REVIEW: David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020

This morning I went to see David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 at the Royal Academy of Arts. Below are some notes I made while in the exhibition - of assorted thoughts it prompted.

It was the earliest time I could view and the ticket has been on my wall for months! The exhibition finishes on the 26th September and I'd be very surprised if there are any tickets left. 

It's moved from the galleries where they normally hold the Summer/Winter Exhibition (because of the hang for 2021) to The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries in the Burlington Gardens part of the Royal Academy of Arts. It appear they've maybe been hung closer together than in the video below of the hang in the main galleries.

You can find the preamble introducing the exhibition on the RA website - and new the works  in this video

You can also download a large print guide of the paper publication you collect on going into the exhibition. This provides dates for th artworks but not times of day- which I think he did in previous exhibitions

Notes on an exhibition by David Hockney

There are no paintings in conventional art media - they are all done in digital software on his iPad.  There are 116 works in total.

These are the images released as press pics - but to be honest while some are good they don't include the best ones. See if you agree with me when you watch the video.

All works by David Hockney. © David Hockney

Clockwise from top left: No. 125, 19th March 2020. iPad painting. No. 340, 21st May 2020. iPad painting. No.186,11thApril2020.iPadpainting. No. 118, 16th March 2020. iPad painting. No. 316, 30th April 2020. iPad painting. No. 88, 3rd March 2020. iPad painting.No. 370, 2nd May 2020. iPad painting. No. 259, 24th April 2020. iPad painting. No. 133, 23rd March 2020. iPad painting.

The sum of the parts

The exhibition is greater than the sum of the parts and it's a mistake to look at them as individual paintings

The impact of seeing them hung - in themes or series - close together on a wall reminds me of exhibitions of Monet's Haystacks (see Monet's series paintings - stacks of wheat (2008) - from which the following quote comes)

Monet was adamant that the series of paintings had an aesthetic quality of its own and that the value of the paintings could only really be appreciated when they were all seen together.

The artworks present well on the background of a dark teal wall. Some would look like quite insipid on an ivory or light coloured wall - but with a dark background they have more impact.

The series I liked the best included:

• The nocturnes - with very bright moons and deep blue skies - which interestingly were not hung together
• the blossom - trees / branches
• plants in pots - indoor and outside (eg 15 and 18 daffodils outside and in bowl indoors)
• pond paintings
• paintings of rain

Monet and series paintings in Normady

It then occurred to me that one of the features of Hockney is that he has at various times reflected on various great artists of the past and created his own interpretation of their works.

It struck me that it's no coincidence that he did these in Normany which is Monet's "home turf" - and that Monet was particularly given to creating series of paintings of the same motifs - seen in different weather / seasons / time of day

A number of the motifs in this exhibition are portrayed in a similar way.

Seeing pictures 

One of Hockney's skills is the ability to "see pictures". A lot of what he's portraying is of absolutely no consequence. Indeed many have commented that his paintings are similar.

I think those critical of the iPad paintings in this exhibition forget two things:

• his age - there are very few artists who continue to create as well a they did in the past as they near he end of their life
• the context - However at a time when the world turned upside down, recording the simple and the familiar and looking closer at nature is something a lot of people did to help keep a grasp on what is real. (I took to posting my photos of plants every day on my Facebook account - from the same date in the past - to keep a grasp on the world outside when we were locked up at home - when Hockney was creating these artworks. Today I posted #492).

What I noticed was that some of the subjects he took great care over - the notable examples being the trees in full blossom - while others which held less interest (bare trees with no foliage) seemed to receive less attention. 

No 57 was particularly joyful and I was surprised not to see it chosen as an image for the postcards.

The colour of skies

I realised partway round how important the colour of the sky was to some of the images and what a variety of colours he had used for skies

Mark-making

He uses the mark-making available in his Brushes software - but I sometimes want to see him experiment more with available software to see what else it can do.... 

The mark-making hasn't really changed over the last decade. Which is a pity.

The visitors

A very white set of visitors in terms of both skin and hair. It's always interesting to see what older ladies think is appropriate dress for a Hockney exhibition at the RA - but then right now, an expedition into central London is something to appreciate and I dare ay a lot were going out for a very nice lunch afterwards

Which I would have been too - but my ankle rebelled....

The Arrival of Spring - David Hockney's latest exhibition

Something like 85% of digital drawings in The Arrival of Spring sold before David Hockney's new exhibition opens tomorrow at Annely Juda Fine Art.  However the stars of the exhibition are a new set of charcoal drawings completed in Spring 2013 - and they're not yet for sale.  I imagine when the time comes they'll either be donated to a major art gallery or museum or they will be sold as a complete set - and if that ever happens it will take somebody with very deep pockets.

"Woldgate, The Arrival of Spring in 2013" - 4 of the five series of five drawingscharcoal drawings

"The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011"

The 20 colour prints in "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011" were drawn on Hockney's iPad and were part of the set of some 50 works shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in his blockbuster show in 2012.  They were all drawn knowing that at some point they would become large prints.  In this show a few of them have become very large prints!  There's one new print in the show

The colour prints are now being marketed for the very first time which perhaps explains the very keen interest despite the fact that the prices of these small limited edition prints are eye-watering.

"The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011" by David Hockney
(Left to right) 1 January 2011, 4 January 2011 and 18 December 2011
The print on the right is a new one which was not included in the RA show and records winter rain

"The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011" by David Hockney
(Left to right) 18 March 2011, 25 April 2011, 1 April 2011, 18 January 2011 and 23 February 2011
139.7 cm x 105.4cm

"Woldgate, The Arrival of Spring in 2013"

"The Chinese say black and white contains colour, and so it can"
David Hockney

On the third floor are six series of charcoal drawings, all drawn on an entire sheet of Arches Aquarelles with the impressed makers name always bottom right - plus a video. These comprise

• 5 series of drawings - each series containing five drawings - all done between January and May 2013
• a series of drawings titled "Vandalised Totem".  which had been first vandalised and then cut down - made in November 2012, following a minor stroke
• a video made in winter 2010 of the road along Woldgate in heavy snow. 

Vandalized Totem by David Hockney
charcoal drawings 57.5cm x 78.8cm
signed and numbered
November - December 2012

He was making these drawings having recently suffered a minor stroke. The first drawing in November 2012 took two days but after that he says he found he concentrated more - and for the next six months he did nothing but draw in charcoal.

To me they're more sophisticated than the ones I saw at the RA - and I was very impressed by those!(see Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture - Making a Mark and Hockney is bigger than Van Gogh! - I visited the exhibition four times!)

One knockout aspect for me was the charcoal drawings - which were simply stunning. I never ever tired of looking at these - but only appreciated the relevance of him drawing trees and wood in charcoal on my last visit.

Gregory who runs the business end of Hockney back in Los Angeles said he felt that the drawings were different from the ones before.  To my mind, one very obvious reason they look different is because they're a considered series of five drawings of a place he now knows very well indeed.  Walking into the third floor space, one is immediately made aware of the impact of charcoal drawings when done as a series of drawings of the same space over a period of time. The drawings also remind you very much of the subtlety that charcoal has in the hands of somebody who knows how to use it.

Woldgate - from the Arrival of Spring in 2013 by David Hockney
(left to right, top then bottom) 6-7 February, 6 May, 12-13 May, 20-21 May, 27 May

I personally found that they kept reminding me of Van Gogh's reed pen drawings of the countryside and trees in Provence.  Hockney uses the same variety of in notations and mark-making used for trees and leaves and grass which felt very familiar and comfortable. (I'm a huge fan of Van Gogh's drawings - if you'd like to find out more about his drawings you can download the catalogue of the exhibition of Van Gogh's drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their publications website - for free)

I definitely recommend this exhibition to anybody who is a fan of Hockney, a fan of landscape drawings, a fan of digital art or charcoal drawings - and if you're all of these, as I am now, you'll have a truly wonderful experience!

Plus the video of Woldgate continues to mesmerise - just as it did at the RA!

One of the nine screens displaying the journey along the snow road of Woldgate in 2010.
You can play 'spot the totem' as it used to be!

The catalogue is also excellent - very good reproduction and well presented.

The exhibition continues until 12 July and can be seen at Annely Juda Fine Art, 4th Floor, 23 Dering StreetLondon W1S 1AW.

"Discover Art" Bookazine to launch next month

The front cover of the first edition
of Discover Art

Next month, some of you are going to be seeing and hearing about the launch of a new publication called 'Discover Art'.

This is a new magazine for artists.  Technically it's actually called a bookazine - which is a magazine big enough to rate as a book!

The other big difference is that the majority of its distribution will be digital - of which more later!

James Hobbs, who's a very experienced editor of art magazines and a fellow Urban Sketcher in London, is editing 'Discover Art'.

I'm sold on the idea behind this new publication as it aims to go beyond some of the more simplistic how‐to formulas and rules of how to copy somebody else's style which all too often fill magazines.

Instead I understand Discover Art will be aiming to help and support artists to find their own creativity and distinctive and personal way of working through experimentation and experience.  So it's not so much how to produce art like a well known artist so much as how to produce art that is unique to you!  I'm definitely in support of that!

Features in the first edition include an article by me..... :)

Its features include

• in‐depth, inspiring looks at paintings by accomplished artists using watercolour, acrylic, oils and coloured pencils, as well as digital media, such as iPads

• interviews and profiles of successful artists including this year's BP Portrait Award winner, Susanne du Toit,

• how a blog and social media can help readers share and promote their paintings and drawings online

• how to meet like‐minded artists through art clubs, societies and sketchcrawls

• information about leading art materials to try out

• a look behind the scenes into the studios and work spaces of artists

• help in choosing the perfect painting holiday

• how selecting the right frame can be the crowning moment of any work of art

• a resources guide to help in finding art courses, exhibition opportunities and ongoing support

Mine is the article with the title "How social media can help the artist".  (I've just signed off the final version!). The main challenge was containing it to the word limit I was given as this is a topic which I could write a book about!

I'm very encouraged by seeing the websites and some of the art of the artists involved. The first edition of Discover Art will also include articles by

• Lucy Duke and Joe Dowden on watercolour, 
• Thomas Doran and Iain Holman on oils, 
• Anne Davies on acrylics - I love the look of her website!
• Rachel Munn on coloured pencils. I was absolutely raving about Rachel Munn's botanical art in pencil only last month at the Florum exhibition in Kent - see Florum 10th Anniversary Exhibition - review - drooling might be more accurate - so I can't wait to see what she has to say about working with coloured pencils.  
• Susan Murtaugh on iPad art. I'm also really looking forward to reading Susan Murtagh's article as she produces some really great digital art - and she's already been been profiled by that well known talent spotter Charley Parker of Lines and Colors!

Copies of the launch issue are set to be well in excess of 100,000.  It will be circulated as both a digital copy to databases of practising artists and will also be available in print via WHSmith, Martin McColl, Easons and key art shows throughout the year.  If you are on the GreatArt database you have no worries - a copy will be on its way to you next month.

There's also another bit about me in this magazine - but I won't spoil the surprise and will tell you about that one after the launch! 

Hockney is bigger than Van Gogh!

These are the queues of people waiting in the rain at 7.50pm on the final evening of the David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.  The end of the queue is down to the entrance to Burlington House on Piccadilly.  The exhibition closed at 10pm.

Below you can see my cameraphone photos of different views of the queue on the last night.

Burlington House Courtyard on the final night of the Hockney Exhibition
- my view from the Archway

© Katherine Tyrrell

The view of the queue for the final night of the Hockney Exhibition
from the archway off Piccadilly, all the way across the courtyard to the entrance to the ticket desk
- as seen from Burlington House

© Katherine Tyrrell

My ticket was for 8pm so I was able to enjoy the last two hours of this exhibition before it closed its doors for the final time.

This was my fourth visit.  I'd been at the Press View when it was simply too much to take in all at once.  I'd then taken my sister and Marion Boddy-Evans to see it - and it's always fun to see an exhibition through other people's eyes.

This time I wanted to go for myself.  I'd had a debate with myself along the lines of is it sensible for anybody to go to an exhibition four times - for five days!  I won - and got to go!

Can I recommend to anybody who likes exhibitions at the RA that becoming a Friend of the RA is the way to do it.  I simply printed off my ticket online and walked straight in last night.  Plus you can take a guest for free.

I looked at all the paintings which I'd not had time to look at properly when seeing it with friends

Here's a few thoughts from my last visit

"Pastel" iPad sketch as a movie

I'm posting a video of the creation of a sketch using:

• my iPad
• Brushes app - which is available from the iPad App Store (and is also available for iPhones and the iPod Touch)
• Griffin stylus (see Product review: A stylus for iPad sketching #1 )

The aim was to see if could get the sketch to emulate soft pastels and be created more or less in the same way as I would work if using pastels for real.  Can I just stress I was playing and it was very basic!



[UPDATE: This was originally posted via YouTube but that produces a landscape format for a portrait format video - which was rather unsatisfactory. I've now reposted from Flickr. Both allow you to change the size of what you see on your blog. However the Flickr video format is much better than YouTubes!]

It took some time(!) to work out how to get it posted on the blog but I got there in the end!

To produce the video I had to:

• download Brushes Viewer on to my iMac (this requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or higher) so that I could read the Brushes file - which is the animation of the sketch and shows the strokes I made in the order I made them
• email the brushes file of the animated creation of the sketch to myself
• by selecting "Mail Actions" from the Share menu at the bottom of the gallery view in Brushes
• This creates an email titled "Brushes Painting Actions" and automatically includes the relevant file as a compressed file
• save the file from the email I received on my iMac
• open the compressed file and extract the brushes file and view using Brushes Viewer
• export the movie as a .mov file.  Option included size, compression, quality and frame rate (but I haven't investigated how to vary those as yet)
• view the .mov file in QuickTime Player
• Upload .mov file to YouTube and Flickr
• Upload the YouTube movie to Blogger

Phew!

This is what comes of going to see the Hockney exhibition and watching videos of him sketching plein air using his iPad, the Brushes app and a stylus!

The video is called iPad sketching using Brushes and a Griffin Stylus and you can find it on Making A Mark - the Video Channel

I expect I might be doing a few more of these.........

How to produce a large 300dpi TiFF print of an iPad sketch

...is the question I've been asking ever since I saw the Hockney exhibition.

So far I have established:

• he uses the Brushes app on his iPad
• Hockney's people state that to avoid pixellation as the size of the print increases, they use a new piece of software which allows prints in a much larger format.

I've looked and looked on the Internet and I can find no mention of the name of the software.  So I asked the question the other way round - the search query was "software used by Hockney to prevent pixelation for large prints of ipad drawings"!

So what's the software?

I'm still not sure - but I've found a suggestion - by a chap called Russ Croop (towards the bottom of the page in the link) - who's a photographer who has been creating large prints from iPhone/Brushes. I've summarised his suggestion below

Brushes Viewer app website - also available as an Apple app

There is a Brushes viewer (the quote is from the Brushes app site)

You can open your .brushes paintings in Brushes Viewer, a free application for Mac OS X. Brushes Viewer allows you to replay your paintings stroke for stroke, export them at very high resolutions (up to 1920 x 2880), and even export them as QuickTime movies.

1. Use Brushes Viewer to export iPad sketch at 5X the native size (using the TIFF format) which produces a large file
2. Import to Photoshop Elements and touch up imperfections (eg unpainted spots)
3. Select Image/Resize/Image Size
4. Unselect resample image box 
5. Type 300 in the resolution box (which changes the file to a higher resolution ie 300dpi which is what is usually required for professional printing) but creates a much smaller image
6. Select resample image box
7. Check you have the units correct for the size of image you want (eg inches or cm)
8. Type in the size of the image you require (eg 20 inches high) - and PS Elements resamples it to create a new large image @300 dpi and keeps the aspect ratio in proportion so long as you also have the "constrain proportions" box checked
9. Also make sure that the Bicubic Smoother is selected (option just below the resample command) as this is the best option when enlarging images.

I tried it - and I now have a very large digital sketch 20x16" in Tiff format sitting on my iMac - which was originally created on my iPad.

I followed all the instructions except for the Brushes viewer bit at the beginning as I already had the digital sketch on my iMac.

Now can anyone improve on that as a method of enlarging digital sketches created on an iPad?

Any queries? Any suggestions?  Any recommendations? 

PS  Two more posts today related to the Hockney Exhibition

• Book review: A Yorkshire Sketchbook by David Hockney on Making A Mark reviews
• Hockney: sketchbooks, iPad sketching and the Yosemite Valley on The Art of the Landscape  This is the post which triggered this post - because I wanted to know how Hockney is creating the very large images from the iPad.