Lynx Kitten

Lynx Kitten

It is three years since I drew the lynx kitten, but I am entering it in an exhibition at the Gallery of the Eden Valley Artistic Network 

http://www.edenvalleyartisticnetwork.co.uk/

It is a 4 x 6 inch pen and ink drawing on graphic film, coloured on the reverse with coloured pencils.

I always used to work on paper, until I started to work in acrylics and gouache. I struggled with the problem of the paper buckling. Paper can even buckle using a dry medium like pastel, especially in damp weather, and now I was living in the Eden Valley. I have known it to rain here when the sky was blue and there was no cloud to be seen.

I had to make a change, and I discovered that graphic film is "dimensionally stable". I understand this to mean it stays flat no matter how damp it gets. So I started painting in gouache on graphic film and I had no more problems.

Graphic film is translucent, so I got an idea. I drew on the first side of double-sided graphic film with pen and ink, then I coloured the reverse side with coloured pencils and the colour showed through beautifully though it was muted.

It is an interesting challenge to paint the reverse side. I imagine that it must be like glass painting. When painting on paper you paint the most important details on top of the underpainting. If you do that on the reverse of graphic film you would never see them. So first you paint the important details, then the underpainting on top of that.

You have to keep looking at the right side to see what the finished drawing will look like.

One important thing to know about graphic film is that the pen, pencil or paint sticks to a special film coating on the outside. If you make an error, never scratch it off. That takes off the coating and leaves a shiny surface that nothing will stick to. You can use water to remove mistakes but that will leave white water spots. I haven’t found anything that will clean off the spots.

I can’t think of anything else to help anyone who wants to try this technique but I am happy to answer any questions - if I know the answer!

Lack of Work in Progress

Lack of Work in Progress

I have made progress. Really! But I am expecting visitors and I have been painting ceilings and woodwork when I would rather have been painting this beautiful rosy-cheeked baby boy.

Yesterday I worked on his forehead, outlined his eyes and got his ear nicely established.

I have discovered that ”brown ochre” in Talens Rembrandt oil paints makes a perfect soft rosy colour when mixed with lots of white. I am adding a hint of light oxide red in the rosiest areas. I know I need to blend the cheeks and chin! 

Today was boring. I was back to washing floors and tidying up to get ready for my visitors. But I achieved one useful thing. I had downloaded an iPad app that was supposed to scan photos nicely. I wasn’t happy with it because I discovered that it depended on a subscription service. I have trouble with that kind of thing. I get a long time lag for anything cloud-based. I am not talking about just minutes. I deleted it.

So I searched for another photo scanner iPad/iPhone app and found one that I could test for free. It worked well (see above) so I paid for the unlimited scans version. It is called Unfade. It finds the edges of the painting and squares it up so I can take a quick photo. The full version repairs faded photos which is how it gets its name, but I don’t need that. 

Latest update on Gypsy Portraits Project.

Portrait of Gucci 

I finished the Portrait of Gucci before Christmas and eventually worked out how to scan the canvas. I cut a piece of thick black paper to prevent the scanner light getting through the gaps in the canvas threads and reflecting off the back of the lid. It worked!

It would have been easier to paint if I'd chosen a different pose for the portrait, but I love this laughing expression. 

Since I finished Gucci, I have decided that, because oil paint takes days to dry (and it sticks to my hands better than it sticks to the canvas) I decided that I have to paint a lot of portraits at once. At the moment I am working on ten paintings. I can’t say portraits because a couple of them have more than one individual.

I have been buying more paints. When I painted in pastel my basic brand was Talens Rembrandt. I added pastels by Schminke and Sennelier, but mainly I relied on the Rembrandt pastels for my pastel portraits. Oil paints are a new medium for me. I was surprised to discover that the colour names are not standard, and when I reach for a tube of Red Oxide to give a small child glowing cheeks, the colour was not what I was expecting! So I have added tubes of Talens Rembrandt oil paints to my palette. The oils don’t match the pastels exactly but I have a better idea of what it will do.

I know that a lot of people mix their colours from a limited number of colours but I am happier to mix a toning earth colour with white then add touches of other colours to get it as close to my subject as possible. 

When I lived in London my main choice for skin colour was gold ochre, but in Appleby it is burnt sienna. Perhaps it was living in London that gave people a yellowish complexion and in Appleby everyone has a much healthier glow!

Gypsy Portraits Project - Progress Report

Gypsy Portraits Project- Progress Report

Portraits of Gucci and Arthur

I have been struggling to get on with the portraits for this project. I have been falling too often. I dislocated my knee at one point, which stopped me from sitting at my easel. It took a while before I could do anything but sit on the sofa with my leg up straight. 

I am completely recovered from that problem and I am getting on with the portraits much faster. I am working on a number at once. A lot of painting in oils is waiting for the paint to dry. It is particularly important for me, because I have post-polio syndrome and my right hand is weak. I can paint with no problem. My only limitation is that I have to rest my hand on the canvas, so if the paint is wet it smudges, and I get an interestingly coloured hand.

I am most advanced with the portrait of Gucci, the dog. You can see what a beautiful nature she has. 

I am having to learn how to paint grass! It doesn’t usually come into portraits. 

Yesterday I searched online for a video of how to paint grass so I picked up a few tips. But I photographed the painting this morning before I put the tips into practice. 

I changed the colours from the video. I have an undercoat of flicks of shadow green by Holbein Duo Aqua Oil. It is looking promising. I used the colour to paint the bottom of the canvas so now it is upside down on the top picture shelf. I like the Duo Aqua paints. Gucci is mainly painted in Duo Aqua using a lot of Paynes Grey and white with raw umber to warm up the sunlit areas. I used some Schminke Mussini caput mortuum for the shadows on her tongue with Schminke Medium W Gel to make it water soluble. I also used a little bit of Schminke Mussini Pozzuoli earth to modify the Duo Aqua alizarin crimson. 

I currently have six portraits on the go. Another one that was dry enough today to rest my hand on was “Arthur”. This time I took the photograph after I had worked on it. It’s back on the picture shelves now, to dry. Today I also sketched baby Billy but it is a faint sketch and wouldn’t show if I photographed it. 

Meanwhile here is Arthur on the easel:

Conversations with Artists

Conversations with Artists

I have been having an Open Studio as part of the C-Art Festival. 

The first weekend stood out for me because my visitors were fellow artists who were interested in the water-mixable oil paint that I am currently using. 

This is what I told them. 

I started by buying Duo Aqua paints. I bought a lot of colours and I like the way they mix with water easily and blend on the canvas. They dry quite quickly, not as quickly as acrylics of course, so they need to be kept wet. They dry matte. 

However the colours, particularly the earth colours: the umbers, ochres and siennas, weren't the precise colours that I expected. 

When I took up portrait painting seriously I used pastels and the brand I used basically was Talens Rembrandt. I used the earth colour in the range of tints for different skin colours. So I expected that if I mixed, for example, burnt sienna with white that I would end up with a colour that would work well for a man who spent time in the outdoors. 

Another colour that I used a lot of when painting portraits in Rembrandt pastels was Gold Ochre. Duo Aqua doesn't include this pigment. So I looked for it in Talens water-mixable oils, Cobra. They don't include Gold Ochre but I bought a number of the earth pigments to try them. 

Cobra paints appear to contain more oil than Duo Aqua and they dry slightly slower. The pigments still weren't the exact colours that I hoped for. 

Then I did some research (on Google) and discovered that small amounts of ordinary oils can be mixed with water-mixable oils. As I wanted to mix small amounts of Gold Ochre with a lot of white, I bought a couple of Talens Rembrandt oil paints including Gold Ochre! That worked brilliantly for the portrait of my friend who has a very pale creamy complexion. 

Her portrait is nearly finished. I am waiting for it to dry completely so I can glaze another colour over her hair. She doesn't like it as I painted it but I am not going to paint it again. It will take too long. I hope that glazing it with umber will make her happy. I will post the result next week. 

After that success, I continued to investigate possibilities and I discovered that Schminke make mediums that mix with ordinary oil paints to make them water mixable. I bought a tube of their gel and a bottle of the liquid medium. And as I loved painting in Schminke pastels (they were like painting with butter!) I bought some Schminke oil paints. Their Mussini paints are of wonderful quality and they sell Natural Raw Umber, Natural Burnt Umber and Natural Burnt Sienna so I bought them and have fallen in love with them. I took advantage of a sale to buy some more interesting colours as you can see in the photo above. 

Schminke Mussini paints dry slower than the Cobra paints and may be more glossy but I am not sure about that. Time will tell. And if I have matte and gloss areas on my portraits, varnish will cure that. 

It is important to keep adding the medium or the oil paint and water separate out. But a bit more medium cures the problem straight away. 

Because the pigments are different in every brand, I have been making colour charts. They are not good colour charts, but they show the differences. 

Below is a photo of my colour charts taken under artificial lighting so the colours are nowhere near accurate but it gives the idea.

Pre-judging

Pre-judging

At the weekend I wrote a long complex post to introduce the reason why I started the Gypsy Portraits Project. It was to use my talent for painting portraits to combat prejudice and Gypsies and Travellers meet prejudice. Gypsies come to Appleby-in-Westmorland every June for the annual Horse Fair, so I took a lot of photos in June this year and I am going to have an exhibition of the portraits next June during the Horse Fair. 

The reason the post was not published is that I was writing it on my iPad and it froze so I lost everything I had written! 

On Sunday, two Jehovah's witnesses came to the door and I told them about my passionate feelings against prejudice. We had a really nice dialogue on the subject and I told them the story of my cat who I rescued nearly 2 years ago. So I think that if I write that story it will explain my feelings about pre-judging. 

The cat was crying at the front doors in my road but nobody would take him in because they said he was aggressive. He attacked the resident cats and dogs and while he liked to have his head rubbed, if his body was touched he would scratch and bite. 

So I took him in. I already had 2 dogs and 2 cats so I struggled to keep them apart. But I persevered and soon realised that the reason he was "vicious" was that he was badly injured. Perhaps he had been hit by a car, because he clearly had liver damage. 

With food and shelter he healed quickly. I couldn't take him to the vet until I could handle him, but as soon as he had recovered enough he went to be microchipped and castrated. 

I called him Jet after a dog we had who had a lovely kind nature. I hoped that it would rub off. I don't know if it made any difference but he is the loveliest cat now. He is so courteous towards my other cats and he loves the dogs. He is still sensitive to being touched on his body so I am very gentle with him and don't pick him up. 

Misjudging Jet is not the only reason I find he is a powerful example of prejudice. He is a black cat and a few people seem to confuse the colour of his fur with racism. When someone says of a cat "I'm not racist", I think that is odd. 

Meanwhile I had been struggling to sit at the easel and paint. But I am fully recovered from my dislocated kneecap now. I had to take off some time to clean the house. It was so dirty after 6 weeks of not being able to do anything except sit on the sofa. 

So I am back to painting. I have been experimenting with different colours and brands of oil paint. For example, I had assumed that if I bought burnt umber, it would be the same colour no matter which brand it was. It isn't true. 

When I used to paint portraits in pastel, my basic brand was Talens Rembrandt, and they make Rembrandt oils which are not water-mixable but the colours are very close to what I am used to. I have found a great solution to mixing a wide range of skin colours. I have discovered a wonderful product made by Schminke, which is a gel that you can mix with oil paint to make it water-mixable. Schminke also make beautiful pastels so I think that I will add some of their oils to my palette. 

I am relieved to be able to get on with the portraits at last. And I am confident that with the new paint I will catch up the backlog. 

Here is how I am doing with the portrait of Mrs Lucas. I am reworking her skin colour. The standard way to paint in oils is to start dark and add the lighter colour on top, but I chose to paint light to dark in pastels to keep the colours clean and I am staying with the method that I am used to. I am also enjoying painting on canvas so the texture shows. 

I have to add some delicate shading to soften Mrs Lucas's eyes and I haven't even started on correcting the colour of her mouth, chin, and throat. It won't take long. I'm on a roll. 

Studio Changed

Studio Changed.

 

Yesterday my friend, Annette, helped me put up my picture shelves. She was in charge of the level and held the shelves steady while I wielded the carpenter's pen that I had bought. It's a felt tipped marker pen with a very long steel nib to be able to mark screw holes even through wood.

Then I showed off my prowess with a drill. The walls in this house are of very coarse sandstone with pebbles in it. I was very lucky though and only glanced off a pebble in two holes. I suspect that the plastering was done by an apprentice because it is so uneven but it wasn't too bad on the level of the lower shelves which is how we managed to get three shelves in a row.

The wall higher up was more uneven and wavy. There was no way to line up the upper shelves that would look good. So those three are on different levels. Annette chose the positions. She used to be a window dresser in Edinburgh, Scotland, so she is an expert at this kind of design.

There is space at each end of the wall to hang framed portraits using picture hooks. That will be a permanent display so I will take my time planning it. It will include the portrait of Roger and the one of Bryn that can be seen on the wall behind the sofa in the photo below. 

I am so happy to have the picture shelves. I will be able to work on a number of portraits at once and have somewhere safe to put them while the paint dries. 

Gucci is on the top shelf and there is a portrait below her that is only sketched as yet. I have been struggling to work because my paintings were behind obstacles set there to protect the canvases from cat claws. No problem now. I have a lot of catching up to do before the Open Studio weekends starting on Friday 8th September. 

After the shelves were in place it was time to put the sofa out for it to be collected this morning early. When Annette had helped me with that she had to leave. I was tired but determined and I made the new IKEA sofa. It was finished at 9pm and I made myself a coffee and put my feet up. 

I put the green cover on it this morning for some protection from the animals. 

Doesn't it look neat? It is very comfortable and takes up a lot less space even though the seat is actually slightly larger.