New paintings and regular art updates.
A favourite painting done seven years ago. It was called Autumn Woman and was snapped up by an old friend. I like slightly surreal images, thinking about traditional art and giving it a slight twist. I may do a painting that includes leaves and fungi using this as an inspiration. I’m so happy with the colour combinations, I forgot that you can include blue as an autumnal colour.
I decided to do a bonus small painting to go with my bigger close up of a poppy. It’s called red poppy. It’s hard to come up with an original title. Lots of red used in these but I’ve tried to vary them and give that wrinkled feeling that poppies have.
My phone is doing strange things, especially when I’ve tried to upload images to my Facebook page today. I decided to optimise some of my photos because my phone memory is too full. Usually the images that I have shrunk stay on the phone and the others are deleted. But thus time everything doubled up. I tried deleting the old ones, but I had to restart the phone and my images seemed to get mixed up. I tried finding them and although I did the gallery kept reverting to the older ones. I guess I need to buy a new memory card? I don’t know if I can sort it out otherwise.
One of the hazards of painting is getting covered in paint! I stuck my thumb in my pallette and splodge, all over my thumb. Luckily I didn’t get any on my clothes! I can wash acrylic off my hands, but once it’s dried it’s impossible to get out of your top or trousers. Oil paint can sometimes be removed as it’s slow drying and you can use thinners to remove it, but once acrylic is dry it’s solid like plastic. You might be able to peel a bit off but it gets in between the fibers and sticks. Anyway, I love this colour blue. Ultramarine? Not sure….
Hard work, but I think it was worth it. I think some of my paintings are like knitting or embroidery, pulling all the threads together to bring it to a finished piece. And sometimes it’s knowing where to stop, to feel satisfied. Sometimes my hubby says I overwork things, but I think I know where I am with this. I decided not to add any bees or butterflies, I think that would just distract.
I turned my painting upside down because I’m struggling to reach the top with my aching and shaking arms. I’m working on the background. But it also helps me see shapes and tones and proportions. I need to decide if I want the background to be blurry? Perhaps I should change my brush size and try and blur the edges. I will turn it back in a while….
I am painting again. I’ve spent a few hours on this and it’s about a quarter done. I want to get it finished quickly because it needs taking in to the gallery, but I want to make sure it’s a good job. I’m layering u the flowers and I will be adding vegetation growing in front to give it more depth soon. I have to stand back from it to check how it fits together. But is it too busy?
Painted this today, only 5×5 inches. I might add more to the background. It’s meant to have droplets of water (like tears) on the petals. I’m also trying to emphasise the flower with a strong red but I don’t know if I should darken the greens. Still I have at least painted again.
I painted this a few years ago, it’s based on a poppy with a white centre. Most poppies have dark splodges in the centre. I think this looks more subtle. I’m toying with the idea of painting a mixture of both on a larger canvas? The background would be greens and straw coloured. Got to possibly block out or draw out their positions and then maybe add some forget-me-nots.
During lock down last year, members of the Orme Art Group collaborated in recreating this Cezanne still life. We took a square each and copied what we saw in whatever medium we liked. Some of the images were smaller or larger than others so when the picture was put together not everything lined up. Also the colours vary because each artist was working to their own image colour settings. I think the resulting collage is rather good. We did several separate challenges like this over covid.
Mallaband-Brown