Ok mate I geddit.....< makes a note - 'no charisma'> ...Oi and what happened to Dear Mr Nail?



I'm not likely to do that John. The type of people I mention could put on a top hat and tails but their face would still give the game away, they just are what they are, regardless of the hair style or clothing.

Anyone with a face like a robbers dog raises my antennae, they give off an entirely different vibe than ordinary friendly baldies.

OK. painting update.

When I last left the painting it was like it is in the above photo, but I wanted to add to it. I mentioned earlier that Millar would have done preparatory sketches before painting and this would be to work out his image before committing to paint. Obviously for this demo I didn't go that far but here's an example of why it's always a good idea.



I decided to fill the car with those chunky flat capped characters of his as I felt that having such a small car crammed full of large overweight folk added to the sense of the ridiculous, and so made it funnier.

The trouble is, that even in such a 'cartoony' form as this is, adding so much weight would have sunk the rear suspension down, but that's already been defined now so I can't. I think having the car dragging it's tail pipe along the road due to the weight might have made it even funnier, but those were decisions that are taken in the planning stage that I skipped - so for now this one must stay as it is.

Stuff like this are only minor details but it's often such things that get noticed. I know someone pedantic might comment that for example in reality the beachball would blow off the roof, but that would be missing the point of paintings like this which is to just suspend disbelief a little and enjoy it.



Having roughed in the cars occupants, and added some indication of the colours of the luggage on the roof I began again on the background. The paint mixture used was again white with a touch of yellow ochre and cobalt blue only this time I used slightly less cobalt blue in the mixture so as to make the paint a touch warmer.

By using this subtle variation in the relative warmth and coolness of each successive layer I maintain both the unity of the painting and the brightness of the final image. I have also given some thought at this stage as to what colours will be where in two or three steps from now, this forward planning will allow me to place certain colours in juxtaposition with each other later on which will be in accordance with colour theory but placed seemingly as if by accident.



The brush techniques changes for this stage too. Previously the brush strokes have been used to drag paint over the canvas, giving a scumbled appearance. The reason for that is because I want a misty effect but without entirely covering and thus losing the colours that have been placed underneath. This effect looks raw up close as opposed to smoothly blending paint wet into wet, but it is done to keep colour purity which is all important in this type of work.

Notice also that the paint is becoming laid on thicker as it gets warmer and brighter, insted of two or three swipes at the canvas with one brush load I now do one brush mark for one load of paint. It doesn't take long however as the strokes are done very rapidly. Many people who have seen a foggy looking Millar print would be quite surprised to see an original painting by him, his surfaces are absolutely encrusted with paint - but only in the lights, the darker areas are relatively thinly painted which is what I'm doing here.

Below are a close ups of the surface of an original Millar painting just to give you an idea of where this one still needs to go.

My dear, Dear, DEAR Mr Nail !!

Sorry to be dispespectful in formalities ! I would rather keep it informal as I prefer not to be addressed as Dr.......simple "Squeezebox" is just fine.

Ordinary friendly baldy is me !....although just happy with my level of charisma.....it could be quite minimum, bit I have a bit....err...somewhere....just forgot where I left it ..I dont need to make an outward show of it... Very happy in my own skin and life !....so I think that is a bit unfair.

Wish you well....and big mutual respect......no hassle my end.

Now enough of this nonsense.....



......and back to the painting.....

My thoughts exactly my dear Dr. simple.

I wasn't having a go at you John, then or now, I'm just an incorrigible old rogue that likes to pull a person's leg.

no worries at all......I can take it, got used to it over the years!


By all means do so again.....but more painting first

I had a couple of hours spare time this afty, so used it to move the 'Millar' painting along nicely.



I put the characters inside the 2cv which now includes a rather grumpy looking wife in the back seat. She is obviously not so optimistic about the holiday weather as she is wearing a big fur collared coat and woolly bob hat.

Next came the objects on the roof and then the car itself has been roughly painted in, I still have some work to do on the car, rear window and boot lid, along with odd bits here and there but they will be taken care of in the final sitting which is the next one. It's difficult to see the painting properly so I've had to tilt it to photograph it, but basically everything is coming along just as it should be.

In this step I have used colour in a way that might need explaining a little.
As with perspective there are libraries full of books on colour theory, and it's not a subject that can be taught without sending folk to sleep, so here I'll just give a rudimentary idea of what I've done and why.

In the beginning if you remember I painted the background with cobalt blue, over that I began painting the 'mist' effect with a mixture of yellow ochre, a touch of colbalt blue, and white. Each successive layer was mixed gradually less cobalt blue content which made it appear warmer and thus brighter than the one before.

Ok so why? Well in paint the lightest light that I have is white, and the darkest dark would obviously be black, but if you place black and white together next to each other all you have is a stark contrast, no feeling of light or shade, no idea of warmth or coolness.

A painter needs to use colour to convey those sensations, and that's where colour theory comes in. We all know from school that mixing red and yellow makes orange, or blue and yellow makes green, but how to use these colours to convey atmosphere, warmth, cold?
If I simply mixed a colour then added white for a lighter mix or black for a darker mix all that would result is a grey scale painting, so to get the effects you want in a painting colours must be used subtly, yet effectively.

Colouring is all about placing one colour to play off another, warm against cool, dark against light, and each new stroke will alter the effect of the previous ones. When I laid down the initial cobalt blue it made the subsequent application of yellow ochre/cobalt blue mix (which actually looked greenish to the eye) appear to be warm. This was because the cobalt blue was much stronger and thus cooler than the mix with yellow in it, so by direct contrast the greenish 'mist' colour, which itself was actually cool, was made to look warm.



So by reducing the amount of cobalt blue in the background mist colour we've made it appear to move forward and look quite creamy as in the photo above. Notice how the warmer colour looks brighter and advances from the cooler greenish one?

But watch what happens next, when I mix a mixture of white, yellow ochre, a touch of alizarin crimson, and add that over the previous mixture.



See the greenish looking colour toward the bottom of the picture? Well that is the same paint mix that looks creamy in the one above! It has been 'trumped' by a warmer colour still, and now looks cool in comparison. Tonally the shades are almost the same, but the eye sees the latter colour that has been added over it as the brighter of the two, and that's a little of how the using of colour theory leads to brighter, more colourful paintings.

The next and final sitting will be the one where all the carefully orchestrated and placed 'accidental' brushstrokes so typical of millar are added, these will give the painting it's final hazy 'Millar-esque' atmosphere.

There was a superb documentary on t'box a couple of nights ago about the human senses. One of the examples it showed of how our eyes are constantly being deceived used two cubes with smaller coloured cubes on their faces. Amongst these smaller cubes were a smattering of neutral grey-toned ones. However, these grey blocks took on a completely different hue when the adjacent cubes were coloured in - they appeared in a contrasting colour, I think it was. So, two large cubes shown side by side appeared to have completely different colours where the grey blocks were. If you know what I mean. I can see how the same colour can look quite different in paintings too, depending on its surroundings.

(A brilliant example of how our ears are 'deceived' had a guy repeatedly saying an exaggerated-sounding "Baaaaaaaaaa! Baaaaaaaa! Baaaaaaaa!" He also 'mouthed' the sound in an exaggerated form. He then changed the 'mouthing' of the word to "FFFaaaaaaaa! FFFaaaaaaa!" whilst the actual word sounded was still "Baaaaa!" Guess what your brain 'heard'?! Yep, it was impossible to make it out as "Baaa" even tho' that's what it was - close your eyes and it changed! Spooky!)

The two close-up examples you showed of the actual Millar paintings (do you own them?!) seem to have a lot of detail in them - the texture of the cap in one and the back edge of the ear in t'other. Does he put more of this detail in than **cough** you do?!

No, you can put as much or as little detail as you want in, all it takes is time. Actually my woman in the car has a multi coloured woolly bonnet on. What I've done here is a demonstration of Millar's technique which has taken from blank canvas to finished painting something like six hours total.

What Millar does is to continue to refine and add detail, scuff over it again to lose some of the edges etc etc ad nauseum. Where it has taken me six hours, it might take him eight or ten with all the bits of fiddling that he might want to do before he declares it finished. The real difference between them is that upon completion his 'ten hour' painting is valued at seven grand, with an additional 250 signed limited edition prints at £495 each, then the sales of 'open' editions. That's worth spending the ten hours I think, whereas mine will go on ebay for a few quid.

Anyway, today I was up early and completed the painting first thing before my day proper began. I had several areas to rework, the main one was the boot lid which I wanted rusty. (c'mon fellas, you didn't expect a non- rusty car from me did you?)

The colour theory that DA mentions above is the key to this type of painting. Using traditional techniques the light and shade were worked out in grey paint before the addition of colour, but with modern painting it is all done at once. What DA refers to above is the method of using colour to alter the appearance of another which is what I have done here. Even if you don't understand how colour works you will all have a basic understanding of it without realising it, for example if I were to say that a colour resonates depending on what it is placed near you might not understand, so I'll say it like this.

Have you ever gone to a DIY store and bought a tin of paint that looked just the job, only to have it look different at home? The paint is the same so what changed? Answer: The surroundings. A colour that looks greenish can be made to look yellow by placing blue next to it, orange can also be intensified by placing a blue nearby.

These are things you have to learn but we all possess some innate colour theory. For example if you have a green car and you want to fit a new set of seats you might consider red ones, or tan, or even beige ones, but why not purple ones?

Because they don't 'go' together of course, but why don't they? What is the science behind it that explains why certain colours don't go together and others do, or why that green car would look great with tan seats, but the same green car with purple would be horrific? It's all to do with that colour resonance I mentioned earlier, colours that resonate inharmoniously in the eye are said to clash.



Another principal of achieving lively colour effects is to mix the paint loosely, that is, not entirely mixed to one single shade. Below is a section of my palette that I used this morning to paint the rusty boot lid, and on it you can see that the colours are a little streaky, this gives a much more lively appearance to a painting as the colour mixes in the eye and not by a dull mix on the palette.

By maintaining clear colour, and by mixing coloured greys which are a combination of opposites in colour theory, so red mixed with green, purple mixed with yellow, blue with orange and so on the painting remains harmonious. It's worth noting here that I painted this with a palette of just six colours plus white, and that black isn't used on my palette at all. Black can be made by mixing two complimentary colours, and in this way you have a 'coloured' black, whereas normal black is just dull and lifeless.



I said before that suggestion is the name of the game in this type of work, in this close up you may be able to see the greens and other unmixed colours that enliven the boot lid, but what I want you to look at it the right rear wheel. Can you see the rear brake hub?

Well that's what I mean by suggestion, because I haven't painted the rear brake hub!

What you actually see is a single rough brush stroke, it's then your mind that tells you it is the rear brake back plate! Same goes for the lights, look at the number plate light and you'll see that it's 'on', so by using colour theory even in such a bright painting I can still put the lights on because it's raining so hard!



I painted in the pedestrian who is walking along in the rain so nonchalantly, probably smoking a Galuoises fag, and I became concerned that it might look like our hero's are going to run him over, so again using nothing more than suggestion I turned the steering to the right so as to seem that the car will turn away from him.

The painting is then finished by adding several swift but accurate brushstrokes to give the effect of spontaneity, even though I knew where they were going two days ago. These were, reflections on the wet upper wings and body, some on the roof behind the luggage, the right rear wing edge has been lost to spray, and there are various splashes rising up from the rear wheels.

And that's it, job done. The Alexandar Millar technique done before your very eyes, now to sit back and wait for the millions to roll in..... Doh!