The Time Lapses
- davecrocker0
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
In 2013 while I was in the middle of doing the 365 paintings in a year on the South West Coast Path, I started making timelapses while I was painting. I just wanted to show the process of the painting from start to finish. This was the first time I had done anything like this, I was experimenting with the idea and a series of mistakes have got me to making them the way they are now, but I expect they will continue to change.
Initially my time lapses just showed the painting, nothing else. At this point I made them with a camera and a device that was plugged into the camera that I could program to take picture every few seconds usually about every six seconds.
Then one day at South Milton Sands in Devon, I didn’t frame it properly and the image showed a bit of the background as well as the painting. At first when I watched it back I was disappointed but then when I saw the clouds moving, I thought "the backgrounds more interesting than the painting".
Here is that time lapse of South Milton Sands
So I started including as much of the background on the shot as the canvas.
Then one day in June 2013 at Mevagissey in Cornwall, I started painting, everything was fine but after half an hour, (34 seconds on the time lapse) lots of teenagers arrived and started jumping in the water right in front of where I had set up to paint. They were constantly blocking my view and my choice was made, the painting started and so moving was not an option, disappointed at first, when I watched the film I liked so much the accidental shots the camera had taken with its every six seconds programming.
Here is that time lapse of Mevagissey
This inspired me to start adding photos I took (not just the automated ones) to the time lapse. Today, thirteen years later, they are all taken by me, with my phone on a tripod using a remote control clicker.
Then a month later in July 2013 I am painting at Lamorna Cove and there is a fisherman on the quay in the distance, he was there so long I felt I had to add him to the painting, something I didn’t used to do, and when I had added him, I was disappointed again. After a while he stopped fishing and disappeared from my view. Then when I was nearly finished a man who I didn’t recognise approached me and said, "My daughter (who apparently had been swimming in front of where I was painting) has just told me that there is a man painting and picture of the cove and that I am in it, how much is it please?" It was Andy, the fisherman I had a few moments earlier regretted adding to the picture. So, he bought it, I had a spare frame in my van and so the last shots on the time lapse are Andy and his daughter holding the painting that he now has on his wall, along with a photo of that last shot. A wonderful example of the lovely things that happen to me when I am outdoors painting, and that sometimes the time lapses enable capture as a memory of the day.
Here is that time lapse of Andy fishing at Lamorna Cove.
Up to now all the time lapses had tunes I liked as the backing track. Then in August 2016 I painted the Brook Inn Plympton St Maurice where Tom Baker was a resident musician. John Govier, who ran the Brook Inn, and Tom collaborated with me to create a time lapse we called "A day in the life of the Brook Inn" this time Toms song "Therapy" was used as the backing tune for the video.
Here is that time lapse of "A day in the life of the Brook Inn" and Tom Baker's song.
Then in April 2022 I did a painting of the Steppingly Road Field Flitwick. This is the only painting I have done over two days from the same spot. A friend who was a member of "Save Stepingly Road Field", a campaign to stop 216 houses being built on this green belt land in Flitwick, Bedfordshire, had asked me to do a painting of the field before it was developed on. He told me there were endangered deer, hares and skylarks in and around the field so we decided to use a recording of the ambient sound as the backing track instead of music. The recording on this time lapse was made at dawn on Sunday 23rd April 2022.
Here is the time lapse of Steppingly Road Field with the ambient sound of it's birds at dawn.
I now use ambient sound recordings on most of the time lapses I make.
By a series of mistakes or happy accidents I am now sharing my time lapses in an attempt to show more than the finished painting, to show the process and the context in which it was made.
Watching them back also gives me the chance to learn. I realise that no matter how hard I may have tried I find it impossible to capture a moment in time. I am not there for just one moment and the scene I am trying to captue changes during my time there painting. But is is not just the scene that changes. In April 2013 after I had painted a picture of the ruined signal station at the Warren Nose Mayo, I watched the film back and thought that i had painted the sky much too dark compared to the real sky, then as the film goes on my sky is suddenly much tto light comapred to the real sky. The tone and colour of the real sky remains much the same, it is the paint on my board that is getting lighter. Watching the shadows on my board I can see that the sun has come around and at the end of my painting session is shinning directly onto my board.
Here is that time lapse I watched back.
The images below are screenshots from the time lapse. The timing starts at top left and finishes at bottom right.
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