Terry King

Here are some examples of multi colour watercolour prints with commentaries on them.

The photograph is of Richmond Bridge. It has a romantic and, to some extent, a timeless quality invoked by the mistiness and the exclusion of items that would easily date the photograph. I am aware of influences from images from over the past five hundred years. Even the railings, which accentuate the illusion of depth of which gum is capable, appear in paintings and photographs of the 1850s.

This was my first large gum print, 20 x 16 print, which I set myself an early bench mark in terms of craftsmanship or technique. I was interested not only in achieving the wide range of tones of which gum is capable but also in achieving the fine gradations that are the test of competence in the medium. One may be able to perceive the two very faint Lombardy poplar trees to the left of the pigeon; these trees are almost imperceptible but are essential to the composition.

The print was made on Bockingford 140 lb watercolour paper using three coats of burnt sienna artistsí watercolour as pigment.
The print was developed using different sizes of sable watercolour brushes.

This print of Birmingham, ‘the workshop of the world’, and one of the founding cities of the industrial revolution, appears to represent a turning back to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. In fact we are looking at an early nineteenth century canal, a late nineteenth century school on the right and a modern stainless steel chimney on the factory. Just beyond the canal work is in progress on extensions to the new Birmingham Arts and Business centre. If one turns round to put oneís back to the cast-iron bridge one sees the new International Conference Centre and Concert Hall on Centenary Square beyond which are the incomparable Birmingham City Art Gallery and the Library with its rich collection of photography. Influences here are the industrial image making of the English Impressionists, and that of the first half of the twentieth century represented by Brandt, Spender of mass Observation, and Lowry. The original photograph was taken in heavy rain. It is one of a series with people walking sheltering under umbrellas.

This print, a 20 x 14, is made using the classic gum process but with acrylic rather than watercolour pigment, working from blue grey in the lighter tones to darkened burnt umber in the shadows to give the recession from the grimy midland brick of the foreground.
The print was made on Fabriano Artistico hot pressed 300gsm paper.

Another Birmingham Print
Looking from the early 19^th into the late 20^th century

Another gum acrylic print on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm in the same series.

Savernake Forest

This gum print is again a photograph taken in heavy rain which accentuates the recession. Savernake is an ancient Norman hunting forest; the shattered tree on the left is not only compositionally important but it draws attention to the transitory nature of our environment. Influences would include the plein air and preRaphaelite photographers of the 1840s and fifties, the new realists of the 1930s and decades of looking and seeing.

The print is in watercolour on Bockingford 300 gsm paper. Size 19 x 14 inches

Chelsea Reach

This is another early gum print which is an accurate record of what was seen at the time. The power station on the left has now gone, as has the oil/gas conversion works to be replaced by the Chelsea Harbour development. The time, the weather conditions and the state of the tide all contribute, with notes hung on a stave along the middle of the picture, areas of gentle gradation in the sky and the foreground enclosed by smoke from the chimneys and its reflection. Both Whistler and Brandt have made similar pictures. The image is about tranquillity. Two people to whom I have sold versions of this image have told me that they had been seriously considering suicide but had decided not to after contemplating this picture on their walls. A copy has been donated to the Westminster and Chelsea Hospital Mental Health Department.

The image was made up of three coats of indigo and ultramarine in classic gum on Bockingford 140 lb paper.

Romantic Langdale

This is one of a series of prints from the same negative demonstrating how the gum medium enables widely different reactions to the same scene to be depicted. Here we have the power of the subjective reaction that can best be seen in painting in the work of Turner. This is not a question of pastiche but of using a breadth of vision and knowledge of image making to suit the treatment to the subject rather than being confined by narrow fashionable conceits.

which depends upon a number of different compositional devices including the vortex and the simple curve in a picture of a path on a cliff top by a field of stubble.