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.

Gold Thread

oil on canvas 6" x 6"
Another colour experiment. I started with a purple and cerulean ground and then worked into that with colour. More paint on the canvas this time.

Also have had this idea in my head for a charcoal for a while and after reading Stacy Rowan's post about seeing things that you want to do and filing them in your mental pending file I decided that the time had come to do put this one on paper. I've long been fascinated by drapery and classical images of fabric folds and white fabric in particular. So here is the start - still toying with the idea of the bowl and chair. The bowl is one of the copper ones I bought last week at a bazaar. I would like the spotlight to be on the fabric with everything else in the neutral block.

Red Thread

oil on canvas, 6" x 6"
The first of my "homework" - I'm sure I'm still not getting the paint on thick enough (that is SO hard for me, I want to scrape off and leave minimal paint on the canvas! I'm using cotton reels as they are nice solid blocks of colour to work with while I learn this new way of painting. It involves starting with a dark wash over the canvas. You then "erase" the paint for the most highlighted areas and then paint into the ground from dark to light. As I see it the image here on the computer I can see that my top ellipse on the gold thread in the background is not right but, in my defence, I was concentrating more on colour than anything else in this exercise. I am very pleased with the muted colour in the front yellow reel and its shadow. This was very definitely a different way of painting and I was aware mid way through that I was not thinking about accuracy of depicting s but was engrossed in colour and light. I'm not quite at the Fauvist point but feel I am heading in the right direction. One of my instructions for these lessons was to paint as if using a palette knife and not to draw with paintbrush. If you want to learn about how this method works I really recommend Michael Newberry's tutorial .

At the end of our road is a police post - I was struck this week that this would be normal in many cities until you think that the policeman has his tent pitched right there on the pavement/sidewalk and in the morning when we head out to work, his laundry is hanging from a line strung between the tent and trees a few feet down! Police and Army both are "housed" in tent villages in what is the "posh" end of town. Among large villas that would be the envy of many western towns are these little encampments, complete with guard posts and little snack shacks. At one of the security posts that we passed today I was surprised to see smoke billowing out from the inside the post and when I looked back I was even more surprised to see that the soldiers had lit a fire INSIDE the post which couldn't have been more than about 4 ft square!

Primary Colours

When I came home tonight I wasn't in the mood to paint at all and I spent at least an hour fussing about what to do, hovering between a pastel and doing my daily painting. The more I thought that I wouldn't do a little painting, the more guilty I felt and so I ended up with this.

As Robyn noted in my last post - I seem to be a little stuck on reds - so here I tried to introduce some other colours. I know that green is a major problem for me so I should really do something that will help me overcome that. The photo is not the clearest, I'm having a horrible time getting photos as its dark when I get home and no matter what I do they don't seem entirely accurate. If anyone has any suggestions on photographing work in the winter ..............

One thing that painting these little pictures has done for me is show me that I do also really enjoy doing more substantive work. Beginning to think seriously about starting a major piece (and finishing the blessed chair!).