Just some loose bird painting for tomorrow’s workshop

Just some loose bird painting for tomorrow’s workshop

Working in acrylic on canvas from a sketchbook watercolour

painting
These were almost finished but needed some extra touches. I quite want to add birds but I need to think about the correct (ish) silhouettes and the correct birds for the seasons suggested. Stopping soon and prepping for tomorrow’s workshop.

Just working on a couple of sketchbook pieces made last spring ready for some landscape/woodland work this week





Working on preparation for first ‘Flowers’ workshop this year was really refreshing (although I’m doing ‘Chilly Landscapes’ and ‘Polar Bears’ before January is out. I had hoped to hang greenery up with something like hellebores so that we might do some drippy work but my hellebores were being rather shy. So I bought some flowers from supermarkets and picked a little, rather bedraggled viola from the garden. The large blank sheet is Arches paper. It’s expensive paper and is a bit intimidating when it sits there saying, “go on, just start will you…” These are to be continued later in the month…




Two watercolours on a Winter Solstice theme, look for the badger in one and the fox in the other. The top two are on Saunders Waterford 425gsm (NOT) which is a beautiful paper to work on and very tolerant of wet washes. Below is an unfinished acrylic version of ‘January Sun’ on the wall behind (the yellow will be softened with some rose glazes). That was painted on Bockingford 425gsm (NOT) also a paper in a weight that can cope with wet work and without being stretched.
This coming week workshops resume. Looking forward to some loose ‘winter flowers’ paintings.
Workshops this week are ‘Polar Bears and Penguins’. So there’s an opportunity to use some lovely chilly colours and have fun with different icy effects .




Great time meeting the Bearsted WI Art group this week. The theme was ‘Chilly Landscapes’ and we happened to have chosen probably the last really hot day of Autumn just before Storm Ali struck. We used a limited palette of the watercolours Aureolin Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. We mixed a cool, dark, blue grey for the trees and shrubbery .We dropped in Sepia Acrylic ink into the wet washes and carefully etched some lines for fine branches with cocktail sticks. I managed a very fast demo of printing leaves with white acrylic paint , which once dry can be over-glazed with diluted acrylic paint in golds or deep reds or cool blues.
I painted this just before Medway Open Studios as a commission. I had painted another piece but was sure the customer would prefer this one. As it turned out they really liked the first painting. This one sold a few days later in the final couple of hours of Medway Open Studios . It was a good week in the end, slow to start but the Wednesday was really busy (surprising) and the final weekend became quite hectic. Thank you those who came to browse, chat and buy paintings and cards.
