learning to share

2007-03-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

This is another face sketch, again not really looking like the original painting. I seem to have made her look too modern, but at least it's identifiable as a face. Cornelius Johnson. Portrait of a Lady, 1623

2007-03-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

I've been sketching faces that interest me again.
Quite often I'll scribble one just before I go to sleep, it's a nice way to end the day, especially if I haven't managed to do anything else.The first one is from a Singer Sargent painting, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. I was holding the book at an angle and got the sketch wrong, but never mind. And there's too much shading, but I do get caried away.

This is from an old art calalogue and I'd never heard of the artist Abbey Altson, nor does this look much like the original painting. Sigh. I'm not much good at likenesses, I'm just glad they look human.

2007-03-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the head of an arabian horse, and loving the gloss and shine on his face.
This shows my messy work table with all my clutter and bits and pieces- I find it very homely and comfortable when I sit down to paint. This is an old table that my Dad built and was in our family kitchen all through my childhood, so that makes me feel good too.

The colour is more accurate in the top photo, for some reason the scans are always a lot redder than in real life.

I love that proud arch to the neck that Arabs have, very nice to draw.
I have yet to finish the halter and the background, I get more excited about the horse and the rest isn't so important. I usually wait until I need to do two or three backgrounds and then do them all at once, I only have to mix up one lot of paint that way. Lazy, I know.

2007-03-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

I love painting Arab horses, they're such beautiful animals.
I have to fight to make sure I don't make them too sleek and lean, not sure whether I succeeded here or not.

I do get a bit carried away with the muscles and highlights, but they're such fun to do!

2007-02-27T03:55:00.000-08:00

This is a very small oil painting of a quarter horse.
This is the actual size, I went through a stage of doing minatures, and now I'm doing the opposite and trying to make myself paint bigger canvases.

You learn something from each approach, but I do have a fond spot for these little paintings, done with 000 sable brushes. They don't use much paint or canvas (board in this case) and can be finished in a couple of hours.
I don't think my eyes would be good enough to paint this small now, perhaps that's why I want to make things larger.

2007-02-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

This is a sketch of my third son.

He was three years old when I did it (he's 19 now!), and I must admit I have quite a few drawings of him asleep, and almost none of him awake! Too hard to capture all that energy, so I'd wait until he was nice and quiet- much easier.
I hardly drew my first two sons at all, I guess I was too busy. I regret that I haven't got a nice 'sketch from life' of all my boys but I can't change that now.. Perhaps I'll be more diligent if I ever have grandchildren.

2007-02-19T02:56:00.000-08:00

I was flicking through a book the other day and discovered this sketch hidden among the pages.
I haven't traced the painting I copied it from, but I'll look through a few more books and find it soon. I should have written it on the actual drawing I suppose.

I've always wanted to make a collection of faces that interested me, much like Laurelines 101 faces project. I was only going to do 50, and started drawing but I got bogged down because I decided later that I wanted them all the same size, on the same paper. This is only on cheap photocopy paper and someone who shall be nameless (third son) had torn the bottom off to write a phone number on. GRRR! ("Don't worry" he assured me, "You can draw another one")

I'm loving having a scanner and being able to play with cropping and resizing these works, some are on little scraps of paper, or cheap paper like this and there's even a couple on the backs of envelopes. But scanned and cropped they somehow look more important, more substantial, more significant somehow.
Don't you love eyes? I plan to play around and have a series of eyes from my paintings and sketches, and today I mucked around making greyscale images of the works I'd already stored. I do love having this technology!

2007-02-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

I'm scanning some old drawings to preserve them, the paper is getting very yellow and brittle.
I love being able to scan my work and store it in the computer, it's great to have a record of what I've done over the years. I don't think I'll feel bad about selling favourite pieces as long as I've got a good image of it to remember it by. I used to take photos, but scans are in another class, you can zoom in and see the detail, print perfect replicas, play with making cards- I don't understand technology, but I love what it can do!

2007-02-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is a sample of the work I'm doing now.

I wish that I was a bit free-er and more slapdash , as I used to be when I was pushed for time and just dashing things off. But perhaps this tightness is a phase too.

One of the results of not having much money to spend on materials is that I began painting in a small format. That meant I could use cheaper canvases and little dabs of paint. This oil is only 8 x 10, but I recently bought some much larger supports that are sitting on the shelf, beckoning. I think if I made myself work larger it would automatically loosen up my style and make me more spontaneous.
I don't seem to have trouble with my sketching style, which is quick and sometimes untidy, just the finished paintings.
It's hard to step out of the method you know and branch out, but I'm going to have a go. Soon.

2007-02-09T02:16:00.000-08:00

For years I couldn't afford proper art supplies, and I painted on a horrible assortment of surfaces.

Both of these oils were done on thin cardboard that had been saved from writing pads and then gessoed. Hardly archival, and I don't expect they'll be around forever.
But I suspect that this 'making do' also had an effect on the way I saw my art, because I never finished anything properly, did lots of rough sketchy things and never had anything that I could really point to and be proud of.
I had three kids to bring up on my own, so I didn't beat myself up, just did the best I could under the circumstances. Now I find that I treasure these paintings that I did on scraps and leftovers, they speak to me of hard times when I was often overwhelmed by life, but somehow I never gave up on my art.

Now that my boys are mostly independant I'm enjoying treating myself to canvases and proper boards and some of the niceties of artistic life.The problem I have now is I'm trying to retain this sketchiness that I had earlier, and not 'finish' everything to death.But the main thing is to have time to devote to the work, and I still wrestle with that some days!

2007-02-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

I painted this little oil without any preliminairy drawing, as an exercise.

I like doing this in watercolours as well, (sort of like using pen for drawing), as a way of making me really look at what I see and try to get it right first time.

Of course with oils you can make corrections fairly easily, but it still gives me a sense of daring when I start without a pencil guide. Perhaps this is my version of being a "Thrill Seeker".

The horse isn't perfectly in proportion, but I like that little highlight on his belly. There's usually some detail in every painting, no ,matter how bad, that comes out right.

2007-01-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

This little sketch was done back when I was in school, so how old is it?
It was drawn from an old (1892) photo by Paul Martin and was done in one of those tiny memo books on lined paper, about 3" by 4", but it's so old the lines have completely faded off one side.It's been pinned up above my art table for years and it's getting brittle and yellow, so I thought I'd scan it and preserve it in case it falls to pieces. One day I may even make a painting of it, but I like this little scribble too. Sometimes things hang around for so long we stop even seeing them, so it's a surprise when you take the time to examine them.

I think I was fascinated by this photo of two long ago little girls because I'm a twin and it reminded me of pictures of us.
Click on the picture to see it bigger.

2007-01-26T02:19:00.000-08:00

Still doing cats...My computer seems to have made these much redder than they are in real life, but that's ok. I do love red tabbies and the nuances in their patterning.
The very first cat I can remember us owning was a red and white tabby like this. He was a foul tempered thing called Rusty and gave us far more scratchings than he was worth. I always loved his colouring though.

2007-01-18T00:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes at night I'll grab a book on cats or dogs or horses and I'll try to draw as many things from it as I can. I listen to the tv and don't let myself concentrate too much on what I'm doing, just quick scribbles one after the other.
I like to work in pen because there's no going back, mistakes remain and there's not much you can do about it.

But the drawings aren't the point, and I don't like to get too precious about them. The main thing is looking and translating what you see to the page and the practice ,practise, practise.

There might be some other subject you can fudge and make up what you don't know but animals ain't it. You have to be familiar with every bit of them, and I'm not there yet, which is why I keep filling up those sketchbooks...

2007-01-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

These cats were done from photos, nothing wrong with that, is there?

Even though I love to draw from life it's just not practical all the time. I hope there aren't any Art Police around to tell me off.

I know, his right eye is smaller than the left, who can be bothered fixing every mistake? Not me.

2007-01-15T17:17:00.000-08:00

What ever you do, don't trust this face!
The owner chews up toilet paper, piddles in the house and tips the rubbish bin over. I'm hoping he'll grow out of all this naughtiness, but in the meantime he's so darn cute! He's my son's Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy named Mac and he's 12 weeks old.

This is the first time I've tried to paint him, just a quick watercolour, and if I'd known how hard it is to paint'brindle', I would have insisted on a black and white mongrel ! Too much fiddling went on, and I'm going to have to persevere until I find a method of rendering his fur that I'm comfortable with."Tabby" is much easier.

He sleeps a lot, so I can sketch him while he's unconcious at least. Otherwise he's hard to keep still, but I still have a try sometimes. Here are some full pages (A4) and then some blown up details. If you click on the image it should come up bigger.

As you can see, lots of starts and scribbles, but it all adds to the store of images.

2007-01-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

It's pretty sad that it's nearly a year since I started this blog.

I had high hopes for 2006, I thought I could dedicate myself to improving my art, and reach out to a wider community without risking too much. But Life, as always, doesn't exactly dance to our tune...
In fact Life derailed my plans in April of last year when I became my mothers carer, which involved coping with shifting two houses of furniture , caring and nursing her as she grew more ill and sadly her death in August. I still don't know if I'm on an even keel, but I think I can cope with the blog again now.

No blogging didn't mean no painting or drawing, thank goodness, but I haven't done as much as I'd hoped to. Nevertheless this is a new year and I intend to focus even more on making art the most important thing in my life.

And I hope to live up to the title of this blog and actually come out of the closet this time, so that I can share what I'm doing, while I'm learning.

2006-02-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

This is a comission for some friends of my son. The subject is called Tom (not very original!) and I had a number of photos to work from, but none of them were perfect. So I used bits from each and cobbled a drawing together. I was a bit worried about the grumpy expression but apparently he's a very grumpy cat and they think it captures his personality well.

Black is a really hard colour to paint, especially in watercolour which gets lighter as it dries. I had to put a few washes over this until I got the depth I wanted, but it got there in the end.

2006-02-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

It's a haaard life being a kitty......

zzzzzzzzz.......

2006-01-30T18:26:00.000-08:00

I love drawing and painting animals, but they never seem to sit still long enough! I use photos and sketches and colour studies to make a finished painting, and the results can be very detailed and time consuming.

However I really love doing quick sketches from life, even if they're just rough scribbles. Sometimes I seem to capture a gesture or movement with more truth than I can achieve in a painting.

I do lots of these quick drawings, most do not have much merit because unless the subject is asleep they're always moving. Nevertheless, the real value comes from actually looking and studying , no photo can replace that first-hand knowledge.

These are details of the pages above, each sketch taking only one or two minutes. You've got to learn to be quick and not worry about mistakes- I just draw over the top of them. I use pen, I seem to be less tentative when I know it can't be erased!

2006-01-26T05:01:00.000-08:00

This is a blue-tongue lizard, common in gardens around here. They're about 8" long and rather attractive.

If I were you Jessie, and I'd chased one of these beggars into an old piece of pipe, I would stick my head in one end and bark madly so that it echoed weirdly, then I'd dig furiously at the end of the pipe, even pick it up in my teeth and growl down it in frustration. Then I'd run around to the other end and bark hysterically through that too.

Oh, you've tried that already? I just thought I'd suggest it.

make me stop!

2006-01-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

This is Jessie, my son's 5 year old minature fox terrier. I love her colouring , black and tan and white, and I wanted to try and capture some of her charachter in this watercolour sketch. However I've overworked it as usual. I pass through the phase of thinking it looks pretty good ....and make one brushstroke too many so that I spend an anxious 15 minutes trying to save what I had originally.

Why can't I just learn to STOP when it's done, instead of fiddling and labouring and spoiling things?

I'm happy enough with it now, but it's lost the freshness I saw earlier.