paintings prints and stuff

Swithland Woods, Inktense, a bit of pen and now some gouache and a touch of pastel. in S&B A4 sketchbook As I said, I wasn't happy with the background foliage ( here ) - so today I used it as an example of editing/adjusting for my class.   I won't finish the foreground off, it's still just a sketch but I was able to regain the highlights with gouache and intensify some darks, simplifying both but keeping the complexity of the foliage. detail better?

 Swithland Woods, detail.  Inktense, coloured pencil and a little ink  I sketched for a short while in Swithland Woods yesterday.   I'd taken my Inktense pencils - and lovely as they are I really really felt the need for oil paints to cope with dappled light and the ability to put back light over dark.  I'll have to get back there with my oils. Swithland Woods, S&B Beta A4 sketchbook, unfinished The sketch is unfinished because the background leaves got overworked and fussy as I tried to get the deep shade and brightly lit flashes of sunlit leaves - and the light changed dramatically, making the trees that had interesting light on them a few minutes before, simply silhouettes.  It would have spread further over onto the right hand page.   Woods are rather like seascapes though, where you have to work fast .  Oil paint would have let me do it in the time and with simple direct marks.  Pencil is so much slower even ...

What to do while the paint dries .....  rapid sketches of students and/or fellow painters :>)   ( and some older ones:)

Masquerade Roses contre jour, watercolour and coloured pencil sketch in 7x7 inch S&B sketchbook This was a challenge to myeself to do some blowsy roses, strongly backlit by the bright day outside, creating deep shadows on leaves and window frame (which I simplified to abstract geometric shapes).  Flowers aren't something I do very often.  They are climbing masquerade roses that I remember buying for £1.60 as a sickly little plant a few years back, that have now spread yards along a fence and flower and flower.  They start out yellow and gradually the red creeps in and takes over as the flowers open. The route I took was to play with the intense shadow, lost edges and brightly backlit elements.  Interestingly this week A&I magazine (July issue - in May !)  was about painting light, featuring a series of different painters.  One, Edward Seago whose main interest was the depiction of light, said that there were 2 ways of tackling bright light: ...

sunglasses and eye drops, backlit,  ink drawing in A4 S&B Zeta sketchbook I've been neglecting my blog lately.   A mixture of a Mount Everest of marking and paperwork to do : >( and having had laser eye surgery.............. and being able to see without glasses (except for reading small print).  : >)    Yay!!!!!! I liked the backlit arrangement of clutter relevant to the surgery on my desk after I'd used the eye drops and decided to draw it.  It started off with some Herbin Gris Nuage but it didn't go dark enough for the shadows so I added FW acrylic Paynes grey ink and touch of their white ink to regain some highlights ,,,, then a small touch of Tombow pen.  The stick I used was a handle from a broken paintbrush, sharpened with a pencil sharpener.   I think I prefer the freer marks of twigs but it worked very well.  There was of course also water and a paintbrush for creating washes of paler ink. There were ...

 Playing on the iphone, very fast coloured pencil sketch A quick sketch of my youngest grandson, constantly moving, playing with an iphone.  He disappeared to the play area of the cafe before I drew his arms.  Done with 2 brown coloured pencils  in a small Derwent journal.  (2 because he insisted on having the first one to do some drawing himself, so I had to find another). Drawing active children is so difficult! they just moved constantly.   The 2 below of my slightly older grandchildren were very messy!  I attempted to catch the huge brown eyes of elder grandson and the mop of fair hair my grandaughter was trying to see through to draw and the soft curls of the 2 boys. Below the oldest ones who were so wriggly and active that the drawings aren't successful - more practice needed obviously .... constantly looking up to talk to me, brushing her hair off her face, leaning forward to draw with hair entirely covering her face etc etc...

    Of Flowers.  Mixed media on canvas. The image below is a part of avariation on this canvas which you can read about here - each version exploits the mark making potential of the medium used.  The flower is purely imaginary and abstracted.  It's about flowers rather than being a flower.  I was asked to do a commission with abstracted flowers and this is a fragment ....   Fragment of a commisssion, using Derwent Inktense I can't show it yet.  All will be revealed later, when the website it and another image, are done for is up and running :>) now to look at paperwork : >(  and hopefully paint some more ....