I’m trying to get over my inhibitions and start adding figures to my artwork this year. I so like the idea of telling stories, and while I know I can do that without any people in my images, it would expand my scope no end if I could just be a little bit less intimidated by painting or modelling the human form. And I guess I have to just deal with the fact that the first attempts aren’t going to be exactly what I want, and that I’ve got to keep at it if I want to improve. I can see that I don’t have the confidence yet to make the forms express what I’m after so I get stuck on detail, anatomy and drawing ‘correctly’.

Only one way to get better and that’s to continue with it. I worked on this small painting (30 X 30 cms) this week of a portrait of a merman. I’ve ended up throwing everything at it – collage, masking, direct painting, coloured pencil – in the hope that something would stick. I like some things about the image, and not others, but it doesnt gel together as a cohesive, happy painting yet. I’ll keep trying 😉

My lighthouse keeper, Captain Cole, met the merman once, but it’s a very sad story I’m afraid.

Early one morning, as dawn was breaking, a couple of years before he took up residence in the lighthouse, Captain ‘Black’ Sam Cole was coming to the end of a long night of partying after a successful raid on a merchant vessel off the coast of Portugal. He was hanging over the side of his ship puking his guts up and feeling, well, feeling just shit, as you do after way too much rum. It wasn’t just overdoing the booze that was responsible for his feeling so rough, though. He had done this and been here what felt like a million times before, and he was weary of it, weary to his bones. Jaded as he was he had no idea what else to do, all he’d known was pirating, so on he went with it, keeping up the swagger and the bluster for the sake of the crew and to hide his emptiness. As he heaved up his insides yet again he was feeling pretty desolate, but at precisely that moment he heard a voice that would change his life forever.

‘Do you mind’ said the voice, ‘we’re just about to start dinner down here’. The rich musical tone of the words immediately alerted Sam to the fact that it was a merman who had just spoken to him. Sam knew the merfolk well and didn’t trust them, they always seemed to know what he was up to which he didn’t like at all. Being in no mood to argue with an uppity merman, Sam was just about to tell him to go suck on a sea urchin when he looked up and met the gaze of the speaker. The merman was smiling and something about the twinkle in his eye caught caught Sam’s attention and his reposte was a little more gentle than he first intended, coming out as something of a weary grunt. ‘Bugger off, I don’t feel so good’ he croaked. ‘You don’t look too hot either Sam’ said the merman, ‘why don’t you come down here, I’ve got some Dabberlocks weed that’ll have you back to your old handsome self in no time’.

To this day, Sam can never recal why he did what he did next, he’d never before wanted to hang out with any merfolk, but something about this one made him mumble ‘OK’  before he dived into the sea to join him. Maybe it was because he was exhausted and hung over and his defences were down, maybe it was because he was feeling so flat and dead inside he was past caring, but he suddenly found himself summing down to the seabed with a merman he’d never met before. They swam into a cave and just as Sam thought his lungs would explode he broke the surface of the water to find himself in a large, dry chamber, with a pocket of air that he could breathe. They sat on a tiny, underwater beach, lit by the soft greenish light of bioluminescent corals growing out of the cave walls. Sam ate the seaweed the merman gave him and did, to his surprise, begin to feel instantly better. And he noticed how handsome the merman was, and how that twinkle in his face was really quite unsettling. ‘Ok, thanks pal, appreciate it, better get back’ he said, and started to wade into the water again. ‘Back to what?’, said the merman, ‘back to robbing, and puking, and running, and more robbing’. ‘What the fuck is it to do with you’  said Sam, swinging around and clenching his fists. ‘Nothing really’ replied the merman, ‘but I think there may be a better life for you than this, you’re wasted on this, don’t you think?’. His quizzical smile went some way to defuse Sam’s default aggression, his fists relaxed a little and the merman went on; ‘I watch you sometimes, late at night on deck, gazing at the stars, you look like a man who’s looking for something. You look like an interesting man to me, more interesting than the other pirates that pass this way, what would you really like to be doing?’.

Sam realised that he didn’t actually know. Seeing the indecision on Sam’s face the merman seized the initiative and took hold of Sam’s hand. ‘Come on’ he said, ‘while you’re deciding what to do with your life I want to show you a bit of my life down here. We know you’re not keen on us, let me try and convince you we’re not all about luring sailors to watery deaths so we can eat them. Oh, but eat this, then you won’t have to worry about breathing underwater’. Sam took the rather ugly-looking gelatinous sea creature from the merman and, after a moment’s hesitation, gulped it down; he realised that he really didn’t want to go back up to the ship just yet and leave this handsome creature.

Nobody on deck had ever grabbed his hand in this way, he’d have thrown them in the brig if they had, but this merman seemed to have some uncanny power over him and he actually liked swimming out of the cave, hand in hand, being led God knows where. For the next few hours the merman showed Sam the places he loved, the reefs with the most beautiful coral, the grottos with the most spectacular stalactites and rock formations, and the deep ocean trenches where you could meet the strangest sea creatures that people ‘up above’ never got to see.

After a while Sam knew it was time to go, that his crew would be looking for him and he swam back to the surface. ‘Come back tomorrow’ said the merman. And Sam did, he invented some maintenance for the crew to do on the ship and he went back the next day. During that second day, when he was crouching behind a rocky shelf with the merman close by, watching the magical mating dance of a pair of sea dragons Sam turned to his companion and realised he had fallen in love, for the first time. The merman had fallen in love with Sam long before of course, when he had watched him on his ship and become enraptured by the soft look in Sam’s eyes when he was on his own, with no crew to play up to, gazing at the stars. So the pair spent the rest of the day in the merman’s cave, making love, playing, laughing and making love again.

‘Stay with me’ said the merman, ‘we could be so happy together here, you and me’. Sam was torn, he’d experienced such love and joy in those few short hours, more than at any time in his life. But the thought of giving up his old life, bored with it as he was, terrified him. And he had his little dog, and his crew and his ship. ‘I’ll think about it’ he said. ‘Let me go and drop off this cargo, get my money, pay off the crew and then I’ll come back. Meet me here in three months, then I’ll have your answer’. 

So he left, standing at the stern, gazing into the merman’s eyes as the ship sailed away, until just before he disappeared from view something rose up in his throat that he never thought he’d ever say, let alone shout at the top of his lungs at a merman; ‘I love you, I’ll come back for you’. 

And he did. Word went round the seafaring community very quickly; Black Sam Cole had gone soft and was retiring. But when he returned to the spot where he’d left his lover Sam didn’t find the merman. As he approached he could hear the haunting sound of merfolk singing, but they were singing a lament. A mermaid appeared next to his boat and told Sam that his beloved had been caught in a trawler’s net and that the fisherman had killed him, believing him to be an evil sea spirit.

So Sam’s heart was broken, and he never forgot those precious hours of joy that he had experienced with the merman as long as he lived. He was changed forever after that and he never went back to his pirating ways. He spend some time with the merfolk, finding some small shred of comfort in being able to share his grief with them. Eventually he took his leave and wandered for a while, until his wandering took him far away and to an abandoned lighthouse that he made his home….

When I made the maquette of Captain Cole, the lighthouse keeper, last week I just drew on his tattoos in a fairly random manner as I wanted to get the thing made and not get bogged down in too much detail. But now I’m planning a painting, and because I’ll probably paint this figure several times I need to plan the tattoos a bit more carefully as I want some consistency across the images. So I’ve started trying some designs, they may change as the first painting evolves. At the moment I’m only sure a few things, that they need to include star charts, maps of ocean currents and some other symbols given to him by the merfolk and other sea creatures. And the Polaris, or Pole Star will sit above his heart, like an anchor as the rest of the sky wheels about this fixed point.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the first of Sam Cole’s tattoos were forced upon him by a fierce pirate captain who kept him on board his ship, a virtual prisoner, when he was a young boy. Sam had gained a reputation as something of a lucky charm ever since he was born. Whatever ship he was aboard seemed to avoid shipwreck and sinking, even in the most violent tempests, when all other ships around were lost. Just as important, he seemed, somehow, to help avoid capture by the authorities, being able to locate the best ways out of whatever tight corner his ship found itself in. So the pirate captain hatched a plot to steal the boy from another ship, and for several years little Sam was forced to assist the cruel captain, and was threatened with being thrown overboard if he refused. The captain forced out of him some of his secrets with threats of torture. Sam told him, reluctantly, that he could feel the constellations in the heavens, the changing courses of the ocean currents and the shifting patterns of the winds across the surface of his skin like subtle vibrations. It was as if his body were covered in a web of gossamer threads, which hummed and tingled like a microcosm of the world about him. The captain, keen to pin down these invisible maps, made the boy tell him exactly where they were located on his skin and then fixed them there forever with squid and cuttlefish ink. But Sam didn’t tell his tormentor everything. The tattoos enhanced his reputation as a mysterious and odd boy, though. Most sailors kept their distance, and thought, wrongly, that he was growing into some kind of a sorcerer.

As he grew up Sam became well known throughout the sea-going community. He eventually escaped the tyrannical captain, with the help of the merfolk who came to know him and who could sense a distant kinship. He went on to captain his own pirate ships when he was still a teenager and very successful he was too. He was called the Starman, on account of his tattoos, and all kinds of stories started to grow around him, some true and some not. Sometimes he grew weary of the distance people kept from him. As well as respect, he often saw a hint of fear, distaste or envy in peoples eyes when he spoke to them. Sometimes he wished he could dive into the sea and all his markings would wash off, but he knew that this would never happen and he knew, also, that they represented something about him that was quite special. He even began to add to them himself when he learned a new peice of ocean lore he wanted to record. But he remained quite matter of fact about his tattoos, and hardly noticed the inklings all over his skin, although everybody else did, of course.

Late one night, drifting out in the Pacific Doldrums and unable to sleep, Sam went up on deck. He found a young sailor there, all alone, and bent over the side of the ship weeping. Sam went to him and asked why he was so distressed. ‘I’m lost’ was the man’s reply, and he kept on sobbing, his tears joining the endless salty waters of the ocean. ‘You’ll find your way’ said the Captain, giving the young man’s shoulder a friendly shake. But the sailor shook his head. ‘It’s all right for you’ he said, ‘you always know where you’re going, you’ve got all those magic tattoos and stuff’. ‘Oh those’, Sam replied, with a wry smile, ‘don’t be fooled by those, they’re just ink’. The sailor looked up, his brow creased into an inquisitive frown. Sam cointinued, ‘it was all there before the ink you know’, and gently stroked his forefinger down the sailor’s arm, before tracing a  geometric shape on the back of his hand with his fingertip, as if swiping a passcode on a phone. ‘It’s all there’ he repeated, ‘you’ll find your way’. 
They may be ‘just ink’ but the lighthouse keeper’s tattoos are quite an arresting sight. As well as the blue black squid ink and the brownish red markings made from a pigment harvested from the sepia cuttlefish there were other marks on his body that were more mysterious. Some of the patterns and symbols had been forced into his skin with a needle and ink made from some of the rare creatures from the very depths of the oceans. These tattoos would glow with eerie phosphorescence, but only at certain times, when a particular ocean current was strong, or a certain alignment of the planets occurred. He soon learnt to hide these under clothes when they appeared as they caused quite a stir amongst crews who thought some kind of devilry was going on. But I think the first painting I’ll make will show Sam with his biolumiescence on display; it’s quite something after all.

Now the maquette and the tattoo guide are taped above my work table for reference:

And I’m starting to made sketches of compositional ideas:

So now to get the paints out; it’s been quite a while since I did some direct painting, and I’ve hardly ever painted a portrait or a figure so there’s only one thing to do and that’s get cracking.

There’s a song by Sandy Denny called The Northstar Grassman and the Ravens that’s been playing in my head whilst working on the lighthouse keeper maquette recently and it feels like the official soundtrack to this post. I’ve loved Sandy Denny since I first started listening to her in the 1970s and I love her more and more as I get older. Her singing is so often dripping in melancholy, and knowing that she died so young and rather troubled can make listening to some of her songs nothing short of heartbreaking. Amy Winehouse’s music can feel the same, but while Sandy’s pure folk voice is less raw it is even more touching and fragile for me. Here’s a link to her singing The Northstar; its deeply haunting, a song for ‘Black’ Sam Cole for sure.

Nowerdays people just call him Sam, or sometimes Starman on account of his tattoos, but for a while, the lighthouse keeper was Sam Cole, Captain of a notorious pirate ship on the high seas. He was known as ‘Black’ Sam Cole; some say because his name sounded like coal, some say because of his jet black hair and dark eyes, and some say, or rather whisper, that it was because of his strange powers, which could only come from meddling in the dark arts and black magic. Complete nonsense, of course, Sam may not have been a saint (but then ‘who is?’, as the character Deaux-Deaux asked in Clive Barker’s Abarat, before clarifying with ‘apart from Saints’) but he’s a good soul and even when he was a young pirate he never harmed the crews of the ships he seized. He usually made them an offer to join him and his band, telling them what freedom they could have if they just cast off the shackles imposed on them by greedy authorities who only used them to get rich, paying them a pittance for the dangerous job they did. But Sam does have special powers; if it’s magic, then it’s nature magic, magic of the sea. He’s a most kind-hearted man most of the time. There was the time when, after sinking a vessel, once he’d relieved it of its crew and silver bullion, as he making off, he turned back as he’s noticed a small puppy leap into the water as the ship went down. The little dog went on to become his faithful companion for the rest of his days.

There was a pirate who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries called ‘Black Sam ‘ Bellamy with a similar disposition but who tragically died in a shipwreck off Newfoundland when he was only 28. Our Sam liked to think he was carrying on the fine tradition set by his namesake of pirating as a kind of ‘Robin Hood of the sea’.

I’m going to use the maquette to develop some new paintings in the weeks to come, but this morning I just took a few photos with the lighthouse model I made last year.

The sea had been very present this last few days, maybe Sam is acting as something of a talisman. At short notice I found myself in a job interview in Chatham, Kent on Friday, trying to give a good account of myself whilst my thoughts wandered out of the window to the Chatham Dockyard Museum which Sam would have loved. I then stayed the night in Whitstable with good friends Paul and Phil and spent Saturday morning walking along the beach in the bright cold winter weather, gazing out to sea for real.

And then this morning a wonderful package arrived from my friend Sarah in Leeds (aka The Curious One); a beautiful copy of Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea. It’s so beautiful, the story and illustrations so perfect for reading at the moment with The Lighthouse Keeper work I’m doing, I could just burst when I look though it:

Back in Berlin today, with sparkling sunlight and snow on the ground, very winter wonderland. I can cope with winter when it’s like this 😉 .

I’ve been making a maquette figure of a lighthouse keeper character this week, mainly as a way in to constructing compositions for new paintings which will feature this fella as the central character. As I’ve been principally a landscape artist over the last few years I thought making a maquette first, before I commit paint to canvas would be a good way of getting into the new images as, once constructed, I can move the maquette around into lots of different positions and experiment with compositions before I decide what to do. So here he is in all his articulated glory:

The maquette is made of thin card, painted with acrylics and coloured pencils and held together with paper fasteners. He stands just under 50cms high. Here are some more pics of him strutting his stuff:

And a couple more with simple backgrounds added:

And here’s a back view showing the fasteners. Some of the joints work fine but i need to work out something more sophisticated for the waist and waistband of the jeans which aren’t doing what I want when I bend him double:

Now this one is more or less finished I can start using him to develop some new images, but I’ll probably make a back view maquette as well. I’m also going to photograph the maquette with the lighthouse model I made last year to see if I can use 2D and 3D maquettes together when planning compositions .

Whilst I started make the maquette as a compositional aid for some new paintings I’ve enjoyed the process very much. It reminds me of several things from my childhood; playing with action men figures. and also those paper dolls with cut cloathes you can dress them up in that you’d find in children’s comics. There’s also a hint of Dr, Frankinstein about the process as my desk has become littered with body parts that await being sewn together. Some body parts get rejected which feels a bit sad, such as the two heads here, but they’ll get used eventually I’m sure!

Sad news yesterday about David Bowie’s passing, far too young to go, but what a life he had.

My ‘starman’ is not a visitor from outer space but my lighthouse keeper character. When he was a child, kept as something of a lucky mascot on pirate ships, his body was tattooed with star charts to help with navigation. From an early age it became evident that he had an uncanny sixth sense about the ocean currents and winds out at sea. He was able to find his way through even the most treacherous waters and also find his way out of trouble, so he became a prized, if slightly feared member of any crew. When he grew up and captained his own ship he added to the maps, including stranger marks and symbols taught to him by the merfolk and other creatures of the sea. I’m trying out making a maquette of the figure to help explore some paintings I’m planning. I’ve taken a leaf out of my friend the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ book with the maquette approach as Clive has made some beautiful maquettes over the years. They’re wonderful objects in themselves and Clive uses them to develop dynamic compositions for paintings to marvellous effect; you can see some of his maquettes featured in posts on Clive’s Artlog here and here. You can also find Maquettes and Constructions in the Topics menu on the Artlog too and browse through all the maquette posts. Clive generously shows you exactly how he puts the figures together including back views with details of how the pieces are fixed. In fact I first met Clive at a maquette workshop he was giving near Swansea a few years ago. I’m not confident in putting figures into my images but this year I really want to get over my anxieties about it so I though making some maquettes would be a good start.

This one is not yet pinned togther and I’m going to replace the boots with bare feet but you can get an impression of where it’s going. Now off to the art shop to see if I can find any of those really tiny paper fasteners which would help make the thing a bit neater when I put it together.

Happy new year to everyone, hope 2016 has got off to a good start for everybody.

I didn’t do any work over Christmas or New Year, which felt lazy and quite pleasant too, Just enjoying being with friends and family. I’ve got so much to do this year, though, and it’s time to get cracking once again.

I’m starting off by working up the character of the lighthouse keeper for  all the lighthouses I’ve been posting. I know lighthouses don’t really have keepers any more, but this one does, and that’s that. I’d originally thought of my lighthouse keeper as an old salty sea dog, a bit Cap’n Birdseye looking but in my initial sketch he’s a young slim jim, and he’s got no shirt on; I don’t know why, he’s that kind of guy I guess.

He might change as I continue to work on him, we’ll see. He lives at the lighthouse, lighting the lamps when necessary, sounding the foghorn, signalling to those passing by. But he’s also keeping an eye out for something else, something elusive, just over the horizon, waiting for his ship to come in perhaps….