Walter’s Scarf.

Walter’s Scarf

Last year, I thought that I had finished the portrait of Walter, but then I was told that he always wore his scarf. The reference photo had a scarf but it was all twisted round one side, so I had just painted over it. 

I need a new reference photo to be able to paint the folds of a scarf correctly so I asked a male friend who is the same age as Walter to model for me. 

The next thing that I had to do was scrape off the old paint. I couldn’t scrape it right back to the canvas but I got it back enough to see the texture of the canvas. 

Now I have done the first phase of the correction by applying some oil paint for an undercoat. 

When I look closely at a painting that I thought was “finished” some time ago I immediately find things that need to be improved. So I spent some time today adding some shadow to his hat after I had photographed his undercoated scarf and sweater. 

And as for his neck; I am sure that I can make that better especially as it got scraped along with the scarf so repair is definitely called for. 

Technique v Paint Brand

Technique v Paint Brand

I have been having trouble with the portrait I have been painting because it is of an man with pronounced smile lines and dimples and the portrait is small on the canvas so there is no room for error. 

I am painting the portrait in water mixable oil paint on canvas with a very small brush. 

When I first tried water mixable oil paint I bought some Duo Aqua Oil by Holbein and I liked them very much but I wasn’t painting anything small and detailed. I had also bought a few tubes of Cobra paint by Royal Talens just to compare the colours. It is amazing how different burnt sienna can be from different manufacturers. I didn’t like the Cobra paint so much but ...

When I paint large areas with Duo Aqua paint, it is fine, but when I am trying to get a fine smile line in just the right place it catches on the tops of the weave of the canvas and I can’t get it in between the threads without using too much paint. 

After struggling for a few days, I thought about trying the Cobra paints that I had bought. Amazingly the brush marks went just where I wanted them. So I looked at the colours that I had and made a list of the ones I needed and sent an order for them. Yesterday I cleaned my palette and laid out the new Cobra ones. 

The colours in the photo from left to right are titanium white, light oxide red, burnt sienna, raw umber and burnt umber. These are the colours that I use to paint flesh. 

I love Terra Rosa colour that Duo Aqua makes which is the only thing that I miss. Light oxide red is a close match so I will learn to live without it when necessary. I can still use the Duo Aqua paint for less detailed portraits. 

Experimenting

Experimenting 

I have been struggling to paint since the Art in the Hills exhibition at Dufton. I had Boots on the easel but I knew that painting his fur needed flowing brushstrokes and I have been finding that my brushes catch on the canvas threads. I needed to find a solution. 

Then I remembered how I painted the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. 

I painted the portrait for the Golden Jubilee. There were celebrations all over the country. Many towns and villages were having street parties but Appleby-in-Westmorland couldn’t do that because the date coincided with the Horse Fair that year and the town would have been too full of visitors. So, instead, the Mayor read out a loyal address from the balcony of the Moot Hall, and I presented the Town with the portrait of the Queen. It is kept in the Mayor’s parlour. (I sent a print of the portrait to the Queen and asked that it would be kept with the loyal address.)

I started the portrait of the Queen in plenty of time. I was working in acrylics on stretched paper. Unfortunately I made a mess of it and the paper buckled so badly that I had to start again. The second version I painted on Graphic Film which is a “dimensionally stable” translucent polyester. As it is translucent I was able to trace the outlines of the portrait to save time, and dimensionally stable means that it stays flat even in humid conditions. 

I was going to paint the whole portrait in acrylics but I was very short of time by the time I got to her bouquet of flowers. I coated the acrylic surface with clear Colourfix primer where the flowers were to go. Colourfix primer has a tooth so I was able to finish the flowers in coloured pencils on top of the acrylic underpainting. It is much faster for me to paint flowers in pencil than with a brush. 

To get back to the portrait of Boots, I bought some Liquitex clear gesso and a big tub of Colourfix primer. I was puzzled about how to open the tub of primer but I had some left from working on the Queen. I painted the gesso over Boots body, and primer over his head so I could compare them. Next day I painted strokes of sepia paint over both areas. Both sides worked and I could make precise strokes of oil paint on them. The Liquitex gesso was smoother, but the instructions say to paint it on a non-oily surface which suggests that it won’t work so well on an oil painting. The Colourfix can be sanded smooth. 

So, in conclusion, I will coat the new canvases in Liquitex gesso but I will paint Colourfix on areas where I have already painted in oils. 

The only problem left is how to open the big tub of Colourfix. I think I know. 

Arthur

Arthur 

I have finished Arthur except for tidying up the left edge. Because I am painting on canvas, I am taking the paint over the edge so I don't have to frame it. The portrait is resting on that edge while the other three edges dry. I am using quick dry medium but I still have to wait a couple of days for it to dry well.

It is interesting to see a photo of a painting because something often pops out that doesn’t show in the painting. I notice that in this photo, his eye on the right is a bit too light, so I have darkened it since. 

There are a number of ways to get a new look at a painting to see what is wrong with it. An easy one is to look at it upside down. It isn't always convenient to turn a painting upside down of course, but it is easy to look at it in a mirror. I keep a hand mirror nearby. 

My usual fault is getting angles wrong.  The mirror shows if I have got things lined up right. But it isn't perfect for portraits because faces are not symmetrical. If you draw a line through the eyes and another through the mouth, they are not parallel. Everybody has one eye higher than the other. It isn’t usually noticeable and it is common to tidy up portraits and make them symmetrical. I wasn’t satisfied with that. I challenged myself to depict the asymmetry in such a way that the portrait looked more like the person and not as if I had messed up and done a bad drawing.

I mentioned my disability in my last post about buying the saddle stool. One of my problems is that I have no awareness of the angle of my head, which means it is impossible for me to measure angles by holding up a pencil. So I square up my reference photos and my canvas or paper to match. But I don’t square up evenly. I start by taking a line through the eyes, then I draw parallel lines wherever I fancy putting one. It is easy to do on image apps with layers because I just duplicate the layers and move the lines where I think they would be useful. Then I turn a line 90 degrees and add perpendicular lines in the same way. 

If I didn’t have an app that will do it, I could do it with a set square. 

Talking of the saddle stool, it is working out better than I expected. I am no longer in pain when I sit, and I can walk when I stand up. 

Gypsy Portraits Changing Expectations Exhibition.

Gypsy Portraits Changing Expectations Exhibition 

Appleby is crowded with visitors to the Appleby Horse Fair, and horses of all shapes and sizes. If you drive this way be very careful. I heard today that a small child running from between caravans got run over, and has a broken leg. We don’t want any more injuries. Children will always get excited and not look where they are going. 

My exhibition is set up and attracting positive attention from locals and visitors. 

This is a visual post. Here are more photos of the portraits. 

Boots

Boots

Boots is a beautiful Deerhound. I am painting him in water mixable oils on canvas using Payne’s Grey and white, warmed with a hint of sepia. 

I am not sure about the shape of Boots’ eye. In my reference photo his eye is bleached out by reflected light. In fact at one time I was wondering if he had a visible eye at all. This is one of those times that I am very glad that I have dogs who often cooperate to help me work out canine anatomy. Bryn is a cross bred Wolfhound so I am going to ask her to hold her head in the right position.

This time next week my exhibition "Gypsy Portraits, Changing Expectations" will be on view at St Lawrence’s Church, Appleby-in-Westmorland during this year’s Appleby Horse Fair.  

I am still busy finishing portraits. So I will get back to the easel now. 

Waiting for Varnish

Waiting for Varnish

I have completed another three portraits in the last couple of days. 

I have taken them upstairs for them to dry sufficiently to varnish them. I am using Exhibition Varnish. They can have their permanent coat of varnish after six months on top of the exhibition varnish.

The photo shows the portraits upside down, because I painted the bottoms last and the paint may come off on the shelf. I know that is obvious, but when I was studying at University I was told that if you don’t write the obvious things you lose marks. 

When it is safe to put them in my scanner I will take quality scans of them. 

Meanwhile I have two more portraits that are very nearly finished. In fact I meant to finish the lady in sunglasses today but I was working on her rather late last night and when I saw what I had done, I scraped it off! I had given her a dirty face. 

I am not going to make the mistake of working on any faces tonight but I think it will be safe for me to paint some sky backgrounds. 

360 degree Rotating Canvas Attachment.

360 degree Rotating Canvas Attachment

I have bought a 360 degree rotating attachment for my easel which you can see above. It took me a while to work out how to attach my reference photos close to the portrait. I was looking in all those places that one puts one’s household bits and pieces for hooks and things, and I found some Command Strips for hanging pictures. That inspired me to use them to hold a piece of plywood in place. I can clip my reference photos to it. You can see it works well. 

I think Jet wanted to get into the photo. He likes sitting on my painting table. The challenge is to keep his tail out of the wet paint. 

I knew for some time about this attachment for an easel so a canvas can be rotated. But I didn’t know if it would fit my easel. I have a rotating drawing board cum table easel that I have set up in my bedroom and I have been using it for years for drawing and painting in acrylics. However it won’t hold a canvas and there’s nowhere to set it up downstairs. 

Once my exhibition is over I have an acrylic portrait of a dog to finish. It is particularly useful to have a rotating easel for painting an animal’s fur because of hair being linear. It will be nice to paint Bentley downstairs. 

Brighteyes is nearly finished. His clothes look blotchy because it is the undercoat, and I concentrated on covering the canvas quickly. Now he is going back onto the picture shelves to dry. I have a dehumidifier working to speed it up. 

Lady in Sunglasses 2

Lady in Sunglasses 2

The Lady in Sunglasses is beginning to show her lovely friendly character. 

You may be thinking that I have indicated her eyes, but I can’t see her eyes at all in the reference photograph. I can only see myself and my camera reflected on the lenses and I am not going to paint that.

No, she hasn’t got a big earlobe. That will become her earring. 

I am still working on 10 portraits at once. I paint a bit more on three or four paintings a day. I have to rest my hand on the canvas because my arm and hand are weak due to polio. That is why I paint from the top left to the bottom right so I don’t smear the oil paint - except when I do it on purpose of course. If I need to go back over a higher part of the painting, I have to leave it to dry for a day or two. 

Meanwhile, I am ready to set up my next 10 portraits. There is a portrait of a deerhound calling to me ...

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. 

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.