Yesterday was Day 2 of the studio project. I spent it mainly cleaning windows and the floors (again). My husband put up wood strips for me to hang my paintings on and then assembling my cheap and cheerful furniture - a desk, a work surface and some shelves to start with.
Then time for a last sweep of the floor then home with aching muscles.
Yesterday I got the keys to my first proper studio.
It is no 37 at the Hanson Street Studios run by Wasps. I have been going to life drawing in the studios for years and have friends there so it is quite a familiar place.
The studio is on the ground floor round the corner from the framers and along the corridor from the photographer which I expect will make life easier. It is north facing with the two big windows you can see in the photos, so there is plenty of good steady light - so different from my current south facing set up.
First job was to clean the clay that was everywhere - on the floors, on the skirting, on the windows . . . this took a couple of sweeps and a down on hands and knees scrub. Then all the holes in the walls were filled then sanded - creating a new layer of dust to be swept up and cleaned off. Then the painting - at which stage my incredibly able husband got on with it and banished me for a while. Two paint layers later took us to the final photo and 6pm - at which point we finished for the day.
And today is my birthday so shan't be cleaning floors. Work will resume tomorrow . . .
Just a little painting (20x30cm) that I did yesterday - I am so glad to see the blossom, I have always loved it and would love to have a blossom tree in my garden. Last year I missed the blossom altogether, as it hadn't come started in Glasgow by the start of May but was been and gone in New York.
So this year I am appreciating it enough for two years!
The Paisley Art Institute Open Show opens next Saturday and I am pleased to have two works up on display. This is my fifth year as this was the very first open exhibition I entered, the first time my work was shown to the public - and my first sale!
Anyway, promises to be a good show - I'll try and post my favs on facebook next week - so hopefully you can get along.
(For those of you wondering why I'm posting less these days, it's because big things are afoot.)
Is this photograph too dark?
This morning on my laptop it seemed fine - but now, on a different computer, it looks far too dark. This sis a problem I have had before - and as I use my laptop for most image manipulation etc it is important for me to work out. For example, I find the image shown on the camera itself is often too small to judge, so I take the laptop too, download an image or two, and adjust from there.
The worry is that doing this makes all my images too dark - reference material, publicity shots (ha! as if!) as well as the photographs of the paintings that I take. Although I do try and get most of my work professionally photographed these days, there are always some that slip through the net . . . or there isn't the time before a competition deadline.
What do you guys think?
Just a little one today - at 8x10 inches. Recently I have been thinking quite a lot about scale and I have decided that I will mainly work at a maximum of life size - it just seems to work better for me, rather than the big heads popular at places like the BP portrait award.
Partly this is because that although I do work in (many) layers, what you see (especially skin) is generally done in one go - and that gets difficult beyond a certain size.
The paintings done in the life room are also "one-go" paintings and don't seem to work if any edge is longer than 12 inches. I suspect this will hold true of painting plein air too.
So currently I am investigating supports - how to get good, small surfaces in various proportions - and this seems much harder than you'd think, with most manufacturers producing a very limited range. However, I have found a source of small stretcher bars and am working on stretching and preparing my own small canvases. Boy does oil primer stink!
Titling paintings is a very odd thing. Some have a title before they even start, some develop titles as they are painted where as others just stay "the blue one" while others only graduate to a title once they are painted.
And some still do not have a title then - like this poor painting. It has a name - that of the model (and bonus points to those who know who it is) - but not a title. Which is beginning to become a problem as it soon needs to go to the framers and then on to an exhibition.
So I am opening it up to the floor - any suggestions out there?
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