Thrummie Bizzum

Suzanne Russell Art

  • Don’t Move

    Don’t Move

    I’m completely smitten with my pan pastels, and I don’t think I have even scratched the surface of their versatility. Here I’m using them over acrylic, and I’m loving how this turned out, especially given it went through a particularly “ugly stage”. Someone was waxing unlyrical about drawing from reference photos recently, and the problem…

  • Pan Pastels Portrait Set

    Pan Pastels Portrait Set

    I had quite a productive day today and worked on several things, but the highlight of the day was the arrival of a set of pan pastels. I don’t usually buy sets of things, but the offer price was too good to pass up, and the only colour I already had was the white, so…

  • Grasp Too

    Grasp Too

    Following on from yesterday’s study, I used the same reference and changed the palette slightly by swapping the black with ultramarine, and adding pyrrole red. I really like the pyrrole red added to the background, and I like the way both paintings sit together in the spread, which I haven’t taken a photo of, I…

  • Grasp

    Grasp

    This is the first time I have used tube black in this sketchbook, having been experimenting with chromatic blacks as a side-shoot of this project. It definitely gives a different feel to a piece. I threw some yellow on the page too, because I never use yellow in a very yellow way. I didn’t like…

  • Honing Ms Drips

    Honing Ms Drips

    There was a lot of playing in sketchbooks today, and lots of ideas came out of that, and there will hopefully be further play and exploration going on there. I realised that I had been avoiding this canvas for some reason, no idea why, so I put it up on the easel and pushed and…

  • Twisting Twirls

    Twisting Twirls

    Experimenting with yesterday’s happy accident, and thinking I’m going to keep experimenting with this process. I predict an art supplies purchase coming up, as I only have two colours plus black and white of these pan pastels. I don’t even have a turquoise one. Shocking. Til the morn, Suzanne 630/700

  • Clear Gesso Rescue

    Clear Gesso Rescue

    I started the day doing some fun sketchbook practise abstracting shapes from some landscape photos. This is not my usual practise, and it was a lot of fun. Once I was done there was some leftover paint, so I used it up in my A3 sketchbook to start a background. I was especially taken with…

  • Cadmium Orange Fun

    Cadmium Orange Fun

    Instead of red, I tried a ground using cadmium orange as the starting place for this portrait. I started off with the highlights instead of sketching, and I quite liked the ghostly effect, so I took a snap. I kept going, and ended up here… I might go again with this one, as it’s such…

  • Sole Perspective

    Sole Perspective

    This sketchbook started out as a project on practising painting hands, and evolved into hands and feet, and figures with either hands, feet, or both. I was flipping through it today, and it’s so much more than that, because there’s also colour explorations, materials explorations, technique explorations, value, shape, proportions and perspective. I’m noting that…

  • Pan Pastels Mixed Media Figure

    Pan Pastels Mixed Media Figure

    I have watched a few demonstrations using pan pastels, and I’ve followed a couple of classes, and never really found a way with the medium that feels natural to me. I do really like using them, even though I have this weird conflict with dry mediums because I can’t be arsed with the whole sealing…

  • A change but still red

    A change but still red

    Compressed charcoal and soft pastels for a change. Til the morn, Suzanne 625/700

  • I love drips

    I love drips

    Layers and layers of drips in a variety of media got things a bit out of control, and became a problem to solve. Drying time was long, but I eventually got back in to start pulling the figure back out of the drips. I’m liking the way this one is going. Til the morn, Suzanne…