Saturday 26 June 2010

I posted a while back that I had thrown out some of my early work from college and school. Well I thought you might like to see of the stuff I saved to remind how far I'd come! If there is any one else out there who wants me to show of their early work feel free to email. While looking at these remember I only had poster paint and charcoal to use for most the work and few pastels. My kit's got a lot more involved since then, and a lot more expensive. Workman and tools springs to mind!!! hope you enjoy. 
The first one below was done when I was 14/15 years old and the charcoal ski boots was a still life I did when I was 16 it got a grade A but not for me, for someone else who pilfered it from my portfolio.


this one is a life drawing done in college of my friend Maria Juan Branco of 
Portugal
This one is the first ever etching I got to do, the brief was to Illustrate a poem or something to do with the weather. I ended up doing a colour version but even at college I would revert back to my Rotring Isograph pens. I'm still using them even now, yesterday I managed another 2 pen sketches on water colour post cards, it's not really the right surface to be using the rotring pens on as the surface drags up and sticks to the very fine nib. So you can only do a little work before having to wipe the nib carefully, not my forte! f your wondering what they should be used on it's Bristol board, it has a very smooth surface that wont cause the nib to drag fibres up. Anything with a very smooth or even slightly shiny surface works well too.
It's a way of keeping your eye in and exploring ideas on a smaller scale that could potentially become a bigger more in depth piece. I'll upload them in a couple of days when I've photographed them.
I thought I might take one of the pieces from school and redo it to see how much of a learning curve I've travelled, it could be quite interesting. But for now I'm still concentrating on my website I can it taking a lot of months to put together. Till the next time  try redoing a piece from your past and post it on here if you like!!
Kat  

Thursday 24 June 2010

web design

 Hi All
I'm still trying to  learn how to use Dreamweaver to build my website but so far I have been unable to design it the way I want it. So I'm doing a mock up in serif webplus so at least I can have something to show for all the time I've sent on it.
I wanted to show you all I've been busy doing some art work for the website, I wanted some fun pieces done in ink and water colour




These are a few of the paintings I have managed to do all on a similar theme, I sat and wrote myself a list of just of the pictures I wanted in my website, I gave up after 1/2 an hour as the list was getting to long. So I just made a start with these and some small ink drawings.
You wouldnt believe how difficult it is to get a hompage the way you want it when your an artist, but I;m determined that one day I'll crack it. 
I've been asked what colours I'm using as they are rather bright, well I'm hooked on W/N Opera rose and Schminke's may green, and cadmuim red pale, you'd be surprised at the flesh tones I've been able to get from these 3 colours, I love the cleaness of the rose and the green and the vibrancy I can get.
Why not try permenate rose if you dont have opera rose and green gold these also make fab flesh tones, do yourself a colour swatch first so you can see just what they can do.
I'll leave with that one!!!
Kat

Sunday 6 June 2010

learning curve

Hi All
I've spent last couple of days trying to my head round using Adobe Dreamweaver Cs4 to rebuild my website.
If you haven't seen my website it's www.orchidarts.co.uk this was the first website I ever built and i did all by myself using XP frontpage. I was very proud of myself getting this far all on my own.
But more than 18months ago the original pc we had XP on self terminated and fried itself. leaving me with no access to my website and no way of uploading more work, so it's sat there for all this time waiting for me to rebuild a new one.
Over the past few months I have designed the pages on paper so I have a clear idea of what I want. The only problem being is that i now have Vista and dreamweaver to work with and that means sitting for hours/days/weeks teaching myself how to.....
So this week I have got as far as getting the background and main photo for the homepage sort of figured out but not exactly as I pictured it. The next step is to figure how i get things hot spots working and being able to label them. All this technical stuff stops me from painting as much as I like but if I can master this I'll be very happy!
If anyone has any tips on getting it done faster please let me know!
As I want some animation on my website now going to go and draw on some acetate cells, that should keep out of trouble till tomorrow.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Hi All
spent most of the day going through my very old portfolio's from school and college, while looking through it all, I decided that I just had to throw some of it out to get some room. I'm at the stage now I cant get in the shed or under the bed and the walls are full. I'm sure I'm not alone!!
Anyway while I was sifting through the mess I came across some charcoal drawings I did when I was 15 although i could see who they were they more akin to sketches than proper drawings. I decided to keep them and show my students in my Monday's classes how much my drawing had changed during the years. I also found some drawings I did when at college (17) of tailors dummies and loads of still lives of junk set up by the tutors.
As for the stuff I did at school much of it was very punk rock or macabre, I kept a couple of them because my daughter wanted them but the rest are now recycling. I'd also forgotten how much I liked drawing with fine nib Rotring pens on tracing paper and clear acetate cells.
While doing all this I had a thought - maybe I should mount some of this stuff and embellish it a bit more - maybe I'll make a book of it all.
For now I've got to clear up the mess!!!
So far I've managed to do no art all yesterday and today - may be there's hope for some tomorrow!
Kat