New paintings and regular art updates.
Artists on Instagram are posting nine favourite images from 2021.
So here are nine favourite images I created over several years. I realised I haven’t done many paintings this year because of doing my Illustration course. These images include a couple of murals and a tiny painting. They show me as an eclectic artist who loves colour, the environment and also abstraction.
Oh I do like creating a dragon now and then. I decided to rotate my sky drawing and then add a bit of symmetrical drawing over the top. I think the result is quite cute.
It’s getting towards the end of the day, week, year and I’m looking at some of my older stuff. I might have to delete some of the earlier work. Memory on computers and phones seems to run out faster than humans!
My earlier ‘hope’ drawing with one lot of added texture, a smudge of gundge, then cropped to cut out my writing at the top. It’s amazing how quickly you can change something by just altering them slightly in an app. In this case I used photodirector. It’s OK, some of the stuff on it is too advanced for what I want, but I just use the simple stuff that’s free. What I don’t like is how a lot of art sites charge a monthly fee instead of letting you buy a package like you could in the past. Over time it adds up, and I can’t afford that.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt. What to draw for hope? I saw the sunset yesterday and hoped one day I would see a beautiful starling murmuration. But as I drew it I also thought of the Greek myth of Pandora and her accidentally releasing all the ills into the world until only one thing was left… Hope.
I wonder if the name Pandora is linked with the word Pandemic? As with many myths it seems like a woman always gets blamed for causing the trouble! By the way it took over an hour to add all the dots!
Have a great and safe 2022! X
I love doing this, mirroring a sky in layout app so it looks like the sky has been reflected in a calm sea or lake. I should try and draw on it to attempt to make the lower part look like real water. Possibly by adding slight wavelets or sparkling reflections. This was today’s sunset as the hill being our house was silhouetted by the growing dark.
I do try and be accurate with my paintings, hopefully getting good realism. I was once criticised in a newspaper review about an exhibition I was part of, they said if I wanted to be a super realist I should have tried harder. The thing was, I wasn’t trying for super realism! If the journalist had actually spoken to me I would have told him that. I do work from photos sometimes, particularly if it’s a commissioned portrait or painting of a landscape. If I do a painting of a steam train it’s got to look right, you can make it up. I love painting, which to me is the accurate manipulation of liquids on a surface. I do try. X
An acrylic on canvas painting I did in 2013. It popped up on my Facebook memories today. I can remember enjoying getting the texture of the building right. It looked like a great place to visit. This portrait was a Christmas commission. The person I did it for was very pleased.
My friend is offering a beautiful print for sale and as a limited edition (not the image here, it has similar colours). I would love it, and it’s at a fair price for an artist to charge. But all I could think was, car tax and other bills are due in January. I have to realise I cannot afford it. Now I feel guilty for just enquiring.
I realise I don’t charge enough for my art. I have this strange idea that I want my art to go to a good home, so I undersell, swap art, or offer ways people can pay in installments. But I’m also doing other artists a disservice. If I charge less, how can they charge more? I think it might be my upbringing. Having a belief in myself? I guess it’s just how I am.
Someone just put a comment on my Instagram account saying this combination of photos looks like an oil painting? It made me think about cooking. If something looks nice and colourful it should also be tasty. A collection of colours, textures, and the vessel the food is in all must have an effect on the psychology of how you taste and feel about a meal or a snack. I’m lucky to have enough to eat and a good choice of ingredients. I wish more people could have the chance to share.
This was the neighbours leylandii trees a couple of years ago. I think I wrote a post about the shock of seeing them being chopped down. They were very big, taller than the neighbours house and right next to it, but I don’t think trees should go.
But then, my media files were over 98% full tonight. The tree photo and several more have had to go. And yet I’m preserving this here… But just to make the point. The blog post is still there. Its too much of a challenge to remove them.
So if you see posts without photos (almost all of them do have my own artwork), I apologise but I want to keep this going…
Mallaband-Brown