Sketching

Hello again!

Some bits and pieces from the sketchbook, from various magazine refs.

And a couple of quick ink sketches of the other half, exploring a possibility for another 'mad hair day' painting...

A couple of watercolour sketches

Here are a couple of little paintings, just sketches really.

The first is of a pheasant which has been a regular visitor in the garden.

5" by 7", watercolour and ink.

Next is an attempt at a landscape watercolour sketch. I have to admit I didn't paint this en plein air - it was just too cold! So it's from my own ref photo.

5" by 7", watercolour and ink.

The life drawing class isn't going ahead next half term, so I will have to find something else to amuse myself with... I have a few ideas floating around...

Life drawing

A couple from last week. We've now got a 1-week break for half-term, then if there are enough people signed up there'll be another 5 weeks... fingers crossed...

These first pics are contour drawings, one continuous line, in biro. The standing pose was about 10 minutes; the two drawings below are of the same seated pose (I moved after a few minutes to get a different view), about 6-7 minutes each. I enjoy doing contour drawings - it really makes you look hard for the shapes, angles and relationships before making your mark.

This next one was a long pose, around 50 minutes, pencil.

Lambs in snow

Hello!

It's freezing cold here at the moment (-9.5degC at 10am this morning, which is mega-cold for Cambridgeshire, and with a heavy but very pretty hoar frost to boot). Lambing season is also underway. I felt like putting paint to paper yesterday, so hunted through my archive of photos and found some lambs, and moved them from their original field of green to a chillier setting, in keeping with the current weather!

 5" by 7", watercolour.

Stay warm, blog friends!

Life drawing

Or life painting, in this case! We had a couple of long poses last week, so I decided to try painting...

This was the better of my two efforts; I really had fun with the paint!

Acrylic on watercolour paper, approx 10 by 18", 55 minute pose.

More life drawing

Here are some from last week's class:

 Pencil, A3, 25 min

 Charcoal and white pastel, A3, 25 min

Pencil, A3, 15 min

For the next session we're having two poses of an hour each, and I've been asked to think about trying something different from pencil or charcoal... I have ideas, so watch this space...

Baby James

Hello!

Here's a quick portrait I completed the other night, while sitting in front of a lovely roaring fire. I couldn't bring myself to leave the room and head up to my 'studio', so I brought all my stuff down and enjoyed the painting and the fire at the same time :-)

I'm never too sure about pastels - I always seem to go a bit mad with the colours (maybe I need to invest in a better range of colours), and I tend to overblend them, but maybe that's something you can get away with when the subject's such a cute baby (I am biased, this is my nephew!). But it's nice to have a change of medium every now and again.

Various pastels on pastelmat paper, 8 " by 8" ish (cropped from a bit bigger, 9 by 12ish).

Edit: I've replaced the pic with one that's a bit more true to the original (the first pic I uploaded look rather orange!)