Category: Fine Art

New picture wip

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Wip, work in progress. Someone has asked me for a painting of a green woman in green, brown and gold. I’m letting a little bit of red creep in. And turquoise too.

I want to model the shape to make it a bit more 3d so I will need to spend more time on it but it’s come on a lot considering I only started it today!

I actually went to the studio despite having a cold. Once I was in there I pout all the heating on. Snug in there but freezing in the corridors  Plus I’m planning a painting of Jupiter. We’ll a tryptich actually. 3 long canvases.. Photos to follow.

Work in progress, mermaid

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I decided to paint a mermaid but didn’t want it to be Disneyish. So I’ve used a photo of a victorian painting to work from. Obviously that face was not blue and I have changed the image in other ways to make it more interesting. I don’t have much more to do to it but I have left it for the moment. I will probably finish it off in the next couple of days..

Older paintings

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Some paintings I did are at my relatives house so I don’t see them very often. The painting I did of Jupiter is there. I do think it looks a bit “knitted”. I would love to do some paintings based on the latest images. I think that it would be very difficult to accurately copy the atmosphere of Jupiter.  Saturn’s rings would be equally difficult to render.

The other paintings are: a picure of our garden before it got madly overgrown. Two paintings of Bovisand, out over Plymouth sound and looking inland at the geology of the rocks. My husband standing under an old arch on the isle of Portland. A watercolour of a place called Jennycliff, which is on the south east side of Plymouth.

And finally a snow scene that I painted in the 1980’s. It was meant to represent the steppes and has Russian style onion domes in the background. I’m not sure where I got my idea from. I was reading Frank Herberts “Dune” trilogy at the time and I had never seen an image of the steppes…. But to me that’s part of what being an artist is about, pictures in your mind that you are trying to represent.

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Exhibition time

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It’s that time of year when I have a small exhibition of work at Etruria. An area of Stoke on Trent in the Staffordshire.  This year it came round fast.  I didn’t really know it was going to happen till a couple of days ago. I think I was feeling a bit down and so I hadn’t organised things very well.

The building it is in is an old warehouse next to the Trent and Mersey, and Cauldon canals. It’s a very old building, with an old canoe up in the rafters, and half a model canal boat up high at one end I the room. It also has some of the largest long legged spiders I have ever seen….but thankfully once I had set up they went into hiding.

Anyway its happened, its up. I’m selling cards and necklaces as well as paintings. I am not really good at doing that. I can be polite, helpful, and enjoy explaining the work I have done, but I don’t like selling, putting a price on things.

I’ve spoken to a few artists recently and they feel the same way. They want to be creative, because they are creative, not because they want to run a business. …

Anyway I think people enjoyed what they saw at the exhibition, I had some good feedback.

What  want to do now is start working on new art!

Poster?.

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I’m trying to come up with a design for a poster. I may have an exhibition at the weekend and I needed to produce something I can put on social media.  The only problem is I don’t know until Thursday night if I can use the room or not. I’m experimenting with ideas and  I quite like the drawing I that I created for the background.

I have quite a few new pictures and I hope people will like them. I have to hang it myself, so it will be a bit difficult. It will beat the Warehouse at the Etruria Flint Mill in Stoke-on-Trent.

Im not sure if there will be more text on it. There will have to be more pictures. Anyway, more to follow I it happens !

Copying a painting

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I’m try in to do a copy of a painting I did recently because it was up in a little exhibition and someone saw it and wanted a copy. My only problem is that I didn’t have a canvas the right size so I’m reusing one I’d started painting . Hence the marks showing through on the copy. But acrylic paint is opaque and they won’t be visible when I finish.

What I do need to do is make sure the face is accurate. I’ve made a start but the nose is wrong and I haven’t recreated the slight smile. Also I think the chin is wrong.

I don’t measure the distances, I judge by eye. I will be making adjustments to shapes, sizes, colours and tones all the way through doing this.

One thing I do like is the colour contrast in theis pictures.  Blue and orange/ochre always spark off each other.

Right, better carry on…..

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Getting better, need to adjust skin tones…

 

 

 

 

Escher cat

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My dear friend who runs a forge called Sculpted Steel.

Late last year I asked my friend if she could make me a cat for my garden. She took on the commission and I drew a quick sketch of what I wanted.

That was a few months ago. There have been a few hiccups and ups and downs, but I finally collected “Escher” today.

He is finely made. The details are brilliant. He even has green eyes! My friend took on board my request that the whiskers were to be curled roundcat the ends to stop anyone poking themselves in the eye. It has been finished off with green car paint.

Escher is now in a quiet part of the garden. He might even frighten off the neighbours cat, at least can’t pounce on the birds!

Little Devil

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I saw Adam from Hulton Art pottery today, which is based at the Spode pottery site. I bought a wall mounted bracket  (which is still wrapped in bubble wrap) but along with it he gave me a terracotta tile of what looks like a cheeky little devil..

I can’t  help liking his wide smile, the twinkle in his eyes, his spikey, possibly flaming coat, (the tile, not Adam!).

I asked if it was OK to paint this little guy, because he made me chuckle with laughter. It looks like something mediaeval that could have been a gargoyle on an old building. Adam told me it was made in about 1997, soon after he had completed his training in pottery, so it seems really special.  I feel privileged to have something that has age and character. This cheeky little devil is probably going to find a home on a window ledge somewhere.

I feel like he is related to the green men I have been painting over the last few years. Maybe they all have a feeling of spirit of the Earth in them. An old hidden life that we have lost as the world becomes ever more urban around us. I like the idea  of faeries and little people getting up to mischief.

I remember one if my favourite paintings when I was a teenager was Richard Dadds’ the Faeiry Fellers masterstroke. He was put into a mental asylum because of ‘madness’ but I don’t know his history apart from that. Dadds’ painting has amazing tiny details. If you can try looking it up on the net.

Anyway I might post a follow up picture of the little devil if I ever finish it.

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Nebula

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Just spent two hours going from a blank canvas to this. I’m trying to paint Planetary nebula NGC 2044. May have got the number wrong?

Anyway I saw the canvas last week and decided to have a go at something. I was going to paint the moon  but decided on something a bit more colourful….hmm there I go again!

Anyway, astronomers out there will see its not accurate, but its bloody difficult to hold a book in one hand and the canvas in the other…not doing my back any good. Its now 2am. I have an appointment at 9.30am, I dont know why I’m still up? Well yes I do, my artists block is well and truly broken. I have finished 8 tiny paintings today and started this!

I sort of explode sometimes with art.. can’t help it. I am so full of ideas sometimes…..but…bed…ok..bed..hmmm…coffee? No..bed…

Night all!

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This is the finished painting. Sorry about the lighting!

Yesterdays Art

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Some paintings I have worked on and a Mini Mona Lisa. ..

The first four are recent paintings that I have worked on because I was not happy with them. Water and Earth are both part of a series (including Air and Fire) I also want to improve them.

Leaves was originally a single leaf but it was very simple and I wanted to add more to it. The leaves are from my imagination. I sometimes use art as a way of helping my memory. If I can remember what something looks like I can use the memory for other paintings and not necessarily use reference photos. I dont have a photographic memory but I sometimes describe an image to myself, like the way a gutter and drainpipe are attached to a house. If I can describe it I can draw or paint it.

Autumn pottery is based on a “pot bank” the kilns that were used for firing pottery in the past. Now they use gas tunnel kilns. The plants are roses and cotoneaster. They are to represent vegetation growing around old, derelict pot banks. The blue background could be sky, or the water from local canals.

The final painting was a quick copy of the Mona Lisa, taken from a very old book on anatomy for student artists. I know it is wrong, the face is too thin, the smile is wrong. But for half an hour’s work its not bad. It’s on a tiny canvas about 1 inch by 2 inches.

So there you are, more paintings, its something I do.