Anyone who’s watched Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year and thinks painting a portrait is a doddle, here’s a glimpse into what it takes to not even come close to that level of skill! Continue reading Revisiting THAT portrait: nose, eyes, mouth and teeth
Could I have chosen a more difficult image? Probably not; wrinkled, crumpled faces give room for manoeuvre but flawless beauty is unforgiving. But I don’t much like being beaten, and anyway, what am I here for? I’m here to learn … Continue reading Revisiting THAT portrait: nose, eyes, mouth and teeth
Call me weird but I’m determined not to graduate this course without making a decent painting that includes a nose. So today, having almost finished up with Studio Practice, I took the plunge and, to really give myself a get-out clause, I chose a photo of an exquisite black woman after coming up blank looking for Nish Kumar, and decided to use oils for the first time ever. Someone gave me some when I began this course, smelly solvent and all, so armed with a couple of YouTube videos, and an acute awareness of the prolonged drying time of this … Continue reading Extra curricular noses
In the last tutorial for this module, we reviewed my selected pieces for assessment. I have re-worked one (The Speed of Things) but the replacement for Blue Bus to Keswick is coming from a standing start. I decided to focus … Continue reading Incy wincy new assessment piece
The previous version was busy and a little too ‘pink’. It was also under wraps due to having been allocated to a poem in a forthcoming collection due out at Christmas. This revised version is much more stark and would probably not suit the publication in the same way so I can post it without prejudice. As before, these are designed as a pair and this time I have reduced the colour by first, counterintuitively adding a layer of bright yellow to each then over painting one with T. white and the other with Payne’s grey and folding the first … Continue reading Post tutorial reworking
One is that I’ve been working on paintings to accompany poems due to be published in a Christmas collection, the other is that I was commissioned to make a painting for the cover of a short story collection by a … Continue reading Two pieces of news
Tokyo Ghost 2. Bang Bang 3. Navy Seal 4. Army Seal 5. Spider Spider Following a tutorial discussion, Blue Bus to Keswick has been relegated. Instead, I found a further subject qualifying for inclusion in the Parallel Project, Mitigation. 6. … Continue reading Assessment pieces & reflective account video
… went the full ophthalmologist. The stencils are aluminium, 2″ and 4″ size. I’d been doing some work with text and realised that, back in the day, I would have used Letraset rather than my own handwriting, which was only … Continue reading Bought some stencils …
Made as a presentation in Canva; video and audio added in Filmora10. Loch Arkaig Osprey – 2020 pair. Video credit from which the stills below are drawn, The Woodland Trust. ___ Loch Arkaig Osprey – 2021 pair. ___ Navy Seal. … Continue reading Mitigation – gallery & presentation; osprey, seal, and spider
Beginning again with an A2 sheet of cartridge, primed with transparent acrylic gesso and with a further layer of gloss varnish, I am making a second painting of osprey on the Loch Arkaig nest. This will be the fourth in … Continue reading Mitigation revisited #3
Strayfish Arts 