More Arty Stuff....

Ah.  Well, seems we're in need of a bit of a catch up again, aren't we?!? I have actually been pretty busy with the painting and stuff....

Last post but one I last left you halfway through a painting of a stormy sky over the sea somewhere in New Zealand.  That painting was finished quite some time ago now and has been hanging on the wall.  I took photos of progress and if I can find them, I'll post them.  Hang on.....

Right, this was the last photo I posted, and I had sketched in the basic outlines of the seashore and hills, and had started working on the stormy sky and rain storm.

This was it again after a few more hours work, the final version (there were more inbetween photos but I can't find them now) - the picture's a bit blue because of the lighting in the room at the time but you get the idea:

And this is it in a black frame and on the wall.  I took the picture with flash which is reflected in the glass unfortunately but you get a better idea of the blue/grey colour of the sky, and the blue/grey/green of the sea with the flash:



Next in my queue was to have a go at painting this very striking red cabin in the snow, taken in New England, that I found on Flickr:

And this is my final version, framed in white and hanging on the wall.  If you look closely, you'll see that I decided to save my sanity by not trying to draw in all the clapboard lines.  I don't think it's come out too badly:



I posted a link on the original photo's page to my Flickr page with the painting on it, and, rather fabulously, the photographer contacted me to say how much she liked the painting!  Thank Jebus!  I knew I was taking a risk by alerting her to the painting as I wasn't sure how it stood on copyright issues (it's fine, by they way - there's no problem with someone producing and publishing a drawing or painting based on someone else's work; the problem occurs if I were to reproduce the original photo and claim it as my work) or even if they would like it.  So, hooray!

Next up, then, I decided to have a crack at pastels again. All my paintings so far have been in acrylics and I've had some difficulty using pastels for some reason.  But my brother (who I think is a fantastic photographer), took this wonderfully enigmatic photo of his eldest daughter (and my niece), Jessica, wearing old-fashioned cardboard 3D glasses, then put it through a filter to make it black and white but left one lens red.  I've always loved this photograph, it looks very 1960s to me, what with Jessie's hair and the glasses:

 I thought I'd use black, grey, white and red pastels on black paper, A4.

This is the picture before putting in the glasses:


And this is it finished off:


I think it came out pretty well.  I'm so pleased I took these photos, though, before cocking it up by spraying it with fixative as it took out a lot of the white.  I tried to rework it but decided I was more like to make it worse so have left it.

Next - told you I've been busy! - was another seascape.  A quick little afternoon's painting, this one, again chosen from a photograph I found on Flickr (unfortunately Blogger seems to have cut off the right hand end of this wave but if you click on the photo it will take you to the original on Flickr):



And this is my 8"x6" painting of that photo:



My current painting is not actually going terribly well, I don't think.  I found this interesting architectural photo on Flickr and loved the angles and colours, and thought it was worth a bash:



But it's proving to be a tricky bugger.  I'm not sure it's working so may well not show you if it doesn't come out reasonably well!  Which would be a shame but it's my first attempt at painting a cityscape and it's something I'd like to get my head round a bit so maybe with a bit more practice I might produce something worth showing other people.

And that's where I'm up to so far.  I have a plan for a close up portrait of my brother, and I downloaded an online acrylic painting tutorial on impressionist seascapes which I will also get round to doing at some point.  Oh, and this term's art classes have now finished.  I have to admit I didn't go to the last three classes which were meant to be spent entirely on working on one large painting of a still life of your own choosing.  But I couldn't make my mind up what I wanted to paint and, to be honest, I wasn't really that interested in doing a still life (I was busy doing seascapes and pastel portraits, as you can see!) but as it's just a class for interest and there's no qualifications to be gained or anything, I decided to not bother with doing them.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did the course as I learnt some interesting techniques this term - mono printing, ink washes, mixing hues/tints/tones/shades - which was brilliant but I'm not really that interested in painting still lifes at this point.

I have, though, signed up for the spring term which will be on landscapes and cityscapes, which is much more my thing and I'm looking forward to.  I expect there'll be lots of talk about perspective and vanishing points.

Anyway, lovelies, I don't expect I'll be posting again before Christmas (or perhaps just once, if I manage to reach a particular running milestone before the New Year!) so if I don't, I hope y'all have the Christmas you want, whether it's surrounded by family, or just on your own, and thanks for stopping by the blog!