Washed my hair

Many times I've looked in the mirror after I've washed my hair and thought, 'actually, that'd be fun to paint'. So I finally got round to snapping a picture of me with my hair wrapped up in a towel and got the paints out...

Acrylic on Galeria paper, 10" by 14".

This one has turned out pretty much as I had it in my head, so I'm pleased about that. It's fairly high key (ie there's not a huge amount of contrast - no really dark darks), but I reckon that adds to the mood of the piece (the bathroom generally feels and looks like a sauna by the time I've finished!), and it's what I was aiming for :-)

Life drawing

Here's the pick of my efforts from last night:

35-minute pose, charcoal and white pastel pencil on a mid-tone paper (A2 in size). The idea was to really get looking at the shadows and highlights, using the colour of the paper as the mid-tone for the drawing. This is a brilliant exercise to do, and is just the same as I've done for some of my portraits. Only this is from life and in 35 minutes, rather than from a photo and taking hours ;-)

I'm enjoying this class so much - the 2 hours just flies by. In fact, I'm now kicking myself for not having signed up last year...

Life drawing

In an attempt to improve my drawing skills I've signed up for a life drawing class at the local college. I'm enjoying it immensely!

All are drawn on A2 paper or newsprint, with charcoal or graphite pencil.

 40 min, pencil





 20 min, charcoal

10 min, charcoal

35 min, charcoal.

Charcoal portrait

I'm pressing on with the portraits...

This is charcoal on pastel paper, A4 in size. The eye on the right needs moving a smidge, but otherwise this looks not too bad. I may well try this in acrylics at some point.

Nigel

Haven't posted anything for a while; I've got a couple of paintings on the go at the moment, but whether either will see the light of day remains to be seen...

Meanwhile here's one from earlier this year.

Watercolour, 8" by 10"

When I was a child

Here's another acrylic painting (I'm getting to really like these!). This is based on an old photo of me from many years ago. Enjoyed this one, and I'm definitely going to do more acrylics.

Acrylic, 10" by 14"

If the wind changes direction....

...your face will stick like that! This is what we were told when we were kids, pulling faces...

Here's the result of my acrylic inspiration. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, and I think I'll be doing more along these lines. I found that the image this is based on had mysteriously appeared on my camera when I got home from visiting my sis...

I had such good fun with this, messing with the colours and generally enjoying my new-found acrylic confidence. Found it hard to get a good pic; there's a bit of glare on the right hand side. Click the picture for a closer look.

Acrylic, 10" by 14", on paper (I'll have to do a biggie sometime soon!)

And here's the work in progress: you really have to have faith that it's going to turn out the way you want it to, it looks pretty grim in the early stages!