I used the Bideford Black paint I made yesterday. I didn’t have any idea what to do. I’m trying to get away from always working representationally and letting my imagination take over. It’s way out of my comfort zone! I took a fairly wide, flat brush and made swirls over one of the sheets ofContinue reading “Surrealist Swirls.”
Tag Archives: painting
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”
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”
#StandingStoneSunday: The Sketchbook Stones
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 theContinue reading “#StandingStoneSunday: The Sketchbook Stones”
Teaching Watercolour Basics
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 demonstrationContinue reading “Teaching Watercolour Basics”
Unplanned Scraping.
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 pieceContinue reading “Unplanned Scraping.”
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