Category: Art

  • Studio Things and Not Orange

    Studio Things and Not Orange

    This is on a canvas board, and so far I am mostly happy with it, but I am changing the orange tomorrow, because it’s making me itch. Other things that happened today include opening a box from Jackson’s, yay. There was also the culmination-ish of a palette experiment, a new A4 sketchbook started, and a…

  • Sketchbook Filled

    Sketchbook Filled

    I finished a sketchbook today. Woo hoo. I started it in March, so that’s not bad going. I had three spreads, or six pages left, and they are now painted. I played with the “ancient palette” again, and I can tell you that I don’t like it on a dusky pink ground, but that’s precisely…

  • Earthy Palettes

    Earthy Palettes

    I am trying out a couple of different palettes here based on earthy hues. I saw something somewhere about an “ancient palette”, but I can’t find it again, so I’m working off memory and imagination. The portrait on the left is a very limited palette: unbleached titanium, caput mortuum, raw sienna and olive green. The…

  • Satisfied Sigh

    Satisfied Sigh

    I’m finally happy with a version of this pose. I think I’ve figured out that she is slightly tilted away on the left side (her right hand) and her hands are not the same distance from the viewer. I used a very limited palette of unbleached titanium, raw umber and French ultramarine for this one,…

  • Painting Feet But Different

    Painting Feet But Different

    I spent a bit of time rearranging my studio today, partly in response to what happened with this large A1 sheet of paper. I had it flat on the floor to spread gesso, then some acrylic paint, and because I was a little tight for space, I had stepped on the page and got paint…

  • Dusting The Oil Pastels Off

    Dusting The Oil Pastels Off

    I have a box of oil pastels that I never use. One reason for that is the fact they don’t dry, and up until recently I didn’t have fixative specific to oil pastels. That my excuse, and I’m sticking to it. Most of my oil pastels are the fairly ubiquitous inexpensive ones, with a small…

  • Things Change

    Things Change

    I was a bit discombobulated this morning because my lodger dog arrived. For some reason I thought he would be arriving in the afternoon, and was a bit surprised to get the message he and his humans were arriving the back of eleven. I had time to get a quick art session in before he…

  • Reflecting

    Reflecting

    Two versions of the same reference. For some reason I did the first one in my A4 sketchbook, even though there’s a hand, so it meets the criteria for my A3 sketchbook. The background was already there, from using up paint at some point, and it worked quite well. The second painting is in the…

  • Sponge and Painty

    Sponge and Painty

    I started today’s practice with a colour mixing exercise, but I was not in the mood for swatching in grids, so I shelved the sketchbook and used the paint for some figure painting. This was painted using sponge brushes, which don’t give you much space for perfectionism, and are just lots of fun to use.…

  • Charcoal Pastel Gesso

    Charcoal Pastel Gesso

    Starting with some warm-up play in a sketchbook on a page that had some acrylic paint from a previous session as a ground, I played with this high-contrast reference and some charcoal powder. Having smudged in some basic shadow areas, I wanted a darker dark, so I mixed the charcoal powder with clear gesso, and…

  • Repeat Until Satisfied

    Repeat Until Satisfied

    I’m still obsessed with this hand and foot pose, and I’m really enjoying the process. Somewhere in between yesterday’s painting (r) and today’s is where I want to end up. I do like the black I mixed today, I’m going to play with that more tomorrow. Til the morn, Suzanne 587/600

  • Hand and Foot Combo

    Hand and Foot Combo

    The hand and foot combination that was bugging me before my trip was given a full A3 page, and some large untidy brushes, to try and make sense of it. I definitely got closer to the shapes and placements, so I’m happy with that. Til the morn, Suzanne 586/600