The Busy Month of November

My apologies to those who are following my blogs, as the title states last month was very busy. The reason for this hectic life of an artist is that I was working on 3 subjects.
Every other year I design and paint my Christmas cards, truth be told its normally December before I got around to them in the past, burning the candle at both ends. This year I was good, ahead for once!

I found that by doing Inktober my mind was in the right place, to sketch and add colour. It is like any craft or art you have to be in the mind set. Normally in past I would paint imaginary scenes, this year I wanted to incorporate where I live but keep it very simple and in many ways this could be anywhere in the world.

"Sli na Breau"

Here is an example of the quick sketch that I did, "Sli na Breau" is the Irish spelling for Barrow Way (the Barrow is the local river near my house).

As you can see the sketch is very loose and I knew that I wanted a snow scene. Doing a snow scene is very quick and handy. Think about it, you are using white paper (cold pressed watercolour 300 GSM) so any highlights do not have to be painted in. To preserve the white of the paper I used masking Fluid.

 I have used many different makes over the years, and this make is by far the best. One crucial tip I will give, do not leave it anywhere the sun can shine on it, It will dry up and unusable.  If you need it near you have it in the shade and keep it away from any sort of heat.

Although only the highlights of snow are white, there are many other hues found with snow, and that can be the reflection of buildings, the shadows from buildings. Here is an example so you can understand.

Graiguenamanagh Co, Kilkenny

If we just look at the snow, we can see the highlights, but also the reflection of the sun, a yellowish hue, the shadow of the mooring bollard in the foreground, it is not a grey it is a more purple-blue hue. This is where snow can not only be easy to paint but it also allows a little more freedom for beginner watercolour artists.

As mentioned before, I used local scenes  and used a little artistic license with the images to fit in with what I was going to paint. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate an animal or two.

I took inspiration from YouTube, I have no problem admitting this, many artists would not, but I can see the how it can help, we go to galleries to be inspired by old masters and contemporary artists, there is no reason why with so many artists on YouTube that we do not treat them the same. 

One artist that I really like his work, Paul Clark. His work is mainly wet in wet, not really my cup of tea as I like to control the outcome of the painting. But if I want to practice something, his channel is one that I will watch and then go off and try it out. 

To keep it simple for myself and not go overboard (I sometimes do!), I decided to go with five scenes, and duplicate them. Each of the duplicated ones turned out very differently than the original, the hues were stronger in some, the skies were different and the more I did the faster I was able to complete the sets.

The artistic Licence that I used on this was to bring the Castle into view, I added and old Irish telephone box which is no longer  operational in Ireland in these colours, maybe the cream and green accented ones are more towards the west of Ireland, but not where I live, but it adds to the painting.

Here, I added a tree, there are no big trees near the style its all overgrown with brambles, again,a bit of artistic licence to make the painting look interesting.

I did three of these paintings and each one the river and pond are very different, the hues are stronger in some and the detail is less in others.

I tried wet in wet, and it kind of worked, so I glazed many layers to achieve the depth in the fox's coat. I doubt that I would do it again as wet in wet, I probably would use the wet on dry.

Basically, the with wet in wet you wet the whole paper allow it to sink into the paper and then add drops of paint into different areas. You can keep working on the image for some time all providing you are using 100% cotton paper. As this will stay flat. Wood pulp paper will buckle and can be a nightmare to work with wet in wet.
Wood pulp paper is cheaper, and the sizing is normally not all the way through the paper, mostly on the surface.

Now, wet on dry painting, is where you add very light washes of colour, allowing each layer to dry completely, you control the colour density, but it has to be done in layers and each layer you use less and less water to the paint and each layer mush be dry before you add the next layer of paint. It is a much slower process but you do have more control.

I have always loved painting stones, walls and things with texture, especially in watercolour. This painting was done using the wet on dry watercolour technique for the wall the post box and the fence. The background the sky and distant trees were painted wet in wet.
The masking fluid I used it in this painting after one layer of colour one the snow, it was a very light wash of blue/grey, very watered down, more water, less paint. By doing this the snow was not a bright white, it had a subtle tone of shadow off it and then I went back in adding deeper tones to suggest shadows with in the snow and reflections.

Each of these small paintings measure approximately  4 x 6 inches, I attached them to pre-made card stock that measured 5x 7 inches. The colour I used as I felt it would add a good mount (mat) to the overall image was a Christmas red, I always write on the back of the cards : 

Title

Medium

Artist name 

Date   

Website

I also add this to the paintings as they can fall off over time off the cards. 

This is how they look finished.

The Complete set

Along, with painting these Christmas cards, I also was practicing sketching boats. In August, this year I took part in a Plein Air in Graiguenamanagh, which has a lot of boats moored along the key side. I think it has been close to 30 years since I sketched or painted boats. I do prepare a lot in the winter months on upcoming events that I want to take part in over the summer months and I practice things that I have either forgotten or very rusty on how to sketch things. So, I practice a lot, different angles shapes, studied how other artists approach the subject that I struggle with. 

Inside the artist's sketchbook

These were simple pencil sketches looking at how some artists approach the drawing in the simplest manner, a flat figure of 8, others I just sketched what I saw not necessarily looking at the negative space, but just looking at the shape. Then adding shadows. It is still a working process but the more I practiced and the different techniques I used the better it allowed me to improve. 

I used both the grid method and the proportional divider tool.

This is a proportional divider.

It takes a bit of practice to use this and I use YouTube to help relearn how to use it. The grid method is basically, whatever the image is divided into 1 inch squares and then you divide your paper into 1 inch squares. 

One method that I found easy to use for the proportional divider was to find the centre of the image and draw one vertical and one horizontal line through the centre and do the same on your paper and for each point make a dot on the paper and then just join the dots up.  This can be time consuming, if you were just doing sketches. I found for quick sketches the grid method was simpler  and faster. You can use the proportional divider too with the grid, but for boats it was not really necessary. What I also was working on it was invaluable, more of that later.

The basic sketch of this boat was used with the proportional divider, and you can faintly see the horizontal and vertical lines on the page.

Although the angle of this boat did not work, I also use the proportional method, I too have fails! I will try it again, probably a few times and will show you in another blog post!

From this sketch, you can clearly see I used the grid method, and it really allowed me to get the perspective correctly and the shape. I use pencil normally a HB or if I  can't find one a 2H. I personally find the harder pencils easier to use in my wood pulp sketchbooks. Remember, you are not holding it write with, it helps to hold it  further back so light strokes are used and will rub out if you want to. 

I will be continuing to practice drawing different shapes of boats over the next month and what the third art I have been working on.

So, if you are in Ireland, the UK or further a field and you have heard of "Sky Arts - Portrait Artist of the Year". I really enjoy this programme. Over the years, I have tried drawing pencil sketches of eyes, noses, ears, hands and feet, but all separate not connected to the whole picture the face. 

Within the month of November, I challenged myself to try and begin drawing portraits. I can draw animals, horses (which most people say are quite hard!)  I figured these out, understanding the different planes of the features and the direction to add strokes of hair, to trick the eye to what essentially is a 2 dimensional surface drawing, but with the fine detailing that it become more 3 dimensional. 

Human faces, I want to conquer. So, that is what I am working on for the next while. I have started by using my family as my guinea-pigs , well there faces. I have taken so many over the years that I decided I have my references and I can at least try.  I am going to share all my fails, as I think this will not only help you reading this to know you are not on your own, everyone has failures starting out, learning something new. 

Initially, I tried using the proportional  divider and I had the one from Derwent, The problem with this style is that unlike the new version (pic above) it does not have a fine end to really get a more accurate placement of the markings. 

My first attempt I tried dark skin tone, and I only did half the face, and there is a resemblance sort of, but its not correct by any means.

This is the image I found on Pixaby, just enough information showing highlights, shift in colour tone around the eye, below it, near the nostril and at the side of the face.
A good start, I have a bit of everything. I decided to you my oils. I use winsor and newton artisan - these are water soluble, you can add water to loosen them so your first layer is quite thin. I am quite sensitive to many of the traditional oil mediums, that it why I use the water soluble ones.

The surface that I am using is canvas on a roll, I cut the size, taped it onto my board and after three coats of gesso and sand papering in between each layer I then but a light wash of a mixture of raw sienna and yellow ochre on the white canvas to take away the stark white. Using a white pastel pencil I grided up the piece of canvas, then sketched in the image. To save paper and the trees, I use an app on my phone to grid images up, you can go as simple or more technical as you want. It is a free app on google play (it's called Grid Art).

I then used a fixative  spray for pastels/charcoal and this preserved my sketch. I am not too sure if I have mentioned I can be slightly impatient!  I did rush this but I am glad I did as you will see with the following pictures, that I can now step back and critic my work. What this does is that I have learnt from past mistakes what not to do again.

First of all, the eye is too big, it is not at the correct angle as the image, there is not enough subtle transitions of tonal value across the eye, above the eye, its quite a cartoon style, my shadows and highlights are in the wrong areas. The tonal values are not correct.  There is a lot more work to be done, and I rushed it. I should have taken more time deciding to look more closely as to where the colour tones shift and possibly smoothed out the paint strokes. I will paint this picture again in the new year.

My next attempt was my daughter, with this painting I used the reverse of the canvas roll, that I had used for something else and the idea did not work out, so waste not want not, and this is just practice, I prepared it same as before but rather than using yellow ochre and burnt sienna as the base I used a tonal grey. Also, I began doing an under-painting in acrylics. Why, you may ask, as I did not do that before. 

I thought I had yellow ochre in oils, but I don't at present, and by using yellow as the base colour, then adding cad red to make an orange then adding blue to desaturate the red. If you understand the colour wheel you can make your own colours but it can also be slightly frustrating when starting out. I suggest have the colours you need. 

As I mentioned before, I have many images of my family, my daughter's was  my guinea pig. She was quite proud to take part in my new adventure. As she is in University, I worked from a photo I took of her earlier this year.  

Having the colour photo I then brought it into the software I am using for photo's

Affinity, and grey scaled the pic and slightly blurred the pic. This meant that I could just see where the shifts in colour tone were placed. I chickened out and just did one eye, part of her face again. This time I took it quite slowly.

By using a grid and the proportional divider together, I was able to get a  very basic sketch down. As I am more comfortable with acrylics, I found it easier to manipulate colour tones better than with oils. 

The pic above is just the blocking in of colour tonal values. It also helped that I had all the colours at hand to catch the colours I found on the image.  This took approximately three days. I would work on it, step back, make slight adjustments, let the painting dry as the colour tone shifts when dry and the next make changes if I needed. When my daughter was home from University, I would sit her down and study her face to see the colour tones and make notes in my sketchbook. My poor kid! 

I began to add oils to the painting last week. What I began to see were parts that I needed to change, such as the white of her eyes is too grey, I  need to add some warmth in them, darken areas that I have too much light and fix the skin tone in areas as it too is too dark to too strong in reds, I need to knock it back with green, along with  the eyelids I need to remember the planes of the face. This is in reference to the Loomis method. Each part of the face has different planes, which when painted will give the illusion of 3 dimensional effect.  I also need to fix the colour of her iris, they are more of a light brown with a hazel mix, very unusual. 

My critic here is what I am looking at when I step back and squint at the reference image.