paintings prints and stuff

Winter Pansies, photograph copyright Vivien Blackburn The summer flowers are still going strong but it's time to think about winter - shudder. Yesterday we popped into a local nursery I like, to buy some trays of winter pansies to plant in the old Victorian chimney pots on the patio. They will be cheerful to look out on as the days get colder :>) And very very appealing to paint. I love the little whiskered faces of pansies. I just hate to see flowers like these in a clashing jumble of colours - the burgundies and yellows and oranges and purples all planted together. I chose soft pale yellows, blue purples and pinker purples and the ones above in the same colours as the little wild ones - they all go beautifully and complement each other. I always think that the way you plant flowers is rather like painting - you have drifts of colour and then echoes of it elsewhere in the garden to balance and link. (I only have a tiny garden and it's quite wild and tangled and

Old painting - Stormy Day, Small sketch 6 inches square, oil on paper, Vivien Blackburn I read this quote by Nina Murdoch Basically I put stuff down to work against – Put on a mark and then cut back – What takes the time is finding those patterns, making space work, where the light comes out – not just ‘ooh colour! ’ ....... the play of colours and light – the sense of something real and concrete but at the same time constantly melting and reforming, Nina Murdoch and it so accurately describes the way I like to work. Even in the recent, more illustrational, observational sketches of apples and the skull - there are tentative marks put down, areas of colour or tone, constantly adjusted, wiped out, drawn over, changed, until I've pushed it to where I want it to go :>) . In oils I mix colours on the painting often in putting down one colour into another wet colour, scratch through to earlier layers, scrape paint off, flick paint, drip paint, use painting knife or edges of card t

Goat skull in watercolour and coloured pencil, life size. Vivien Blackburn I did this to show students how to work in watercolour without any preliminary drawing, simply drawing with the paint and brush, building up the tones. Working this way is so easily altered, so flexible and fluid, allowing mistakes to be corrected easily in the early stages. I then added some coloured pencil to sharpen edges and haze glazes of colour in highlights and shadows. I wanted to show how blues added as glazes with watercolour and coloured pencil over the deep shadow colours add depth and coolness to contrast with the warmer highlights, which themselves have a little additional amber warmth added to the ochre underglazes. Done with college materials: White Knights watercolours and Lyra coloured pencils. Below is a link to a coloured pencil version I had done in the past - almost the same view, but not quite. you can see it here. Which works best? I need to get back to seascapes and waterways

Braeburn apple, coloured pencil, moleskine sketchbook, Vivien Blackburn and another sketch for Jeanettes challenge :>) This one is lighter, more luminous because the sun was shining on it - the first one was done when the light was gloomier, earlier on. Both on the same spot on my desk. now which one works best?

Braeburn Apple, study in watercolour and coloured pencil. Life size. Vivien Blackburn Jeanette on Illustrated Life has issued another challenge - this time to paint an apple. Here is my apple :>) A quick sketch in watercolour - no initial drawing, just laying down colours - finished off with a very little coloured pencil. Now I'm going to eat it :>) Why not join in with her challenge?

It's a lovely early autumn day and she-who-is-incredibly-spoilt is loving the sunshine in the garden. And yes, the lawn does need cutting I'm afraid. I'm up to my eyes in paperwork and hope to paint later - so I have no plans to even consider it - and anyway the cats love it long ;>) I love this kind of light. I hope the weather continues like this as it's the kind that leads to spectacular autumn colours that stay for a while.

Sketch of a water feature in the pool at the University Botanical Gardens, 10 ins approx Today I was sketching with my class at the University Botanical Gardens - I don't normally 'do' gardens/manicured/tidy so decided to just look at texture and reflections. This isn't a finished painting - just a study, a practice piece, so the composition isn't great. The subject wasn't one I'd want to do a 'finished' work of, I couldn't see a composition that really appealed to me. The water was very murky and the fish (koi carp) had to swim near the surface to be seen! Depending on the light - which changed by the minute from sunlit and warm to overcast and chilly and back - the water was deep khaki/peaty brown or amber. detail of painting above The surface of the bronze bell interested me as it contained so many subtle nuances of colour and texture - at the bottom (due to an unseen patterned structure underneath?) the water trickled at regular interva

Detail of the finished painting below: Mixed media, a still overcast day, dulling colours. Vivien Blackburn I arrived in bright sunshine but it almost immediately turned overcast and soon started to rain - a misty soft rain. Colour dulled and contrast softened, except for the strong contrast of the block of trees with heavy summer foliage, and their reflection, against the pale bright clouded sky. Whole painting: Swithland Reservoir, overcast day, summer. Watercolour and coloured pencil. 10x9 ins approx. Vivien Blackburn A very very still subject, as different from the rough seas of Cornwall as possible but an equal challenge. There was a very limited colour range because of the light and the dense foliage of summer. I may try an oil paint version to see which works best - I have a suspicion that water colour may win. other posts in the series can be seen here

Beach, mixed media - acrylic and coloured pencil, 8.5x4.5 ins, Vivien Blackburn This started as a doodle, showing a class of students new-to-painting the variety of mark making possibilities they could use. It isn't great art - just done to show techniques in action. It started off with wet washes of acrylic, dry brush scumbled layers to adjust and add depth when these were dry, washes of glazed colour, blotting paint out, smudging with fingers, dragging the end of the brush through wet paint to draw with it, tapping the brush to get fine flecks of paint for texture - sometime dragging the end of the brush through these to draw them out into other shapes and finally scumbling a little coloured pencil over it. I wanted them to understand that painting is a language of marks and colours and not just about neatly colouring in areas, or thinking that once a colour is put down that it isn't touched again - or most importantly that the paintings they were doing were NOT a disaster a

Serengeti Carpet, digital image, Vivien Blackburn This is an earlier version of the image shown in the last post. Sadly the original file is lost to a past computer breakdown. This is a scan of the one print I have left. My daughter has another. It's about A4 in size and printed on Rosapina printmaking paper, which works as beautifully with computer inks as it does with more traditional printing inks - not as lightfast of course.

Digital manipulation of a design done in a very old sketchbook, Vivien Blackburn This started life, some years ago, as a design in a sketchbook, done in gouache - the colours were more subtle but shapes were very simplified, as here. I played with it on the computer, heightening and changing colours some time ago and I don't think I've ever shown it. I wonder if I could expand on this as a story book for my grandson? First need story, animal characters etc .... and time!