New paintings and regular art updates.
Just a little painting of a green man with morning glory flowers. I thought it would be nice to add some bright colour to this. I chose morning glory because its a climbing plant that scrambles up and opens it’s flowers for a day. The flowers then wither to be replaced by new ones the next day.
Ouch… I’ve just finished putting mirror plates on the back of my paintings. You have to make holes in the back of canvas’s wooden supports and then screw them in place with two screws so they can be attached to gallery walls.
The problem is that the screws I have are small and have Phillips cross headed heads on them. The screws are made of harder metal than the screw driver and consequently the head of the screw driver had worn away. You can’t see this clearly on the photos though.
The the screw driver does not sit properly in the head of the screw, this means that they are really difficult to drive into the back of the canvas. I had to do this on 14 canvases, so 28 mirror plates and 56 screws. The wooden frames on canvases are not uniform, some are made with harder wood than others. In a couple of cases I had to use shorter screws because they would not screw all the way into the wood.
Now I have to list all the paintings so that I can take them down to the gallery on the morning.
I’ve worked myself to a standstill with this. I’m getting rather tired but I’ve got a lot more to do so I won’t stick around for long. Just having a breather.
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I’ve finally finished the Hare painting. I’ve added the Harebells. I’m not sure about the background. I may play with it tomorrow, but enough for one day’s work. I’m also not sure about the proportions of its head…. I’m too tired to think.
I went out this morning to go to the Orme Art group. We were supposed to do limited pallette paintings, white, red, yellow ochre and black. I cheated and used some cerulean blue in the background. I want to add harebells, a beautiful bell shaped flower found in the countryside. The image is an amalgum of a photo from a magazine that I’d taken a photo of and a photo off the Internet. I’m not sure if I will finish this or any of the other paintings at the moment. Every time I feel better I do stuff, then I feel ill again. I guess I’m trying too hard. But I wanted some really strong paintings for the exhibition. I hope they look good. Anyway I’m having a rest for half an hour.
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Painting bricks is hard. Especially when the image is tiny. I’m trying to get this finished, but so many bricks, I don’t like drawing them out with straight lines, so each one is a bit wobbly. We shall see….
Also it’s hard to work off a phone. I need to get photos I’m working on printed off.
Plus, I need to leave bits of the painting out. I don’t want metal fencing on the picture, or the striped barrier. But I will add the hanging baskets and flower tubs.
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Next week!
My exhibition. At centre space, the Spode Heritage visitors centre, Eleanora street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent
Preview night is on the Wednesday between 7 and 9pm. If you are around come along.
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Progress… Just a quick update.
Using various greens, it’s going to be monochromatic, no other colours but white, greens and some paynes grey.
May be finished by the weekend.
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Yes I’m painting my husband as a green man. This is about two hours in. I’m limiting the pallette to only greens white and dark grey. I think I’m getting a reasonable likeness to him although his nose may be a little long and his face is a bit narrow. The cheeky eyes staring out make me want to laugh, so often he’s serious, he’s got a lot on his mind. Also I rarely paint faces on this scale, it’s quite a big canvas so any mistakes are magnified. As you can see I have not sketched this out except initially in a darker green. I’m adjusting positions of his features as I go along. However I’ve stopped for a rest and to charge my phone as it is going flat and I’m holding the phone to work from. Modern day painting eh? And yes his nose needs to be bigger.
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I’ve started work on this painting after a gap of a few months. I think it just over faced me, it was too big, to difficult (I’m working on it by looking at my phone).
And this last few days I haven’t felt well enough, but I started work on it this morning and did a good few hours on it.
So, where am I painting? In the house, not my studio. That’s the other thing, physically I feel awful. Mentally, I’m OK but don’t feel like I want to go out. We went for lunch with a friend today, but came straight home afterwards because I was exhausted, literally shaking. I don’t think I’m getting worse, but it’s taking time to recover and I know I’m pushing myself. But I have an exhibition next week and I haven’t got everything done. It’s very last minute……
This morning I realised it will be forty years in September since I started my degree in fine art painting…and I have never stopped….
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Mallaband-Brown