Days 67 and 68 – Finally learning to paint faith and love…

Quite a while ago I tried to paint how I feel about my Christian faith.  Because it means so much to me I found that it was just too difficult to do.

(Here’s a link to those first attempts: Faith and Love Attempt One)

Then a week or so ago I sketched a picture of a shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders which kind of said what I wanted to say.

So I re-sketched this out onto proper cold-pressed watercolour paper…

 

 

Then I had a go at painting it with Winsor and Newton Artists Watercolours..

 

At first it looked really wishywashy and pale and I felt all fed up and annoyed with myself for doing a bad job – again.  But then the next day I decided that I had nothing to lose if I painted more layers over the top.  So I did – lots and lots of layers.  Here’s the final painting…

 

It’s not perfect at all but it does touch my heart in the way I wanted it to.  It just has, for me, that feeling of being loved and cared for which I get from my faith.

 

Because of the autism I have a lot of difficulty accurately communicating what I really feel with words which I find very frustrating especially when people start getting upset with me and I’ve done the very best I can do.  My language skills are pretty good generally but I don’t have the usual social context in which most people seem to operate – I’m always misunderstanding the effects which my language has and not getting the whole social aspect of communication.  For me, saying “A, B and C”, just means, “A, B and C”.  There is no social context, no what they call ‘side’ no ‘reading between the lines’ (which means understanding that there is a subtext in some communication)  because I am basically blind to all of this.  I can’t ‘see’ social context or non-straight-forward communication.  But with pictures I feel that I have a genuine way I could potentially communicate well and accurately in a way which isn’t constantly misunderstood.  I have a fighting chance.

I feel really pleased about this picture because it does, for me, finally say what I want to say.    🙂

 

Days 17 and 18 – A winged woman

Today I played around a bit more with my new graphgear mechanical pencil.

I drew a sketch of a woman with wings.  She started off as an angel and then became a fairy.  Then I put a dress on her, which, if you’re flying up in the air, isn’t exactly practical!  Anyway, I was trying see if I could follow Mark Crilly’s drawing style for his Miki Falls manga / comic book series.

Here’s an example of his art on this project:

I like the way he has thicker, darker lines around the main objects and then shades the rest like a really good pencil drawing.  You can really see what I’m mean if you look at Miki waking up in her sleeping bag in the bottom left panel.

So here’s my attempt at that kind of style / effect:

 

I used a black coloured pencil to do the thick outlines.  It was a watercolour pencil so it was really soft to use and I think I ended up making the lines too thick.  Nevertheless, I’m beginning to get there with that kind of style.

 

(Then just because I had the watercolour pencils out I decided to colour my picture…

I don’t like the watercolour pencil effect much.  I should have left it alone!

The Phoenix and the New Job

Well,  I got the job I went for a few weeks back and today I passed the health screening from the County Council Occupational Health Department, so come September I’m going to be working again!  I feel really lucky because it’s a really super school and the job fits what I’m able to do at the moment really well.

In celebration I thought I’d paint something.  I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook of J.K. Rowling’s Chamber of Secrets again and, since I go off to sleep listening to these stories, my dreams have been full of phoenix’s.  So here’s what I dreamed…

 

I painted this in watercolour.  It was a new experience of the medium for me.  Although I was aware of the fact that I was working in watercolour I continued to paint as if I were using gouache which really changed how things went.  I build the pcture up in layers – a background colour and then firey feathers over the top.  Finally I wanted just a little more definition at the end and  used ink to add some harder lines.  It’s not a typical watercolour type subject but it was kind of fun to do.

 

Salt, Watercolour, Frost and Fractals

So first off for the summer holidays  is a technique I read about which uses salt on a watercolour painting.  It’s really interesting because the salt draws the pigment into itself and so leaves these beautiful frost-like patterns on the paper. Basically you do a background wash in a range of colours – I chose Cadmium Red, Burnt umber and Cadmium Yellow.   Then while the paint is still wet and just becoming less shiney you put some salt onto it.  Apparently you can use table salt or rock salt for different effects.  I only had table salt so I used that.  Then you leave it to dry and then rub off the salt.  After that you can then incorporate the beautiful pattern it leaves behind into your painting.  The pattern on the one I did looked like a cross between frost and a fractal called the Julia Set. This is how my painting ended up: It’s only a small picture but I really like the effect and the colours.

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Fractals have always interested me.  They are basically a set of complex numbers which can be represented as a pattern.  The most famous is the Mandelbrot set which looks like this: I think thay are incredibly beautiful and really they are just a set of numbers!  I love it too that these patterns relate strongly to nature and natural physical effects, like frost and lichen growth and anywhere really where natural patterns form. The Julia set is also a set of numbers and also makes beautiful patterns: The thing that’s most amazing (from my point of view) with these sets is that if you zoom in an dhave a closer look you can see more and more patterns.  Theoretically you could go on getting deeper into the pattern indefinitely.  It’s amazing.

Line and Wash Picture – Finished

Yesterday I got this far in my latest trial of the ‘Line and Wash’ technique:

I was quite worried about making a mess of the colour over a complicated ink drawing which I liked, so I photocopied it a few times on regular photocopy paper and played around with the colours.  This way I could test out some ideas and colour schemes before starting on the original drawing.

The preparation and experimentation with colours took longer than the actual painting in the end, but I think that is because this technique is still relatively new to me.  This is how my painting turned out.

Watercolour Elephant

Today was a good day.

• Firstly my wonderful son is feeling better and will probably go back to school tomorrow or the next day!  🙂
• Secondly, for the first time I’ve painted a watercolour which looks something llike the image I had in my mind.  I feel happy!

It began when I decided to paint an animal using a pure watercolour technique.  Last night I watched this brilliant, brilliant video of a real watercolour artist doing a painting of an elephant.  The video I watched was this one:

I thought it was absolutely fabulous!

Elephants are such graceful, sensitive animals  I couldn’t resist having a try at painting one, especially having watched Fiona Clarke make such a fantastic job of a similar picture.  I have loads of animal books at home (typical biology teacher!), everything from a collection of ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ books to invertibrate textbooks so I found a photo that I was happy to use as a basic reference.

Some of the trunk of the  elephant I wanted ot paint is covered by her calf but, with other reference photos to look at too, I thought I could fill in the missing part.  I made a quick sketch while I got dinner cooked (spicy chicken wings, boiled potatoes in a herb sauce and corn, carotts and brocolli).

Then after dinner (and the ironing – groan) I was able to paint it.  I worked from light to dark and from big to small as lots of people seem to recommend on the internet and it turned out well.  Two things really helped – (1) I worked on one a small area at a time so I could play with the paint a little and use the water to make it go where I want without it drying out too quickly and (2) I took it slowly letting the paint dry out between layers.

So this is how it turned out:

It’s not as exciting as some of the wonderful work I looked at last week but I am happy with it.   😀

(All Images unless otherwise explicitly stated are © Jo Fox, 2015)

Needing to ‘see’ in order to paint

I’ve spent some time over the last week or so struggling with watercolour and I have been tempted to give it up and go back to what I know – acrylics, ink drawings and (to a lesser extent) oil painting.  But there are some good things about watercolour which I do like.

The Positives of watercolour for me are:

(1) Somehow I make less mess when using watercolours compared to acrylics and oils.

This might seem like a minor point but because I have a chronic pain condition, working in a medium which is harder to clear up means I can work less, or hurt a lot more, so this ‘easy management’ of watercolour has a really good effect on me.

(2) The paintings are quicker to complete.

Again, because of the pain this is really a good thing.

(3) Most of all I like them because with the ‘Line and Wash’ technique I can make use of my love of ink drawing and add to those drawings the one thing I feel they lack – colour.

This is the biggest plus of all for me with watercolour because, with ink drawing, it feels like I can draw anything I want, it’s almost like being able to fly (figuratively speaking) and to be able to use this and have colour is a tremendous opportunity to make the kind of pictures I really want to make.

The negatives of watercolour for me are:

(1) I’m very inexperienced and struggle with the medium.

(2) The kinds of watercolour paintings I’ve seen the most are little cottages and coutryside scenes and sort of ‘still’ ‘quiet’ ‘cute’ pictures which are pretty but don’t seem to touch my heart.   (Please understand I am not intending to be critical of that type of subject – I’m sure such pictures give joy to many people – they’re just not for me.)

(3) The colour in these paintings often looks weak and I kind of need strong vibrant colour.

So, thinking through all of this I think I’ve decided that I want to have another go at working in this medium despite how difficult I’m finding it. 

I think my inexperience and difficulty with watercolour can be overcome by learning and practice.  Just because a lot of watercolour paintings are of a sort which don’t touch me doesn’t mean that I have to do those sorts of paintings.  Also, the colour in watercolour is often weak because, apparently, the paint looks darker and richer when you’re painting it and then weaker when it dries, but there’s no reason I can’t compensate for that with stronger deeper colour.  Obviously my work won’t be very traditional in terms of watercolour if I head in this direction but I want to be free to paint what’s in my heart so why not give it a go?

With this in mind I’m going to spend some time looking at watercolour work of all types and finding the kind I like and how it’s done.  I found gesture drawing impossible at first, I didn’t even understand what exactly it was but the more I looked the better I got.

Eye Study – Jo Fox 2011

I need to really truly see it before I can paint it.      🙂

(All Images unless otherwise explicitly stated are © Jo Fox, 2015)

Line and Wash – Rocks and Countryside and Gulls

Well, after the ‘Octopus’ I had another go at a line and wash watercolor.  It was still difficult…I just can’t seem to get it to look how it looks inside me.  The colour seems to come out different every time I use it.  It’s quick to do and less messy than acrylics but I find it really difficult.

I kind of went for a simple country, seaside rock and seagull type thing.

Here’s the ink:

Here’s near the end…

And here’s the final picture:

I think the ink lines I typically do in the sky could be left off next time leaving the watercolour can carry that area of the picture on it’s own.  I like the way the grassy area turned out but I don’t really like the sky – it looks a bit contrived – usually behind a bright yellow sun the sky is refelcting a lot of that yellow cololur too but I only realised that after I’d added the sun.

(All Images unless otherwise explicitly stated are © Jo Fox, 2015)

A Line and Wash Octopus

Sorry to have not blogged for a while – I was ill with a chest infection and then my son got the same thing, poor lad.  Anyway I’m on the mend now and my fabulous son is beginning to get better.  I may need to post a bit less this week if he is still home from school and unwell.

So, while getting well last week I managed to finish my first attempt at a line and wash picture.  The ink line work was, predictably, fun but the watercolour part was like pulling teeth – argghhh – I find it so hard.

Here are some pictures of my progress, such as it was:

(I didn’t photograph my watercolour progress as most of the time I thought it would end up in the bin.)

So here’s how it turned out:

(All Images unless otherwise explicitly stated are © Jo Fox, 2015)