Three Parts of the Whole

25" x 19", pastel on paper

I posted this a couple of hours ago and have come back to add a little writing after spending an evening doing research on blogging, feeds (RSS versus Atom), marketing and generally getting tied up in knots not knowing how to make the next step.
A lot of wonderful advice out there:-
Linda Blondheim has some wonderful thoughts about thinking about directions to take in these hard economic times.
Cindy Davis also had some interesting ideas on what artists do wrong.
Beth Hayden runs a blogging workshop and just in her description of her blogging toolkit give great ideas.
Alyson Stansfield is a font of knowledge for marketing strategies for artists (I'm currently taking a course with her and learning heaps especially about what I am not doing that I should be doing!

If anyone has any others to share - please feel free to do so! :-)

Three Quarters Mutiplied by Two

Pastel, 24" x 16"

Oil on canvas, 10" x 8"
I can see looking at this photo that I need to tone down the rear quarter of orange - the colour is too saturated and brings it foreward.
Both these pieces were fun to do and it was interesting doing the two pieces with different mediums. I really like the way the pastel glows.

Watercolour and Bear

I'm procrastinating - making phone calls, getting started with painting, studying and while I procrastinate I doodle - watercolour paint tubes and a little teddy bear.

Urban Sketching

A sketch for today. Sun was shining it was lovely and warm sitting in the sunshine for twenty minutes sketching this. Put the colour in when I got home. Taking a night off oil painting for some admin time. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice studio time for the more practical stuff. I really enjoy the geometric shapes of buildings and the cast shadows that form in hidden recesses.
Where I was sitting is a rose garden and its very odd to find roses blooming in January! I'm hoping to get a couple of blooms to paint this weekend as the weather forecast is not promising for plein air.

Green and Black

10" x 10", oil on canvas
Tempting fate by putting another apple in this set-up. Quite enjoying playing with green here - never thought I would hear myself say that! More fun with the reflections.

I forgot to say yesterday about how I came by the apples. The wonderful secretary in my office, Maria, bought them for me. Because of security we really are not encouraged to go out shopping and so we rarely get fresh fruit of vegetables. I asked Maria if she could possibly get me some green apples when she went to do her weekly grocery shopping. She told me that her children were fascinated by my wanting them for painting and insisted on helping pick out the best apples. Anything that was not a perfect apple shape was rejected.

On the way to work today we passed a scene that reminded me of how grateful we all should be that have homes and running water in our houses. Men washing in a puddle by the side of the road. I've grown used to the men in the river. This reopened my eyes to the poverty. Its funny how we begin to become blind to things we see on a regular basis. It reminded me of a lecture by a fascinating artist (Sorry I can't remember his name) who had done an installation piece using famous newspaper photos and how at first it seems so horrific and then after you have seen those images over and over again that you become immune to their image.

Black and Green

10" x 10", oil on canvas
Working with a limited palette of viridian, cadmium yellow light, cobalt blue, alizarin and titanium white. Applying more paint and using a larger brush - the problem as usual was not tweaking with a tiddly brush at the end. I have to get over the idea that all edges have to be neat and tidy, that I'm working toward suggestion more than detail. I read again last night that by leaving a suggestion you engage your viewer more because they have to fill in the gaps. Very pleased with the reflection of the apple in the cup.

York II

I love reflections in still water, slight ripples disturbing the reflections so they just shimmer.

Trees and Garden

Today was another study day - studying trees and trying to work out how to paint trees so that they look natural but painterly.
I am struggling with trees. I'm not sure what the answer is but I feel it lies in brushwork and controlling the paint. The learning process goes on.


This morning the sun was shining through under the trees and over our garden wall, highlighting one side of the guardhouse at the front gate. The chairs are where our armed guards sit and have their tea on sunny days. The 18" metal spikes that surround the property are a constant reminder of the security threat, along with the double layer of metal bars on every window

Chocolates

I did get out to paint plein air today but I have it posted on a private blog for critiquing so just some sketches today of chocolates. I've given myself the evening off practical work for more study and note taking.

I've been carefully studying other artists landscape work and in particular their brushwork. Sargent is a wonderful example of outstanding brushwork. It all seems to be about suggestion and letting the viewer create their own interpretation from the information given. This is the painting of Sargents for which I had been searching (Thank you, Karen, for finding it. Jeanette, the one you gave me is very similar and is as good an example) which shows how he masterfully demonstrates this suggestive quality (I had in particular been drawn to the silverware on the table). One of the books I recently brought says that you should paint according to what your eye sees - if your focus is on one object that is what should have the most detail while the peripheral objects should be more suggestive with only as much detail as is necessary to reveal them as they would appear in your field of vision.

I've also been reading, both in books and on blogs, about minimising the tonal values in a plein air landscape to 4 or at most 5 in an attempt to simplify the landscape. Severtal artists advocate doing a thumbnail tonal value sketch and also a thumbnail colour study. Kevin McPherson (Landscape Painting Inside and Out) suggests using a large brush and doing 2" x 3" thumbnails using the the closest colours to the landscape. Vicki McMurray (Mastering Colour) also suggests colour thumbnails to check the balance of the picture. Both if these, I feel are things I need to include in my practice as I am sure they simplify the actual painting process. Lots to chew over and absorb!

Some wonderful snapshots on my drive in to paint today - the soldier sitting on a chair in a tented camp with towel draped around his shoulders, his friend giving him a haircut and there were boys playing cricket in our street, the wickets set up either end of a very short "22 yards" were concrete blocks!

Chiquitas Cosiendo

10" x 10", oil on canvas

I took the reference photo for this painting at Valle de Bravo in Mexico after we had been to see the Monarch butterfly migration (Unbelievable sight!). These two young girls were dressed in traditional dresses and sitting in the dappled shade of the trees, embroidering. I have to admit that I am not normally drawn to pictures with people in and this would not normally be something that I would paint under any circumstances. But yesterday in the absence of having done any sketching from life, I sketched from this. When I came home from work this evening I was totally exhausted and had to push myself to my easel. Having already produced a tonal drawing I thought I was already halfway to the painting and so I set off on yet another experiment. And here we are. I bore in mind all that I had read lately about distances being thin transparent layers and foreground being thicker opague paint.

The weekend and another promise to myself that if the sun is shining I WILL be painting plein air! I need to dig out some warm socks and jacket because it was decidedly nippy this afternoon and if I had been anywhere else I would have said there was snow in the air. The driver did tell me that there is over a foot of snow where his family lives in the Himalayan foothills.

After lunch my husband and I usually take a stroll around the compound and enjoy the lovely gardens and trees, taking a few minutes from our desks. On several past weekends he has told me about some green parrots with long tails that he has seen in eucalyptus trees near his office and as I had not seen them I began to tease him, telling him he was hallucinating. Today, on our stroll, I saw them from a distance as they flew off, a shimmering emerald green in the sunlight. We have wonderful birds here - there are always kites and hawks flying around (one that stands guard on top of the main building), hoopoes that remind me of my childhood in Kenya, and many other birds that I had not seen before. I've yet to see any wild animals, unless you can count the cows that meaner freely down the main roads!

Revisiting Missouri

I came back to this reference today to put into practice some things that I have been reading about. Slightly different crop this time. I'm much happier with this version and feel that I am beginning to make a breakthrough with bringing my foregrounds forward and pushing back the background. The tree also seems to have more substance and I feel a lot happier about its structure. Sketching priorities for the next few days is to do some work on trees. I am also very happy that there is a feeling of early evening to this piece. I do need to work on my brushstrokes more, looking at other artist's work I'm aware of what a difference the use of different strokes makes to a piece.

I've been trying to find a picture by Sargent that I had seen a while back (dining table with silver dishes on it) - if anyone knows the one I mean I would be very grateful if you could give me a URL. Its been driving me crazy not being able to find it!

New Year's Resolution 8 - Practice techniques.

White on white

10" x 10" (Lousy photo I am afraid, despite my best efforts and it being daylight)
Another experiment - battled with this - but its definitely an improvement on my last try of white on white. I can see that I am having problems with the deepest shadows. My instinct tells me they are the same but looking at the image I am not so sure they can be. Determinedly not using tiddly brushes in an attempt to keep loose. I can see that this is going to be one of those subjects that I keep coming back to, even if only to see how I have improved.

Today is the start of Alyson Stanfield's Blast Off course that I have signed up for. Robin Neudorfer gave me the link and after a lot of arguing with myself I decided to bite the bullet and see what I can learn to get my artwork out into the public arena. I'm determined that this year is going to be a breakthrough year.

New Year's Resolution 7 - Take every opportunity presented this year.

Two Pairs

6" x 8", oil on canvas.
Today I did some colour studies. Single Japanese pear place on red, blue, green and yellow ground. I was aware that I got less and less loose with each one - maybe doing them all in one session was pushing it a little. It was really interesting to see the different colours that appear on the pear. The pear itself is a very pale creamy yellow and reflected the ground colours beautifully. The red was seriously in your face - nothing subtle going on here and the glow on the pear was brilliant. The blue fabric is a pale coeruleum pashmina with touches of pale lilac and paler turquoise and the pear shadow hues became much more subtle and soft. For the yellow I used a yellow top - quite a bright yellow - and the pear was almost camouflaged on it. The shadows seemed much darker though than they had on the blue. Finally for the green I used an olivey green sweater as my ground but in the light it became quite a golden colour and it seems like its only in the background that it shows as green. The shadows and lights were much cooler with only touches of warmth showing on the edges of the pear and at the stem. Interesting exercise and I learnt a lot. They look pretty cool all together too! I'm beginning to feel much more confident about moving the paint around the canvas and doing wet in wet. Another step forward!

New Year's Resolution 6 - Make notes of lessons learned.

Today was extremely chilly and there was frost on the ground - the first frost I have seen in years! All the locals were wrapped in their blanket/shawls and when my husband asked the driver why they wear blankets and not jackets, his response was that jackets are much more expensive at ................ $8.50 whereas a blanket/shawl costs only $3 or $4 and is much more useful because you can also wrap it around your head and across your mouth like a scarf as well as it covering your body and your hands. A jacket, however, only covers your arms and body. The soldiers guarding the road outside the Pakistani Parliament were dressed in greatcoats similar to the ones that used to be worn by British soldiers, their hands shoved deep in the pockets and then scarves wrapped around their heads, like a ladies headscarf, with their berets perched on top, kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders. Quite a picture.

One thing that is noticeable here is how few overweight people you see. They are also small. I am only 5' 5", very average for the western world, and here I am an amazon woman and tower over all but one person in my office!

Genalgualcil

Genalguacil is another of those gorgeous Andalucian pueblos blancos and an artists dream. Within this small village is an amazing art community who show their work throughout the village and once or twice a year hold an exhibition with their studios open to the public. I've not been fortunate enough to have been there at that time but my mother tells me its a delight! When you walk through this archway you come to a wonderful open plaza in front of the church and, if my memory serves me well, the view from here goes all the way to Morocco across the straits of Gibraltar. (Sorry for lousy photo - will retake in daylight on Wednesday).

The more I paint white the more I want to explore it - the different shades you can achieve and still create some very subtle difference. Just looking at my palette after one of these paintings shows the wonder of white. There is such an incredible subtlety and depth in areas that are close in value but shimmer with colour. The trick is in keeping the colours clean and not muddying them - now that I would like to learn! Doing the pastels has really helped in being able to see those differences in areas that at first look like they are one plane of colour but on closer inspection dissolved into multiple hues.

New Year Resolution 5 - explore areas of interest.

York

Today just a sketch - from York.

My father was a champion clay pigeon shooter - he won competitions the world over. He had a theory that anyone could hit the first clay - the action was instinctive. He said that after that it would all fall apart because you would try to think about what you had done and repeat it and but the results were invariably a miss. From that point you had to learn how to shoot. I think that this also applies to painting, at least for me. On successful days its intstinct - I don't think about what I am doing, I just apply the paint. The problem arises the next painting when I try to think what I did the last time and repeat the prescription and it just doesn't work. Either the mood is different or the change in subject matter changes how I react. Today was one of the days when I tried to recreate whatever it was that worked yesterday and just couldn't quite capture it.

Back to work tomorrow and dreading it. I've had the most wonderful 10 days at home, painting and doing artistic research. I'm going to try and do sketches in my lunch half-hour (weather permitting) and come home ready to paint.

New Year's Resolution 4 - Sketch regularly.

Bowl of Sunshine

oil on canvas, 20" x 16"

I had all sorts of intentions today to go and paint plein air. I spent at least an hour yesterday evening packing up watercolours, brushes (both oil and watercolour0 pencils, drawing pens, water, jam jars, plastic plates to act as palettes, kitchen towl, an old tea towel, two canvases (carefully organised cardboard to protect these) and woke this morning to a deluge. The best laid plans of mice and men ..............

So still life it had to be. Now I have long held that I paint best when I am listening to music and it really is important what music I am listening to. I love things I can dance around to (pictures of Anita prancing around with palette and brushes in hand!) and my new favourite art music is Gabriela and Rodrigues. They play this funky flamenco type music - great beat! So this is what you get when you paint to their music.

I had such fun painting this though it started off badly. I washed the canvas with alizarin and rubbed it into the canvas. That in itself was hard as I had gessoed this canvas and sanded and gessoed and resanded until the surface was completely smooth. And boy does that surface suck up the paint. I then blocked in the main colours in thick paint and then painted into that layer. A real wet in wet challenge! I'm afraid its not a great photo as the wet paint is reflecting light - will try for better tomorrow.

New Year's Resolution 3 - Find enjoyment in everything you do.

6 O'clock Shadow

The name is a misnomer - it was two o'clock but I prefer the play on words! We have a covered back balcony (the sides are just wooden bars with netting) and in the afternoon the sun shines through and makes wonderful shadows with the bars. Ever since we arrived here I have wanted to draw it and thought there is no way I would ever be able to work quickly enough to catch the light before the shadows change. Of course there is no way but I took a tip that Mary gave me (I believe she got it from Michael Newberry) to lay in the shadows first. The colour of the light didn't change much but the shadows moved across the floor very quickly. So having worked out where the shadows were it was much easier to then concentrate on the light. Second question was how much of outside detail should I include and I decided that as it was the shadows on the floor and side net wall that interested me most I would just give a suggestion to what was outside. All in all I am pretty pleased with the way this came out. I tweaked it a bit once I got it inside.

New Year's Resoltion 2 - Keep website updated regularly.

Lake Sinclair

A couple of sketches from Georgia.
New Year's resolution No 1 - Do some art every day - even if only a sketch.

Happy New Year

Watercolor and pen from my sketchbook. Two of my favorite drinks!
I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! May your 2009 be filled with happiness.

Mid-Summer Missouri

In an attempt to get more painterly with landscapes I have started by painting from a photo I took in Missouri a couple of summers ago so that I can get to grips with the main concepts. Stage one, draw in your main shapes and block in the colours being careful about values. Stage two define the blocked colour shapes. For once I got a decent amount of paint onto the canvas (and all over me).

Another three hours on the chair today - and according to the oracle its coming along nicely though I have to admit to having some doubts at the moment. We'll see how it looks in the cold light of day, tomorrow.

Comfort Zone

Spent a few hours this morning putting on more colour on the chair - begin to feel it coming out of the grisaille now. I'm experiencing something quite strange here - the colours should be the same value as the grisaille - and when you get it right its like there is no colour because it just melts into the picture. And then stand back and bingo its coloured. Looking at this photo I'm not sure that the colour is quite accurate as the distant arm is not nearly such a warm orange IRL.

My Christmas present to myself came today - some books on painting. I am inspired!!! Lots of tips such as painting 2" x 3" colour studies, daily practices, and all sorts of wonderful colour advice. I am in heaven!

Alexis

Today I wanted to experiment - not really sure what I am doing when it comes to watercolour. I know the background isn't quite the way I want it but will wait until it has completly dried before I decide if i will continue deepening the background. I'd really like to have puddles of colour overlapping the hair but I am a little cowardly about throwing the paint around. Also wonder how much more I can push the tonal values in the face.

Jennifer

From my sketchbook
A day of fiddling around and not getting anything done.

Lemon

6" x 6", oil on canvas

Christmas Memories

Today is my son's birthday - he is 22 today (I'm really not sure how he got to be that old because I swear I'm not much older!).

I was thinking today about childhood memories of Christmas. As a child we always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve (my father was Danish and it is the Danish tradition) - my mother would do the decorations in secret, locked away and it wasn't until we went to sit down for our Christmas dinner in the evening that we would be allowed to see what she had done. It was like magic when the door was opened and the Christmas tree was decorated. Dinner traditionally was goose with mashed potatoes, peas and red cabbage, and dessert was rice pudding. An almond (just one) is placed in the bowl of rice pudding and then everyone is served and the person who gets the almond recieves an extra little present. After dinner we would unwrap presents - the person who had won the almond present would pick the first present from under the tree. And then that recipient would pick the next present and so on. And just so we would have a taste of English Christmas, my sister and I would wake up on Christmas morning to stuffed stockings at the end of our beds.

When my son was born on Christmas Eve, I was determined that his birthday wouldn't get lost in the excitement of Christmas so we always had a proper birthday party for him with family. He always thought he got the best birthday because it was presents two days in a row! Our tradition on Christmas Eve went from birthday into Christmas late in the evening. We would read the Christmas story out loud, each member of the family reading a section. And then I would read "'twas the Night Before Christmas" to the children before tucking them into their beds.

Now they are grown and its been several years since I have had Christmas with any of my family but there are things I still do. Christmas is not Christmas to me without rice pudding and every Christmas Eve I read "Twas the Night Before Christmas".

I'd like to wish all my friends and their families "Merry Christmas" and may you all have a peaceful loving Christmas.

Sketchbook

From my sketchbook.

Not enough time for anything else today - up to my ears in Christmas cookies. Why do I let myself get distracted with things like that? And tomorrow I wont be home until later as there is a Christmas get together that I could really do without. But then FREEDOM and 11 days off - woohooo paintbrushes, here I come! I'm making a list of things I am going to do during that time

1. Work on the chair
2. Do some pastels
3. Daily paintings
4. Plein air

Jubrique

oil on canvas 9" x 12"

The white villages of Andalucia are incredibly picturesqe, brilliant white houses cascading down the mountains, their terracotta roofs glowing in the Mediterranean sun. My mother, sister and brother-in-law live in Jubrique, one such village, and we have been lucky enough to visit them there a couple of times in the last few years. Painting this makes me want to go back soon to paint plein aire. I'm still finding green a real challenge - maybe time to make a colour chart and try out mixing different greens.

Report Card

No art to show today. Not that I haven't painted. I have. All day long. Work is having a competition for decorating doors for the holidays. Our office is open plan so we are using our reception desk as our "door". It is about 40 inches high and has a ledge on it. today I spent the day painting a fireplace on unstretched canvas to put under the shelf area which will serve as a mantelpiece. Woking with the canvas on the floor was extremely tiring. My back aches and my knees are agony! Yesterday we made a Christmas tree from green card (in true Blue Peter fashion!) and also some candles that we will put on our "mantelpiece". Tomorrow I must make stockings to hang off the ledge.

I read on Tina Mammoser's blog today about looking back and evaluating the past year and thought that that sounded like a good idea. The year started for me with my making a lot of resolutions about creating regularly but got off to a very slow start! I was struggling with finishing the grisaille of the chair - at least now I am putting the colour on that (note to self - 2009 will see the end of the chair painting!), I did a few pastels and not a lot else until October. I did sell 5 pieces this year (four pastels and a drawing) so that was a bonus.

Things learned - I'm suddenly much more comfortable with using colour, I understand more about how it positions itself in space according to hue and value. A lot of the things I learned with pastels I am being able to put into my oil paintings and find that surprisingly - they work! I made a commitment to a painting a day and have by and large kept to that for the last month - admittedly there have been a couple of days when I have painted but not completed a painting but sometimes its nice to feel you are doing something of substance.

I've set myself some goals for the coming year that I'm not putting into writing yet - if they work out I am sure that I will be saying more. I'm planning to get out and paint plein aire - one of those feel the fear and do it anyway things. I also want to investigate getting work on Imagekind and other selling avenues.

We will be moving again next year so I have to plan how I will get over the hiatus of a couple of months without materials - or maybe put together a travelling art box to take with me - just leave the clothes behind!

So an early end of year assessment - progress made, more to make, but feeling very positive about the direction in which I am headed. It just remains to say thank you to everyone for their continued support - its great to have you along fro the ride!

Yellow Thread

Another colour exercise. I have these cotton reel pictures sitting next to each other and they make an intersting block together with the differences in colour and positioning of the reels.

More Chair

More work on the chair today. A little scared of rushing it. I am still sure I am not putting enough paint on the canvas. I'm not sure about the warmth on the closest arm - it seems a little too warm - daylight check required.

This morning when I got to work I decided to spend the time that I normally surf the net before the day starts (we always get to work about 45 minutes early) walking around the football pitch to get some exercise. The sky was amazing and I took my time to analyse the colours. We had had a huge storm in the night and the remnants of the storm clouds lingered and were being stroked by the rising sun. Wonderful brilliant glowing oranges and yellow with deep violet clouds and the palest blue early motning skies. With each lap of the track the sky had changed. Spending half an hour on analysis made me realise how incredibly quickly light changes at that time of day. After my 30 minutes my cheeks were glowing and my nose,ears and fingers were frozen and I was ready to crawl back into a cosy bed and not at all like going to work.

Colour on "Comfort Zone"

I worked on the chair tonight - I don't know what came over me but I looked at it as it leant against the window and my palette was freshly loaded and lo and behold colour has been put on the canvas! I'm pretty sure that I am not putting enough paint on the canvas but at least I am over my fear of working on this. Having spent so many months on the grisaille the terror of ruining it was seriously hampering any advances on this piece. I've become very philosophical about it though. I've decided to face this project as a learning curve, not as a masterpiece. Anything that I learn doing this is another piece (please excuse teh pun!) in the jigsaw of my art education. It becomes even more urgent that I get a daylight bulb when such subtle colour changes come into play. One interesting discovery is how I can picture the chair so precisely in my head. All those hours of studying it and doing the pastels has it locked in my memory. We will see what Michael has to say!

Lemon Juice

oil on canvas, 8" x 10"
I should stop trying to photograph work at night! Its a total lost cause! Still here is today's still life and once again the colours are not quite right. The background is definitely not that dark! I think the lemon is much richer IRL. Another thing about painting at night is that I am never sure what the picture will look like in daylight. I wish I worked a night shift so I could paint in the daylight! If I could only find a decent daylight bulb! Someone once said to me not to worry about painting at night and what the picture looks like in daylight because very few people hang their pictures in direct daylight.

I heard today that the portrait of "Leon" arrived safely and that he was very pleased with it. He has promised me a photo of it when its framed.

"I just received the portrait. Unbelievable. It is stunning. I am seriously and utterly impressed. I cannot begin to thank you. I’ve no doubt my Mom will cry when she gets it."

The Ronda Valley

The sun refused to cooperate today and was doing that really annoying "now I am shining, now I'm not" thing so today's painting was from a photo I took when visiting my mother and sister where they live in southern Spain. Ronda is one of their nearest sizeable towns (they live in the isolated white villages in the Andalucian mountains). This is the view north from the bridge in Ronda - the most amazing view down the canyon to the fields and vineyards beyond. Ronda is one of my favourite little towns in Spain and despite the tourism it has maintained a wonderful charm. The history dates back to the Moorish conquests of Spain and the buidlings are old and picturesque. (photo of the painting is not quite accurate - the background is more neutral and the rocks to the right are much brighter but try as I might I cannot get an accurate photo.)

I have for the past two years, not allowed myself to paint from photos (except portraits) and I know that I have learnt an enormous amount in working from life. I've been very aware of the limitations of photographic references but recently I have read a lot about using photos as a tool. On one site an artist said he only ever uses photos he took himself because he knows the space and the photo acts more as an aide memoire than anything else which made immediate sense to me. While I will continue to try to work predominantly from life, I will forgive myself, on days like today, when I use a photo reference.

Plein Aire

I really wanted to go and paint plein aire today but I have too much to do at home (those horrible domestic things that get in the way of painting) so I stayed here but determined to at least try something new. This is the view off my back balcony to the neighbours house behind us. There were nice shadows cast off the angles of the house which is white. Trying to get distance into each step back in the building was interesting and working with white walls and trying to create some difference between those closest and those further away but still in full sun was difficult.

Last night was the first night I have missed my daily painting in over three weeks but I was totally exhausted when I got home from work. Its funny how quickly something can become a habit. And how quickly you can lose them! (Guilt here about not working out! Something had to give!). I'm trying to decide whether to go with canvas panels or stretched canvases for my next order. I do really like the "boing" factor of a stretched canvas, but thinking about how quickly daily paintings are going to add up bulk-wise if I do them all on stretched canvases.

Vineyards

I needed to do something different tonight - hard day at work called for something expressive. Trying to keep in my head all that I have learned in the last week but finally being overcome by colour. If I have it right, the greatest contrasts in value should be in the foreground and the further back to the horizon you go the less difference there should be in tonal value - so you could have equal tonal values of orange and purple in the background but in the front you should have your darkest and lightest colours. It was fun to really let go with colour. Now to find a way to use colour but with more control. The colours are not quite right in the photo, the sky is much paler and less overcast looking.

Today I had to go out to from work to buy flowers. Flowers here are extemely bright and gladioli seem to be the favourite flower - and in every shade, bright gaudy oranges and yellows, pinks and reds. My favourite flowers are all white and I find the colours a little garish here. After the drabness of the Middle East though, it is a refreshing change to see so much colour. Roses are still blooming at them moment and even in my own garden I have roses by the dozen. Unfortunately I also have marigolds which are one of my least favourite flowers along with carnations and gerbera daisies.

Paint Box

I knew I should never do it - I put black back on my palette and bang its all over the place! It makes it too easy to do darks and I had just got the hang of creating dark tones using other colours. Lesson for the coming days is to remember that black needs to be used with restraint.
I'm a real Brit and drink gallons of tea everyday - when I'm at work its an excuse to get up from my desk. But when I'm at home it's a break to walk away from a painting and then come back to look at a piece with fresh eyes. The only problem is that I then immediately see things that need doing and I put down my cup of tea and it invariably gets cold and I end up drinking rather tepid tea. One thing that I have not yet managed to adopt, from my new American side, is drinking iced tea - tea should only ever be very hot, served with milk, strong and preferably in a large mug. The other thing that I have been known to do all too often is to clean my brush in my tea cup!


I tidied my "studio" today (it is really the upstairs landing)and it seems a little more ordered and things are easier to reach. I have discovered that I have a number of mid size canvases and also two large ones which immediately set me to thinking what I could work on largescale. Time for that journal to come into play to work on some ideas.

One thing that I am going to have to find time for is some admin - Website, thinking about selling prints etc etc..... I really resent losing valuable paintng time to this sort of thing but its one of those things that really has to be done. What I need is a secretary! Or to give up my day job! My to do list is growing by the minute.

Dusky Rose

When picking out my subject for today's little painting I was a little surprised to find that nearly all my lipsticks are almost identical in shade! Its not even as if I wear lipstick that much - it never stays on, I put it on and then a few minutes later it seems like its gone. I read somewhere that someone had figured out that over the average woman's lifetime she will eat over 6lbs of lipstick. If each lipstick weighs at most 2 ounces that is 48 lipsticks! And for all those millions of women in the thirld world who have never even seen one, that means that some women must be living entirely off lipstick!

I was thinking more about sketchbooks this morning and was reminded of the journals we had to make in art school. Quite a high percentage of our final grade was on our journals as they were supposed to show not only our process in exploring concepts but our research into other artists, our philosophy and conclusions we had come to. There was a guy called Gary, on my foundation course (wonder whatever happened to him!) who was a sculptor - produced an amazing final piece at the end of the year with multiple steel oscar type figures holding up a square stone block on their heads. His journals were as beautiful as his artwork. He wrote everything on a typewriter using something like tracing paper and then tore out the words of the main sheet and stuck them in his journal over the drawings. And then there was Debbie (she went on to do a year designing fabrics for DKNY) who did wonderful fabric designs and her sketchbook was filled with the most amazing stuff. A good journal was judged by how fat it was - you were supposed to stick flyers from all the exhibitions you went to see (seeing other contemporary artists work was considered extremely important), pages of magazines, little sketches you had done on other papers, bits of anything and everything (leaves, pressed flowers, fabrics, paint charts, etc etc). These were definitely all working journals though rather than decorative pieces. Though they seemed like very hard work at the time, now I think that there were many benfits to this kind of working journal.

Unwrapped

Working with blue underpainting proved more difficult than the magenta did. Very hard to get cleaner colours for the icing. The extemely subtle colour changes in the cupcake case were very hard to do and not revert to using tiddly brushes.

I'm trying to get myself to do more sketching so this is todays - ok yes, I did it from a photo - excuse? Em..... none!
I remember reading in "Five Quarters of the Orange' by Joanne Harris about a recipe book, created by the main character's mother, which is illustrated with little drawings and paintings and the idea captivated me then. And of course it would be a great way to capture my crazy nomadic lifestyle on paper. Since then sketchbook/journals seem to have taken off as an artform and I love seeing snippets posted on blogs. Its a bit like peeking through a window into people's lives. Not sure I will ever get my sketchbook looking like that but i'll give it a go! There seems to be as much to learn about creating great sketchbooks/journals as there is to doing any other artwork - mixing media like ink and watercolour, coloured pencils and an abundance of other media. And then there are the sketchbooks themselves! I have moleskines - both waterolour and drawing. And then I've seen homemade sketchbooks and I wonder about whether I should try to do one of those. There are whole books written on creating journals. I got some great tips from Billie Crain on putting together a watercolour sketch kit so I will do that tomorrow to take to work with me on Thursday. I already have coloured pencils salted away at work - now all I have to do is put pen/brush/pencil to paper ....................

Any tips on journalling/sketchbooks welcomed.