On my camera.....

We've been blessed with little visitors and memory making moments of late.  The excitement of riding the mower with a much loved Uncle.  A sweet lab always, always wherever the children are. Checking, wagging, licking, protecting, begging insistently "Please, please throw the ball."  My sweet, dear girl.

After school picnics on the play fort, cool in the dappled shade of the mango tree.  A special treat with a rug and basket like Yogi Bear's.

Swinging, higher and higher saying 'look at me, look at me Aunty Sandy' and 'get out of the road dog'.  Soothing, loving family time.  That's what we all need at present. 

Framed

Thanks to a long ago trip to Ikea I had some frames in the studio that I could pop a couple of yesterday's watercolours into.  This first one stands upright on a bench or whatever surface you choose.

 Meadow against white wall in the playroom.

 Meadow against YELLOW wall in the studio.

Just thought you might like to see how they look framed up.  Once again, please excuse the photography.  iPhone and quick photos do not masterpieces make.

Watercolour

After a very stressful few days I had no heart to continue painting the sweet puppy I've been  working on.  I needed something soothing. I needed to play with colour. I needed something easy to set up and clean up.  So I faffed around with a copic pen and some watercolours.

I wanted these to look rustic and not like the soft, gentle watercolours you may be used to.

I've purposefully drawn very loosely, almost like blind contour drawings.  It makes the pictures more quirky I think and I quite like it.

The background on this is still wet in spots (darker bits) and I think I enjoyed doing this little 'meadow' the most out of all the paintings.  I was right to do this. I lost myself in the process and just enjoyed playing around.  If I had continued with the dog I would have had to think too much and I definitely needed a 'brain on the shelf' activity. 

Evolution of an artwork.

Last Tuesday I wrote about the study of a dog that I had worked on in class.  You will notice that I continued to paint by drawing lines either with pencil or brush and then sort of painting between them.  During last Thursday's class, Don demonstrated a different way of approaching a painting and today I attempted this approach to continue the dog study as a painting.  Just a warning, the post if pretty photo heavy.

With no preliminary drawing and a large, flat hogs bristle brush I began to block in a slurry of colour using the broad, flat side of the brush.  I made large blocks of colour to begin to create form.

I continued in this manner working over past brush strokes and incorporating more colour.  Do you see how dark it looks on the left side of the dog?  I've also painted these in cool colours to make this side recede.  I will paint this area much DARKER before the end.  Trust me....it will work out.

I brought white in too early and as it mixed with the dark shadows I lost the shape of the face and also the image became flat and less three dimensional.

Bringing in more colour and warming the light side (right) of the dog using burn sienna mixed with whatever lights I had on my palette (white plus.....?). I also noticed that in the rough rendering of the image I had the little puppy tilted too far to the right and needed to make some adjustments in the positioning of the facial features.

Don then came in and helped me to reinstate the darker tones. Can you believe how dark they are?  Notice the cool colours in the shadow side of the dog and the warm colours in the light.

I continued to intensify the shadows and alter the shape of the image.  I began to lighted the background on the left and this made the shadow side appear darker also.

More work on the background further lightening the left side of the picture and pushing darks into the right hand side to intensify the light side of the dog.  I have also manipulated the paint to give the dog's head a more realistic shape.  The eyes at this stage are just blobs and will be sharpened up at a later stage of this process. 

Painting in this way required a huge head shift for me and I did struggle for the first 45 minutes or so as I battled my desire to 'draw' with the paintbrush rather than paint.  I am so pleased that I have persevered as I felt my confidence grow and my technique improve immensely by the end of the session.  I obviously still have more to do and can't wait to get to the stage where it is finished and ready to share with you.

I really hope you have enjoyed this insight into this particular artwork and into this particular stage of my journey.

Trying new things

Just because I'm not busy enough exploring my art and chugging through a learning curve there..... I got a bee in my bonnet to learn to knit.  I could do plain garter stitch (which is plain knitting) but couldn't remember how to cast on and was unable to increase or decrease.  So, pattern, wool, and needles in hand I snuggled down a few days ago with you tube knitting tutorials close at hand and got to work.

 

I'm knitting a shawl in a rather fetching old English style.  Sort of Tess meets Jane Eyre meets Elizabeth Bennett.  I chose a Patons brand wool mix comprising of 70% wool and 30% alpaca.  It's lovely and soft to work with and very warm on my lap so definitely for our coldest winter moments.  I get quite cold when working for long periods drawing and wanted something cosy to keep the chill at bay.  Judging by the nip in the air today and the chill in my hands I may have to learn to knit fingerless gloves as well.

I've really enjoyed this project so far and have even been able to repair a dropped stitch on an increase with the help of the ever marvelous YouTube.  I have also learned a) what stitch markers are and b) what they are used for.  Wonderful things, they take the counting of  this project and as a result make things come together much faster.  My favourite thing is the discovery of these funny little caps for your needle points that wonder of wonders, STOP THE STITCHES SLIDING OFF THE NEEDLE.  This may be non-earth changing news for most people but is a revelation to me.  Six rows to go so I will be finished tonight.  

No art this week as I've had my niece and three nephews visiting for sleepovers (not all at once) and seem to have had a stream of visitors too. I found it easier to knit and be interrupted than work on my art. I need to be more productive as we have our first open studios in June.  I am waiting on the delivery of a small order of prints (it's been an unnecessarily long process with much tooing and froing) and am also considering having some of my work made into jewellery as an alternative for clients.  Here's an example using Cleo.  What do you think?

Dog Study

Over our next six week block with Don we are studying pet portraits.  In class last week we did lots of observing, chatting about technique and then started with a graphite study of the reference material.  Image courtesy of Don.

Working on a graphite sketch in class....  Having not used graphite for ages I felt very awkward and found this quite hard at first.  By the end of class I was in love with drawing again and getting back into the swing of things.  I concentrated on the nose and getting the light in the eye right.

Today I did a quick sketch taking in more of the little puppers and probably due to the speed of the exercise gave the poor thing a stretchy crazy face!  Added a colour chart to work from for the next step also.

I decided to do a study to keep in my sketchbook so dragged out some awful oil paint paper that I could tape in and it wouldn't be too bulky.  A very short time into painting I remembered why I had dubbed this paper as awful....it sucks the moisture out of the paint and makes application, blending etc very difficult.  Once again I concentrated on the eye and nose features then got sort of sidetracked and fascinated by painting the darks and mid tones and letting the white paper make up it's own highlights.  This is only a study remember and not a completed painting by any means.  If I have time tomorrow after knit 'n' natter I will do a final piece on canvas to take this right through.  I had thought of doing a tonal painting (white, gray through to darkest gray) but decided to dive right in with colour due to time constraints.

Don suggested mixing a dark purple from the colours in my chosen palette (see above) and I think it worked really well.  Before running out of time I was working on adding darker, cooler tones to the left to make that side of the face recede, and warm tones and more light on the right side to bring it forward.  I was quite enjoying myself and was disappointed to run out of time.  Remember, you can click on the images to enlarge them and have a closer look.

Enjoy!

Behind the Scenes

I don't just make art, although one would think this having read my blog in recent times.  Today is Wednesday and in my world that means it's 'Knit and natter' morning with my Mum and my sister.  We tend to crochet and natter but this year I am determined to branch out and improve my very rudimentary knitting skills.  My motivation is a book on Estonian lace (knitted) that has sat on my shelf waiting for me to miraculously become a marvelous knitter.  So, in 2013 I will make a start. 

Behind the scenes of painting and drawing life, I have made (or mostly completed) these.....

 

Two scarves in Queen Anne's lace pattern and made with Jo Sharp Cotton.  These are the two outermost scarves in blue and the right is a deep aubergine. Two plain but deliciously soft and warm straight scarves both in wool.  I simply need to tie in the ends for them to be finished.

 Two wild and wonderful corkscrew scarves.

 

 A snowflake garland with bright button centres.  Once again poor light = poor photos.  Sigh.

 A riot of colourful bunting, crochet flowers, stars and wreaths ready to be adorned with bits and bobs.  Just some assembling and finishing off and all will be done here.

 

A bit of colourful frivolity that I had to do as soon as I saw it on Lucy's blog Attic 24 .  I still need to sew this together, add beads and other finery before this beauty shall be hung on my wall.  I'm thinking perhaps in the studio.