Talking about Hockney's Landscape Painting

Tomorrow is the last day of the Royal Academy exhibition David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture.  I'm going to see it for the fourth time at 8pm tomorrow evening.  The exhibition closes at 10pm.

Here are the podcast recordings which the Royal Academy have made from the various events held during the course of the exhibition

The second room in the exhibition reviews his earlier landscapes - which includes his California landscapes.

• From Malibu to Montcalm: Hockney Finds a New Perspective - Listen to recording (57 minutes)

Constance Glenn delves into David Hockney’s California works, from his signature landscapes of the 1960s to his panoramas of the 1980s that introduce a new perspective and capture Mulholland Drive’s vertiginous curves, which swerve across LA’s hilltops toward his Montcalm studio and home. 

David Hockney - Nichols Canyon, 1980
Acrylic on canvas, 213.4 x 152.4 cm
Private collection
Copyright David Hockney

She describes this painting as his first mature painting of California.  It bears no relationship to the work he had been doing previously (swimming pools and palm trees).  Hockney had brought a house at the top of the Hollywood Hills on a street called Montcalm.

The image is to convey the sense of careening down the hill in a car to his studio very quickly - it has a visceral feeling of descent.  The houses are situated at their natural place, have perspective and are quite realistic.  But the painting also includes patterns of the landscape either side - mark-making and images that represent trees and grass.

Mulholland Drive runs across the hills - but "drive" in this painting is a verb - it's what he's doing.  The mark-making has almost become the subject of the picture.  It has a pattern of complementary colours red/orange and blue-green and yet it's not easy to look at a painting of complementary colours.

The Pearblossom Highway picture is a composite of photographs.  She (and Marco Livingstone below) describes how is was created.  The photo collage precedes his multiple canvas paintings.

David Hockney - Pearblossom Highway, 11-18 April 1986 #1
Photographic collage, 119.4 x 163.8 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Gift of David Hockney
Copyright David Hockney

I like listening to descriptions of the drives with Google Maps in front of me!

• On Location: Hockney in Yorkshire - Listen to recording Marco Livingstone, exhibition curator (59 minutes)

Marco Livingstone describes how the exhibition was put together and how Hockney tackled the way he painted for the exhibition.  Prior to this he comments on paintings in the exhibition from the Californian era.  He comments on the importance of looking at the images from different distances.

David Hockney - The Road Across the Wolds, 1997
Oil on canvas, 121 x 152 cm
Private Collection
Copyright David Hockney
Photo credit: Steve Oliver

This is the view of the drive he took on a regular basis to see his friend Jonathan Silver who was dying from pancreatic cancer.  Silver was a major collector of Hockney's work and established a museum at Saltaire of Hockney's art - owned by either the Silver family or the Hockney family.  The road is the one between the Yorkshire Wolds and Bradford.  It repeats the process of Nichols Canyon - he painted in the studio of accumulated memories.  He didn't work from direct observation and spent a lot of time on each painting.

By way of contrast the more recent Yorkshire landscapes are produced by a man who is more comfortable painting landscapes.  His landscapes are much spontaneous and immediate.

He liked painting in watercolours because of the disdain it was treated by the royal Academy.  He knew many of the great landscape painters were masters of watercolour painting - and he spent three years just painting in watercolours.  He was also aware that no major British artist had ever painted East Yorkshire.

Latterly he has been painting plein air by the side of very quiet roads.  He's not doing any preliminary drawings, not drawing on the canvas - just getting on and transferring his observations into paint.  He intensifies the colours which he sees in the landscape.

He's made more work in terms of the number of paintings in the last few years than ever before.  The numbers rival a whole lifetime of painting by other artists.

In Yorkshire he really revelled in the changing seasons - in the different look of the place - and the light from the early morning and the end of the day when you have the best light for painting a landscape

He also comments on what a fantastic tool the iPad has been for Hockney in creating drawings of the landscape and there are now hundreds.  They are visually very rich.

He also describes the process for producing the films of moving through the landscape in what has turned out to be a very popular room in the exhibition

David Hockney - Winter Tunnel with Snow, March, 2006
Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm
Courtesy of the artist | Copyright David Hockney
Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

David Hockney - Under the Trees, Bigger 2010-11
Oil on twenty canvases (each 91.4 x 121.9 cm) , 365.8 x 609.6 cm
Courtesy of the artist | Copyright David Hockney
Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

• David Hockney: A Bigger Picture – an Introduction - Listen to recording Edith Devaney, exhibition curator  (55 minutes)

She tells the story of the exhibition and explains the paintings room by room.  She has a tendency to gabble in long sentences which makes her talk a bit more difficult to follow.  However she does focus on Hockney's ways of working and how is work is all based on observation and the memories of looking.

Many of the stories in the recordings can be read in Hockney's biography David Hockney: The Biography by Christopher Simon Sykes and True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney by: Lawrence Weschler.

Note: Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Links: About David Hockney - British artist

Places to Paint: David Hockney and East Yorkshire

The Hockney Trail is a new website which provides an insight into all the places where David Hockney has been painting in East Yorkshire - and in particular those which can be seen in the David Hockney RA - The Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts

This is a major contribution to the "places to paint" theme which I return to periodically on this blog.  If I can locate the place where John Singer Sargent painted a painting, then surely it's possible to do the same for a contemporary painter like Hockney?  This website would suggest that's the case.

The Hockney Trail website

It was also bound to happen - and, as it happens, this website has done the job rather well - BUT with a major caveat (see end).

The Hockney Trail provides:

• a Google Map of various locations where the paintings were painted.  
• details of which Ordnance Survey Maps cover the area
• details of where Hockney country is - and facilities in the area eg places to visit, eat and sleep
• details of various locations of Hockney paintings of East Yorkshire
• Kilham Road and the location of "Tracks into Wheatfields"
• the A166 - at the location for the painting "Garrowby Hill"
• the location for the painting of "Bugthorpe Valley"
• the location of the paintings of "Three Trees near Thixendale" - the paintings which you encounter - in all four seasons - as you enter the exhibition
• the location of "The Road to York Through Sledmere" (which is my version of the location of this Sledmere painting- done while sat with page 92 of the catalogue open in front of me!)

I made a few discoveries of my own.  First here are the locations I've found since reviewing the website

• this is the location of "The Tunnel" which is the subject of a number of the paintings in the exhibition - and also one of the films.  It's on the right of the Kilham Road to the west of Kilham, going towards Langtoft.  It's a long straight farmer's track between his fields

Hockney's Tunnel

David Hockney
A Closer Winter Tunnel, February - March, 2006
Oil on 6 canvases, 182 x 365 cm
Collection Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Purchased with funds provided by Geoff and Vicki Ainsworth, the Florence and William Crosby Bequest
and the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation 2007
Copyright David Hockney / Collection of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

This is Woldgate and the location of Winter to Spring in Woldgate the major installation in the main Gallery at the RA (see yesterday's post Hockney: 51 iPad drawings on paper - Winter to Spring in Woldgate).  I estimate it's about 10 minutes from Hockney's house in Bridlington and is a brilliant spot to be able to get to quickly when the light looks good.

• Woldgate is an old Roman Road which runs between Bessingby Hill on the outskirts of Bridlington and the village of Kilham.  
• This is the Hockney Trail page for Woldgate.  

Woldgate

and this is one of the digital paintings Hockney did on his iPad in this location.

David Hockney
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 2 January
iPad drawing printed on paper
144.1 x 108 cm; one of a 52-part work
Courtesy of the artist
Copyright David Hockney

I have to confess this location hunting is addictive.  I think that's it for today - but I'll be back.......

The second thing I discovered yesterday is that East Yorkshire has the Wold Wide Web - with links to pages about all the villages in the Wolds.  How about that for an example of Yorkshire humour?

But how long will it be around?

My only query about the The Hockney Trail website is whether or not it's authorised.

It doesn't seem to have any sort of formal association with either the artist or any of the sponsors of the current exhibition at the Royal Academy.  I don't think it falls within the normal copyright exemptions for the use of Hockney images given the adverts which are visible in my other browser which doesn't block adverts (you're seeing the advert-free version - and I'd written most of this before I realised it had them!).

My current thoughts are that maybe the originator is well intentioned but maybe not aware of just how jealously the Hockney empire protects the copyright.  I think he might find somebody giving him the virtual tap on the shoulder sometime soon.  It would also appear that maybe the images of some paintings have already been taken down......

PS  I am by the way posting a scheduled post.  I'm actually currently sat in the RA having lunch with my sister after having just seen the exhibition for the third time!  Join the Friends of the RA and go as many times as you want - and take an adult family guest for free!


Links to related posts about Hockney and the exhibition:

• David Hockney RA talks about landscape painting
• Hockney: sketchbooks, iPad sketching and the Yosemite Valley
• Hockney: 51 iPad drawings on paper - Winter to Spring in Woldgate
• MAKING A MARK: Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture 17 Jan 2012
• MAKING A MARK: Review: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture 02 Jul 2009

Hockney: 51 iPad drawings on paper - Winter to Spring in Woldgate

SkyNews have produced the first video film I've seen which provides a good view of the printed iPad landscapes of East Yorkshire as drawn by David Hockney - which can be seen in the David Hockney RA - The Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts

The two rows of large "paintings" on three sides of the largest of the Academy’s Galleries (Gallery 3) are 51 iPad drawings printed on paper.  These together with an oil on thirty-two canvases comprise the installation titled ‘The Arrival of Spring on Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (Twenty-Eleven)’

It's a sequence of paintings from the beginning of January 2011 through to early June 2011 - and shows the movement from the winter landscape through to the spring landscape.



A lot of the iPad drawings are done along the same road which features in a lot of the paintings

Woldgate is a narrow lane that runs from Bessingby Hill on the outskirts of Bridlington to the village of Kilham which is 7 miles away. It was on this road that David Hockney observed many different seasons and recorded what he saw using his iPad and on canvas with paints.
Woldgate

I'm taking my sister to see the exhibition tomorrow - it will be my third visit!  See Making A Mark - Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture

MIDNIGHT OPENINGS: 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' is now open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays

See also:

• Making A Mark: How to produce a large 300dpi TiFF print of an iPad sketch
• Making A Mark Reviews: Product review: A stylus for iPad sketching #1

Hockney: sketchbooks, iPad sketching and the Yosemite Valley

This post is about Hockney's sketching and painting using sketchbooks and iPads. and is part of a series of posts about specific aspects of the David Hockney RA - The Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.  This exhibition is largely about his recent work drawing and painting the landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds - but images of the Yosemite Valley in October creep in at the end!

Unfortunately the images made available by the Royal Academy are very limited and hence I'll be linking where I can to images elsewhere.  I don't have any image at all to show you what the Yosemite images look like - more's the pity.

The Sketchbooks

"Everything begins with the sketchbooks"
David Hockney

Gallery 12 is a room full of sketchbooks.  iPads are hung on the wall about the sketchbook proper and loop through images from the sketchbook show below.  There's a fairly good correlation between the image on screen and that in the sketchbook.

The main reason for studying the sketchbooks is to see how he chooses and isolates elements in the landscape and tries it out in different ways before making the commitment to a more involved sketch on the ipad or a "proper" painting using watercolours or oils.

There's one sketchbook with a concertina fold which he has used to record all the plants in a hedgerow.  It reminded me of how many of the landscape paintings include portrayals of the plants which are the minor players in the grander scheme of things.

There's a sense of the sketchbooks being the first step in a process which progresses from a quick drawing done from observation to an enormous painting.  The sketch for the painting used to advertise the exhibition is in the display - drawn using coloured crayons in April/May 2008.  It was first drawn in a charcoal and crayon as a landscape format double page spread in a sketchbook - and measures 21 x 60cm.  It's remarkably similar to the final painting (below) which was painted on 15 canvases and is approximately 10 times bigger.

David Hockney 
Winter Timber, 2009 
Oil on 15 canvases, 274 x 609.6 cm 
Private Collection 
Copyright David Hockney 
Photo credit: Jonathan Wilkinson

The colours used in the sketches seems to be a bit of a test for "what works".  While sympathetic to the natural colour palette of the countryside, the colours he uses are often rather more vivid.

This is a fast slideshow of Hockney creating another painting in the series related to the trees which were cut down.  From this you can see how he works from smaller sketches both to get the painting started and also to refine the final colour palette.  The sketches are essential to both the composition and design, the tonal values and the colour palette.

It seems as if the whole process for the larger paintings works as follows:

• sketchbook study - identifies what interests him
• charcoal drawing which is more refine - defines shapes and tonal values
• small colour oil sketches - initial plans for paintings
• large single canvas oil paintings
• multi-canvas-larger paintings - which are developed from all the supporting material back in the studio

The sketchbooks he uses are of every size and they vary in the weight of paper - although it looks like they're all capable of taking watercolour sketching.  He mostly sketches in watercolours, although he sometimes uses a graphic pen - especially if drawing people.  He also uses felt markers, coloured pencils and crayons.  I think it's very likely that he's mostly using Neocolor II wax crayons judging by the marks made and the fact that he then sometimes uses water to create a wash after he's completed the sketch.

He's an inveterate panoramic double page spread man - done in landscape format sketchbooks!  (I felt better about my sketching and own sketchbooks as a result.  I keep increasing the size of my sketchbooks and every time I do I seem to still want to use the double page spread.  I've only finally stopped and stuck to one sheet after I got to the A3 sketchbook!)

You can read my Book review: A Yorkshire Sketchbook by David Hockney on Making A Mark reviews.  You can also view the Yorkshire Sketchbook (Yorkshire 04) on the official Hockney website (please note Hockney is a stickler for copyright - so no stealing images from the website!)

RECOMMENDED (for fans only) - This is the nearest you'll ever get to handling a Hockney sketchbook.

The iPad Sketches

David Hockney 
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 2 January 
iPad drawing printed on paper 
144.1 x 108 cm; one of a 52-part work 
Courtesy of the artist 
Copyright David Hockney

Gallery 12 also houses 6 iPads which are set up to run through all the iPads sketches in sequence.

I was disappointed to see that there is no iPad set up to show how he makes his sketches while using the Brushes app for his iPad (which won the Apple Design Award in 2010).  The Brushes app has a very neat aspect to its functionality which shows you how you constructed your drawing - in stages, one stroke at a time!

One of the films makes it clear that Steve Jobs would not have been happy - as he clearly uses a stylus to draw.  It looks very like the one I bought and promptly lost!

The iPad sketches are interesting - mainly because it was not apparent to me until I visited this exhibition just how big iPad sketches can be printed.  Of course the great thing about the iPad is you can move in and out of an area of the artwork.  If you know you're going to print big you can adjust the level you work at.

I'm not actually quite sure when they stop being sketches and start being paintings in their own right - although I guess it might be something to do with how long they take to do and refine.  We also need to remember for all the iPad work we see in the show there's bound to be a lore more which just didn't work - just as there always is in any sketchbook.

The 51 iPad sketches which form part of The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire 2011 (twenty eleven) are all printed on paper which is 144cm x 108cm (that's c. 57" x 42").

I had no idea one could contemplate digital sketches on an iPad translating through to work of that size.  I guarantee there will be quite a few wiPad owners looking at their iPads with renewed interest after seeing this exhibition.  Me for one!  The main reason being that at the end of the day these are still unique hand drawn paintings.  You can see all the marks.  It doesn't look like a hyper-realistic photograph.  You know a person created it!

This in part is, I guess, Hockney's response to all the people who are photoshopping photographs and then calling it art.  His preoccupation is with the eye, the hand and the heart and having all three working together to produce the image.

[Note:  I'm trying to find out what software is used to produce the very large prints - and will report back!]

The Yosemite Valley Sketches

I'm really surprised not to have an image of these iPad sketches.  They are simply ginormous!  They're also displayed in a small gallery so that one gets the sense of the enormity of the place itself.

I'm guessing that they must have given the publishers of the catalogue and the gallery guide a bit of a rollercoaster ride too - as Hockney produced these specifically for the exhibition but only produced them between October 5th and October 16th 2011!!!

The catalogue indicates he's using a special piece of software which prevents the iPad drawings from pixelating as they are increased in size.  (see How to produce a large 300dpi TiFF print of an iPad sketch for my best guess at the moment of what they are doing)

However the super ginormous Yosemite sketches are in effect like his multi canvas paintings.

The overall dimension of most is 365.8 x 274.3cm (That's 144inches x 108" or 12 feet by 9 feet).  However they are actually printed on six sheets of paper mounted on six sheets of dibond.

So now you know!

You too can have an iPad sketch enlarged to a 12 foot by 9 foot image!

Videos of David Hockney painting landscapes

The third in my mini series of posts about David Hockney references his website and the page which has a number of videos of him painting landscapes

Click the link http://www.hockneypictures.com/tv_video.php and enjoy the videos!

David Hockney's Yorkshire

Royal Academy of Art: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture (21 January - 9 April 2012)

This post is about three major new initiatives relating to David Hockney and his paintings of the landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds

First - a new exhibition by David Hockney opens on Wednesday 14th September at the Salt Mills Gallery in Saltaire.  Called 25 Trees and Other Pictures it includes three 27-foot-long pictures of Bessingby Road, Bridlington and other Yorkshire landscapes. The show, which is on the third floor, is open Wednesday - Sunday, 10:30am - 4pm, admission free.  The Gallery also displays many paintings by David Hockney all year round.

This Guardian article The north gets a peep at David Hockney's new portfolio first and the Salt Mills website (extract below) explain how Jonathan Silver started the Salt Mills Centre and amassed the largest collection of Hockney's work.

These days, David spends much of his time in this part of the world and his paintings of the East Yorkshire landscape are admired world-wide.
Home, then, has always mattered, so it wasn’t surprising that when Jonathan Silver approached David about displaying his work in the Mill, David agreed. The two had first met in the 60’s and had kept in touch, sporadically since then. The Galleries at Salts Mill are very proud of the large collection of David's wonderful work on show and deeply grateful to him for his continued support and interest.Salt Mills website - David Hockney Profile

Silver's daughter explained a little bit more of the background to Hockney's paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds which I never knew before.

Dad said to David: 'Paint Yorkshire. It's where you're from. You know it and above all you know how to celebrate it. You've done California and the Grand Canyon and those swimming pools. Now bring all that colour back home.

Second, a major Hockney retrospective exhibition - David Hockney - A Bigger Picture - will be held at the Royal Academy of Art early next year.  It covers work from the last seven years - mainly paintings but also his sketchbooks and his work on iphones and ipads and film - 150 works in total.

This is the first major exhibition of Hockney's larger landscape paintings of Yorkshire.  The galleries at the RA are large enough to hold them!

'David Hockney: A Bigger Picture' will span a 50 year period to demonstrate Hockney’s long exploration and fascination with the depiction of landscape.  The exhibition will include a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using 18 cameras, which will be displayed on multiple screens and which will provide a spellbinding visual journey through the eyes of David Hockney.

This Guardian article explains how David Hockney moves into film with Royal Academy exhibition

I'll be writing more about this exhibition as we get closer to the opening date!

Third - David Hockney has a new book out called My Yorkshire.

David Hockney - My Yorkshire
Enitharmon Editions (Published in UK: 1 Sep 2011)

The publisher describes it as follows

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. In 2003, in a series of dazzlingly fresh watercolours of the rolling landscape known as the Wolds, Hockney embarked on one of the most ambitious and extraordinary projects of his career. He set about memorializing this little-known, intimate and gently beautiful part of the world. His vibrant landscapes twist and turn with ever expanding scale, reminiscent of the American West. Despite this they are remain instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Yorkshire. The many paintings he has made in the vicinity of Bridlington since 2005 are among the most captivating and impressive of his long and distinguished career.

It's now available in the UK but is only available through importers in the USA as yet.

So lots and lots for true Hockney fans to revel in - I'm very much looking forward to getting the book and seeing his paintings.

Below I've included links to two DVDs by Bruno Wolheim about David Hockney - The Bigger Picture  which is about Hockney painting in the Wolds.  I highly recommend this DVD (see my Review:  David Hockney A Bigger Picture on making A Mark in 2009)

(on the left is the UK version and on the right is the USA Region 1 version)


Plus for more information about David Hockney in general see:  David Hockney - Resources for Art Lovers