‘My love for coarse fishing followed closely on that of birds and soon my days of bird-watching were joined with days of fishing. These interests went hand in hand and the desire to paint fish grew stronger. As I became confident enough with my fish painting, much as with the birds, I learned as I went along, working things out on my own’
I am looking at a weird picture in a small book of a vague image of a lady with a hat on, holding some baskets with flowers in and a kind of windmill in the background. My best friend Vince is next to me, wondering what the hell I am on about, and was tracing out a big number with his finger on the same picture. I obviously couldn’t see it and thought he was madder than he thought I was. It was a circular image made up of hundreds of different colour dots and it was being handed around the class until it ended up on our desks. The school doctor had paid our class a visit. It was 1966 and we were eleven. On the back it said that anyone with normal colour vision would see a large number of which I was blissfully unaware, while anyone who, in layman’s terms, was red-green colour blind, was gifted with a lady from Holland holding two baskets of tulips. And so, with this pivotal moment I became aware that I was red-green colour blind, but not badly so as it turned out. This bothered me not in the slightest; we all thought it was pretty funny to be honest. Little did I know it at the time but, looking back now, I see a meandering path before me dotted with a few pot-holes. I dodged most of them and fell in a few but there you go.
I was born in 1955. Anyone wishing to delve into my past or past history will, I dare say, find snippets regarding my colour blindness written up in articles and books, particularly in my three autobiographical fishing books; While My Float’s Still Cocked, Water Colours and Still Half-Cocked.
Back to 1966 and the classroom… Returning home, I happily mentioned to my dear Mum and Dad, Leda and Doug Pledger, my news with the Dutch lady. Mum smiled, I suppose, and Dad half-smiled in a dismissive kind of way; he was by profession (funnily and luckily enough for me, anyway), a lithographical colour printer and, as such, his whole life revolved around colour and its association with printing. Dad’s hobby was photography and he spent every waking moment taking photos and developing them in the kitchen which he blacked out in the evenings. Initially this was in black and white format but eventually he drifted into colour printing and I watched in awe as he juggled colour balances to achieve what he wanted. I spent no end of time with him developing his photos. Because of my parents’ love of nature, especially birds, and always having lived in Hoddesdon, Herts, we regularly went for long walks in the countryside, taking thousands of photos. It is something I still do.
Thanks to this and their love and encouragement, I’d already begun to draw birds a few years earlier. This love of drawing was born from my lovely Uncle Sergio who lived in Bologna, North Italy. Uncle Sergio was an extremely talented oil painter and from the moment I was born, every moment of spent on holidays visiting my mum’s side of the family would be in his company and watching him paint. Quite simply, I just wanted to be like him. So began an insatiable desire to emulate the great bird artists Basil Ede, Archibald Thorburn and Arthur Singer, from the wonderful bird books bought for me, particularly Ede. I wrote a letter to Basil including six of my little pencil drawings and on the December 1 1966 he wrote back a wonderful letter with a few pencil sketches to illustrate a few points. His letter appears in Water Colours.
Mum and dad clearly saw the love I had for bird illustration and with this wonderful encouragement from one of the world’s greatest bird artists, the world of wildlife illustration lay before me, waiting. Following mum’s suggestion of colouring in my pencil drawings, I had already been using a set of poster-paints for a little while. Basil suggested I used what he did, namely sable brushes and some Winsor & Newton artists’ water colours and gouache; very expensive but Mum and Dad spared nothing to give me the best. Dad could get me no end of paper and card from work, and the artist suppliers Oram & Robinson was only a ten minute drive up the road.
I’m finding it very difficult to condense a lifetime onto a few sheets of paper but, if you’re still here, thanks for your patience; the pot-holes are coming into view… I slowly became familiar with Winsor & Newton’s materials and my selections grew and grew (not that I could see half of them but checking the label names gave me a start). Over the next few short years it became obvious even to my Dad that my use of colours was, at best, wanting. It wasn’t long before Dad began helping me and each time we mixed a new colour, we made up a few sheets, swatches of colour, with the names of the tubes we’d use in the mix. For example, the brown of a robin was made up with raw umber and a touch of olive green. The breast was light orange lake and scarlet lake. The modelling and feather detail had me guessing my way along, with streaking in amounts of Naples yellow and burnt umber on the head and wings, with spectrum yellow on the breast. In effect, I was stumbling along, using colours which, to my eyes, were lighter or darker than the main colour wash. I knew I was getting things right a few times at least, when Dad’s criticisms became fewer. Occasionally, would hit a block, typically on the grey of a jay, with Dad insisting that his colour mix was perfect, with my interpretation seen as being totally wrong. I always bowed to his better judgement, often finishing a painting wondering what the hell I had done.
Somewhere along the line it kind of went off the rails a bit. I was commissioned to paint a large barn owl, maybe sixteen inches by fourteen inches. I decided to paint it on grey, Canson, art paper where the white of the owl would really stand out, especially with it perched on a broad section of dark tree trunk. Things were going fine until I realised that the one remaining tube of burnt umber for the tree was now flat. I headed off to Meadows in Hoddesdon who had a fine art section upstairs, ran in, grabbed the three remaining tubes of burnt umber and returned. Adding at least a quarter of a small tube to the dwindling amount in the mixing tray, I happily continued until Dad arrived, finishing it just as he walked in.
“How’s the owl going?”
“Great…just finished…have a look.”
For the only time in his life that he ever got cross at me, he said “What the hell have you done?”
“Er…finished it.”
Apparently, for some reason, the wrong labels were attached and, instead of the desired burnt umber, I had painted the whole tree in alizarin crimson and the tree happened to comprise most of the painting.
No end of dabbing out or over-painting ever got rid of it, not that I could see what I was doing anyway.
Even after all these years, when I have various colours scattered on my mixing tray, most of the time I can’t see the difference; olive and Hookers green, raw and burnt umber, raw and burnt sienna, yellow, gold and brown ochre… If I walk away and come back to any permutation of any of these, I simply don’t know which is which. No end of times, when my children Douglas and Laura were at home, even when they were only aged two or three, I would ask them, “Is that green or brown?” and then I’d know and continue. I remember once, years ago, being distracted from having answered a phone call, returning to complete a robin’s breast using the colour of its head and back. Sometimes I resort to writing ‘BU’ next to burnt umber and ‘OG’ next to olive green and so on.
A few years later at the age of seventeen, I joined the London artist’s agency, Linden Artists Ltd., headed by Bernard Daniels and Dennis Bosdet. Bernard Thornton, who joined at the same time, concentrated his interests on the agency side of things and his career progressed to that of the company’s shining light, before leaving to set up a one-man agency, Bernard Thornton Artists, probably the most highly regarded artist’s agent in the country, if not the world. Our friendship, both personal and business, continues to this day. When I joined Linden Artists, I was told it was probably not a good idea to tell prospective clients that I was colour blind, not that it bothered me; I treated it all with a smile but on occasions it really did matter.
Being commissioned to paint a series of warblers for a bird-watching guide presented me with no end of problems. Any particular variations of plumage, mostly very subtle, had to be shown in each image and if one warbler was slightly ‘more olive’ in colour or its legs had an ‘ochrous tinge’, I really was at a loss. I would add a slight wash of olive green perhaps where I thought it was needed but often had the artwork returned for correction. I muddled through but this was the last time I accepted work of this kind.
Years later, when my work drifted to children’s books, another pot-hole came into view but it was one which I neatly side-stepped with a few adjustments. I have lost count of the many children’s books I’ve illustrated, probably more than fifty of them.
Many of these featured various characters, for example, Billy Bunny, Charlie Chick, Morris Mouse etc and, as such, each one had to be shown frequently as the stories progressed. As a result, I had to take great care to repeat the colours faithfully from the previous pages. Each new book was started with colour swatches and samples along the same lines Dad and I had made before; Billy Bunny in permanent white, touch of neutral tint, tiny bit of raw umber and so on. In this way, by referring to each character, I was more or less able to manage things.
Then, one day, another pot-hole came along and although I well and truly fell in, I somehow managed to crawl out. Most of my children’s books were commissioned by Mandy Wood, head of Templar Publishing, and together we produced title after title and series after series, with one featuring a new character, Lexi Lion. Previous books in this series of Ping Ping Panda and Tavi Tiger presented no problems until the request came from Mandy, “Can you paint a lion cub?” So, having finished the tiger cub, I could see no problem at all….until I began to paint it. The cover was completed firstly and this was okayed. Dad had sadly died by now and, as I had never painted a lion, I felt very much on my own. The overall base colour seemed to me to be a washed-out, biscuit colour; whether right or wrong, everyone I asked seemed to be okay with that. The detail of the hair and darker streaks proved easy enough and I guessed at all the other colours necessary to darken things, but when over-painting with lighter and lighter hairs, the problems set in. As I built up layers and layers of yellow ochre and Naples yellow streaking, I made the mistake of trying to finish highlights off with brighter streaks. For these I chose, wrongly it seems, lemon yellow, both on its own and mixed with white. Even today as I write, I have no real idea what happened. The lemon yellow, when painted over what was laid down, turned to, or showed, as green; great patches of it, none of which I could see. So, on showing this to my wife Pietra, she pointed out that there were, almost like spots on a Dalmatian’s face, green patches all over it. None of these were visible to me. I spent hours re-painting, over-painting and dabbing out but to no favourable end. It still remained and I just could not see it. I was even painting out areas I thought might be green but weren’t until I gave up. I phoned Mandy, emailed some photos and even sent her the original to prove I couldn’t do it. After great deliberation, she resigned herself to substituting the lion cub with a baby squirrel monkey. I painted the cover but the request came back; the clients really wanted a lion cub. Gazing off into space, I agreed but now faced having to paint an entire book with something I couldn’t paint. The answer lay in two tubes of cadmium yellow and cadmium yellow pale. Someone explained that lemon yellow is on the green side of the spectrum and cadmium yellow is on the orange, but the science of this is a little beyond me. In any case, the problem was solved and the green disappeared, not that I could see it anyway.
My love for coarse fishing followed closely on that of birds and soon my days of bird-watching were joined with days of fishing. These interests went hand in hand and the desire to paint fish grew stronger. As I became confident enough with my fish painting, much as with the birds, I learned as I went along, working things out on my own. My inability to see red, especially at distance, dictated that the tips of all my little fishing floats needed to be painted bright yellow. It amazes me, even now, when I question my friends if their red floats stand out as much as my yellow ones, when they reply that they do. When I hold a red float in my hand it does appear red but the further away it gets, not even that far, only a few feet in some lights, the whole thing merges into a mish-mash of anything but red. A bright, red, holly berry in my hand looks bright red but the whole bush, even if it was covered in thousands of berries, seen from thirty feet away, would have no reason to even be there. A field of buttercups I could see clearly from half a mile away but on the day a friend and I drove along a motorway between two poppy fields, I was unable to see them even after having them pointed out.
Painting fish has given me quite a few headaches; in particular the bright, red fins on the lower part of the body of a perch. Although they can vary in their colour and intensity, in the main they are a very bright orangey-red, through to a dark scarlet and even crimson. When I hold one in my hand, I am staggered at their brightness. However, when painting them, particularly against a weedy coloured background, I’m lost. Constantly checking with a good fishing friend finds me correcting what I’ve painted and adding more and more red, only to get to a point where I have to add bright orange purely to see what I’m doing. Because of this, apparently they become too orange and the whole cycle re-starts. Somewhere amongst all this, someone suggested buying an artist’s colour-wheel: an artist’s aid which apparently would solve my problems, enabling me to see and understand which colours to mix to achieve others. I fiddled with one of these for half an hour, spinning it round, reading pointless words against insanely vague colours until I got fed up and threw it in the bin.
Which brings me to today… A few weeks ago, my son Douglas told me about a lovely lady he had contacted via the internet concerning colour blindness, named Cecilia Gerosa and, coincidentally enough, Italian, and she added nicely to the path I had been wandering these years. Now and then, news items had come up mentioning new technology concerning contact lenses and corrections for colour blindness. Having a decided aversion to putting anything in my eyes meant I never bothered to listen to such items. After all, I had got this far quite happily enough, resigning myself to not seeing things as others did and treating the whole thing as a joke. Clicking on the link Douggy sent, I read the information on the Enchroma website and was intrigued to see that there was a new Enchroma colour blind test recently developed from new technology. This product was compared with the original standard Ishihara Test of 1917. Taking the test, it came as no surprise that, whisking through the circles of coloured dots, my colour vision was not normal. Looking back at an Ishihara test done at the local optician probably over thirty-five ago, my result had been a resounding 0 out of 32; apparently, the worst case the optician had seen.
Back to the present day and, with my family behind me looking at the screen, my two little grand-daughters found it immensely funny that on most of them I couldn’t see a thing. Now and then,on the remainder I could see vague numbers but none of them very clear, and even on the ones I thought I could see I merely made a guess. Amongst the laughter came comments like, “Grandad, you’re joking, I can see that from the other side of the room”. I was amazed at the clarity with which they saw the numbers. At best, the ones I could see were almost suggestions of numbers and most were just a collection of circles of weird coloured dots. I’ve tried this test multiple times, at different times of the day and in different lights, but although the percentages vary by one or two percent, as an overall average, my blue count is always around 100%, my green count hovers around 63% but the red count is always 0%. Wearing the designed glasses for the test, my blue is 100%, the green varies between 50-64% depending on the light, but my red score has leapt to 62%. The glasses are worn over my prescription glasses and are incredibly light and wonderfully clear. The accompanying information warns that one’s eyes need a little time to become accustomed to them; at least fifteen minutes or so but, in my case, the oranges and reds were instantly brighter and more intense. As mentioned, my problem with reds is that they may appear, or I assume them to be, bright red, if placed right in front of me, they increasingly get ‘muddy’ as they recede into the distance. For example, at fifty or sixty yards, a bright red car amongst other cars of varying colours, just disappears and become one of any number of colours. I was also amazed at some coloured, porcelain, mushroom garden ornaments we’ve had for a few years were actually bright orangey red, having assumed them to be a dull brown. The glasses are amazing and have made me aware of how bright some colours are. With the yellows I’m pretty much okay but I notice that blues are more bright and intense. I notice the differences especially in bright conditions; on bright days I can see a passing red car at over a hundred yards away, whereas if I dip my gaze to look through the prescription glasses, I see merely a car.
Following the incredible improvement in my red and blue colour vision, I can only imagine what it would be like for someone whose colour blindness was less severe as mine. Obviously, each person will appreciate the difference in their own way but on handing the glasses to family members and friends, I’m astonished at their reactions; each of them has exclaimed how bright and vibrant the colours become. I thank you for this wonderful opportunity to finally describe the sights that I’ve been missing all my life. I’m sorry if I’ve rambled too much along this path but, hopefully somewhere in here, one or two might find something in common with what I’ve written. If these glasses have enhanced my ability to pick out my ‘problem’ colours and made me aware of what I’m am looking at, then those with less severe colour blindness have a lovely surprise waiting for them, an incredible one. I hope this may be of help and interest to anyone reading it.
Maurice Pledger
On Painting
‘The drawing of the fish, fins and scales will all be painted again, this time in extremely fine neutral tint which I use instead of black, using a very fine, tiny, sable watercolour brush. The density of these lines is very faint, especially along the lower body of the fish’
Solving problems with painting birds was easy enough, as I continually looked at Basil Ede’s work, trying to figure out his method. As time passed, it became obvious that as I was still learning how to paint feathers on birds and fur on animals, fish presented a whole host of new problems to sort out. With the passing years I became more and more aware of fish artists, with a few whose heads began to pop up above the shoulders of others. At the time, I was truly inspired by the work of Keith Linsell, Chris Turnbull, Ernest Petts and Bernard Venables. More recently, this list includes David Miller, for whom I cannot begin to tell you of my admiration. All are incredible artists and as I sit in awe of their talent I console myself that each of us is different in the ways we paint. I well remember the first time of meeting David, standing before a huge, wonderful, oil painting of some feeding roach. Literally, my first words were, “I could break your arm” Surprisingly and satisfyingly, his reply of “I could break yours too” has comforted me when I’ve been struggling with something which didn’t quite look right.
As you will be aware, while still at school, I had contacted Linden Artists, the artist’s agency and met Bernard Thornton. This began my professional life in book illustration, particularly children’s books, and cemented a deep professional relationship with Bernard that continues today. The children’s book work has been the mainstay of my work for most of my life, alongside my first loves of bird and fish art. Under Mandy Wood and her team at Templar Publishing, my children’s books, in excess of fifty titles, continue to sell worldwide, with unbelievable sales in excess of fifteen million copies. Looking over my life, I’m amazed at how many exhibitions of original watercolours I’ve had, ranging from the prestigious King Street Galleries in London, all across the UK and farther afield in New York and three in Launceston and Hobart, Tasmania.
By necessity, the children’s book work was painted on pure white paper, so it was natural for me to do the same with my fish. Being very fond of Lladro porcelain, I love the movement and flow of their pieces, and my favourite way of depicting fish is to convey movement purely by the composition and curling of fins and underwater vegetation; reeds, streamer weed etc. When in the mood to paint a whole scene, it is no trouble to create a composition in that vein. With my fish paintings, I like to suggest something happening, maybe to elaborate on the character of the fish, or depict behaviour with which anglers are familiar. Over the years I’ve built up a large collection of reference photos taken of fish before being returned. I very quickly take close-ups of the whole body, fins and scales, an invaluable aid to getting everything as correct as possible. Unfortunately, as I am abysmally red-green colour blind I continually badger close friends for help with colours, or to double-check finished results. These results can quite often need correction. This is amusing, as most of the time I can’t even see the colouration of the colour I’m correcting it with. At the end of the day, I shall never see what I’ve painted as you do. I often laugh to myself if someone compliments me on the colours, realising that I wouldn’t know anyway, but there you go…If I’m painting on card, it is simple enough to tape it down on six-millimetre MDF board, whereas if painting on smooth, white, watercolour paper, then it has to be thoroughly wetted first under a running tap, slightly dried in between a clean, flat, cotton sheet and quickly taped down, again on the board, with gummed brown parcel tape.
When the paper dries, the tension of the parcel tape causes it to stretch as tight as a drum. In this way, no matter how many washes I use, the surface remains perfectly tight. The process of drawing out the whole composition, depending on size and complexity of the content, can take anything between a day or several days. Only when I’m content with everything, do I begin to paint. The drawing of the fish, fins and scales will all be painted again, this time in extremely fine neutral tint which I use instead of black, using a very fine, tiny, sable watercolour brush. The density of these lines is very faint, especially along the lower body of the fish but the lines are just dark enough to still be seen after I’ve washed over it with many layers of colour. These colour washes can be achieved by masking off all the background with fine transparent art-masking film, then finely airbrushing the fish in various colours until it starts to take shape. Then the masking film is carefully peeled off and I’m ready to start with the painstaking process of painting the whole fish. If I don’t airbrush, then it is a case of building up all the washes by hand using various large brushes. If the fish is very dark, for example a perch, pike, carp, bream or tench, I sometimes paint all the scales, again, extremely lightly with the same fine brush, but in neutral tint acrylic. In this way, no matter how many layers of paint I wash in over the top, I don’t risk washing out any of the finely painted scales.
Bit by bit, the whole fish is painted and the entire process can easily take over a week, thanks to having to paint each scale in excess of twenty or thirty times. Layers and layers of washes have to be over-painted, with the scales re-painted again and again; it really is never ending. Eventually, once I’m happy with the fish, I start on the background and, as this starts to take shape and deepen in colour, the fish visually becomes lighter, rather than being dark against a white background. Then, as the background takes shape, darker areas are added, shades and shadows painted in and, with each layer of paint, the fish itself becomes totally different from how it originally was. At this point, I return to the fish and spend no end of time re-working the whole thing, softening edges, modelling the body and adding highlights to finally achieve what I was originally trying for.
In my compositions I love to add various angler-related items, such as a lost reel or an old hurricane lamp which has fallen in; in short, an item that anglers can relate to and adds to the story. Very often I love to devise a composition of not just a fish leaping but one, usually a pike, which is leaping and throwing a lure as it breaks the surface, and startling a small water bird which just happens to be sitting amongst the lilies. I like showing the fish as having the upper hand and escaping by throwing the hook. In other compositions I like to show a fish on the bank in a traditional ash-hooped net by a rod and reel, surrounded by old cork floats, goose quills and porcupine quills. These are my favourites, along with some old assorted split-shot in maybe an old tobacco tin. I’ve never smoked but I always used to nab Dad’s tins from our old shed to put my bits and pieces in. For me, every painting will be full of memories, with many of the things very dear to me, just adding a little something to the story. Before I finish these few lines, I’ll just add that in each painting there’s a secret. A few close friends will know what it is, most won’t, and I’ll just leave it at that.
Should anyone be interested enough to want to commission anything, please feel free to contact me for a chat.
Many thanks and all the very best, Maurice Pledger
A Most Wonderful Gallery
Illustration and text (c) Maurice J. Pledger, courtesy of Bernard Thornton Artists, Mallorca.
If anyone would like to contact Maurice regarding his paintings or indeed commissions, please drop a line of enquiry to info@thepiscatorialraconteurs.co.uk
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