forgot to post this!

Another painting I finished but forgot to post. Hope you like

Pixie blue

Another watercolour I did this ages ago but did upload to here. There is no model for this I made it up I was more interested in playing with the colour and tone, limiting the palette and adding some pure white ink

new drawings

Time for some basics
Back to the drawing board as they say! Did exactly and started with some eyes and a good old fashion pencil or two or three.

Then I had to add some carbon and charcoal because the pencil doesn't go dark enough, with the help of a putty rubber to lift out some lights and  job done!

Cant beat time spent drawing, a therapy in its self especially if you use your imagination anything can happen on the paper.

This is unfinished at in this photo I will upload the finished version when I get a decent photo of it!

My Rainbow Period

The model was my daughter i wanted a different perspective on hands and eyes but as my love of insects was bugging - excuse the pun. I wanted to combine some of the things I really love such as certain colours,insects and odd angles as well as the human face. So this is where it lead me to "Evolution" all worked in watercolour on Arches 300lb.
Continuing in this vein I did another one this time using the other daughter as the model and keeping with some of the same elements.

Moth

What not to love about Cerulean blue and Opera rose, this time i've added some pen work in using and old fountain nib pen and burnt sienna ink.

As I get quite carried away with these paintings I did more with similiar colours only this time went back to the Angels I done before

Statue

Kept this one a little simple in watercolour.

 

And yet another Angel, pregnant one at that

wasnt sure this would work out very well but I'm quite happy with  the results of this one, I went on to do  another one like this but didnt like it as much.

So colours used were as mentioned Cerelaen blue, green gold, opera rose, permanent rose, Indigo and Dioxazine purple and cadium yellow. Finished with some white ink here and there.

 

 

 

 

 

New Exhibition for 2013

This year The exhibition will be held at
 The Rhodes Centre, 1-3 S Rd Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire CM23 3JG
01279 651746
This will run from 14th May until 25th May 2013

There are to be a few of us exhibiting to raise money for the British lung Foundation, so there
 will lots of different media in use as well as styles to tickle the fancy.

My latest painting has taken a more macabre style, although this is more like my old style, 
still in watercolour with a bit of pen work

"Corvus Corax"

 Ravens in watercolour, there is a video to this but it wont upload to this blog so might have to trim it down

detail of ravens

 

 Before I did these i was working on some realistic painting of playing cards copying every detail to match the originals, these  are life size


Dead Mans Hand

These are in watercolour although the deck doesn't actually exist they are the same size as a normal deck, I haven't as yet designed the rest of the deck - maybe in the future. The next one I did, i did for a class demo then got the class to do the same Guess who was really popular that day!

King of spades - in acrylics

 

The king was a torn up card that I painted the top half to the real half is beneath it, the acrylics didn't work out too bad, was quite pleased with outcome.
My next set in this  range was the Ace of hearts-

spot the fake!! again in acrylics might try again in watercolour then oils.

Finally done!

I decided to enter the Society of wildlife artist open exhibition this year, to held at the Mall galleries. Consequently this meant I had to finish or start something to enter. After much deliberation i chose to do 6, 4 new ones and finish 2 I had already started, due to the fact it was a wildlife exhibition i figured that my hummingbird might be in with a fair chance of looked at. So as i had already put an acrylic base for the painting, thought it might be appropriate to continue with another layer in oils. Took a couple of weeks to  finish even though its only 14" x 10" but the details were so small.

I took the original photo of this bird in Antigua I quite liked the blurred background and lights, if I had stuck to my usual formats I would have had a much plainer background to push the bird out more

 needless to say it wasn't accepted.

My next one was to finish my lemurs, again in oils as you can see a little plainer in the background giving a bit impact to the tails and eyes. This painting also took weeks to complete, which meant that I didn't get to start any more painting for the exhibition. Again i was hoping for this one to be pre-selected at least, again this one also failed pre selection. So no luck this time.

Another exhibition another set judges may well yield better results so I'm gonna keep trying until someone does!

Where has the year gone!!

I cannot believe it's July already, this year seems to have whizzed by without me noticing. I'd like to think it was because I was so busy painting that I didn't notice! alas no - as of today I don't think I have completed a whole painting this year, many started projects but none finished. Although i haven't been idle i did get some jewellery making done, check these out....

Ear cuffs No piercing required just wrap around your ear.

They are all on Etsy if anyone would like to buy one

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SocietyInk

I have also been working on a very large fishy pic, goldfish to be precise. in watercolour if you work in watercolour you will know the difficulties of covering large areas with colour that doesn't look stripey or blotchy.  This painting is no exception in as much that some of the areas are still quite large pieces that have very dark colour on them. The only way I have found to cope with this is to mix up paint from tubes in a tray to a milk consistency and then with large brushes wet the area to be painted with an under coat, so for me it was indigo undercoat. Two reasons for using this staining colour 1. it covers very well and intensifies the black that go over the top 2. If I'm going to lift any of the lighter parts out I can do so but still have a blueish tint to the paper which works well with any thing black.

OK that done let dry

repeat the process with your next colour in my case blue-black on wet paper again, I usually advocate mixing any darks with deep colours such as purple, blues or deep greens to give the dark more body. In this painting it wont be needed as it is a reflection through glasses which will be slightly grey in places as the light hits the glass.

As for the fish you can see from the above photo that I started with a base coats of Winsor yellow and Vermilion diluted for the fins. These are then let dry before re-wetting the paper with water and applying intense colour do this gently as you do not want to churn up the under layer. keeping this intact will leave room to lift highlights and edges of scales when it's dry, as you can see the yellow shows through really well.

If you haven't guessed already the picture in the background is Aubrey Beardsley' Peacock skirt. It does actually hang behind the fish bowl on my desk!
Try some distortion paintings there good fun but a little time consuming.