Street Photography

I've found a really cool book called Street Photography Now (Thames & Hudson 2010 — so I guess it should be called Street Photography Then...but it feels very contemporary).

The book contains images by '46 contemporary imagemakers noted for their candid depictions of everyday life'. Here are some of the highlights:

Melanie Einzig, New York. She says 'My best photographs were taken going to or from work, or some other destination. It's about tuning in to intuitive clues, to turn this way and that.'

I like the natural light and the way the picture hasn't been fiddled around with. I like to find interesting people in my pictures – but I have never seen anyone quite like the guy in yellow! I'll keep hunting. Here is a picture of mine that I feel achieves a similar effect.

Christophe Agou is French, but also lives in New York. He works mainly on the subway. His black-and-white close-ups of faces are very strong. For example:

I would like to hope some of my pictures can get close to the strength of his pictures. This one isn't so well framed, but captures a similar emotion:

I'm not sure I agree with Christophe Agou when he says 'there is a certain honesty underground, a certain truth'. In my experience, people on the underground are closed off, wary, untrusting, and no-one speaks to anyone else.

Maciej Dakowicz, born in Poland, lives in Cardiff. His street pictures are brutally honest, challenging — and they make me feel I should just get out there and do it! The woman in this picture doesn't seem at all bothered about being pictured in such an unflattering environment. (The quality of my picture of the picture in the book is not great!)

This style of photography reminds me of Nick Waplington. Sometimes I feel that the photographer is judging people, it feels almost like a class thing. And I'm uncomfortable with that.

Another photographer in the book, Carolyn Drake, says: 'I am weary of stereotypes and aware that photos often perpetuate them. I'd like to take pictures that somehow counteract this'. Hear hear!

The eye contact in George Georgiou's pictures (he lives in London but has spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe) is often quite shocking. For example, this picture of a man on a train in the Ukraine:

Sometimes I have experienced a level of discomfort, taking pictures. Here, for example, the man at the edge of the picture is very aware of what I am doing.

Nils Jorgensen is Danish but lives in London. He says he likes 'small random moments which have no obvious news or commercial significance'. I appreciate that. For example, this picture makes a strong image out of an advertisement:

It reminds me slightly of a similar picture I took:

Now, look, I'm not comparing my work with the work of these photographers. Clearly, they are all highly skilled and have produced some great work.

All the same, it is very encouraging to realise that other people are doing the same thing as me. I'm not entirely alone. I'm not the only freak out there!

Commuting syndrome

What I want to do is pull together images that represent the qualities of commuting in my mind.

Here is the first picture I stuck together from several pictures I had taken:

I imagine this would be easier if I had PhotoShop!

The face of the fat man in foreground in this picture is pretty poor quality and not very tonal but the creases in the shirt are very distinct and I can imagine painting this image. The old man looking out of the window has better contrast. The old man the lighting has a better contrast, with more visible tones. I need to balance all the tones. It's one of the problems of working from photographs. And especially, from my secret snaps!

I don't want to make the whole background surrounding the two men in the foreground completely blurred out, but want more detail to add to the overall idea.

Here is another, more worked version of the same thing. The wonders of the Pritt stick!

Returning to the subject of honesty. Let's put together some key words that come to mind in connection with commuting: repetition, distraction, tension, purpose, purposelessness, boredom, fatigue, career, motivation, preoccupation, self-sacrifice, family.

Gazing out of the window and dozing off are escapes for some people, forms of meditation that help to get away from the tedium and uncomfortable routine. Or looking at phones, or listening to music. They also help to get away from the terrible closeness of strangers! The enforced intimacy and unwelcome nearness to other people.

The man immediately behind the two main figures has a phone, repeating the action of the man in the foreground. Almost everyone seems to be looking at some or other electronic device.

Commuter trains are commonly crowded. In one sense it's a blur. In another sense, everything is black and white and tense. Everyone sees everyone else. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing, but no-one is looking at anyone. I hope to represent this tension through sharpness, tactical blurring and detailed line direction.

At first I thought I would blur the entire background. As per the example below (made with PhotoShop on a borrowed machine):

This was, in a way, pushing back on earlier thoughts - that life is the blur beyond the window. I do regret losing the background. And so I have rejected this in favour of a more considered image (the second one, above).

What I hope to achieve, by dealing with photographs in this rough way, is a basis for a painting that will give a more personal and a fuller version of the subject.

True or False

I need to find out why I have these recurring thoughts of blurred images. Check myself for falsity. Here's the thing: truth and honesty in art. Some art is dishonest as art and maybe that's one distinction – at least in my mind – between art and craft. What do I mean? Oh, boy. Here goes. Art is about the need to do the right thing in the right way for the right reason; craft means the ability to do a thing that looks right for any of a number of reasons.

I need to be clear as to my motivations as I progress in my practice and keep checking my work for honesty of thought and feeling. Prohibit myself from doing something simply because it looks impressive or clever, but make sure my work is always good enough for me.

I need to scrutinize everything I do, track my thoughts, so I can communicate my experience properly. Otherwise I may have the experience but miss the meaning, as TS Eliot put it!

To what extent can I realise my – what shall I call it? – my communication? Who knows? Because if I can't identify what's going on in myself, how can I put clear focus in my art? I'd like to clear out all the garbage! See things for what they are, through my eyes. I must see the scene as it is to me.

This is what it's about, surely, bringing me to the table, to what I'm doing. I mean, in the most honest and direct way possible. I can't get to something that feels like art by trying to be clever, because that means being something I'm not. I can't get there by trying to do what other people have done, because that isn't me, either – and the people who have done it already will have done it better.

So. It's all about me! It seems pretty straightforward. I know there is lots to learn, but if I forget this, how can I ever hope to achieve something original? Like a personal vision, a personal statement. Like, perhaps, art?

Thinking about it

I have to get used to thinking of my photos as a form of quick sketch - and I need to find photos I really want to work from.

The medium must relate to what I see. I don't want just to take pictures and make  paintings of them. I want to follow through why I took the pictures in the first place. Try and find a meaning in the images. Try to find the perfect expressions and gestures to convey the experience of this form of travel.

The communication is what brings out the human relationships.

Tutorial Challenge

I've been a bit confused since my AL tutorial with Natasha Kidd. I feel that what she said was very useful and I agreed with her.

She said that the good thing about my prints was, that I had my own style going but, on the other hand, the fact that there was a border around them made them seem contrived. I don't exactly know what she meant by that, but they do feel a little bit limited, to me.

I need to branch out a bit, experiment with the prints....I feel I can do this. At the same time, I need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I don't just want to chop everything up in pieces.

My original thinking with prints was, that I needed to try something different. I had mainly focused on oil painting and portraits and wanted to be more adventurous. I wanted to experiment. But it's hard to start in a new medium, especially one that has so many technical restrictions.

I also wanted to link this piece with my oil painting of two people on the train.The sense of the blur and movement of the train going past, with glimpses of the people in the windows.

With hindsight, I could maybe have achieved this effect in a different way with a linoprint. But this medium is slow, it's unforgiving and, as I said, it is completely new to me, and it's a steep learning curve.

I needed to get some breathing space, so I tried something a little bit different.

I photocopied the two tube prints and created a blur by making the picture wider each time. I found that photocopying the photos in black and white created a rough, almost mysterious effect, in keeping with the original style of the photos I had taken.

Damp paper and other experiments

Over the weekend I experimented with a couple of prints. First of all, I dampened the paper before printing. This was a success. The paper held the print much better if it was damp. I also used 'packing' on the press - putting extra sheets of paper on the one printed to make a heavier impression.

The other thing that I played about with was the mix of ink. I put two colours on the ink stone and rolled them together on the plate. This created an interesting blend.

I discovered that it's easier to print light colours than black (or at least, the imperfections are not so obvious when printing with light, bright colours on white paper).

Here are a couple of examples, side by side, with different weights of ink and different blends of light grey and light blue.

Andro Wekua

Yesterday I saw work by Andro Wekua, a Georgian artist who lives in Berlin, at the Saatchi Gallery. I really liked one collage, called Black Sea Surfer. It had the feel of a woodcut.

And I had the feeling that I could work in a similar way with linocuts, making a tiled image, putting together different blocks, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

Today I printed the last colour of my suicide print and also two new tube prints.

I started off by brushing down each print with an old toothbrush to get the dust and trimmings off the plates. Any dust on the roller is a nightmare.

Suicide print, final colour
1. At first I wanted to use a clean solid blue to print on top of the slightly creamy light blue. I squeezed out some blue and looked at the colour and realised that it wasn't the contrast I wanted. So I mixed in just a smidgen of black which created a darker blue.
2. I feel it went well:

 The main problem was achieving perfect registration – in other words, lining the plate up perfectly with the print. On a positive note, the colour went on well.

Here I am, wiping excess ink off the plate (in the non-printing areas) just before printing:

With the tube prints – even though they might come across as similar, they are different experiences to print.

The plate with the people dug out has a far greater surface area for ink so it was important to get enough ink on the top of the design. The first attempt didn't come out too well even though I really layered the ink. Tried it again and it worked a little better but still not sure what the problem was.

There are technical difficulties with printing using an old (1872) press. Getting the right pressure across all areas of the linocut is hard.

The plate with the people printed and the background dug out went better; there was less surface area, so therefore it was easier to print. I was really pleased how this turned out. A little patchy in the bottom left-hand corner for a couple, but I soon realised that applying more ink and turning the plate upside-down helped matters.

This is the second plate (the one that was easier to print) inked and on the press:

Lessons to learn, today

• Clean the plate properly.
• Make sure the print is properly lined up
• Make sure there is enough ink on the plate
• Make sure when I am digging out the lino I dig out enough so I don't get little bits of ink showing up in the spaces.

This week I have been working on two linocuts. I intend both to be one colour (black) but let's see how it goes. Both are the same image, but opposite ways around...

In one cut, the people on the tube are black and in the other, white.

When the people are black, the background holds the most negative space, so if I print over a photograph, most of the photograph will show through.

When I think about a tube I think about an enclosed space, a cave.

I wonder what would happen if I were to print the people over an outdoor space, eg fields, treees - lifing it out of context, making a connection between the 'trapped' people and their imagination.

I'm going to try both ideas. I'm more interested to see how the print with the people printed will work out.

Another thing I could do is treat both prints as different plates of the same final image, print them one on top of another in different colours (the way standard printing works, actually). I'd like to see how this works, but I am a little concerned about how I'll line up the images.

I've been thinking a lot (ie, worrying) about ideas and final pieces for my exhibition over the last few days.

I find that going to galleries and exhibitions helps me sort through the thoughts in my head, but sometimes these visits throw up more ideas, and these make life more busy and confusing. For example, Paris Montparnasse, by Andreas Gursky. Neverland by Damien Hirst. The scale of both works is impressive. In Gursky's work, it was strange being at eye-level, peering into rooms, seeing people staring out from some of them. Hirst's work was like a huge kaleidoscope and I liked the way that the mirrors distorted the size and shape of the drugs in this vast medicine cabinet.

I've recently been working on two prints one suicide print which is interesting because I've never attempted it before and it has always stroked me as being a hard job and difficult to get my head round.

The yellow print (first colour of suicide print):

Preparing the blue for the second part of the suicide print:

The blue on the yellow:

 Another print I'm working on is in black-and-white, of the inside of a tube train, from a picture. I am thinking of incorporating a picture in the print. I guess working from Patrick Caulfield.

I guess with the suicide print it's more about appearance and how it ends up that I'm interested in; I like seeing what can be done on a one-way journey.

(It is called a suicide print because it is a one-way journey; once you have cut out lino for a colour, that's it...you can't go back. You can see above by comparing the yellow with the blue. At the end, there's hardly anything left of the lino. All the detail is on the print.)

With the monoprint and feel I can show some meaning and work with that, cutting it up, maybe working with its shape more...

Suicide Print

It has taken a while, but I think I have got my head around how to make a suicide print. To work it out, I made a sketch, then drew each colour in the sketch as an underlay, on a separate sheet of tracing paper.

I am working on a three-colour (plus white) print. It works like this:

• Cut out the white areas. Print the first colour (yellow).
• Cut out the yellow areas. Print the second colour (light blue, say).
• Cut out the light blue areas. Print the third colour (dark blue, say).

It sounds easy, but I found it hard to put together.  I have to explain it to myself, like this:

• At stage one, the yellow covers all areas except where I want white. 
• At stage two, the light blue covers all areas except where I want yellow or white - because I have cut the yellow out, now, so it won't be overprinted. 
• And at stage three, the dark blue covers all areas except where I want light blue, yellow or white – because I have cut the light blue out to stop it being overprinted - and the yellow and white areas have gone already.

It feels strange, like working backwards. I shall take pictures, to show the progress of my first attempt.

Building a Box

I have an idea around building a box. I imagine a long tunnel of a box with images on the far wall. Maybe use adapted mirrors, tracing paper and holes in one wall, at different places. Or perhaps use a wide-angle door spyhole or two, as mentioned earlier. Perhaps play with the idea of perspective in the box, too. And give people the opportunity to look at the image through different mediums. And use cellophane for one wall, or different coloured plastics, to create different lighting inside the box. I am not sure where this is going but I feel that there is something in this...oh...I need to try to make this, play with it...

Seeing very little

I am thinking of a picture in which all that is seen is a fuzzy image -  obscured tracing paper. The translucent, or semi-opaque paper prevents the viewer from seeing the finer details of the picture. And perhaps leave a gap between the image and the tracing paper, so the viewer can look at the sharper image if they want to.

Make it more difficult, perhaps, for the viewer to see the clearer image. Placing washes over glass would work perhaps as well as tracing paper.

This is all about questioning what is seen, particularly what people see of other people who are nearby, close...distant...

Cupboard: an idea

I like the idea of building a cupboard with shelves. On the shelves are images, stacked up against the walls, heaped up on the shelves.

Perhaps have a fish eye lens (like the one in a front door) to allow someone to see into the cupboard. My grandad made a boat inside a box that could only be seen through one of these lenses, so I know it works. Artificial lighting would be needed – or perhaps a roof made of cellophane.

Black-and-white images, and colour images. Pictures of people lying on the shelves. Or tacked on with masking tape.

The carriages on the Tube are like a waiting room, for example, in a hospital. Or like one of those overful cemeteries I have seen, abroad...stacked up in a Portuguese cemetery, or heaped up like the gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Perhaps play with what can be seen in the cupboard...showing it through a semi-opaque mirror that only allows a partial view of the images inside. Or a painting of the cupboard, a big clinical picture, with images of people, and perhaps their imagined thoughts, added too...

Alternatively, have a cupboard that is empty inside, but covered with images of people on the outside, to show the emptiness at the centre of the journey...

Underground, Underwater

I like this image, blurred to make it seem that the Underground is underwater...a fish tank... And this gives me the idea of working with boxes, somehow...

Merging Images 2

I have tried merging two images of the same person at different points in the journey. I still think of these pictures as notes.

Sitters

There is something special about capturing strong images of the people who sit close to me in trains. I think the best thing to do would be to make an album of these pictures.

Merging Images

I have been playing with some of the photographs I have taken of commuters... I am not sure why. A busy station, the underground at London Bridge, say, seems a metaphor for the way the lives of commuters blur, merge... Seems clever to have Private Eye in the foreground...my camera is the private eye...

Watercolour linoprint

I have printed, using Speedball watercolour inks, a four-panel linocut of commuters in front of the departure boards at Victoria. It was my first time with watercolour inks and I found it hard to get a good impression.

Next time I hope it will be easier. The difficulty was getting the right balance of water and ink. There was a suspicion, too, that the press wasn't printing evenly, although the same result was achieved when I printed the other way up.

Overall I'm not exactly disappointed with the result, I got one good print, and for this project that's what I was after.

Linocut ideas at Tate Britain

Today, when I visited the Tate Britain, I was preoccupied with linocuts...and so was drawn to Patrick Caulfield and Paul Catherall.

In my art, I like the idea of mixed media and am interested in collage and photo montage. It is used to great effect in Paul Caulfield's picture (below).

What I found interesting about Patrick Caulfield was that After Lunch is acrylic. I was very surprised as it looked so like a print! The colours were very clean and solid. I know this was an early work and that he went on to make a number of screen prints in a similar style.

This set me thinking again about my ideas of blur and focus to highlight the difference between inside and outside (inside a train carriage, outside a train carriage, inside commuter life, outside commuter life).

I could create a lino print of the interior of a train and then, like Caulfield, introduce an over-saturated image, a photo or similar, into the piece.

I've always liked the print (below). It hangs in my aunt's house. Today I discovered it was a lino print by Paul Catherall. I like how the colours work together, and the sharpness achieved by the solid colours. And taking the essentials of an iconic building such as Battersea Power Station and creating something similarly strong. The style seems particularly appropriate for the building.

Human interest

At the moment I feel there has to be at least one person in each work I am involved in. It sounds odd, but without the human interest I feel there is no interest...at least, for me.

I am feeling anxious. I want to push myself to experiment, to be adventurous. I have to keep challenging myself. And this is hard, sometimes. Maybe I need to try to hold to the idea but think of new ways to work with it.

I am trying to get my head around suicide cuts – a method of printing several colours from the same block. It's a very strange process, but I think it could produce something interesting.

Divided

At the moment I haven't settled down to painting in the studio at college and am not sure how that can work. I find it hard to paint in public! I have more time when I am out of college to focus on painting, but it isn't easy to shuttle back and forth with oil paintings...

So at the moment I am working on the project along two separate paths: painting out of college; printing (eg, linocuts), research and photography at college.

More Wings of Desire

When the child was a child, it walked with its arms swinging. It wanted the stream to be a river, the river a torrent, and this puddle to be the sea. When the child was a child, it didn't know it was a child. Everything was full of life, and all life was one. When the child was a child, it had no opinion about anything, no habits. It often sat cross-legged, took off running, had a cowlick in its hair, and didn't make faces when photographed.
Damiel: [voiceover]
IMDb Quotes: Wings of Desire (1987).

And when the child grew up, it became a commuter. And life was elsewhere...and that was terribly sad...

Fragments

Lots of things going on in my head!

Stay alone! Let things happen! Keep serious! We can only be savages in as much as we keep serious. Do no more than look! Assemble, testify, preserve! Remain spirit! Keep your distance. Keep your word.

This is a quote from the film Wings of Desire. They are the words of an angel, Cassiel. This film is about the secret observation of people, but somehow in a good way. There is huge sympathy for the people who are observed.

I'm thinking about surveillance. Exploring the lives of others. The Handmaid's Tale. How my mum felt after therapy – the experience of opening up completely.

Commuting is just a part of everyday life. It's an ordinary situation. That's what I like about it. I am not an angel (!) but I feel sympathy for these people. And I do see part of my job being to 'look, assemble, testify, preserve'.

I have been working in black-and-white, using blurring effects to represent time and tone to represent mood. In Wings of Desire colour is used very sparingly, to represent unusual or strong emotion. Most of the film is grey...

Notes on Two Commuters

A few more comments about the picture that I am working on (see Two Commuters, below) of an old couple on the train. They were a lively pair, having a completely ordinary conversation - about the Rugby World Cup, as I recall! They seemed younger than their years.

I am painting them in the style of Gerhard Richter, but this surprises me, because when I think, it doesn't really reflect how I saw them.

They should be in warmer colours. In comparison with commuters, they were a lively blur, as warm as the blur outside the window of the train. All the same, I am happy with the way things turned out. As an experiment with the technique of blurring, I think it has proved reasonably successful.

Questions and Some Answers

There are lots of questions that need to be asked already, in relation to this project. I am not sure I know all the answers! Here are some questions that have been put to me, or that I have put to myself - and my attempts to answer them.

• Is the secret photography of people ethical? That's difficult. These photographs are not in the public space. I use them only as snapshots to assist my memory. Is there a code of ethics covering such things? I don't know. I can see the difficulty. I try not to be invasive, and the identity of the subjects will remain private.
• Who decides if it is ethical, or not? I think this is the answer to the first question. I am not sure if the artistic process should take into account what is ethical. Any response to artwork is personal. It is not up to me to decide. 
• Can such photography be sensitive? I would like to think that it is. I am a commuter, I understand the feelings involved.
• Why do I take some pictures and not others? I don't know what compels me to take certain pictures, or to keep some pictures and throw others away. The composition itself, the arrangement of people, or expressions, or something else...
• Am I too ambitious about my project to care about how the people I am using as my subjects might feel? I would hope not, but I have no intention of making these pictures public. They are visual notes.
• Why am I taking such pictures, anyway? So I can remember particular situations and images.
• I want to see myself as respectful and non-judgmental, but does that mean that I am? I can't comment on that.
• Is Nick Waplington judgemental? If not, why not? I don't think that Waplington is judgemental, but it would be easy to be judgemental. He lived with the families, became part of the families, and I believe his pictures reveal great warmth and affection for his subjects. And John Berger agrees with me!
• Would I be happy to show these pictures to someone else? Yes, if I was happy with them in the first place.
• Do I need to think more about what I am doing? Always!
• Is what I am doing any different to, say, a poet making an observation about how they see people? I don't believe it is different.
• If somebody saw me taking a picture of them how would they feel? I don't think they would like it. They would feel I was intruding on them. And they'd be right. Maybe I should prepare an apology and an explanation, just in case!
• I am invading people's space, how do I feel about that? It's awkward - but then it shouldn't necessarily be easy for me to do something. Having said that, I admit that I enjoy it. I hope the ends will justify the means.
• Was Oliver Reed's A Text Message photo posed? I think not.
• Could I do this project without taking photos, just writing notes and painting from my imagination? Not very easily. But I do enjoy it more, this way. Maybe that's a bit weird. Am I a peeping Tom? I don't think so. These people are all in the public space. They are not behind curtains. There is no privacy on trains.
• Do I need to take a more ethical approach? I don't think so; this no different to staring at someone sitting opposite. 
• I dont know any of my subjects, but someone will. Does it matter if someone recognises a friend or a relative in one of my pictures? This shouldn't happen, because I don't intend to publish.
• A picture of my friend was printed in the paper, without permission. Was that right? She was involved in a public meeting. She was in a public space. I know there are laws around such things. I don't know what they are. Anyway, she didn't care. Her family bought lots of copies of the paper! And seriously, we are always being seen – in papers, on TV, on CCTV. There is no privacy, these days. I do not feel my project is about privacy as such, but it is about the private space that commuters occupy. I am not disturbing that space, I am just observing it.

Reflection

Trains sometimes provide an opportunity for thinking. Often, you see people staring through their own reflection, out at the fast-moving landscape, apparently lost in thought.

On the other hand, here is a commuter who does the long trip from London to Brighton. I like the rush of blurred colour in the window, while he sleeps.

Two Commuters

I have been working on a painting of two commuters. It's a work in progress. On a large canvas. The image has been disturbed deliberately to appear blurred. I wanted to make it hard at first to establish the edges, to understand the shapes. I used sponge brushes that were given to me by a student to achieve the blurred effect.

A Different Approach

My approach, while influenced by Richter, feels slightly different. I believe he uses distortion and blurring as a way of making the observer look deeper, beyond the surface. 

So far, I have been thinking of these ideas (ie, blurring) as a way of emphasising  difference. That is to say, to create a difference between the contained, hard-edged reality of commuting and the unfocused nature of everything else – basically, the life on the other side of the train window.

Commuters exist in sealed units. They cannot focus on other things when they are commuting. The rest of life is blurred, unreal – and yet it is life...alive, varied, rich. In comparison, their hard-edged days must be tiresome.

Gerhard Richter

Richter’s work made a much bigger impression on me than I had expected. 

Beforehand, when I thought of Gerhard Richter, it was his blurred works that came to mind. But there’s much more in this exhibition. A lot more colour and more abstract works than I imagined. What I liked most was the variety of his subjects. I had expected his portraits to intrest me most, but it was the landscapes that caught my eye, and the different approach he took to certain subjects. He works mostly from photographs but for some reason I feel his paintings are more alive, more realistic. He makes photographs seem like grubby snaps and his paintings improve on photos.

He really focuses on colour tone and brushstrokes and these sometimes distract from the often simple subjects of his paintings. In some pieces it is simply about the tone and colour rather than the object. With The Candle, you spend more time looking at the tone and colour rather than the object and you realise, after that, that colour is very important to the feel of his pieces. The soft glow reaches beyond the canvas.

A lot of his big canvases take a simple idea and work at it in great detail, with the emphasis on tone and colour. I was pleased to see how, in certain pictures, traces of the working grid are visible. In some of my pictures I have found it hard to eradicate the grid. In Bombers Bomber, the grid almost feels an integral part of the picture.

Study for Clouds reminds me of when you hold a balloon up to your eyes and see the faint blurred outline of the objects, but not focus on their colour. This strikes me as a key to understanding Richter. He forces you to look beyond the surface, to look harder. Distortion is important and  yet there is a calmness to the pictures. Some are so blurred it is hard to make sense of them unless you work hard. For example, Paris is a large picture, but you have to to squint to view the building.

I had attempted a similar idea with my Linocut (see Stranded, below).

The exhibition makes me want to experiment with my own pictures. For example, to try scraping thin and thick paint over canvases and dry-sanding them down. Of course, I could blur my pictures in PhotoShop first… but that would be a little pointless. I would rather create effects myself than achieve them in a purely mechanical way. I like how, in certain pictures, the grey streaks make a sort of splash puddle effect, achieved apparently by painting blurry straight lines then disturbing while still wet. Or for example, the smoother effect he achieves in Two Couples, how, when you look at it up close, it seems as if he soaked the canvas in white spirit then painted over it so the colours blended more…

Portrait

Yesterday I went to the Gerhard Richter exhibition. It gave me the confidence to work further on the first portrait of the commuter and inspired me to attempt to experiment with the theory of blurring the image. I am pleased with the outcome.

Silence in Southwark

The emptiness is unusual, here. I like the shiny stillness of the first picture, with one commuter standing still, straight as a soldier, apparently facing a blank wall.

I also like the way, in the second picture, that the lines converge to a dark point in the distance, as if showing the direction of travel.

Blurred Reflection

Another picture of the commuter, taken in a tunnel. The blurred reflection interests me. Again, I am reminded of Gerhard Richter. I will look closer at this picture. I would like to paint it, but the newspaper puts me off. I'm not interested in painting that. Perhaps I can do something with mixed media. Or perhaps there's another way.

Travellers vs Commuters

The couple are not commuters. There is a liveliness about them that tells you they do not do this every day. In comparison, the commuter is tired, shut off.

Stranded

I took a picture about a year ago, on the day when there was really heavy snow and all the trains were cancelled. I remember arriving at Victoria to see the entire concourse full of people staring at a blank board with the word cancelled all over it. It was like a religious event. Everyone was in the same situation and there was a huge sense of frustration. The picture I took was just a crowd of people staring at the blank board wearing hats, gloves, talking on phones. Wondering if they'd ever get home.

It's an interesting aspect. Commuting, it doesn't feel like travel, normally. It's just routine movement between dreary spaces. But when something goes wrong, it feels like a journey and it takes on a special significance.

I'm thinking of doing a painting of the scene, maybe in black and white. Today, though, I made a lino print of the picture, slightly abstract, the edges of the characters slightly deformed. I'm thinking of printing it a grey colour then cutting more away, if necessary.

First pull on the press:

Second attempt

This time, I worked with a thinner, more turped-down underlayer, made sure it was fully blended, and that the grey tones on the face were accurate. It felt a bit flat to me and half-way through I lifted up the canvas and realised that the brush-strokes were a bit careless, so I took it to the easel and this made a big difference.

Because I was working at a relatively small scale for me, my brush strokes were sometimes like dabs - and this felt neater. I mixed black and white on the palette to get the right tone, rather than on the canvas (which is what I often have done).

Going Wrong

My first attempt at painting a commuter went wrong. The tones are inaccurate. When laying down the undercolour I didn't focus enough on the tones. As a result, the flesh doesn't feel right to me. The blending is poor, too, and up close, the brush marks are pretty shabby. I decided to bin this first attempt and start again.

I'm going to work from home this morning, and go more slowly. Here is the pencil sketch on the grid.

A Station Cafe

Young man with a new-born baby in a cafe on the station – basically a noisy waiting room with hot milk froth. In my picture the man looks child-like, too; tired, but expectant. As if he is buzzing after a night at the hospital.

The other woman in the foreground helps to frame the picture. I liked playing with colour and black-and-white in the composition. It's not a complicated point. Colour is alive, it stands for all things that stand apart from the world of trains and commuting.

Studio

First day in the studio. I'm really pleased with it. There is a good-sized window.

I printed out a picture I'd taken earlier in the week of an old man staring out of a train window.

He seems to be staring out at a colour blur. It made me realise something obvious, that when you look out of a train window, your eye sees what is there as a continuous view. But in a photograph, the view is blurred to a horizontal rush of colour.

I created a grid which I find helps me to place the image on the canvas. I started with a grey-white underlayer, after I had sketched out the face.

I want the inside of the train to be monotone and the outside world to be colour.

Black and white seems best to represent the tired quality of routine inside the carriage. Hard lines etched in the face, hard surfaces, coldness, an exhausted light.

In contrast, what's outside seems alive, warm and vivid - but it also seems to lack a firm shape, as if it is both beautiful and unreal.

Space Invaders

Sitting opposite me today. A young guy. Initially, he had his rucksack on the chair next to the window until a middle-aged woman asked him politely to move it. Space is important in trains. Jealously guarded, fought over. A silent and bitter struggle.

Two big men working on small laptops. I like the idea of the world rushing past them in a blur. This is why, in my picture, I have kept the colour only in the window.

Woman takes out her powder and applies to her face discreetly, facing the window. There is no personal space on trains. Someone is watching you!