Category: Studio Diary
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Soft Pastel Everywhere
I am having a lot of fun with this one, not least because whatever perimenopause shite is going on with my hip/knee combo seems to be easing, and I’ve been able to stand for longer periods of time. Yay. This is two more sessions from the last time I posted. The first session involved a…
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Moods and Muslces
My studio was overgrown with clutter which isn’t really clutter, it’s art supplies and wips, but it had moved on from creative chaos to just chaos, so I cleared the decks and reset everything, and that’s always a good feeling. I also spent some time looking at all the photos I took during our recent…
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Chunks and Smears
One of yesterday’s drawings was hilariously bad, but a good smear of gesso over everything but the head made a fresh layer for another go today. I used one of my XL charcoal chunks for some messy, chonky mark-making, and then sprayed it all with water. I can never remember which XL charcoal chunks are…
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Side-Eye in Chisel Tip
A length of brown paper cut off the roll and clipped to an A2 board is one of my go-tos this week, and I am falling head over heels for my singular Liquitex chisel point marker. It’s a different way to make marks, and completely out of the comfort zone of scratchy brushes and moveable…
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Handmade Grey
I mixed an interesting blue-grey today. It’s not a payne’s grey, but it’s got a similar feel. I used caput mortuum violet, phthalo blue and van dyke brown for the mix, and white to get some lighter values. This is a horsie I started on a wood panel ages ago with just a rough sketch,…
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Hare-Brained World
Today was fineliner sketching and I’m enjoying these two hares from the same reference. I am more interested in using a reference to inspire something, than doing photo-realism or carbon copies. I do practise replicating things closely, but that is more about honing my seeing skills than self-expression. In amongst all the developments as the…
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Chonky Marker
I was searching this blog to try and find a reference to when I finished my last A4 sketchbook so I could date the spine, because I neither dated the last page, nor dated the spine at the time. I eventually located the post, but on the way I got a kind of tour of…
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Complex Horse and Cloth Hare Head
The last thing I did today was sketch this horse in my sketchbook. It’s a lovely, challenging reference that I’ve come back to a few times. It’s very good for the practise of reducing complex things to simple shapes. Reducing complex things to simple shapes was also the theme of one of the other projects…
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Sketchbook Plotting
I did not get stuck into the next stage of my textured self-portrait today. I put it up on the easel and moved it off the easel four times. I shuffled through my rack of works-in-progress and sorted them into vague categories. I eventually accepted that I was in procrastination mode, and got stuck into…
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Elphin Is Political
Someone might suggest that yesterday’s boat painting was too political, and they’d prefer I stick to badgers. I’ve had exactly those sorts of things said to me, so it’s not really about “might”. Badgers are political too, sad to say. Their very existence and right to life has been the subject of political debate for…
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Painting Elphin
Sketchbook painting using one of my photos of Elphin the taxidermy badger that I took at the wee sketching group event a few weeks ago. I’m playing with colour, and using turquoise as the almost mother colour because, like the badger, I am a creature of habit. I was using one of my gel plates…
Thrummie Bizzum 