Felicia In Coloured Pencil

Before I start talking art, a bit of news.  I retired on Tuesday.  Eighteen months without a contract and the likelihood of my father's will being sorted by the end of the year?  Yeah, time to call it a day and make retirement official.  It won't make much difference to my lifestyle but at least I won't be going through life not knowing whether I'll need to drop everything at a week's notice to start a new contract.

Anyway, it's coloured pencils today and it's a third modelling gig in eighteen days for Felicia.  There's absolutely nothing new about today's techniques.  I just went through my usual well established process.

I think this one's decent enough, despite the shape of the left thigh.  It's up for sale.

That was a short post.

Looking Up At L3, Christ's College

And finally today, we're back home in Christ's College.  This was the first to be drawn on Sunday and the last to be painted today.  It's a view from First Court of the main gate leading out of the college.  But, more importantly, the window at the top of the gate is the bay window in L3, my second year room.  As well as that bay window with its amazing view over First Court, the room boasted access to the roof, with even more amazing views of both e college and the street outside.  Having to not put the door on the latch the night before royal birthdays so that the porters could put the flag up was a small price to pay. I should add that there was a separate bedroom within the room that the porters didn't need to enter, so it's not as bad as it sounds.

Anyway, the iPad picked these colours for me:

I have to say that's a pretty good set of colours.  A red, a blue and a sunny looking orange, making up a purple warm key.  Here's what the swatches looked like:

It looks like what I'd expect from a purple warm key, bright colours with the exception of the dull looking green.  I was optimistic.

And the final result is at the top of the page. It's the best of the three but still not great.  The drawing's OK and the colours are realistic, but maybe too realistic.  And again the paper's not helping.

Looking Out From Clare College Memorial Court

Next up is Clare College, and this is a view looking out from Memorial Court through the big archway into it.

Here's the drawing I did on Saturday:

I think the drawing was a good start.  There's plenty of variety in the thickness of the edges and there,s plenty of over the top detail.

Here are the colours the iPad picked for me:

It's not the greatest set of colours, with two of them earthy and indigo being full on dark.  Here's wha5 they looked like on cold pressed paper:

The swatch was actually quite encouraging.  I thought I might be able to find a good red for the roof, an understated grey for the buildings and a dark neutral for the shadows.

But what did I end up with?  Junk again.  Part of me wishes I'd been given a bright sunny yellow like transparent yellow instead of raw sienna but there's another part of me wanting to blame the paper.

The WongAvery Music Gallery, Trinity Hall, Cambridge

I've had two trips to Cambridge this week.  On Sunday I had to drop off number two son at his Trinity Hall accommodation.  He's just starting a four year engineering course.  The following day I was back, dropping off number one son for the fourth year of his engineering course at Clare College.  I had to rush home on the Monday but the Sunday trip was more relaxed.  I had a good look round all three of my family colleges and came up with three dash and splash drawings.  It's only today, three days after the dashing, that I'm actually splashing.

Trinity Hall was actually the third college I visited, but the first whose painting I completed today.  I came up with this drawing of the WongAvery Music Gallery, a brand new music room in the middle of one of the courts and with a grand piano and (I think) some seating for performances.

I must admit it's not my greatest drawing - you can see out on the right where I started off making the building too wide.  I was getting a bit jaded at this point, maybe because the architecture in these colleges is so complex.

And for colours, the iPad picked these three:

Here's how the three colours looked on a bit of cold pressed watercolour paper:

You know, I really had high hopes that these colours would work after seeing that swatch.  But they didn't.  I'm sure it's this hot pressed paper that I'm using.  The colours don't soak into it or mix together.  They just sit on the top.

I do have to take most of the blame for this one being a flop but I need to think seriously about switching to cold pressed paper for these dash & splashes, even if the pens would prefer hot pressed.

Bailey

After a few days off dealing with all sorts of other stuff in my life, I'm back to work again.  Today it's some figure drawing in coloured pencils and it's a debut for Bailey as model.

There's nothing new to say about my methodology.  I put down the starting drawing using a 5x7 grid of squares.  Then I put on the colour.  Throughout the process I would stare at the painting and try to identify which colour was missing.  Then I'd add the colour where could see it in the source photo and then in some places where I just fancied putting it down.  Some of those places were influenced by how I was drifting into putting warmer colours on rightward and downward facing edges and cooler onto leftward and upward.

After I thought enough colour was on. I burnished the painting all over.  I used a light grey on the tablecloth, raw sienna on the hair and a combination of white and beige red on the flesh.  Afterwards I tinkered by adding more colour on top: some sepia in the shadows on the cloth (where I tried to get soft edges), indigo on all the shadiest bits on the body and a few different colours in the hair.  I also outlined all the body and hair in indigo.  Finally I put in a greeny blue background.

While this one's not terrible it won't be going up for sale as there are a few things about it that bug me:

- the sticky out bit at the top of the left thigh sticks out too much

- the right arm out in the left doesn"t harmonise with the rest of the body, so doesn't look like part of it

- the hair feels a bit too intensely coloured compared to the rest of the body

- worst of all, the right shoulder looks instead like part of a very wide neck

On the other hand, the tablecloth looks ok this time, with no signs of laziness, and the colours on the body (the indigo in particular) look good.

The Encyclopaedia Of Coloured Pencil Techniques: Judy Martin - Book Review

And here it is, the last of the books I got for my birthday to be reviewed.  It's a 176 page paperback.  It's a book of two halves, with about half of it on techniques and half of it a gallery for inspiration.  I'll talk about these two sections separately, then move on to common themes and the rating.

So first there's all the techniques.  38 techniques are described, each of them given a maximum of two pages of discussion.  I was disappointed in this section.  Maybe the clue was in the name of the book but this really did feel like reading an encyclopaedia. It was a series of separate articles that could be picked out and read at random; I'd rather have gone on a journey.  A beginners' book needs to start slowly, then introduce important techniques one at a time, maybe with some longish demonstrations.  I got none of that.  Burnishing was covered in only two pages; the paintings in the book look much more shiny than mine but there was nothing there to tell me what I'm doing wrong.  And there wasn't even any structure to the first half.  A list of 38 really needs to be presented as a list of lists rather than a big list.  You know, just divide it into separate groups covering drawing, colouring, advanced techniques, mixed media, that sort of thing.  And there are things in there that I really wasn’t interested in.  All the mixed media stuff for a start but the worst bit was a couple of pages on how to correct errors in your drawing by cutting them out and filling the hole with another piece of paper cut to the same shape and sticky taped on the back.  Is she kidding me?

Then there was the gallery.  A mix of some really good paintings and some absolute cack.  I mean, what is this?  It doesn't even look like coloured pencil

The words accompanying the paintings are unhelpful.  Judy praises everything she sees and loses credibility in my eyes.  The paintings are divided up into landscapes, objects, nature and people (happy with that, the sort of list of list that I thought was missing in the first half) and there are some words around these subjects and around smaller subjects within them (e.g. all the different types of landscapes) but these reminded me too much of Garth Crooks on BBC Sport.  Garth likes to make really obvious comment then sit there pouting as if he's come up with something really profound.  Judy hits us with amazing insights about how textile patterns get messed up when there are folds or how animals and kids move more than bowls of fruit.  When she wasn't Garthing, she'd be telling us you can give the impression of movement with coloured pencil marks but then not tell us how.

There are some common themes to both sections that are worth mentioning.

- They both included demonstrations but none of them went into the level of detail that I needed as a beginner.

- The tone of the book was abrupt and choppy, from the encyclopaedia style in the first half to Garth Crooks in the second.  It took me days to get through the whole book, and that's not a compliment.

- There was a lot of really poor artwork throughout the book.  Three of the four extended demos in the second half were really poor, although not as bad as the one in the photo above.

- Maybe it's my age but the writing was really small in places and difficult to read.  I've never had this problem with other books.

- There was too much mixed media work featured.  Some of the show on show were watercolours where coloured pencil only played a tiny cameo role.

But were there any positives?  No, can't think of any.  Beginners need to be led on a journey and this book doesn't do that.  The quest for a beginners book on coloured pencils goes on.

🎨

Stockbury Church Tower

For my final dash and splash of the day, I headed out to Stockbury Church and settled down in a spot that I'd painted from before.  After not being happy with my previous two drawings (and this was before heading home to paint them) I was determined to come up with something different and interesting.  So I exaggerated the perspective, making the vertical lines converge together more quickly than they really did as I headed upwards.

Here's the drawing I ended up with:

It doesn't actually look up to much at this stage, does it?

When I got home, the computer picked out these three colours:

I must admit I was worried about this triad.  Would the indigo and the orange be too opaque and make muddy mixtures?  Would the orange be yellow enough for my needs?  Could I even make greens?  I thought this was looking like a hospital pass.

Anyway, as this was the last of the three, I was in the mood to go out with a bang.  Rather than try to replicate colours (apart from some green for the trees), I wanted to enter into the spirit of dash and splash by just throwing on the colours and allowing them to do their thing.  So that's what I did.  The only thought that went into the painting was to have indigo on the darkest places and orange in the lightest.  Apart from that, I just let it all go crazy.  I also threw on some salt to create some texture.

Once the tree and church were done, I put in the sky using the same techniques as I'd use for a conventional watercolour, wetting the sky area, tipping up the painting, dropping in some blues, then the odd bit of red and some orange at the bottom.  And then dabbed a bit at it with toilet paper to create some clouds.

And look what an amazing work I ends up with! This is what dash and splash is all about.  Expressive drawing and crazy colours giving this building some real personality.  And there's no way I would ever have picked out those colours without divine intervention.  This one's up for sale.

MB Farms, Stockbury

After drawing the pub, I wandered up the road to MB Farms, Stockbury's village shop and the closest shop to those of us in Hartlip.  MB Farms boasts a fantastic award winning butchers, where you'll find Clive Anderson behind the counter.  A lot of the frontage of the shop is black wooden boards and I quite fancied going to town with the colours rather than painting on a dull, dark neutral colour.

I started off with this drawing:

It's a pretty poor drawing in my part.  It was badly planned, with the bottom of the doorway missing (if I was going to focus on the doorway, why didn’t I go for portrait format?).  And there's something wrong with the perspective.  The tapering brick shape to the left of the door looks like the wall of the shop (which it is) but it’s opposite shape on the right looks like it's sticking out.  A poor effort.

The computer picked me out these three colours:

With a warm red and a violet and a yellow from the opposite side of the colour wheel, this is a complementary colour scheme.  I'd normally be quite happy with this but the door of the shop and the sign above it are green and there's no way I can get a green from these three colours.  Still, yellow ochre makes for a good brick colour and violet should be a good substitute for a shiny black, so there was some hope.

I ended up with a decent sky and brickwork and passable woodwork.  It's such a shame I couldn't make any greens.  This would have been a very different painting if I'd been given a yellow rather than either the blue or the violet.  But in the end this has to go down as a flop.  I did well with the colours I was given but the initial drawing was poor and I really needed some green.

The Harrow, Stockbury

Sunday is always a good day for a dash and splash and today I've trekked out to my neighbouring village of Stockbury to do three drawings before dashing back home and so,asking in random colours chosen by the computer.  The first subject I chose was The Harrow, the village's community-owned pub.

I started with this drawing:

The drawing was quite rushed.  That's not always a bad thing, although the roof tiles don't look as good as some that I've done before.  The bigger problem was the shadow in front of the pub.  I tried adding it with the brush pen in my set but the blackness was too inconsistent.  I'm going to stick to small black shapes in future.  They look better and the brush pen will last longer before running out.  I ended up going all over the shadow with a black marker.

After dashing home, I was presented with these three colours:

I didn’t think it looked like too bad a choice.  A yellow, a blue and a reddy brown that would suit the brickwork.  And maybe the brown could give me a dark neutral when mixed with the blue,  but it just didn't work.  I couldn’t get that dark neutral that I was looking for, so there are just muddy browns where I wanted dark colours.

This one was a flop and won't be going in the shop window.  I'm just as much to blame as the iPad.

Tweaking The Random Colour Generator

As an actuary, I'm feeling professionally bound to disclose that I've made some tweaks today to the spreadsheet that chooses three random colours for my dash and splash paintings.

I start with 22 colours sorted into seven colour groups (red, yellow, blue, orange, green, violet and brown).  The spreadsheet picks one of the 22 at random: all are signed equal probability.

Before picking a second colour, I eliminate all the other colours in the same colour group as the first colour.  So if my first colour's Prussian blue, I eliminate all other blues.  The spreadsheet then picks out a second colour, assigning equal probabilities to all other colours.

None of that's changed.  What I've made a change to is the procedure for picking a third colour.  For my first ten dash & splash paintings, I would pick a third random colour after eliminating all colours in the same groups as the first two colours and assigning equal probabilities to all the remaining colours.  The problem I found with this was that the spreadsheet would occasionally throw out ugly triads: the village hall painting I was presented with a blue, a brown and a violet and  the painting inside the Tuck Inn, I was given a green, a yellow and a brown.  When you stop to think about it, you realise there are some combinations of the three colour families that work and some that don't.

So I've created a table of the 35 possible triads with a column of ones and zeros to tell the spreadsheet whether that particular combination is allowed.  So now, the way things work is that:

- the first and second colours are chosen the same way as before

- for the third colour, the spreadsheet eliminates all the colours in the same groups as the first two colours and all colours in groups that are not allowed to form triads with the groups for the first two colours.  Then  it chooses one of the remaining colours, assigning an equal probability to each one.

The table of colours may get tweaked over time if I find certain combinations don't work or decide to bring back previously banned triads: all I need to do is to change the ones and zeros.

One weird combination worth mentioning is brown, yellow and red.  It's a combination that I'm allowing, despite the lack of any blue within the set.  This is actually the only combination that includes both red and brown: without it the spreadsheet would be left with no balls in the bag if the first two colours picked were a red and a brown.  I just don't see blue, violet or green working with red and brown: things would get too dark and/or muddy.  Of course if I want to ban all red/brown combinations, I can just reclassify burnt sienna and burnt umber as reds, leaving me with five reds and no browns.

Anyway, I'm glad I got that off my chest.  If any future dash & splashes are flops, I won't be able to blame the iPad. 

Hills In Shire Colours

As I said in the last post, I felt like I could do a second quick painting today.   Because I’d managed to paint an imaginary landscape quite quickly using the tundra watercolours, I thought it made sense to repeat the exercise with the Shire supergranulators.  And, what's more, I thought I'd paint a very similar scene.

As normally happens, I've supplemented the Shire set with cerulean blue (because Shire blue is too green for skies) and rose dore (to both tone down and complement the greens).  Cadmium yellow and titanium white were also called upon towards the end, the yellow for a major role and the white for a cameo.

I started with cerulean blue, rose dore and Shire grey in the sky.  Just as with the last painting, I wet the sky first, dabbed in colours wherever I wanted to, tipped up the board and dabbed out some white.  It took me two or three attempts to get this one right in places but the paper was wet enough to be forgiving.

Then I worked my way down all the grassy shapes, throwing in all five Shire colours and the rose dore.  I found the Shires to be a bit low on pigmentation and needing to be put on much drier than tundra colours.  These will run out quite quickly.  I also didn't notice that much difference between the Shire green and Shire olive.  I don't think I'll be replacing this set of colours when they run out.  I did throw on some salt at one point and its effects are visible on the background hills.

To match today's first painting, I needed to add trees in the foreground.  The low pigmentation of these Shire colours gave me similar problems to painting trees using Shire colours.  So I needed to be rescued by cadmium yellow again.  The trees were all stabbed in with dry paint on a Merlin brush, Shire blue in the middle, cadmium yellow on the left, Shire grey on the right.  Just as with the earlier painting, I wet the bottom of the trees and brushed them into the foreground to link things together.

As finishing touches, I added not just the birds but also a circle of stones on top of what might otherwise have been a boring round topped hill.  And I added some tiny white highlights to the stones and some white bits to the birds.

And you know what, I think this is another success.  It's the moody sky and the colours in the hills that are the highlights.  And I like how, while most of the cadmium yellow has turned to green, there are a few bits that are still yellow, creating extra interest.  Needless to say, this one is up for sale.

Hills In Tundra Colours

The rain's finally stopped, so I'm back on the watercolours at last.  I thought I'd let myself back in gently by painting an imaginary landscape and by giving the tundra supergranulators a runout.  No pressure, just all the fun of painting.  As well as the five supergranulating tundra colours, I've used cadmium yellow.  More on that later.

I started off with a sky of tundra blue, tundra violet and tundra pink.  It's just impossible to go wrong with those colours.  I thoroughly wet the sky area first then dropped in the three colours wherever I fancied, with the board tipped up.  I tipped the board up and let the colours run, stepping in to mop up puddles with a dry brush and dabbing out the odd white area with kitchen paper.

Then I added the mountains, using whatever colour I fancied everywhere.  This is where I noticed the tundra green and tundra orange actually blending nicely into the other three colours.  Up to now I was resigned to mainly using them for things like buildings but, no, they're proper landscape colours.

Before adding the foreground hill, I tried painting some buildings along the top on the left of the painting using paint straight from the tube and a palette knife and later a credit card.  I'd seen Steve Mitchell (The Mind Of Watercolour) do something similar on YouTube, then spray the building shapes and, when the paint started running down, sweep the dribbles across the foreground.  It didn’t work for me, though.  I couldn't get the right shapes on the paper.  So I decided to cover up the resulting problem area with trees.

I know from prior experience that I can't just add foreground trees with these tundra paints and that I need help from outside the palette.  So, while the trees were initially stabbed in with dry tundra green paint on a Merlin brush, I also needed to stab in some cadmium yellow down the left sides of the trees and some shadowy tundra blue down the right sides.  I also wet the bottom of the trees and brushed them into the closest foreground area to keep everything connected together.

Then I added the birds as a finishing touch.

I rate this painting as a success and it's going up for sale.  The sky's moody and there are interesting colours in the mountains and interesting textures in the foreground.  Perhaps most importantly, I'm starting to understand how to make these colours granulate.

This painting came out pretty quickly.  I don't know whether this was because I had one eye on the dark clouds in the North or because I was so excited to be back on the watercolours or because imaginary landscapes are quicker than real ones but it was one of my faster ones.  I felt like I had more in the tank and could do another quick painting.

To be continued in the next post.

Felicia In Inktense Pencil

It,s raining again and three successive days of drawing with coloured pencils would see my standards really drop, so I'm back to inktense pencils.  It's a second successive appearance for yesterday's model, Felicia.

The plan was to draw Felicia freehand rather than dividing the paper and source photo into grids.  I managed to put down just a couple of lines before giving up and reaching for the ruler.  Using a grid is going to be mildly embarassing if I make it into Drawers Off.

For colours today, I used chilli red, fuchsia, Shiraz, bright blue and baked Earth.  I wanted a green in there too but, rather than reaching for my usual leaf green I thought I'd try something different.  I started with apple green as it was the longest of my green pencils but quickly decided it was too bright (even for me) so switched to field green, another rarely used green.  Looking at the results, I'm wondering whether field and apple greens just aren't up to the task for figure drawing and whether I should just stick to leaf green, with the occasional teal green if I have lots of brown to balance it.  I also used some deep indigo for outlines after looking back at Wake Up Kevin, but this time I applied indigo before adding water.

For Felicia's hair, I put in one of the reds and one of the blues and then later some indigo.  I think it worked out well enough, harmonising better with the rest of the painting than if I just plucked out some grey or brown.

I was brave including a face and two hands and actually adding some features to the face.  I think the left hand and face are just about OK but the right hand isn't.

The indigo outline is different.  Personally I don’t think it works.  It makes Felicia look like a 2D cutout, detracting from all the good work I've done in making her three dimensional.  Comparing to Wake Up Kevin, I think indigo edges must work better for dark coloured compositions.  And maybe better if the edges are all straightened.

Then there's the smudging on Felicia's left arm.  I'm not sure how this happened but I like it.  I liked the smudge (and disliked everything else) so much that I tried smudging in other areas without success.  Still, the smudge has been mired as a possible dutire idea to create some movement and energy.  While in an experimental mood, I also dropped some water onto Felicia in places to see whether it could create some interesting cauliflowers.  There is one at the top of her right thigh that looks interesting but, I can't lie, I can't remember whether that was the result of one of my experimental drips.

Overall, I think this is a flop, so it won't be going up for sale.  Why?  Well there's  the right hand, the 2D effect of the indigo edges, a muscle above the right breast that I can see is missing, the right nipple being in the wrong place, a funny concave edge at the top of the left thigh.  No, not a good day at the office today.  If I'd done this painting two or three years ago, I might instead be celebrating: m6 standards a4 gradually creeping upwards.  Hopefully the rain will all be gone tomorrow and I can get back to watercolour, otherwise I might just take the day off.

Felicia

It's still raining here and more's due tomorrow.  I know I'm overdue a watercolour but I can't be going outside in this weather, so I'm stuck indoors with either inktense pencils, coloured pencils or markers.  Today it's the coloured pencils again and the model is Felicia, making her debut.  I picked out this Thor-like pose, thinking it would be more challenging that the static poses that I normally pick.

I need to keep challenging myself with these paintings, I really do.  The thing I did differently today was to set out with the intention of allowing all the value shapes on the body to have curved edges so that I could sculpt a bit of three dimensionality.  Yesterday I was too intent on keeping straight edges everywhere, even in all the shadowy value shapes.

One bad habit I've settled into in these figure drawings is using grids to get my starting drawing down.  Quite fine grids too: seven by five for the coloured pencil drawings.  I do need to get out if this habit.  Maybe I'll start tomorrow.

So, yes, I got down the original drawing and then coloured it in, using darker colours in the darkest places and otherwise putting colours where I could see them or just where they felt right.  I think I started with blues, putting down the darkest areas with warmer blues on the right and cooler on the left.  I then spotted some reds in the cheeks, so added reds there and in some other places like the hands and feet.  Screwing up my eyes, I thought the painting needed some green as, so added them.  Then some yellows.  I just carried on like this, looking for what colours were missing them and adding them in.

Obviously, the hair, the blanket and the stick had their own colours.  The stick was pretty straightforward with loads of different browns, darkest on the right and lightest on the left.  But for the hair and blanket, I was a bit more free and easy, just putting on whichever colours I fancied.

For the final burnishing, I used ivory all over the body and some blues and greys on the blanket.  I outlined the figure in blue, with a warm ultramarine on the right facing edges and a cool pthalo on the left facing.  With blue looking pretty dominant, I shaded the background in orange, its complement.  When I stood back, I wasn't convinced my shadows were dark enough, so I went over them with the edge of a Prussian blue pencil and the colour stayed on despite the earlier burnishing.

The final result looks OK and is worthy of a place in the shop window.  But the pencil strokes on the blanket look lazy and I need to put down outlines that match the adjacent colour.  It generally looks like I've been following a recipe.  I do need to mix things up a bit.

Thea's Back

More angular figure drawing and today's model was Thea.

You know the drill by now.  Put down the drawing with lots of straight lines, put on lots of colour either wherever I can see it or wherever I fancy, then burnish it at the end by putting on one last coat pushing the pencil down hard to flatten the paper.

Today I was feeling quite value focused.  I started by putting down lots of Prussian blue in the darkest places, but as more and more paint was added, this dark showed up less and less.  So when the burnishing stage came (and after burnishing the hair in sepia) I started with a dark grey in the darkest areas.  I tried to give these areas a hard straight edge on one side but to lessen the burnishing away from that edge so that it could blend into lighter burnishing elsewhere.  I was less than happy with this, so went over the grey with black along the straight edges, blending it into the grey.  That looked a bit better.

I then finished off by:

- burnishing the blanket in cream,

- shading in a blue background that varied from cool blues at ethe top to warm at the bottom, and

- adding black outlines on left facing edges and helioblue reddish outlines on the right facing.

And the final verdict?  The black shadowy shapes are a bit too colourless for my tastes and the right shoulder blade is bothering me a little.  But the blue, red, yellow and green colours all worked out nicely - that side of things is definitely improving.  The pinch on the left of Thea's waist is good - the pinch is something I always include and that's vital to an6 figure drawing.  And there's a consistency between the angle of the head and the angle of the background pencil strokes that makes it look as if Thea is staring directly into a rain shower.  This one is definitely going up for sale.

Abou5 four or five months after posting this, I realised the model was Thea, not Katya.  Now corrected.

Niecy

It's been a while but the weather today was just right for oil pastels.  No rain, warm enough to paint outside, not so hot that the pastels melt.  I wanted to do some figure drawing because I wanted to have fun sculpting shapes with my fingers.  Today's model is Niecy, making her debut.

As usual, I put down a pencil outline, filled it with spots from the pastels, trying to have at least three colours everywhere and then smoothed it all our using my fingers in the bigger shapes and tools in the smaller shapes.  I started in the darkest areas with sap green because it's one of the darkest colours and it's not brown or black, which are a bit too plain for my style.  After that, I used different greens in different value shapes and the whole green colour scheme just stuck, even when I threw lots of other colours into the mix.  Because this was all about having fun. I didn’t bother leaving white highlights: any highlights would have to be added in oil pastel.  The finger smoothing is not only great fun but also adds dimension to the painting, more dimension than I seem to be able to add in other media.

In some places, the edges were fuzzy. I quite liked this; it added some energy and I deliberately fuzzed some edges in other places.  There were also a few messy fingerprints in the background.  After thinking for a while, I took the brave step of covering the whole background with fingerprints and blurring them in places.  At first I prepared my fingertips by dabbing them into the colour that was already on the paper; later, when there wasn’t enough surplus colour left, I just rolled the pastels around between my fingertips.  The final result is that the background looks like a dirty wall in an abandoned building.

I've ended up with a decent painting, which is going up for sale.  The best things about it are the sculpted body lines; its weak point is the fingers behind the head but they're not a disaster.  The fingerprints background will no doubt be divisive but I quite like it.

This is my first oil pastel work since early July, before my birthday and before coloured pencils, dash & splash and the supergranulating Schmincke watercolours.  It's interesting to see how my style's changed in that time.  I noticed two changes.  One was that I was really free and easy with the colours; the other was that I was working much more quickly than before.  Maybe it's because today was a day for fun and things will change back when I'm painting landscapes or portraits with the pastels.

Four Views From A Californian Bus Stop

The idea came to me over the weekend when I was watching a famous Hitchcock film on the telly.  There's a famous scene of someone waiting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere and I was struck by four particular shots in the film showing the two sides of the road and the road disappearing into the distance in both directions.  I decided I had to do this quadtitch (is that a word?).  I found where the scene was filmed;  it's on a road running East to West in California.  So these are views looking North, South, East and West, as indicated by the compass in the middle.

The main colours are cerulean blue, Winsor red, burnt sienna and Indian yellow, so this is in the key of orange cool.   I picked Winsor red and Indian yellow for their warmth and threw in the burnt sienna as another warm red for a bit of variety and earthiness.  I picked a cool blue after seeing a tip from Hazel Soan in this book talking about how cool blues in the sky can make warm foregrounds look warmer than warm blues in the sky.  There's also a little bit of raw sienna at the bottom of some of the skies and some titanium white highlights in places.

I started this one last night, first measuring up and putting down masking tape and then putting down pencil drawings.  I didn’t fancy leaving the paper around for days with masking tape on it, so was determined to finish the painting this morning, even if it meant setting up shop under the eaves of the garage to stay out of the rain.

The first thing I did today was to put down some masking fluid.  I wanted some sunny highlights in the roads and fields, some white lines on the road, a crisp white shirt shape on Cary Grant and a little bit of spatter to five a dusty impression.

There's not much to say about how I put down the paint except that I wasn't too worried today about asphalted bleeding into each other: the subject suited a loose approach.    Once the four subpaintings were complete, I painted on the compass.  I managed to find some interesting neutral colours for this.  The circular compass dial was originally a bit too saturated, in a vivid red/orange colour but a dab with kitchen paper got me to a more washed out colour that I was happy with.  I've left the needle slightly more saturated than the dial but I think that was necessary.

I'm reasonably happy with this one.  The Cary Grant figure has worked out fine and I like how (in the North and East paintings in particular) the edges are all a bit blurred, giving the impression of a hot, hazy day.  But most of all I like the colours.  The cerulean blue is the star, supported by all the browns and oranges that complement it from the other side of the colour wheel.  The green trees in the North view add a little bit of variety.  My only complaint is that the compass is pointing a bit too close to North West whereas I'd rather it was midway between North and North West.

This one's going up for sale.

Sam

It's raining outside, which is a big frustration because I have a great idea for my next watercolour.  Instead I'm stuck indoors and thought I'd have a go at a monotone painting with the inktense pencils to remind myself that I don't have to go crazy with the colours every time and to get in a bit of practice with values.  I think there's some stuff from the Tony Smibert book rattling around my head, along with some tips on drawing people from a Liron Yanconsky YouTube video.

Today's model is Sam, making her debut.  I picked this photo because it had some great lights and darks and in between shades: an ideal subject for a monotone painting.

I picked indigo as my colour.  It's the best inktense colour in my collection for painting in monotone.  Just going off on a tangent for a second, that's got me wondering whether there are sepia inktense pencils.  They’d be pretty good for monotone paintings and there will be spare slots in my case available if and when I throw away the white and marker pencils that I never use.

Anyway, I did the usual thing, putting down a pencil outline, then adding colour with the side of the pencil.  I had four values in mind.  In putting down the colour, I put lots down in the darkest places and a medium amount in the second darkest, leaving the two lightest value areas empty.  It was only when I wet the pencil marks that I brushed some of the colour from the two darkest values into the third darkest value areas.  The lightest areas I just left white - something I've not been doing enough just lately.  And I left a couple of lost edges.

Overall, this looks like a success to me.  If I were to be given the chance to do anything differently, I'd blend in and soften some of the edges of the darkest shapes but that's getting picky.  The best bit about this one are the white highlights on the body.  And I'm also quite pleased that the hands and foot didn't come out too badly.  Sam's up for sale.

Turner's Apprentice, A Watercolour Masterclass: Tony Smibert - Book Review

Still making my way through my pile of birthday books and today it's this work by Tony Smibert.  It's a 144 page paperback in landscape format.

The book takes a long, long time to get started with a 30-page introduction that really doesn't say anything and that I'll never read again. With the book closing with 20 pages of the author's own Turner-inspired work that looks nothing like Turner, that leaves only about 90 pages of written material in the middle.

And, looking through those 90 pages I can only count eight tips.  I'm amazed that someone can write so much while saying so little.  One of those eight tips is to go to an art gallery, observe Turner's works closely and try to copy the works or the ideas.  That's not really a useful tip, is it?  I was hoping this book would do a lot of that work for us by identifying those ideas and saving us the trouble.  I don't want to say much about those other seven tips because that would give everything away and make the book worthless.

There are some demonstrations in the book which I quite like as they're not dogmatic.  They're more like exercises with Tony's attempts at them than something of Tony's that the reader's expected to copy.

There are some great paintings in this book, and it scores highly on inspiration.  I can look at the paintings in the book and think about how Turner put the paint down which, to be fair, is something Tony's trying to get us to do.

It's time to make the final judgement.  Thinking about the Turneresque techniques in the book, they have a lot in common with techniques that I've seen in three other books: one by Ann Blockley, one by Kees Van Aalst and one by Nita Engle.  I think all three of those books provide better and more passionate explanations of those techniques.  So it's hard to find a way for me to find a place for Tony's book on the shelf.  I can think of two vague reasons for buying it: it's up to you to decide whether they make a case.  The first reason is the look of the book, with all the inspiring work within it.  The second is that the book doesn't just try to learn from Turner.  It also teaches the reader how to learn from other artists: all the different things to look for, how to identify brushmarks, how to learn from the artist, that kind of thing.  If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, then this could be the book for you.

For me, though, it's a book that I don't regret putting on the wishlist but that I wouldn't buy again if I lost it.  That means it gets two palettes.

🎨🎨

David Bowie

In the mood for a coloured pencil drawing today, so looked at the CD collection and decided to go for Bowie.  The CD collection is pretty good inspiration for this sort of thing.  With sportspeople it's a case of seeing someone on the telly and thinking they might make a good subject.  I can't ever sit down and think of a sportsperson to paint.  With music, though, everyone's a potential subject and my CD collection is a huge vault of ideas.

Four bits to the methodology worth mentioning today:

- while I always find myself putting down the initial drawing for coloured pencils in straight lines, I decided today to not emphasise the angularity and to just keep the rest of the painting round and curvy

- I tried especially hard to get the gaze in the eyes right and to make the eyeballs look spherical rather than just 2D shapes on the paper.  I think I caught something but messed up by making the iris of his blue eye too big

- for the burnishing, I went back to three tone flesh burnishing: cinnamon in the darkest places, white in the lightest and beige red in between. I wanted to keep the sharp pointed shadows on his cheeks

- for the hair, rather than putting down a big shape, I painted hairs.  For the first few goes, I used the side of the pencil lead to get down lots of colour but later on I drew in big long sweeping hairs with the points of the pencils.  Once the forehead was looking good, I put in lots of hairs coming down over it towards the eye.  And on most of the hair body I added more dark coloured hair marks close to the scalp and at the ends to leave a lighter m shiner colour in between

The end result isn't too bad.  While I can't claim this is a perfect likeness, I've definitely caught something.  Cover up the mouth and green eye and you'll see the blue eye and hair are looking pretty good, even if that blue iris is a bit too big.  I'm going to put this one up for sale.

Thatch Cottage, Hartlip - The Full Monty

Someone approached me the other of about the possibility of painting Thatch Cottage in my home village of Hartlip.  It's a cottage I've painted before but that original painting was all about the thatched roof.  I'd not painted the full Monty before, so thought I'd give it a go.

The colour scheme was a no brainier.  This cottage has a lot of whitewashed areas, so is screaming out to be painted in the key of purple cool, with transparent yellow, French ultramarine and quinacridone magenta.  Cadmium red and cadmium yellow were planned all along to be invited for cameo appearances in the flower basket, and the white gel pen made a rare appearance at the end.

I started by putting down pencil outlines, and then reserved some whites and spattered over some masking fluid, which I thought might give a rustic feel.

The first paint down was the sky, as usual.  After that I worked from back to front but in a series of washes  intended to gradually build up colour.  My first layer, rather than being a fast and loose Peter Cronin underpainting, was quite a careful one, accurately mapping out shapes.  After that, my.triple layers went on until I was happy with everything.

The final stages were the addition of the flower baskets with some cadmium red and yellow flowers, the removal of the masking fluid and some tiny finishing touches.  Most of the finishing touches were with the white gel pen on the public footpath sign (which had blended into the greenery behind it) and on s9me highlights around the chimneys to bring them forward ahead of the trees.

The best things about this one were the thatched roof, the car in the bottom right, the hanging baskets, the shadows and the colours on the white wall facing the sun.  Less successful were the boring building on the left, the chimney on the left that is part of Hatch Cottage but which I deliberately understated and the flower pot in the bottom left, which I probably should have left out.

Still, I rate this as successful and it did indeed sell.

Miriam

Only half the day available today for painting so I reached for the coloured pencils.  It's a modelling debut today for Miriam.  Please make her feel welcome.

Most if this followed the usual process.  I used a grid to get a straight edges drawing down, then coloured it in with the edges of pencils.  I kept comparing my painting to the source photo and trying to work out what colour was missing.  I'd then add bits if that colour in the places I could see it, and some where I couldn't.  Then I'd go back to comparing the painting to the source.  I repeated this until it felt as if the paper couldn't take any more colour.

After that, it was just the finishing process, and this is where I did things differently.   One thing I did differently in the burnishing was to use a single colour all over the flesh, and that colour wasn't cream: today it was ivory.  But the more striking difference is in the linework at the end.  I went over all the outlines more forcefully today, and in sepia.  I also used the sepia to add a load of internal lines.  I was wanting to emphasise the angularity of the drawing and I thought sepia might harmonise with some of the colour in the hair and the pillar.  I also added a little straight line to the front of the face for eyelashes.

Overall, I rate this one as a success and it's going up for sale.  I'm not sure those sepia lines bring out the best in these figure drawings though.  I think JenH has been the best of these angular figure drawings so far, with her understated outline, lack of internal edges and shapely (rather than angular) colouring.  That's the style that I need to replicate.

Oh, and I got some Facebook feedback saying that this painting has a Japanese feel to it.  Yeah, I can see that.  Not just in the eye but also in those strong straight lines.  The jury's still out.