Category: Studio Diary
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Subtle Underpainting
I had a very productive and varied day in the studio today, and feel very accomplished. Yay. I started with my habit-in-development, a timed twenty minute sketch. It wasn’t particularly good, but the sketchbook is filling up. Next up I prepped seven 6×8″ sheets ready to begin the 100 Day Challenge tomorrow. I decided having…
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Quatro
Mini portrait umber four is complete. This is for Week 4 of Let’s Face It with Laurie Johnson. Model & Photographer: Sasha Sears Source: Museum/SKTCHY app I’m in catch-up mode with the classes at the moment, but I’m not stressing about it. I’m painting every day, and that’s what I’m focused on. I really enjoyed…
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Nasally Challenged
This is a very challenging reference, and I feel I am going to have her on my table for a while, working away until I master the nose. The head tilt and the hair makes what’s happening around the nose and hidden eye very difficult to translate. I started out with a twenty minute sketch,…
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Closed Eyes Pouting
I rocked the day today. I am trying out a new app that is recommended for overcoming neurospicy Things. It’s called Habitica, and I am liking it a lot. Of course it’s a very neurospicy thing to start a new Thing and rock the first day or even ten, so I’ll see how it goes.…
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Timed Portrait Exercises
The timed sketch to start the day happened again. Since I had prepped some paper for a mini paintings exercise, I decided to use the first reference as my reference for the drawing. I gave myself twenty minutes. The painting is on 12×16″ watercolour paper that has been prepped for oil painting, and divided into…
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One Hour Oil Painting
I tried something a little different today. In fact I tried quite a lot of things a little different today. I have been in a half-slump lately, and it doesn’t manifest every day, but often I find myself struggling to start, and one of the themes is “I don’t know what I want to paint”.…
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Mixing Blacks
When I am painting I really try to focus on value, and I have mentioned before different ways of analysing values as I am working. My favourite way is using my small rectangle of red perspex to view my painting as I am working. It’s simple, and instant. Once I started focusing on values, and…
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Big Paper Messy Play and Discoveries
This is a very large sheet of paper, so large that it’s really too large for either of my studio benches. It’s from the pack of Snowdon paper I bought with a gift voucher, and I am having a lot of messy fun. There’s acrylic ink, paint, gesso, art markers, collage, some of those punched…
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Back to the Glam
Resting the portrait was slowly morphing into avoiding the portrait which risks slowly morphing into not finishing the portrait, so I had a quiet word with myself and squeezed some paint on the palette. I have changed the eyes and the jawline, done more work on the lips and nose, and I am much, much…
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Priming Papers
I’m still resting that portrait, not least because I did not sleep well at all last night, for a number of reasons. For today’s creativity I watched this week’s Let’s Face It class with Deanna Strachan-Wilson. I like her process, and I spent a bit of time pondering how to respond to the class in…
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Painting Tools and Collage Fodder
I ended up with only a short amount of time for art today, and I decided I wanted to give my portrait a rest, and have some space from it, before going in to hopefully finish. Instead I did some simple play in my old sketchbook, not really trying to create anything, just moving paint…
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Making Fake Believable
Today was all about the hair, and a few tweaks to the lips and eyes, but I wasn’t in the mood for doing much to the face. I think what’s left to do to the face needs to happen at the end, once all the colours everywhere else are in place. This is a really…
Thrummie Bizzum 