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| The Threshold |
For the last couple of days I've been doing non-art stuff mainly so it was nice to get into the studio again today.
This is the first day I've not had to think about my materials too much and could therefore concentrate more on colour and mark making - there is always more to learn but progress is being made - and I'm now up to 11 paintings, which should give me a bit of leeway.
It's been almost a fortnight since my last WIP and this is what I've done. Not a whole lot, really, but through a combination of car trouble, visiting the Edinburgh Festival and photographing new models I've only had two actual painting days.
One of which was my first full day painting since the op. As well as finishing the teacakes I started four new paintings. I'm starting small, since I have a lot of small canvases lying about and I have various ideas I want to try, so the bigger ones will have to wait a little while.
A busy week, so not much studio time. Did get some painting done though - think I'm finally done with the big still life, and have made progress with the teacakes and the two back views, may be able to finish all three next week. Also did the two little framed works from start to finish - they are drawn in graphite on gesso panel, then a layer of oil paint added, which gives quite an interesting effect. They were an experiment, for a show at the Glasgow Art Club on the theme of oil and water, and like all good experiments have given me more ideas to try!
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| Time For Some Fun |
Last weekend was a busy one, as the Flights Of Fancy exhibition opened at Mansfield Park Gallery on the sunday and on the saturday I was at the Glasgow Contemporary Art Fair - non stop art!
The afternoon was great fun, long chats with many artists surrounded by beautiful painted birds. If you weren't lucky enough to be there the show is on till the 16th of May and I very much recommend taking the time to go see it - it really is a delightful mix of work by many of the best artists working in the area (and me).
Recently I've become a little cup obsessed, which is kinda nice as it lets me set up still lifes and play around with colour and pattern easier than you can do with portraits.
These are two of these new works, which will be on show with another two cup paintings and a selection of my figurative work at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair this weekend. Tracey Mcnee will be representing me, along with several other terrific painters and I'm sure it'll be a great show - I'm pretty sad that I'm just too busy at the moment to go down and see it myself, but if you are in the area, let me know what you think of my mini change of direction.
Finished - maybe. For today, at least. At this stage I generally stop, put the painting up on my studio wall somewhere and see if it annoys me while I'm working on other stuff. In a week or two I'll take it down, have a closer look and either do more to it or decide it is done and put a layer of retouch varnish on it.
Then it goes back on the wall until I decide to either do more to it (it it's crying for attention) or send it to a gallery. Depending on how long it's been it then gets a final coat of varnish or gets taken directly to the framer.
After that it depends very much on other people what happens - although I have a sneaking suspicion I might just keep this one for myself!
This was done with water soluble graphite from Artgraf, that comes in a little tin I bought at the Royal Academy last week. I thought that graphite might suit a picture of kitty with the grey winter trees behind her and I am fairly pleased with the results although as always with new media I can think of a few ways to do better next time. I used a chinese brush, which is my favourite for life drawing - I can really see this stuff being very useful indeed in the life class, especially if using pencils as well. The finished work has a lovely granulated, slightly sparkly look, which might suit a future project I'm thinking about. So although not entirely pleased with this drawing really glad I did it as I think it will lead to lots of other, better works.
It's Valentine's Day and I thought I'd share the love a little to the cat. But I don't think she was very impressed by her rose and she tried to eat her ribbon. Oh well.
A little slide show of a painting that I started this morning, showing the stages of the first stage of a Jane painting. It seems to run too fast, so will post each photo seperately.
First is the drawing, squared from photoshop, using watercolour pencil.
Next are the darks - if it doesn't read at this stage, then I need to go back to the beginning, re-draw, re-think. Not this time, though!
Then I add the mid tones, and generally things look much worse as the white of the canvas is still showing. In this case the white is oil primer on aluminium - an experiment!
Lastly I add the lights - these are much darker than they will be eventually, same as the darks are generally not as dark. Everything is grey/brown as well, so I can judge easier the colour of the next layer easier - in this case, there will be lots of blue toned greys and black, which is why the colours here are more brown, which should add a bit of contrast.
At this stage I stop to let things dry and for me to consider the painting while stuff is still changeable. It'll probably lie about my studio for a week or so while I work on other stuff, then hopefully I'll be able to finish this in one more layer, maybe two.
After yesterday's drawing I had a wee think about what it was I hated about charcoal (the mess, the difficulty in getting different tones, the lack of accuracy) and on spotting a big thick bit of charcoal in the box thought I'd try a diffemore direct approach.
And enjoyed myself much much more.
Have I mentioned how much I hate vine charcoal? No? That may be because I've been wise enough to avoid the stuff for the last few years - when I have used charcoal, it has been charcoal pencils and dust, and has been at an easel.
Using it in a small scale (about a4) on the couch was just murder - at one stage I had to open a window to shake all the dust off as it was just moving about the paper and not adhering. Gah!
Anyway, done now and I hope you like it - a wee picture of us together, even if she is clearly just putting up with me.
A week tomorrow I'm off to London to see this painting at the opening of the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize . I'm terrifically excited as this is my first London exhibition and looking at the other choices there are many amazing paintings hanging along with mine. Once I'm down there I will report back with how everything looks - or if you are in London, come along - it will be open all of next week at the Mall Galleries.
But even fancy-pants arty farty painters need to learn and do their daily drawings - so today I gave Mrs Cat her own teacake. She didn't seem overly impressed.
Day 7 and I went shopping today for art materials - I realised that I didn't have any good, dark, 8b pencils - I think I must have used them all as I really, really loved these pencils once upon a time.
Now my hand has cramp as I'm really not used to this kind of intensive drawing any more, using a brush is so very much quicker. But being forced to take longer is possibly a good thing, I certainly felt that I was making more adjustments and decisions as I went along than I do when using watercolour so that it actually felt more like oil painting.
Next time, maybe a more scribbly, line based style - we'll see. There were a few other purchases which I'll use before the month is up - one of my aims this year is to broaden my drawing skills, both in what materials I use and how I use them - I hope you are enjoying my efforts so far.
Day 6 and I didn't have much time at all this morning. Kitty here was determined to be awkward, refusing to let me draw her on her chair by keeping moving, then following me through and jumping up to be stroked as soon as I sat down - very nice, but no drawing could be done. Eventually though (when I was almost late leaving the house) she got bored and decided to stretch out in the hall instead - hence this very quick brush and ink sketch. Then I threw her out and went to work!
Day 5, and after enjoying using a brush yesterday I thought I'd do the same again - only this time with white gouache on black card.
The pose I chose perhaps wasn't the best one for this, as her lying with one of her paws up on the side of her cheek, at the base of her ear, perhaps isn't a very common cat posture - she does it all the time, though, and even sometimes lies with her paws over her eyes.
The blanket was fun and is related to a lot of the paintings I'm doing at the moment - I have recently become a little obsessed by pattern. The painting below shows how I start - with rough tonal values, In this case, I didn't like the original tone of the background and decided to add a leaf pattern today - and I really like the way the pattern looks now, so may not paint over it in a more finished way as planned - we'll see.
This morning I felt I wanted to do some fine line work and use a brush and watercolour, after the annoyance of yesterday's pencil. This is a technique I am more familiar with, having used it for years at life drawing to get quick poses down fast.
The paper I used was also my favourite paper - mi-teintes touch, which comes in a good colour range, doesn't seem to fade and comes in 335gsm so is fairly robust feeling - this was my first try at adding a waterbased media, and it behaved perfectly. My only complaint is the size - a maximum 50x65cm.
Todays drawing was on a quarter sheet, so around A4 size and I was happy with Dr Martin's liquid watercolour. Not so happy with Derwent's white ink - ended up having to apply around 3 layers as it seemed to sink in and fade - not sure if not was the paper's fault, or the ink's - I'll try watercolour and gouache in later drawings so will be able to compare.
Oh, and I meant to go back and add in the black pads of her feet, but forgot. May do it when I get home tonight!
Had a bit more time today so thought I'd try a ore detailed pencil drawing. Unfortunately black fur doesn't lend itself to that kind of work and I chose the wrong pencil - a derwent sketching light wash hb. It just wouldn't go dark, or layer satisfactory - I tried adding water, and that seemed to help a little, but still not happy with it. Oh well.
One reason I had more time was because although today was a studio day, I had to do various collecting/delivering paintings type of stuff. But I thought it would be nice to share how the studio looks presently - a tip, as I have been photographing for still lifes and everything has been pulled out. Anyway, here are some photos.
Hello everyone again - it's 28 Drawings Later time of year again.
This year, my plan is to draw my neighbour's cat, Vader, every day - she's not always up, so some will be drawn from life (like today) while others will be from photographs - she really doesn't seem to like being photographed, though.
I'm going to be using all the bits and pieces of stuff that have been shoved to the back of drawers. Today's drawing is on a piece of ampersand pastelbord I brought back from New York. It was quite lovely to draw on, using pan pastel initially, then chalk and charcoal pencils.
If you'd like to see previous years, they are at 2014 , when I was preparing for my first solo show, 2013 , when there wasn't an organised thing, so I blogged every day instead. In 2012 I just kinda drew what was around me, similar to 2011 which was the very first one and I was new to sketching, new to blogging and just generally a beginner - the encouragement I got that year really encouraged me to keep developing ever since.
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| Two Forks |
A couple of weeks ago I listed the christmas shows that'll have my work in this december - but I forgot one - the RGI Kelly Gallery Christmas exhibition .
As I was included in the last RGI show, they've asked me to put in a postcard sized work - The Two Forks, above, for sale unframed at £250 along with everyone else's small works. The private view will be next friday (the 5th) from 5 til 7 - the chances of picking up a bargain are fairly high, so I'm disappointed I'll probably miss it - maybe next year I'll declare the last week of november/first of december a holiday and just float around all the openings without having to worry about getting some stuff done - might be fun!
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