Tag: painting

  • Priming Papers

    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…

  • Painting Tools and Collage Fodder

    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…

  • Making Fake Believable

    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…

  • Refining the Eyes

    Refining the Eyes

    I spent most of my painting time today on the eyes and lips. They still need some adjusting, but they are getting there. I also blocked in the dress. This is an interesting challenge, not least because I don’t often paint clothes, and this dress is covered in crystals. It’s also a little bit see-through,…

  • Drama Queen

    Drama Queen

    This was looking absolutely terrible to me, I mean leaving the room in a flounce considering pouring gesso over it terrible. I’m invested in doing this one well. I came back and mixed a close-to black and used the palette knife to put it on the background, and it immediately looked much better, and I…

  • Painting a Queen

    Painting a Queen

    I spent a chunk of time fiddling with the charcoal sketch today, before starting to apply paint. There are still some proportions that need to be fiddled with, but I am happy with the way this one is going. Til the morn, Suzanne 327/400

  • It’s very pink, darling

    It’s very pink, darling

    After a lot of pottering cleaning gel plates, and gel plate storage clamshells, and cleaning stencils, and brayers, and brushes, and brush pots, and then sorting out the cat litter bucket for all my acrylic water, ready for collection tomorrow, I got stuck in to working on a 16×20″ canvas. For some reason this pic…

  • Girl in this world

    Girl in this world

    First finished painting of 2025. Yay! Acrylic on paper, 16×12″ 300gsm watercolour paper. This is my response to the first class in Let’s Face It 2025, with Kara Bullock. I decided to use the same reference as Kara (from Museum app) but do my own thing with the colour palette, composition, and style. Instead of…

  • Looking Up Or Eye Rolling

    Looking Up Or Eye Rolling

    I spent some time yesterday making collage fodder with a view to using it for this class project, and then got up and did something completely different from the plan. I made the background, then sketched this cute quine in with a few charcoal marks, and then did my underpainting with caput mortuum. Next I…

  • Sketching Ideas

    Sketching Ideas

    Today I had another not-good day. It seems the festive season has gifted me with a sharp lurch into the next phase of perimenopause, and by fuck is it a complete and utter bastard. I did manage to spend some hot sweaty time in my sketchbook marvelling at how hot and sweaty I am as…

  • Live Sitter

    Live Sitter

    Oil painting again today, this time a bit of fun with a live sitter. Forty-five minutes, and if you turn it upside down, there’s even a likeness. It’s a long time since I’ve done any figure drawing or portraiture with a live sitter, and you can’t tape them to the drawing board in the usual…

  • Painting Saves the Mood

    Painting Saves the Mood

    I had all sorts of plans for today, and a meticulous To Do List, and I was fired up and ready to conquer life, the universe and everything. The first item on my list was try, again, to contact the retailer who sent me two canvases with rips in the middle of them, which I…