Obstacles

Obstacles

It has been another difficult week. 

There is a belief that when one tries to do something valuable or important, obstacles arise. 

I thought that my badly bruised knee was bad enough but it has not healed as quickly as I expected because of misbehaving cats. 

Life normally has a gentle routine of painting and drawing during the day, interspersed with taking care of the animals. I have two dogs and three cats. 

The dogs are well behaved except when our friend Annette, visits. Then it is playtime and treat time. Annette thinks they are badly behaved with visitors but they know she is the only person with a pocket full of treats. 

Cat number one, Pumpkin, is best described as a "gentleman". He has impeccable manners and has the run of the house. I don't let him out. He is old now 

Cat number two, Fliss, is in the photo above with Bryn. I had her from a kitten and taught her to pay attention to me but I don't trust her to be left loose unsupervised, so she is shut in the spare room when I am working and at night.

Cat number three, Jet, is a rescue. He is feisty. He is opinionated. He has teeth and claws and is willing to use them. I can't work with him around. He sits on anything I am doing. This week he decided he will go to bed when he wants to and I have been kept busy stroking him for hours which has been stressful for my knee. And tiring. I have been getting to bed very late and I haven't got much work done. 

Last night Jet refused to be put to bed at all. I don't know where he decided to sleep eventually. He certainly spent hours outside my bedroom door making strange noises. As I expected, when I got up he was desperate for the litter tray which is in the spare room. He was probably very hungry too. I took the opportunity to shut him in for the day. 

Fliss was loose in the studio today. She was interested in the palette of oil paint. I was interested in keeping her tail out of the paint but I did get some work done. I had to scrape some cat hair off the painting. Luckily it wasn't a delicate piece of brushwork. 

This week I bought myself two more ceramic palettes with lids so I could work on three paintings at once. I like ceramic palettes more than any other kind. The paint doesn't dry so quickly or hard on them and they are very easy to clean. They each live in their own air tight food storage box. These boxes are also cat proof. 

Next Friday is the Private View of the Dufton "Art in the Hills" exhibition so I will be late writing my blog. I will take photos. The three portraits that I am struggling to finish despite knee and cats are to be in the exhibition. I have to finish them by Wednesday morning when a fellow exhibitor (and good friend) will pick them up from me to deliver them to the Dufton village hall. 

Cat in the Studio

Cat in the Studio

I haven't been able to do as much painting as I hoped this week. I had a fall on Monday and landed heavily on my right knee. I was in so much pain and I couldn't walk never mind sit at the easel. By Wednesday I was able to do some drawing while sitting in my easy chair in the kitchen. That evening I was able to stand and transfer a new portrait onto a canvas. I paid for it yesterday though. My knee became so uncomfortable.

This morning I was able to get back to the portrait of my friend. I was playing with the colours. I am getting a skin tone that I am happy with, by mixing a lot of white with a small amount of gold ocre and a hint of light oxide red to take the yellow out of it. I am using water mixable oil paints, but the gold ochre that I want is an ordinary oil paint. Luckily you can mix small amounts of oil paint with a greater quantity of water-mixable oil paint without losing the water mixable aspect.

After lunch, I got back to my easel raring to go, to find Pumpkin asleep on the lid of the palette. I hope you can see him in the photo. So I went upstairs to fetch a ceramic palette. I had been using it for acrylics so I had to clean it. 

I like to use ceramic palettes. I like the ones with round dimples. The paint doesn't dry so fast and stick so tight on ceramic. When I'm not painting I keep each one in an airtight food storage tub. 

I want to mention my favourite brushes as well. I have a couple in the pot on the window sill. The ones with a white handle are made of memory hair. The brand name is KUM. I buy them from CultPens. I don't know if anyone else sells them in the UK.

Getting on with the Portrait

Getting on with the Portrait

I have continued to experiment with the skin colour as painted in water mixable oils.

I read that I could add conventional oil paint and it would still be water mixable as long as I only used a small quantity. I bought a small number of oil paints including gold ochre which I used to find very useful for skin. The new paints arrived today and they worked well. 

Portrait painters prefer that their subjects don't see the portrait until it is finished. My friend turned up unexpectedly on Sunday afternoon. I would have hidden the painting if I had known. She was worried about the "wrinkles". I was thinking about the lines on her forehead and it was later that I realised she probably meant the construction lines round her eyes. The portrait won't look anything like that when it is finished. Her mouth is tight in the reference photo but I will soften her expression a lot. 

I like the paint to dry off between painting sessions. So I have started another portrait, but because I was struggling with skin colour at the time, I chose to paint a black and white dog. The dog is a crossbred Jack Russell terrier and I caught a lovely smiling moment from her. 

You won't be able to see it clearly but she is pencilled into the hole in the middle of the painting. I paint the surroundings first because the fur/hair has to be brushed over the grass. 

Studio Changes

 

Studio Changes

I have been very busy fussing with changes to my studio for the last few months. 

There are two reasons. The most important reason is that I am starting a new project. I am painting a series of portraits in oil on canvas. I will have a solo exhibition of them in June 2018.

The second reason is that I have had a nasty rash on my leg that meant I have had to sit with my leg propped up on a stool since last October. Because of that I haven't been able to use my usual painting table where I paint while sitting on a gas lift bar stool. (I couldn't find a footstool high enough 😉) So I have been painting and drawing small portraits on the kitchen table. But I have commissions for some big portraits and I have my project. I will say more about that in my next post. 

The result was that I spent a lot time online looking at easels that would let me sit with my leg up. I bought a table easel that would hold a bigger canvas but I couldn't get on with it, and l didn't like the idea of painting in oils on the kitchen table. 

So I set up my old easel in the lounge and it was very crowded. This week, I decided that it is no longer a lounge. It is a studio where I entertain guests. I rearranged the furniture. There was a plan chest under the window which I moved to the other wall where there was an easy chair. The chair has been moved to the kitchen (in the way of the oven). The easel is now in the perfect place where it gets the north light. 

The photo shows my new setup with the portrait I am working on. It is my first attempt at an oil painting. I am using water mixable oils. There are a few different brands. The first ones I bought were Duo Aqua Oil and I like them very much except I have been struggling to get the skin colours that used to be so easy in pastels. I bought a few Cobra oil paints to see if that burnt umber was the colour I remembered. It wasn't. The Cobra paints are more oily and don't suit me so well. 

I checked and you can mix normal oils with water mixable ones so I have bought some but it will be ages before they arrive. 

Meanwhile I have managed to mix a nice skin colour with burnt sienna and Quinacridone Gold and lots of white. I thought the Gold was too powerful to be useful but a tiny bit takes the pasty pink out of the burnt sienna.

I have also been experimenting with different brushes. I like KUM Memory Point brushes for my gouache paintings and I bought some in different shapes and sizes to try.

The water mixable paints dry faster than normal oils and it is a good idea to have a palette with a tight lid like for acrylics. I don't imagine that the kind with a reservoir and a semi permeable membrane would work right but you might like to try. Let me know. 

While I was about all this paint shopping, I bought a Daylight bulb for my worklight which is turned on in the photo. It has been a damp dismal day. 

Postscript: my leg is getting much better now. 

Drawing of Bryn Finished

 

Portrait Drawing of Bryn

I finished the portrait drawing of Bryn some time ago and immediately became involved in new exciting projects. And not so exciting problems to solve. So I just now posting the finished result. 

I am calling the portrait of Bryn "Elegance". I once had another dog, a crossbred boxer, who had a similar queenly demeanour. But Juno wasn't able to curl up into such a small neat space with her chin resting on her back. Bryn is such a feminine dainty soul who takes a great interest in hair styles (mine) and manicures (hers). She tells Jasper to stand in the corner while I vacuum, and she keeps the cats in order. She is 14 now and I am making the most of every day I still have her. This is why I wanted to commemorate her in this portrait. 

I worked the portrait in graphite pencil on Bristol board. I used mechanical pencils that have a good grip area for great control. But it still took me 57 hours to get that degree of detail. 

The main problem that I have to find a solution for is that I need an easel that I can sit at with my leg up on a stool because it is not yet fully healed. I have easels. I have a great one set up facing a north light but it is set up on a high table and I use it while sitting on an adjustable height stool. There is no way I can rest my leg on a stool! I have a regular studio easel which I have to stand at. The construction makes it impossible to put my leg on a stool with that one. So I spent hours online shopping for easels. I saw one I liked but it takes up a lot of floor space and my house is small. 

Then I remembered I had seen a thing to attach to the back of a drawing board to set it up on a camera tripod. Plenty of space under a tripod for a footstool. I bought that and a lightweight drawing board and I am going to use it to start my next portrait tomorrow. I will be working A3 size which is uncomfortably big for the table easel. I will be working in Acryl gouache which is a gentle medium so the camera tripod should stand up to it nicely. 

New Portrait of Bryn in Graphite Pencil

It feels like a long time since I did any serious artwork. I have a rash on my left leg that means that I have to sit with my leg on a stool. I found it very difficult to draw with my leg sticking out to the left. It was putting me off balance until I developed some new muscles to compensate!

I also needed to buy a new easel that I could use on the kitchen table. I bought myself an easel that I can tilt and rotate, so that instead of me bending to shade at an angle, I can twist the drawing board round. 

I started drawing this portrait of my old dog, Bryn, last year. She is very grey now so I am using an old photo as reference, but the pose is still so typical of her. She is a very elegant lady. 

I am drawing on Bristol board using mechanical pencils in sizes .3 and .5 in 2B. I love using the pencils which have a special grip area, but, even more, I love using the leads which have nano diamonds so they are blacker than usual because nano diamonds lubricate the lead. 

The piece of card at the bottom of the photo is so I can rest my hand on the surface without getting grease on the drawing. Graphite doesn't stick well to grease. 

Now Bryn's face is drawn, I was thinking that it wouldn't have be long before I finished it, but I forgot about the lovely twirly rosettes of fur on her chest. They will take some time. I am so glad that I bought the new easel!

Well That's Over!

 

Church Craft Fair

I would have liked a bit more warning about the craft fair, and having set to work on doing a couple of paintings for it, obstacles arose. Don't they always! So I only finished one painting which was design of a cheetah for a new bookmark. I am not happy with the finished result so I won't show you until I have done more painting on it and made it look as I wanted. The other painting I was working on was a portrait of a cat. I am going to get more work done on that one next week. I will share the work in progress of that one.

I set up a folding canvas with samples of my portraits on repositionable posters, and added some colourful small drawings, flyers, business bookmarks and cards.

I also ran a one day raffle in aid of the Church. The prize is a portrait by me. So I have a dog portrait to do. I know the dog. His name is Bentley and he is very cute. So I am a winner too.

The people who didn't win the raffle were not total losers. I included a 25% off voucher with every raffle ticket valid for one year. One lady is very interested in having a portrait of her horse.

It was a good weekend. I added the Conté portrait on the left on Saturday. I am glad I did as it was much admired. It is an old portrait, but I am still proud of it. 

The dog portraits and the baby portrait also got a lot of positive attention. Amateur and professional artists asked about my media.

There were a lot of jokes about my self portrait (on the right hand canvas). I did the self portrait for two reasons, and the relevant reason this weekend was to prove that I am good at getting a likeness. I explained to a few people that I had done more than one portrait from life using a mirror, and how difficult it is to maintain a pleasant expression while one is staring at oneself in a mirror.

One of the most enjoyable things about taking part in a craft fair, is making new creative friends and one had some interesting news for me. Her artist son is starting a gallery in the next town. So I am planning to do some still lifes in hopes that he will show them for me. 

Look out for the next post with an update on the portrait of Freyja, the cat.