painting – Page 9

Bashing Bideford Black.

After coating some sheets of paper with my home-made walnut ink yesterday, I decided to stay with natural pigments and make paint with some lumps of Bideford Black I’ve had lurking in a box for years. I’d made paint with it before, using water (here). This time I mixed it with Nori paste and vodka.Continue reading “Bashing Bideford Black.”

Prepping Paper.

I prepped some paper yesterday with gesso and my home-made walnut ink. I have to be careful with the ink as I am allergic to walnuts, proper anaphylactic stuff, so plastic gloves, mask and lots of ventilation are needed when I’m spreading it onto the paper. It seems ok to work with when it’s dryContinue reading “Prepping Paper.”

Tools Of The Trade: 1.

This blog has always been about my art practice but I don’t often post about the tools I use. And of course these underpin everything I do. Here’s a selection of brushes, some for watercolours and inks, some for acrylic paint. I don’t use oil paints. The toothbrush is for splatter and the feather –Continue reading “Tools Of The Trade: 1.”

#StandingStoneSunday

It’s #StandingStoneSunday and here’s one I did earlier lol 😀 It’s a stone that lives in a small community on the North-East fringe of Swansea, in Bonymaen. The Welsh name of the area means the “base of the stone” and there’s a legend that it’s one end of a vast stone that travels under theContinue reading “#StandingStoneSunday”

A Simple Still-Life: A “How To” Film.

Here’s a short (2 minute) “How To” film from a recent session I ran at GS Artists in Swansea, as part of their 9to90 Community Arts programme. It was a simple still-life in acrylic paints. The film shows how I started with a couple of basic drawing techniques and then took a look at some examples of still-life paintings ofContinue reading “A Simple Still-Life: A “How To” Film.”

More Big And Messy.

Here are a couple more paintings done by participants at GS Artists in Swansea, as part of their excellent 9to90 Community Arts programme. We did BIG and MESSY acrylic paintings with tennis-themed life size figures. Paint was applied with sponges, bath scrunchies and occasionally even big paint brushes.

Big And Messy!

I did some teaching this week, with a group of adults at GS Artists in Swansea as part of their excellent 9to90 Community Arts programme. We did BIG acrylic paintings with life size figures and a tennis theme for Summer. And it was MESSY! Loved it! I started out by getting people to draw around each others bodies toContinue reading “Big And Messy!”

Yesterday I made a couple of sheets of little circular designs, 24 in all, trying out some ideas for some Adult Education sessions I’ll be running soon. Today I chose 10 of them to make up into badges and mount onto a small canvas that I painted black. I’ve had the badge machine for aContinue reading

Let The Water Do The Work.

Here’s another little watercolour from my adult teaching session this week. I’ve been emphasising that the important thing about watercolours is actually the water, letting the image develop as it dries. We flooded the stretched Bockingford paper with clean water then using a very wet brush, “dropped” the wet pigment onto the paper without overworkingContinue reading “Let The Water Do The Work.”

Teaching Watercolours – The Reveal

Today was a fun day. Last week’s adult education group prepared some samples of different watercolour effects but they were still wet when they left (below), so today we had the big reveal! It’s always exciting and these techniques often have that WOW factor! We used Winsor & Newton Cotman half pans onto Bockingford watercolourContinue reading “Teaching Watercolours – The Reveal”