My mum loves poppies. She even grows large ornamental ones in her garden. So for her birthday I made her a card with a poppy on it. I tried to make the background very loose which is not something I am good at.
I didn’t manage to take any process shots of this painting. I think I had to concentrate so hard to get the background to work that it just went out of my mind! Oops!
Once I’d finished the painting I trimmed it neatly with my rotary trimmer and then mounted it on a card. I actually use doublesided carpet tape to mount heavy paper like this. It works really well.
This week, while waiting for some more pictures of Jim for the portrait, I made a line and wash painting of a manatee mama and her calf. I love the slow gentle nature of these animals and the beauty of their curvy body shape. I would rather swim with these guys than dolphins any day, although octopuses are still my favourite. I think I would give my right arm to swim with an octopus!
Here are my process photos…
I have a strong preference for scientific styled paintings of animals and plants which usually have plain white backgrounds. However having some kind of background really helps a painting find connection with it’s viewers. This week I tried to make a smaller background by masking off a smaller rectangle around my main subjects and painting in a varigated wash using yellows greens and blues. Peeling off the extra masking was such a joy – like peeling the plastic protector off a new calculator or phone!
I stopped to savour the last bit and ended up photographing it.
Once this was done I painted my manatees. I began with big washes over the grey / brown areas and green areas (where the animals get covered in algae) and then moved on to the details.
Since I’ve not painted for a few weeks I wanted to get back into the swing of it before attempting an important portrait of my son’s Grandad who passed away recently.
I began this painting just messing about with gouache on a watercolour background. The foliage began life as grass, but soon became the kind of water weed found in freshwater rivers and lakes in the UK. Then I sprayed it with some fixative (since gouache can be reactivated very easily by water).
Once it was partially fixed I sketched on a fish like this…
I blocked in the underpainting of the fish roughly, giving it some warm and cooler colours…
Next I partially fixed the painting again with the fixative and then applied a more finished layer. I also tidied up the my rendering of the weed too…
Finally I added all of my details and highlights and then painted in some weed in front of the fish.
Here is my completed painting…
When making this painting I changed my usual gouache process a little. I added a spray of fixative between layers. This partially stabilised the gouache so that the layer beneath wasn’t quite so readily activated by paint on top. This method worked really brilliantly allowing me all of the freedom of using gouache without the hassle. I will use this method again I think.
Very sadly, a couple of weeks ago my father in law passed away. He had been ill but we were hoping for another year with him. In many ways it released him from pain and suffering which is good, but I just miss him, a lot.
He was a good, good man and would do anything for his family.
Since this happened I haven’t been able to paint. The creative place where my pictures come from is just silent at the moment. I’ve let this blog just roll through the schedule I had already prepared and uploaded. But now I have run out.
I am planning to paint a portrait of Jim for his wife in oils or acrylics once I’m able. I think oils would be better but they will take so long to dry, so I’m going to try using acrylics in a similar way to painting alla prima with oils and I’m going to use a retarder to give me more time to blend.
Today I had a go at a simple digital painting despite the silence inside. Although I didn’t plan it, it does reflect some of the saddness I feel about losing Jim and seeing his wife Jane so sad at his loss.
Here are some screen shots of how the painting went…
I completed the painting in Photoshop. I adjusted the levels and added a border. Here’s the finished picture…
This week I painted a family of Emperor Penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) in Watercolour. I wanted each adult to reflect the two imperatives of penguin parents whilst bringing up a baby – to protect the chick and to feed themseves (and the chick). So I drew one looking down at the penguin and the other looking off towards the sea ready to take their turn to fish.
Here is my very basic sketch (apologies I drew this very lightly and it is a bit hard to see)…
And here is the basic drawing I made from my sketch…
My next task was to plan my colours. I did this by pulling my sketch into my android tablet, marking off some basic flat areas, putting in some colour and then playing around with the colour until I was happy. Here’s an animated gif (if I’ve done this correctly) of the process I went through to plan my colour…
Once I was decided on my colour choices I was just a quick and happy painting session away from a finished picture. It took a while for me to get to it though since I was unwell for a few days again.
I did have a lot of fun using some dry brush techniques to make my baby penguin suitably fluffy. I also used a light yellow ocre/grey to add some shadows which “pushed” the baby into his parent’s feathers so the viewer gets the feeling of him being loved and cared for by his mum and dad.
I had a go at mixing Ink and Charcoal in the same drawing this week. It was really good fun. I really enjoyed the way I could add textures with the charcoal that I could never achieve with ink.
I began sketching in pencil, then added an ink outline and then added some deep shadows in ink too, like this…
Once I had my ink drawing I began to add shadow using a charcoal pencil and some charcoal sticks, like this…
Above was my first work through with the charcoal. I could see I needed to go darker in places and that I needed also to smooth things out with some blending stumps and tissues.
Once I’d completed the charcoal work I photographed the picture and brought it into Photoshop. I added a black background and then adjusted my levels. I did quite a bit of adjustment to get it to look right with the black background and to get rid of some reflection from my black ink brush pen which sadly has a shiny finish.
Here is the final image…
I like the textures and the strong contrast. It also made me smile to have things around the wrong way, with the water and fish inside the helmet and us humans looking in from the outside! While I was reviewing the image I thought it might make a big difference if I added some halftone reflections on the glass in the front window. So I quickly opened up Photoshop again and added them in post production!
Once everything was complete I also had a quick play with adding some digital colour…
I think it turned out OK, but I prefer the black and white image.
This week’s painting was done using the line and wash technique. It was of a cute little badger cub, transfixed by a bumble bee! Being a true Hufflepuff, I love badgers! They’re a very grounded animal. I just love their dirt snuffling ways!
I’m afraid I had a difficult week with my health, so this was quite a quick little sketch. I began in pencil then added some ink outlines and then inked all of his fur, like this…
Once the inks were completed I washed over my picture with watercolours to add a little more depth. Here’s the final painting…
This week’s painting is a digital drawing of a small fishing boat caught in a very heavy sea. I decided that the boat would be from Brixham because my first new friend at University when I was 18 was a young man from that part of the country. He was reading Computer Sciences and I was was reading Natural Sciences. To this day I can’t read the name “Brixham” without hearing it in his accent! 😊
Here are some process images I made as I drew the boat…
Once I had my boat drawn I moved it to a jaunty angle…
…then added some big waves behind her…
Next I added big waves in front of her…
To finish it off I added some sea foam coming of the bow, a rather stoic Brixham fisherman in the wheelhouse and some threatening looking skies…
To get it ready for publicaiton I ported the image into Photoshop, made some final changes to the levels and added a border. Here is the final picture…
Looking at this image, I wonder what it would turn out like if I were to play around rather wildly with some ink, then draw on a small fishingboat and then add more ink on top? It could be a disaster (for the carpet around my dining table, as well as for the drawing)! Or it could be quite interesting. Do I have the courage to try it?
Over the last couple of weeks I have painted a cheerful little guy called Dardanus lagopodes, or the Hairy Red Hermit Crab. I used Winsor and Newton Professional Watercolours on A3 Arches Hot Pressed Paper.
