COTMAN THROUGH THE CAMERA LUCIDA

John Sell Cotman as drawn by John Varley with a camera lucida.
Dated 1810.Yale Center for British Art

Anthony Vandyck Copley Fielding. Also drawn with the camera lucida. Same date and provenance
as the Cotman.

Artists do sometimes use mechanical devices in their work. One gadget  is the camera lucida which is a device that can be used in portraiture. Here are two drawings made by the British watercolourist John Varley. The he first bears an inscription which confirms that it was made with the cameras lucida. The other is so similar in style that  if the one was created with the device then the other must be too. Interestingly enought the subjects are both distinguished British watercolourists J S Cotman and Anthony Vandyck Copley Fielding. Both works are in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art.
The Cotman dawing in particular proves that male hairstyles are relatively unchanging.

The inscription on the front of the Cotman states "Johnny Cotman of Norwich",and on the back,"Mr John Sinclair Cotman/Done with the Camera Lucida/June 1810. (Varley gets Cotman's middle name wrong, it was Sell.) And it also appears that the camera lucida used was most likely that invented about this time by John Varley's brother Cornelius who certainly had strong scientific interests.For further information look here . And for information regarding scientific aspects try this site of the American Philosophical Society.Cornelius called his apparatus a Patent Graphic Telescope. He was an artist but worked mostly as a maker of scientific instruments.

The camera lucida is basically a prism fixed above a drawing board.To use it the artist normally sits at a table and looks into a prism at eye level. Then the artist traces what is seen in the prism -which appears to be on the paper which sits on the baseboard.

The quality of line is also a giveaway which suggest a kind of tracing or copying activity. If you look at the neckwear of the sitters you will see the clear and slightly perfunctory quality of line which is common in traced work.You can see a similar simplification in some of the drawings which Rodin made when he copied a work by holding it up against a pane of glass to allow tracing onto another sheet.

OX-GALL FOR WATERCOLOURS

Yes, that is just what it is, another traditional feature of the British watercolour tradition. And yes, in the past you could have sent someone round to the slaughterhouse to obtain enough to last a lifetime.It is also used by people who make marbled paper. But apart from this gory facet, why is it of use to a watercolourist?

If you use quality watercolour paper you will often find that it is difficult to cover the paper, difficult to spread your wash because the colour will not take and balls up into patches no matter what you do. Watercolour papers are often hard-sized so that the colour stays on the surface and maintains its brilliance.This is what ox-gall helps with. It is a water tension breaker or wetting agent.You can add some to your painting water and see what the results you get.It may only need a few drops.Available from reputable art stores, you don't need to go to the slaughterhouse.

CLOUD STUDIES-A TUTORIAL

Here are the stages in the making of a small watercolour exercise done to practise the visualisation of clouds, one of the hardest of subjects for an artist to imagine.Done on a sheet of watercolour paper with a slightly rough surface. Sometimes I lift  the dried watercolour with a wet brush-no colour.The blue shapes eventually define the white shapes of the clouds.

Haphazard dabs of very liquid blue watercolour

Dark blue starts to define clouds.Orange brown to represent land/horizon

Green band to represent another patch of land. it dries in a puddle with a hard edge. Some blending of sky at lower left.

Further work on the sky near the horizon  where the clouds are blurred by rubbing with brush loaded with clean water.

More blurring of clouds on the horizon and upper right with clean water. Land areas strengthened.

Trees are introduced and the horizon is strengthened.Clouds are blurred with a brush loaded with clean water

Trees are strengthened and some light ochre is added to the shadow sides of the clouds.The clouds are redefined a little at lower right.