale* doodles and a dinosaur flying a kite.

*a character I'm working on. More to come in future updates. Maybe.

The cat is my pet, Minnie, who I've sketched and painted before, viewable in earlier posts in this blog. The man is my Grandad. The horses were in anticipation of a painting I might attempt at some point. All were done very quickly (by my standards) with no real dedication to extreme accuracy, rather to being speedy.

Night Photography

I feel like I should apologise. For the third update in a row I'm posting photographs and not paintings or drawings. I'm not going to though. It's my blog, I'll do what I want, y'hear me! (I will post some drawings and paintings soon, I promise, I have some underway/completed already. I've just been enjoying the winter scenery a lot lately.)

These were all taken from about 4.30pm onwards and so there was very little light, particularly from the photo of the Knowle Locks sign onwards, where, other than the street lights, it was about as dark as it would get on that night. As such there was a lot of trial and error involved when it came to focusing and framing the shot because nothing could be seen in my viewfinder in the dead of night.

This was somewhat intentional, as I wanted to try out some more long exposures, having dabbled with them in the forest the other weekend. I figured if I waited until dusk, I could use the maximum exposure time allowed by my camera of 15 seconds and see what kind of effects this would create. So, with tripod in tow*, I set off to the nearby canal.

 

The resultant colours are exactly how they came out on the camera, with no post processing, bar a bit of cropping in 2 or 3 of the shots.

Rather amusingly, when taking the following photos by the road side, I noticed that the cars were driving a lot slower than they do normally, clearly mistaking me for some kind of speed cop. Now I finally know how Bruce Wayne feels.

*canal related pun

SNOW!

Oh my God! SNOW!!! Quick, panic buy! Bread, copious amounts of bread, buy it. And milk. More milk than is humanly possible to drink before it goes off. Petrol! Mustn't forget the petrol, to fuel the car to carry out the bread and milk salvage. Snow chains too... Should definitely get some of those this year. I heard it's going to be 10 cm deep. 10 cm! Ten centimeters! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Oh, wait... it's melting already.

I love snow. Call me childish, but I always get excited at the prospect of snow each winter time. Especially when it coincides with Christmas like it did last year (here in Britain). It almost makes the season bearable. I just love the look of it. Even the most aesthetically miserable places are cheered up by its glistening white icey coating.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the snow is going to be making a prolonged visit this year, which is why I'm glad I ventured out in it earlier with my camera. The sun was hidden behind clouds all day, so sadly there were no nice shadows or reflections to be taken in. Instead I messed around with long exposures and small apertures. As long and small as my camera will allow anyway, which isn't all that long or small as it happens. The ND filter however  helped to extend both as much as was possible in the available light.

As in my last post, the images were taken at Hay Wood, near Baddesley Clinton.

Keep to the Path!

A noble message, an amusing one too, displayed along the track leading up to the church near Baddesley Clinton encountered on my weekend walk.

But in terms of getting the best photographs, not the best advice God has ever decreed...
The best photos are often taken when you stray from the path and start to see things from a new perspective. As evidenced by a wander through nearby Hay Wood. It was a lovely frosty morning and the sky was clear, full of that excellent winter light which makes everything look so very fresh and picturesque.


I must have walked about three or four miles in and around the small one or two square mile section of woodland and taken over 200 pictures, and with almost every push of the shutter release I thought to myself "it's impossible to take a bad photo here". To the point where I felt I might be going a bit mad, like when you get a tiny section of a song you hate stuck in your head on a seemingly infinite loop.

Getting off the main pathways and into the heart of the forest provided the best photo opportunities. Unfortunately, a lot of them looked better through my viewfinder than they do on my 27 inch monitor... I'm certain this is God's way of punishing me for straying from the path. That or my 9 year old camera is starting to show its age. One of the two.

Here are some of the better ones-