Paris visit

I’ve just returned from a short visit with my mum, sister and her boyfriend to the most beautiful city of Paris!

 We stayed at a lovely hotel just off the Tuilerie gardens on the Rue de Rivoli, which if you know Paris is extremely close to both the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay.

 We were blessed with exceptional weather as you can see from the photographs however as I did spend most of my time in the art galleries it didn’t really affect me!

I have been to the Louvre before although then, much to my dismay, the Dutch wing was shut, this time however it was not so I did get to see two fantastic Vermeers, ‘The Lacemaker’ and ‘The Astronomer’. Another favourite for me was Holbeins Anne of Cleeves portrait, you see she looked lovely in Holbeins painting but clearly old Henry wasn't impressed with the real thing!

The highlight of my trip however was the Musee d’Orsay as it contained paintings from the movement I particularly like which is the Naturalists. No John Singer Sargents were there but a lovely portrait by his mentor Carolus Duran was on display.

The current exhibition at the Musee is the Manet Exhibition, which I enjoyed thoroughly and was particularly interested in seeing a painting of the above-mentioned Carolus Duran. The painting was framed but clearly was only the under-painting so it gave a little insight into his technique, which I found very informative.

I do confess to getting a little irritated by some peoples indifference to the paintings, maybe it was just me who was besides herself at the joy of standing in front of Whistlers mother! Ah well, the good thing about that was whilst most people were falling over themselves to see the Van Gogh’s and Degas (which were lovely) I could enjoy the experience of marvelling at the Bouguereaus in relative peace!

I loved ‘Cast Shadows‘ by Emile Friant and Léon Lhermitte’s ‘Paying the Harvesters’ but I think the highlight of the exhibition for me, just edging the Buguereaus, was ‘Haymaking’ by Jules Bastein-Lepage (above), just a wonderfully simple but naturalistic painting!

Paris was wonderful and I will certainly return!

New Painting

I have just returned to an oil painting I planned about a year ago but then abandoned because I felt I really wanted to work on a slightly different oil technique. After having spent some time on much smaller oil paintings and sketches I now feel sufficiently confident to return and try again on the larger canvas. 

Unfortunately I had already drawn out the image and started with a burnt sienna Acrylic ground which was the style I first started with, I would now do this very differently by not having such an extensive under-drawing and would use lean washes of the actual colours rather than a sienna ground. I am stuck with this base however but who knows it may work out to my advantage as a orange/red ground can work well with a predominately green covering, we will see!!

Well, first areas laid in using quite loose brush strokes. You can see where the shaded pencil work is showing through ground so it looks quite dirty at the moment but that will eventually be covered up, proved to myself that I really don't need this wasted stage!

A bit further into the process of blocking in. I'm still trying to keep my brush strokes quite fluid and loose, concentrating on a variation of edges and establishing tonal and colour values, these could be slightly adapted once the whole thing has been blocked in however.

I will carry on working on the block-in to see how the overall composition looks so best get back to work!!

Wastwater

I've been playing around with watercolour landscapes recently but thought it high time I returned to the oils for a little while!

The last couple of days I've been working on these two little 7x5 inch oils, one is a commission and the other for my amusement only. I've based them on a couple of photos I took on a days watercolour painting workshop at Wastwater last February.

I hope you can get a feel of the weather that day from the paintings, It's hard to believe that they were both taken on the same day! The day started with a blizzard then cleared to reveal glorious views of Wastwater before starting to snow again late afternoon, I've never painted watercolours in the snow before, it certainly gave a whole new meaning to the term wet on wet!

For those of you who don't know Wastwater it is on the Western side of the English Lake District and has the most jaw-dropping views of Haystacks, Great Gable and as shown here, the Wasdale screes.

Wastwater is also the deepest lake in the Lake District so if you see it on a wintery day such as the day I was there it looks almost navy blue it is so deep.

The second little oil below depicts the same scree but a little later when the sun came out. It is still not quite finished in the foreground, I worked on this last night and just didn't get my values right, the light maybe and not concentrating?, however I've wiped out the wrong values and will re-paint the foreground.... why I love oils!

Little Sophie on the day doing a spot of sunbathing before the snow returned!

'Wolf oil sketches'

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to continue with my little, 7x5, wolf oil sketches, well, here they are! They are by no means finished but they have moved on a stage from last time so hopefully it will give you some idea of the stages involved to produce them.

I am still trying to keep the 'looseness' of my brushstrokes and am not above wiping away sections if I think they are looking a little stiff, actually sometimes I achieve more in a couple of seconds of wiping away than in the previous hour of work!
I will have to wait a while for them to dry before adding to them however I have plenty of other paintings to get on with. I suppose that is one of the joys of oil painting in that you are forced to wait for them drying, this not only affords the joy of working on a few paintings at once to keep any boredom at bay but allows a fresh eye to appraise the work on returning for completion, boy, the things you didn't spot first time round!!

Watercolour challenge!

Well, it's getting around to the time of the year for me to get out and about and produce some landscape 'en plein air' paintings so I thought I should get a little bit of practice in!

I am trying to stop myself from 'fiddling' around too much with detail on my landscape paintings, especially those painted outdoors, as it can make the work look overworked but more importantly it also takes time, a commodity not afforded in rapidly changing light. With this in mind, I set myself a little watercolour challenge of producing small (credit card size) watercolour studies but did keep my reasonably sized brushes for working with. 

I think I had varying degrees of success trying to suggest some areas with a sweep of the brush and others affording a little more attention. I can't wait to carry the technique forward to slightly larger sized paintings produced outdoors, better get the woolies ready to hit the Lake District!

I also thought I would give a plug for the brush company I use as I think they produce excellent quality brushes at a very good price. The brushes I used on the little watercolour samples are shown below and are by Rosemary & Co whom I order from on the internet, they are extremely prompt with delivery, usually next day, so I can't recommend them highly enough!

The watercolour brushes shown above are a sable blend round and rigger, a red sable small and a squirrel hair mop. I also use this company for my oil brushes and like the Shiraz range of filberts and rounds which I will be using this afternoon to work on my wolves.

Anyway, off to do more painting, will post next time on my oil wolves and my outdoor adventures in the Lake District painting a few landscapes.....weather permitting!!

Drawing Practice & paperwork!

First of all, I can't believe we are already into February, where did January go?! I realise that my last post was in December but I have been busy with a lot of things since then, honest!
The first task of 2011 was to take down my exhibition from the Dock Museum, plenty of lifting and packaging involved before loading the bus in lovely gale force winds and rain so I must say a big thank you to my little crew of helpers. I then had to get paintings out to those who had purchased and get all my paperwork from the exhibition in order.
Speaking of paperwork, the centre where I teach my weekly art lessons has just experienced the joys of an ofsted inspection and all the blooming paperwork involved! I also had to take a safeguarding course so January for me has been very little about being an artist but plenty of being an administrator!
Thank goodness February is allowing me to return to being an artist so I thought I would post one or two of the little things I have been doing in amongst all the paperwork!
I set myself a challenge at New Year of going to drawing practice each morning for 30 mins, well, I haven't always achieved it but it is helping with my speed and ability to produce freehand sketches. See below one page of  my sketchbook with 10 to 30 min studies and then 3 little wolf oil sketches in their preliminary stages. In the second, I've drawn freehand sketches and then put very loose lean oil over the top to get the basic shape and colour relationships which I will work over with fatter transparent and opaque oil.
Well, that's pretty much as far as I have got but looking forward to working them up soon!

'Wolf Head'

Well, almost into the new year, hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

I try and take photographs of my paintings during progression to post on my site and also to use as a visual aid to show to my students. I thought I would post one of the oil paintings I completed for my exhibition to show the stages involved, actually it was the very last one I finished for the exhibition pretty much a week before setting up!

The first stage is just a simple pencil freehand sketch onto gessoed panel before I then add a thin layer of lean oil paint as a ground and take out any areas I want to leave light. I then start to lay down layers of translucent washes in picture 3 making sure I keep the paint lean and loose. 

After that stage has been allowed to dry I start building layers of translucent and opaque layers in a 'fatter' paint, the outcome is that some areas have the early layers showing through and other areas have a lot of opaque paint, this hopefully gives an illusion of depth to the fur. I also decided to change the background colour at this stage to frame the wolf head and once dried the final painting can be seen on display at the exhibition!