For my next trick! Digital scrapbook give away!!

Hello all
Ever thought of combining your art with somethng else? lets say drawing with fabrics or scrapbooking with painting or something from the kitchen and your canvas?
I'm sure you have this week will see me and my students fixing kitchen foil to canvas and using Acrylics/oils to create some new paintings. Questions is what would you paint..

I recently took a painting I had started in one of my classes, it was of Koi fish and painted in oils. I left it unfinished and let it dry for a few weeks until I was ready to continue (laymens terms for didnt have a glue what i wanted to with it) until I trying to photos of others things that I came across a slightly out of focus photo of  my "Cosmic Dancer" painting. Buddha that was what i wanted to do Buddha!
Out comes the gold leaf and I start applying it to the pre painted canvas and then coated with Shellac so I could use more Oil paint over the top. Result

cosmic dancer

Yes it's unfinished but at least I made a start. It's not as difficult to paint on metal foils as you may think

as long as they adhere to the surface properly and you use something like Shellac between the surface and the paint all will work well.  Try some yourself and post them to me to let us know what you've come up with.

On the list at the top I also mentioned draw & fabric heres something else you can try. Leather and drawing ink,
I have always draw on leather but using in gold and silver ink, which does come off if it's rubbed too often.

I did this with a scrap piece of leather I had - there is a little bit of stitching going on but the rest is all draw from imagination. I bet your wondering what it is aren't you.

It's my new brush roll I was in desperate need of a bigger one that took a few more of my brushes. I need to make another 3 I think!

In an earlier blog I showed you my little book I was making for Alice in Wonderland which primarily drawn in ink on trade cards. This is another project thats started but never finished, If you remember I added scrapbooking papers to the book leaves which will then take some of my art work

Ok why am I suggesting this well I was giving the opportunity to give away to one lucky winner a digital scrapbooking software kit.
 This is courtesy of My Memories who have given us one digital scarpbooking suite to give away free to one lucky winner!!! could that lucky person be you??
My Memories Suite is rated #1 by Amazon and TopTen Reviews. Using this software, anyone can create digital scrapbooks, photobooks, cards, calendars and gifts without having to buy expensive and complicated software programs.    
Check out this 10 minute video for the digital scrapbook software and see what it can do with all your photos or indeed Artwork - http://www.youtube.com/user/MyMemoriesSuite



http://www.mymemories.com/digital_scrapbooking_software
JUST CLICK THIS LINK and take a look at the suite.
Once you've been there come to this blog and tell me which is your favourite designer, there loads to choose from, why not try some of the free samples. Then you can post  them here and on My Memories.
So to recap!!!!
To be in with a chance of winning this software all you have to do is click on the link above and find your favourite designer - post your comment here and names will drawn out the hat!
The winner will be drawn on the 14th November just in time to make some fantastic gifts for Christmas!

FOR EVERYONE ELSE there is a 10% discount from http://www.mymemories.com/ when buying the My Memories suite version 2 only
USE this unique discount code STMMMS90340 at the checkout!

boohoo!!!

Last week I finally got round to ordering a copy of Micheal Wilcox's "Artists guide to selecting colours". Micheal Wilcox also has a website you can order from http://www.schoolofcolour.com/
I have to say I wished this book had been available when I first started painting. it would have saved so much time trail and error not to mention money. Let me brief you on the contents. This book covers the all the named paints that you have all heard of, it delves into the making of them and whats in them then and now!
Ready for a shock? some of the colours that I use most frequently and which can be found in all my palettes across all the different media's I use are in fact worthless. I nearly had a fit when I read this, as with many of you I suspect I/we trusted the labels that say we tested these paints to the highest degree. Hands up all those who have Alizarin Crimson,sap green, Prussian blue, hooker green and anything Madder Oh and not forgetting one of my favourites indigo, There's more on the list but these are probably in most peoples palettes, in the past I've used alizarin crimson for all manner of subjects even portraits. I have even rendered complete paintings in monochrome using nothing but indigo. And unless i put all those that I still own in dark drawer they wont be there in the future due to the fading and mis-colouring.
it's worthwhile buying this book so you know what your buying in the future -it also gives alternative to each colour and/or mixing tips. So it looks like all these paints are now resigned to sketching purposes only.

After that bombshell I'm going to go and paint fish to console myself
xxxxx kat

paintbox portfolio

paintbox portfolio, a set on Flickr.

Follow my portfolio on flickr

Finished at last

This week saw the start of my summer classes, all of which needed some prep for each of the classes. Not only in the advertising but in the lesson planning. The classes were centered around drawing watercolour and Thursdays will be Oils, so quite a mix of techniques and media going on. As the classes are only 3 hours long it's hard to get a completed piece of work for most students but the results were excellent, next week they will be completing a full tonal drawing which I think they will be impressed with. Today's watercolour class was using bold colours and learning to lift out. Not a class for the faint hearted!! This really throws students in at the deep end. Cant wait for Thursdays lesson Oil portraits.
During the time I've been working on the getting the classes up and running I've also continued to work on the piece below.....

I have finally finished the Large piece entitled " Stealing the wings of butterflies" you'll see from my last blog that I was a fair way into it, but still had a ton to do. Well since the last photo, i completed our heroine first with a white hair do then changed my mind back to red. while painting I realised that I would have been better do this in oils rather acrylics I'm much happier with slow drying paint - I don't need to make any adjustments for the paint drying darker or lighter.

 

I glazed over the white with burnt sienna, transparent red oxide and burnt orange. i was a little happier once this was finished - making changes half way through a painting can mess other areas up. Next was the wings hanging on the pole and guess what I did here?
Started with one colour and ended up with another, check out the black wing -this was too dark for the overall composition so that had to be changed.

With the lighter wing in place i carried on putting the insects in some of which are made from glass.
The glass beads are made by a good friend of mine at http://www.flowerjasper.co.uk/ a very talented bead maker.
This is what happens to the broken ones!

perfect for little bugs!!

A little white moth not finished in this photo.

base coats on for the Centinakes

Add some mist and tweak here and there and we're finished Thanks for joining me

New Beginnings

This month starts the first month ever in my entire adult life where I no longer work for the youth Service, you'd think having worked nearly 3 decades for them they'd let me with just a months notice - only they didn't i had to work 3. now that it is over I'm concentrating on my summer programme, where i will be teaching drawing, watercolours and oils.I may also start up another private class in the evening in my local town.
So now i have more time to work on my own work where shall i start?????????
I wrote myself a list at the beginning of the year of all the things I wanted to paint, then I kept adding to that to that list and now it's got over a hundred items on it!
I want to continue with my fairies and angels and dragons and insects and write a small book on skin tone and .......................... I've exhausted myself just looking at the list. Oh and then there's the list of creatures that my client gave me to see what I could come up with.
So what did I decide on? doing my usual combination trick, if i cant do all the list then I find ways to combine different elements, which lead me to this -

 

 The drawings from my sketch book, this is not as planned out as it first looks ( I should have done a tonal sketch to see how the light would fall.  Moral of story don't take short cuts - you'll see why in another blog.

The drawing below is also from the same series, yup it turned into a series of drawings overnight. The series  title of is "Stealing the wings of Butterflies" all will become apparent as we go with the paintings.

The first colour washes for the background completed - yes they are floating leaves in the sky, I also limited the palette here to just a few colours such as lemon yellow titanium white, sap green and green gold. Being a bit eager I rushed the drawing copying from my sketch book and not making many adjustments.

I wash on base tones for the skin in burnt sienna and white. this just lets me play with the sculpting part of the body before rendering the skin properly. 

As you can see the tummy going well!!!  and I've started to base coat other areas such as the trousers, shirt and boots. What I haven't told you is the canvas is 100 x 50 cm and is over half my height, remember what I said about not cutting corners! well if you look carefully you'll see that the legs aren't long enough because I didn't spend the extra time i normally would checking these things. Drawing below your waistline is not conducive to great proportions- let that be a lesson to you!!

I had to repaint all of the lower half  to correct my mistake!

I'll show you rest on the next blog.

new book

This week I've been working on my new portfolio book. Actually it's a photo book, I thought it would be a good format to keep all of my work in but without having to carry a huge portfolio around with me. It's my second book, the first I did a soft cover which sold well to those who know me. This I thought I would keep for my self as a complete work/portfolio. It's not really the done thing when presenting Art but times are changing so why not. It would normally only contain my best work, but as there are no words and no statement in it, I thought it would show some kind of progression. And perhaps a glimmer of things I'm capable of. It did highlight, how far I'd come with my skill range and where I want to be in the future.

As I finished putting the book together I felt I should now start writing some e-books on the subjects of basics and development of skills. So with that I also need to create some DVDs while I'm working on paintings.

I'm going to research the Internet for all those holes that haven't been filled properly in the art section, my students tell me that I have a far simpler way of explaining things that they can understand and use. they also suggested writing books on the subjects of the human head and figures. So this may well be my next step on getting my work out there.

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The fairies above are some of a series I've been working on for a client that lives in Dubai, They are to be reprinted to make decoupage images, so keep your eye out for these. I might use some of them to create a diary/calendar. These started as drawings which were then washed with very pale colour to allow me to control the overall design at leisure. Then I was able to play around with some of the details which I hadn't spent time developing until i needed to. for skin tones I use my favoured permanent rose and green gold, with the odd touch of opera rose and burnt sienna, any dark areas are tackled with dioxazine purple.

The start of another portrait - who says you need to use skin tones. I used mixes of turquoise and and permanent rose  to start the base coats with the edition of some green, I can limit the palette and experiment more. The original paper is bamboo, which lends itself quite well to a semi wet technique, where by I can splash the paper first with random colour patches, then move them if necessary. When dry I can then draw over the splashes and place the features where i want them. I'm happy with the 1st layer, as now I have something to work with, build on and corrections can be made easily. 

thanks for reading!!

3 Months later!

I cant believe it's 3 months since I blogged, and what have I achieved in this time? when i sit down and look at the work I've done I see a massive growth in my ability to deal with commissions. I have to question the way in which I interpret these commissions, but one of them is quite tight on what they specify. Although this is challenging it can be very restrictive when your trying to visualize something from some Else's imagination. Which in my case has lead to me spending hours and hours working on pieces just to be told I've got it something wrong. Then its back to the drawing board !!
February the family go to Antigua loaded with my art gear, and managed to do almost no painting, took 1700 photos instead. While I was there I came up with a plan to paint the people and living accommodation of the island, with a view to having a solo exhibition the following year. Haven't started yet - got home armed with a to do list that would require me to hand my notice in for one of my jobs so that I can concentrate more on the commissions and get some time for the exhibition work. But hows this -the week we  come home the phones ringing and I've picked up another commission, yet another from the world of fantasy! Love these kinds of things. 12 of them to be exact. With the other long term commission still running and all the titles for it needing painting I've had to work flat out to create 12 little people with wings and with only a month to do them in. It was my fault that it was only a month- i had  some stupid idea that I could just knock them up from imagination and that would be that. FOOL!! When I'd started drawing them, some appeared on the paper quite naturally but the majority of them required some development, the characters hadn't really come out in them in the first few sketches and more time was needed to get them come to life. Thank god I didn't have to do them in oil I'd never got them dry in time, as it was I didn't complete all of them on time and need an extension.
Add to that I have agreed to demonstrate at a craft fair on the 9th of April, so I need to work like stink to make enough work to take with me to sell and decide on a topic to paint while there. Check out http://www.thecreativefair.com/ come have a look, lots of demonstrators  and stalls full of wares.  Perhaps I should stick with the fantasy art as i don't own a lot of my art of that genre. Thanks for reading! feel free to comment on any of the content.