Start to A Portrait

 

For tonight’s painting session I decided to make a start on the portrait for my study group.

I used some of my new brushes that arrived today. I absolutely love my new “mural” brushes….the two inch flat is my favorite, just a wonderful way to lay down a huge swab of color.

Before I head off into the weekend…

Valerie, one of my Fine Art Friends has a new Etsy store. Valerie is clever with a colored pencil. She is also very good with a sewing machine. She has some unique products for sale – if I had a daughter she would get one of these for sure.

Spring’s Calling Card

Spring’s Calling Card

Purchase information to follow once it’s varnished

This is my entry for the Virtual Sketch Date this month. Thanks to Stacy Rowan for the reference photo and doing the admin work this time.

As I don’t do many bird paintings or drawings (maybe one or two so far), I decided to just experiment. I took branches from one side of the photo, put them under the bird on the other side, and flipped the whole thing horizontally.

I put in a wash of bright red as the ground as I knew I wanted to have flecks of red showing through the gray background. My original background was too cool, so I added in some yellow ochre…then splashed in some white to break up all the warmness…then decided it was done!

New Brushes

Royal Lily,

click here for purchasing information

There was a 40% off sale on Robert Simmons brushes recently at my local store. Naturally, I raced down there and bought a couple. Their “white sable” brushes have fast become my favorite to use with acrylics. I now have two flats, two filberts, and a round.

The question of edges has come out recently in relation to my art. There are plenty of decisions around when to have hard edges and when to soft ones. The choices you make create movement or slow it, give new direction or maintain it. In short, it’s a fascinating part of art making, one that I have only begun to appreciate.

A Great Blogging Tool

Single Tulip

4 in x 4in, open acrylics on Gessobord

not for sale

On my break recently, I made a discovery. It's not like it is a big secret, I just had never taken the time to think about it. I have discovered MS Live Writer. It's a software tool, like Scribefire, to help you blog.  I never imagined that I would use such a thing, seemed like just another complication. But honestly, I love it and wouldn’t be without now.

What you get:

• Write locally, then publish online.
• Great image handling software - I have been trying to put images in a table for the "pages" on my sales blog (such as my flower gallery or portrait gallery) - it hasn't worked until I used Writer.
• Lots of integration with other online apps, plugins etc.
• My current favorite plugin asks you if you want to update twitter with your new post – you click yes, it goes to twitter puts in your blog title and a shortened url. If you have things set up between twitter and facebook then it will go publish the same thing on facebook. All for one click, awesome!
• Here’s the official list of features
• Life Hacker’s ideas about how to use the features

Now, it is true that you wouldn't want to edit the code it generates, but you can edit old posts with it, so you shouldn't ever need to look at the html. It is really helping me dress up my posts, I'm thrilled!

Thinking

Thinking lots about edges, looseness, detail, form, value, color temperature, unity, etc...this is last night's effort at teasing out the image in my mind. It was based on this study.

Two Knights

Two Knights
open acrylics on gessobord
6in x 6in

I was reading about drawing from casts a few months ago. The author suggested spending lots of time in the school's cast library to learn...well, I don't go to art school, so I don't have a library. But later on it did occur to me that I could use chess pieces. Ideally, I would be able to find extra large pieces, but for a quick Friday night painting, the mini-cheapy ones worked.

This was a good exercise for me...finding that balance between detail and looseness. Interestingly, achieving both of them is equally difficult...rendering detail takes an observant eye and interpretative skills...being loose and free takes a creative "otherly" vision and intuition about when enough is suggested. I hope to continue learning the balance.

Another Moment in Painting Adventure

Last Friday night I took another step in my painting adventure. Above you see my third "painting" of the evening...the first two were just binned, nothing salvageable there. For this one, I had no reference. I just tried to do with paint the things that I believe paint can do.

So I mixed wet into wet and did washes to get the background...I just went for values and quick strokes to achieve my petals.

Of course I'm not where I would like to be, but I persevered. I desperately wanted to give up several times...but, as always, sticking with the hard task has its rewards.