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Monday, May 24, 2010

Diamond Corner

My first attempt at doing a landscape in pastels. 30 X 40cm grey pastelmat. Again found the discipline of lanscape painting a hard task after the portraits I'm more used to. Started out OK building up the basic colours in carres pastel:

When it came to putting in detail I found my Conte soft pastels a bit dissapointing, even on pastelmat & fixed they just would not lay down the pigment as I wanted. My old scraps of pastel I had left over from my school days are actually much better, fortunately there was enough of them to to finish this, might try some Unison pastels I reckon.


Don't really know what to make of this, I'm reasonably pleased with the result but don't know if it's really what I was after.

Ref photo:



Friday, May 21, 2010

Someone a bit older, Pedro

Finished this last night, carres pastels on yellow pastelmat. Peter Robertson (AKA Pedro) the owner of Port Stephens Farm down in the south of West Falkland. An old man of great character which, I think, comes across in the portrait quite well.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Gabba

Finally my new art materials have arrived, conte soft pastels, carres pastels, pastel pencils, blending stumps, pastelmat...the works! Started this last night on pale grey pastelmat. This is my neice Abagail (calls herself 'Gabba' so now everyone does) age 8 months (ish), never used pastelmat before, amazing stuff. This is not quite finished yet I think.
The 'studio', with all my new goodies! very pleased with them although I am finding the soft conte pastels are surprisingly hard compared to the scraps I had left in my art box (no idea what they were but must have been something quite good I think).
Did a bit more work on Gabba last night, here's the finished version.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Really finished this time!

Right...Confession time...this wasn't finished, having said it was I flipped it on my computer to have a fresh look at it and damn! face was out of balance (too fat on the lit side) so I just fined down the face and did a bit more work round the eyes a bit for a better likeness. It is now mounted, framed and presented now so it really is finished.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Finished!

Finished my baby portrait last night...well...I'm not going to do any more to it anyway, when is a painting ever really finished? Quite pleased with this, my 6th effort at portraiture. I am enjoying doing them but really must have a go at other subjects.

Here is my 'studio' (aka: dining table) with the painting in progress, a little bird told me I'll be getting an easel for my birthday though.
:)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

progress on the baby portrait

Getting there now I think, reshaped the nose & mouth and knocked back the contrast a little. A bit more work this evening should do it I reckon.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Baby portrait

Portrait of my baby nephew, soft pastels (as ever). This is taken from a photo that my father has that caught my eye, dark fabric behind and lit strongly from the left. Not finished yet but getting there (I hope)

charcoal underpainting:

....and progress so far with the pastels, mouth and shadows of the right cheek are wrong I think, more work needed.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Mt Adam

This is Mt Adam, biggest hill on West Falkland, as with many of the large hills on the west Mt Adam bears the scars of glaciation. The veiwpoint is from the end of the north ridge above the southern tarn 500 feet below and looking up to the twin summits, I like the way one can see the original rolling shape of the hill and the distinct boundary where the glacier has cut it away.

I've wanted to have a crack at drawing this veiw for a while and it's the first proper go I've had at a landscape since I took up art again. Interesting subject landscape is, I've found it to be very different from doing portraits like if've been stuck on so far, For me anyway what makes or breaks a portrait is to get the form correct, get that right and anything else goes (within reason). Accurate form seems less important in landscape than getting the sense of depth and colour right, if the hills are slightly the wrong shape it doesn't matter, I guess it's that landscape features like hills, rocks, rivers, lakes are variable in shape, a rock is a rock as long as it's texture & colour looks rocklike, a human form on the other hand is something where we can immediately see if it is right or wrong and if it's wrong it doesn't work. In this case I've dramatised it a bit, the ref photo had flattened the perspective (as photos do), the drawing is more how I remember the veiw from visiting the hill.

I used my neocolour II crayons and polychromos coloured pencils on grey canvas texture paper for this, I really do like my neocolour crayons. :)