Finishing and starting

Today I think I have finally, finally finished the rose painting.  I have signed it however this often sends me into a frenzy of fine tuning on the canvas instead of walking away.....  I'm not particularly happy with how my colour experiment in this piece turned out but as with most paintings I have learned along the way.  For some reason I had dreaded doing the heart of the rose and in the end it turned out to be far less daunting than my imagination and knotty stomach told me. Not really sure why I baulked at it.

Hmm, a rather glamorous shot of the down pipe there.....oh well, this is turning into a 'warts and all' art blog!

Edited to add cropped picture of rose..... :)

My next window-scape in the hard edge style is starting to take shape after putting some time into it yesterday.

My initial inspiration came from a small sketch done about 3 years ago.  It had shells on the window sill and I changed them to these rocks that I've seen at the beach in England (my head is so in England and Scotland at present - been going over old photos).  I have recently found artwork with these rocks in them in a similar hard edge style so am worried they might be too similar.  May change them for the final piece.  I am enjoying doing this hard edge style this time though.  Completely opposite my experience when doing my last hard edge piece for my course.  The above photo shows a larger sketch and two iPad images where I draw on the iPad and play with colours before printing it out.  I think I've decided to put a sail boat in instead of a little tug or fishing boat.

I then drew this up onto a small canvas as I showed you in my last post.  I'm using small canvases at the moment in the hopes of getting more art done in time for the exhibition over Easter.

The first layer of paint is down in large blocks of solid colour.  This gives me an idea of what changes I need to make to colours.  I think I'll mix a new sand colour using the cadmium yellow mid and titanium white. I used Naples Yellow here and it's not quite right.  I also need to fiddle with the greens, I mixed them rather haphazardly just to get some paint down and will think more closely this time. I will draw in the next layer of details with a pastel pencil and layer them on too. Once that is completed and I'm happy with all the colours I'll just continue painting layers until I have good coverage of the canvas.  In this style I do between two and four layers.

Here's a little peak at my painting set up when I do this hard edge style.  I paint sitting down (I usually paint standing at the easel), just find it easier to sit to do this style.  I mix my paints in an ice-cube tray from a limited range of colours.  I then store this in a plastic container that can be sealed with a lid. A pastry storer in this case.  Throw a wet kitchen sponge in with it and the paints (Atelier Interactive) will stay mobile, moist and able to be used for months.  I find this great for when I'm tired as it minimizes clean up and preparation on a daily basis, I just pop the lid on, clean my brushes and walk away.

I did six hours in the studio yesterday and although I felt ok last night I haven't been great today.  I still managed to put a couple of hours in but had the dropsies and found it quite hard to concentrate.  I'm still so thrilled to have found something to do that fits around my health and the needs of my body.  Grateful, so very grateful.....