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 watercolour paper. We stretched the paper first onto boards and used masking tape to define the separate spaces.
I spent a happy couple of hours at Swansea Print Workshop this afternoon, experimenting with the vintage wooden typefaces to design my next little experiment in letterpress. I had more or less settled on this one but then I couldn’t find any quoins to hold it together, so I’ll have to go back to finish it. Never mind, it’s good to have time to play with stuff and see what happens.
My new toy came through the post today, a box of Caran d’Ache Neo-Pastel colours. For a long time now I’ve been following the blog of USA based artist Aletha Kuschan and I’ve been so impressed by her work, particularly her lovely vibrant pastel drawings. She kindly told me what she used for them. So I had to have some. I did a very quick scribble onto Khadi handmade paper. I love the colours, the juicy intensity and the feel of the pastel as it glides over the surface. But I’m not keen on the way it moved over the very thick paper. Back to the drawing board (hahaha)
When I was travelling around South Wales studying standing stones with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams, I generally worked onto large sheets of prepared paper. But sometimes I travelled light with just a brown paper sketchbook and it gave me a different insight into what I was drawing, I focused more on the decorative aspects of the subject.
This stone is Ty’n Y Selar and it’s sited near the ancient community of Margam in Neath Port Talbot, overlooked by the very busy and noisy M4 motorway. I drew with conte crayons in white, black and sanguine.
It’s #Caturday Saturday once again and I’ve been playing with a picture of Sparta Puss in Adobe Photoshop. I put the photo through a Coloured Pencil filter and then cranked up the Saturation to create this golden effect.
I did some more adult teaching this week, I’m running a short course in watercolour basics, covering a range of simple and accessible techniques. The group started with stretching some watercolour paper with paper gumstrip (learnt last week), sectioning it up with masking tape and producing 4 samples of different techniques. This is the demonstration one I did, using coarse salt, rice, cling film and aluminium foil. It’s frustrating that we all have to wait until next week to see how they turn out when they’re dry!
I’ve used Winsor & Newton’s Cotman half pan colours onto a heavy Bockingford paper.
I’ve been browsing through some of my archives and seeing loads of work I’d forgotten about. This is from 10 years ago, working with an older male model, John. I went through a brief phase of drawing onto collaged paper and mixing up my drawing materials – charcoal, conte crayon and oil bars. I don’t know why I stopped working like this. Looking back I really quite like it.
I carried on with the nocturne painting by scraping on some pinks with a palette knife. It wasn’t planned, I had some Titanium White, Medium Magenta and Dioxazine Violet left over from another painting and as always, “waste not, want not”. I’m not sure if the colour will make it though to the final piece but it will add to the texture and give richness and depth to the colour.
I’m using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paint onto a recycled textured stretched canvas with a metal Daler Rowney palette knife.
I carried on with the still life painting I started a couple of weeks ago. I’m really enjoying this, I’m not being precious about it so I can just slap the paint on without stressing about it, impasto style. If I don’t like what I’ve done, I’ll just paint over it. It’s gradually building up into something resembling the original.
I’m using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paint onto a canvas board, although I began the painting in Daler Rowney System 3 acrylic ink.
It’s Standing Stone Sunday on social media again and I’ve chosen a strange little drawing I did of a relatively local monument, Maen Ceti (Arthur’s Stone) at Cefn Bryn on the Gower Peninsula. It’s a huge magnificent megalith in beautiful countryside and it’s easy to get distracted and concentrate on the surroundings when I’m drawing or painting. This time I made a conscious decision to do something different and played around with making interesting marks. I started with a piece of paper prepared with gesso and my homemade walnut ink and build on that background with conte crayons in black, white and sanguine.
If you want to see more of my standing stone art, please browse my digital gallery here.
