Back to Vellum and the Blog's Birthday

Last week marked 7 years of blogging for me! it's been interesting to look back and see what's happened in that time. The first image I ever posted on the blog was my very first painting on vellum, so it seems fitting to write a post about my latest work on the surface.

My most recent work on vellum, Three British Butterflies on manuscript vellum 2015 ( Comma, Red Admiral and Peacock abberation, painted life size)

My first painting on vellum, Foxglove dissection on Kelmscott vellum (6 x 4 inches)  painted during the summer 2007. I had grown the foxgloves from seed in my garden in Scotland. I've since moved house and the foxgloves have long gone but I can remember them clearly, they sprouted everywhere and were enormous!

Last week I had intended to start a larger work but got side-tracked by the butterflies.  I think it's fair to say that any large painting requires a significant amount of planning and practice, and none more so than a painting on vellum.  A decision had been made and the time had come to crack on with a painting I'd started preparing around 18 months ago... but it has been a slow start, full of distractions and not an awful lot has been achieved during the week. I don't see this as wasted time but rather part of the 'warming up' process. When I start a new painting I can never be sure whether or not it will work out but  I'm pretty sure that the more planning is put into a large pieces  - the less likely it is to go wrong! I'd like to have done more this last week but sometimes we have to accept it's a slow process. So I deviated from the large painting with some butterflies and moths as a warm up exercise. They're great little subjects to ease back into painting on vellum. I always find that painting on vellum it takes a couple of days to ease back into the technique. So two whole days were spent painting insects.

The process of building up the layers of paint on the peacock. Laying down the veins and outline first and then building up from light to dark. As a last minute addition I also used a very small amount of titanium white to dry brush  shiny white wing markings, this stands out well because the creamy colour of the vellum.

The finished Peacock, with its warning colours and large eye markings. This one is a abberation, with blurred eye markings. 

Adding the first wash to the final butterfly, The Comma.

The Comma butterfly. Again, working from light to dark. Marking out the viens first, followed by a light wash of the golden yellow mix ( transparent yellow and scarlet lake), thereafter various dry brush techniques were employed to build up the rich browns and patterns.  

Detail of the wing, showing the build up of the wing patters using 'dry brush' to create the scales and hairs on the delicate wings.

 The butterflies had  made a welcome change. I took me back to my days at  the University of Aberdeen, where I studied evolution as part of my degree some years ago. It was great to revisit mimicry in the wings of these beautiful creatures. As for painting butterflies, the process is the same as it is for plants. The manuscript vellum is slightly more challenging as a surface compared to Kelmscott, it's also quite a bit thinner. Darker and highly saturated colours are the most difficult to build up on the surface, simply because the paint sits on the surface and doesn't sink in, so the reds and blacks are good practise. With vellum it's not possible to use the same amount of washes as on paper, so after the initial controlled wash has been applied, the 'dry brush techniques must be used. Sweeping stokes and a form of 'modelling' dry brush techniques (similar to stippling but very dry) must be used to create form and the softness of the wings, and a 'drawing' style dry brush technique is used last to add the finer details.

Eyed Hawkmoth, watercolour on natural vellum, a subjec that really suits the warm tones of the skin. The 'eyes' of this moth  are a form of  mimicry which has evolved through natural selection to scare off predators. I might write a post about this it's a fascinating area several different type sof mimicry.

I used up a few small off cuts of manuscript and natural vellum for the moths and butterflies, the latter being off cuts from a whole skin. The natural vellum felt perfect for moths and I hope to paint more, it seems to work well for the scaley paterned wings.  After spending a couple of days painting the insects It was time to move on the the large autumnal painting but I will definitly paint more in the future.

Moving on
My current work is a fairly large painting  52 x 72 cm of autumnal subjects on natural vellum, as I've mentioned I had planned this some time ago, see this previous post. The idea was born from  the 30 day challenge works, which were all simple 'spontanious' paintings with no planning. but I felt that collectively they would make an interesting piece. All of the subjects in the piece were collected from my local park.  Life events had forced me to put the work on hold but I hadn't forgotten about it.
 Natural vellum was the obvious choice for the subject matter. The warm tones are sympathetic to the browns and golds of the dead and dying leaves and the rich coloured fruits.

The original inspiration for the piece, I no longer have the subjects so will have to work from my original observation drawings , photographs and some saved dried specimens.

  I opted to buy a whole skin of natural calfskin from William Cowley,  it arrived rolled onto a cardboard tube. Only one surface is suitable for painting and when first unrolled the it was a different experience compared to that a of ready cut pieces. The backbone and rib markings were clearly visible, this skin has a beautiful rich warm colour - it's a work of art in its own right! The vein markings should be very much part of the work and need to be considered in the composition, so although the planning of the drawing is icompleted, I want to be prepared to make small changes to accommodate the features of the individual skin.

Cutting the skin, the off- cuts will be used for small studies....maybe more moths

 First of all the skin had to be cut to size - a slightly nerve racking experience but it cuts easily with Stanley knife. Natural vellum is very thin and transparent so must be handled with care, if you've only painted on Kelmscott before this is a different!  Kelmscott is much more robust with a chalk wash coating and allows easy application and lifting of paint. On natural vellum it's hard to lift any paint overworking is a disaster.  The size also makes it difficult, buckling will be a problem if too much water is used. I thought about using a rabbit skin glue to secure it to a board before painting but decided it was too risky because of the size.  I gave the skin a very light rubbing with pumice powder to remove any grease.

I decided to use the A2 light pad to transfer the rough image onto the vellum because it helps to minimise the amount of pencil work on the vellum. It's never  a good thing to have too much pencil line because it makes the paint dirty. In fact I tend to remove the pencil on each section before I add paint leaving only a trace or work just inside the line, removing it after the initial wash.  The light pad worked very well because the vellum is so thin. I used a fairly soft pencil 2B sharpened to a long point to transfer the image and drew a very fine outline.

Using the light pad to trace the rough layout onto vellum, this approach  has the advantage of being able to switch off the light to check which parts have been traced already.....it's easy to get confused when tracing a large piece!

Part of the image traced onto the vellum

The vellum was fixed to the drawing board with Frog Tape. It's a pretty vibrant green colour but is much better than masking tape for securing vellum. It can be covered with normal masking tape if it's too distracting.

Finally! I made a start by applying the first 'wash'. It's not a particularly wet wash but quite controlled and applied in sections between natural divisions, such as leaf veins. Little or no primary material means I have to work from my preparatory sketches and photographs.

Slow Progress! After a day and a half , this is all there is to show.

I spent a day and a half prepping the vellum and made a start but ran out of time. I had a trip to Donegal planned and had to leave it there! .....There's always next week!

Painting on Vellum

I've been painting on Kelmscott vellum for a number of years but recently tried the natural vellum for the first time. Both are available from William Cowley in the UK. I like the look of this vellum because of the warm colour and venation but it's a slightly different experience to paint on compared to the Kelmscott.

Old Rose Hips, on vellum 2013

This is a slight aside from the recent posts but I thought a short piece about painting on different types of vellum might be of interest, given that I'm using vellum for my core work at the moment, and currently teaching an online vellum course. I've also been getting a lot of emails asking about different types of vellum, so maybe there's a renewed interest. I'm discussing the Natural and Kelmscott in this post, however you can also paint on the Classic calfskin and Manuscript vellum, refer to Cowley's website, which provides great information about all types of vellum and parchment too.

Guelder Rose, Virburnum opulus, on vellum, 2013

  To highlight the difference between the two vellum types, you can see in the image below, the darker natural vellum is on the lower right. The other two pieces are both Kelmscott.
Natural vellum does not have the chalk wash surface coating, is thinner, therefore more transparent, has unique venation and warm colouring, it also has a slightly more shiny surface than than Kelmscott. These properties make it more challenging to work on. You need to use even less water than when using Kelmscott. The coating applied to Kelmscott alters the appearance of the vellum making it slightly more opaque but the luminosity is preserved. Kelmscott is no doubt the best surface for the botanical painter and is easier to paint on than natural vellum because you are painting on the surface coat rather than the actual skin. It's a very forgiving surface and errors can easily be removed by rubbing with fine grade pumice or by carefully scraping away a top layer of the coating with a scalpel. If you've never painted on vellum before always start with Kelmscott.

Vellum: Apologies for the boring photo!  The darker natural vellum can be seen bottom right, it's thinner and more transparent. The other two pieces are Kelmscott. The large piece is the Rory McEwen vellum, it has the edge of the skin on two sides and a thicker surface coating, prepared and applied by McEwen compared to the Cowley's Kelmscott on the upper right.  

  Back in 2007 I was gifted a piece of Rory McEwen's vellum,  the large piece seen in the photograph above. It was given to me by the late James White of the Hunt Institute, following the 12th International, which I participated in back in 2007. The Hunt Institute were given his vellum by the family, following McEwen's death in 1982. They gift  pieces to artists who show an interest in working on vellum, at their discretion. I've been a huge fan of Rory McEwen's work for many years,  so it was a great honour. However I haven't felt confident enough to paint on it yet but hope to make a start shortly. So I'm brushing up on my technique at the moment. I find it takes me a day or two to get into the method of painting on vellum. It  requires a very light touch and a lot of dry brush work. I've included some detailed images from my works below to demonstrate.

When working on vellum it's always a good idea to give it a rub down with fine grade pumice powder first. I put it in a small round bag, you can use muslin or I use a piece cut from a pair of ladies tights - works really well! Use small circular motions evenly over the surface.  This removes any grease and blemishes from the surface. I didn't prepare the first piece of natural vellum and it still worked OK but was a bit greasy in places and resisted the paint slightly, but if you work dry enough it's not a problem. For my second attempt I rubbed it down very lightly taking care not to apply any weight.

Detail from old rose hips, using dry brush over an initial wash

Detail from Guelder Rose

Detail of the leaf, showing dry brush and fine line work

Painting on Kelmscott vellum, First layer

Finished paintings on kelmscott

It's also difficult to draw on the natural vellum, I painted directly on to it free hand without drawing for the two paintings shown above. I made a pale under-painting first but there's not much room for error so decided a better approach for more complex compositions would be to use a lightbox, or, if the image is drawn on paper first it could traced with the brush because the vellum is so thin. Pencil work should always be kept to a minimum whatever type of vellum is used because it can be difficult to remove. 

If you are just starting out with vellum. I would recommend starting with something small and simple, such as seed-heads or small fruits, leaves or flowers. The most difficult subjects are large shiny leaves and large smooth surfaced fruits. Building up paints to create such smooth surfaces is difficult territory until you get the hang of it....and wasting vellum is an expensive mistake! 
Always tape down the vellum, although for very small pieces you can actually get away with not securing it. I tape smaller pieces to thick card which is a couple of inches bigger than the vellum, so that I can rotate it. Don't leave tape on the vellum for too long though because it will mark the vellum edge. Large pieces of vellum should be secured to a frame. It can also be glued to a surface to keep it flat.

One of the biggest problems with vellum is buckling,  This is caused by incorrect storage, too hot, cold or damp or using too much water when painting. Water is most certainly the enemy of vellum, so always work fairly dry. I apply only one light 'wash' and then use various dry brush techniques. Pay particular attention to the edges, when applying the first wash - it's not like a typical watercolour wash, because unlike paper the surface of the vellum is non-porous, paint will sit on top - you want to avoid any pooling at the edges, if this happens you need to mop it up  it using a small dry brush, you need to achieve a fairly soft edge. If you get an hard edge  this will create problems later on when the paint becomes too thick, if you try to lift it later you will get into all sorts of problems. It's best to avoid this in the first place by using less water. Thereafter gradually build up the paint in layers of dry brush.  Most of all remember to work work lightly and keep water to a minimum!

Larger work on Kelmscott, life size foxglove, 2011

     

Cherry leaf on Kelmscott, 2010. The background has been lightened for print on this image but it is more cream in colour.

Finally, if you have never painted on vellum before, give it a try, its unique properties are a gift to the botanical painter! and once you become experienced with vellum, you can even buy whole skins and prepare them yourself!

For more information thers's also an article on my website about painting on vellum.