Our mad moorhen

Some sketching from life:

This is a page from my sketchbook, drawings of a moorhen - this is a bird you'd normally find on a pond or river, but this one had decided to climb up the conifer at the front of the house. I looked out of a window in an upstairs room and found myself at eye level with it...

Biro, A4 sketchbook.

Portrait

Hello again!

Here's another acrylic portrait, painted from a reference photo by the talented babasteve on flickr with the online group of portrait painters I belong to. I was experimenting with colours here - purples and oranges. The photo here is a bit on the dark side, it's a little zingier in real life.

I'm fairly pleased with the way this has turned out. I definitely wasn't looking for cute or realism, was going for something painterly and with a bit of texture, and I had fun with the colours. I'm enjoy painting with acrylics, and I feel there are some nice things going on here. Will be exploring further!

Acrylic on Galeria acrylic paper, 14" by 10"

Birthday bullfinch

I painted this one for a friend's birthday card. I'm lucky enough to have a group of these birds as regular garden visitors at the moment, helping themselves to the berries on the shrubs and trees.

Watercolour, 5" by 7"

Autumn arrives

Over at the Painting Friends forum we have had a Fall Card Exchange (that's Autumn to us here in the UK!). I chose to paint some rose hips which I photographed a couple of years ago at one of my local nature reserves here in Cambridgeshire. I've painted this before, but this time I thought I'd go all out on the autumn colours.

This went to my Painting Friend Cindi, in California.

Watercolour and ink, 5 by 7" on HP watercolour paper.

Life drawing

We're breaking for a week for half term in the life drawing class, so here's a couple of drawings from this week and last week. The coloured ones were 30-min poses (using pastel pencils), and are in preparation for getting some paint out after the break (how exciting!). Obviously our model wasn't really this colour! It was an exercise in dark, mid and light tones in colour.

I've been working away on a painting for a charity fundraising exhibition (more on that at a later date), and on a commission as well. I'll share both here at some point. And I'm trying to get into better sketchbook habits too...

Life drawing

A couple from last night. I always enjoy these drawings on dark paper, I seem to find it easier to get the shapes down.

portrait sketch

Well, here we are, back to the portraits. This is a 'getting acquainted' sketch, from a ref from babasteve on flickr, under Creative Commons (thanks!). I'm part of a small online group of artists aiming to improve our portraiture skills, and this is our current ref. I'm intending to paint this in acrylic, and have a fairly good idea of what I want to do.


There are issues with this sketch which I'll bear in mind for the painting, but really I'm hoping to end up with a pleasing painting rather than an exact likeness with this one. We shall see...


Pencil in an A4 sketchbook, a quick sketch, about 15 minutes.