Sold a drawing!

Happy days! last year I did a coloured pencil portrait of another member of Artforums.co.uk as part of a portrait challence that used to run on there....and she's just bought it from me! well, we arranged a swap, the drawing for some new art materials for me. Well chuffed!

She's Julie Broom, an artist in Scotland who's been very supportive to me in my attempt to get back into drawing & painting, Check out her blog: http://juliebroom.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/last-blast-at-the-make-room/

New pastels

The missus came back from Stanley today and had a present for me, box of 16 daler-rowney soft pastels. Banged out a quick 10 minute sketch of some flames just to try them out on brown ingres paper (not my favourite paper for pastels but worked just fine with these, very nice, fat, soft pastels, I'll see how they compare to the Unisons that are on their way)

Goodbye Crow

This is another first for me, working from a movie. This is intended to portray emotion of the moment although it turned out quite close in terms of form to the frame I was using as reference.

A quick explanation of what's going on: Based on a scene from the movie Minority Report. It depicts John Anderton, a drug addicted and mentally scarred cop who runs a police department called pre-crime who use psychics to predict & prevent murders, he is driven to help develop pre-crime by the unsolved murder of his son six years earlier.

In the scene he is about to avenge his son by killing Leo Crow, the man he believes abducted and murdered him. He knows this action  has been predicted to happen by the psychics and if he suceeds in committing the murder he will destroy not only himself but everything he has worked for in Pre-crime. Holding Crow at gunpoint he struggles with himself, his wrath and desire for vengence against his duty as a dedicated cop.....Choices eh?

I used the still from the movie as a reference to get the basic form of this, but once that was done it was mostly down to trying to 'feel' the emotion of the moment which was tough, surprisingly tiring. "Goodbye Crow......BLAM"

Pablo

Portrait of Pablo Picasso, soft pastels on 30X40cm yellow pastelmat.

I've noticed doing this and my last painting 'Wind' that I've not been blending at all and I've hardly touched my pastel pencils, everything is done with the big pastel strokes, again this is not intentional just seems to me the way I need to go.

Seem to be too many paintings going on in my head at the moment and I'm rushing a bit, just need to slow down a bit and take stock of where I've got to.

The Wind

This is an experiment I wanted to try, representing strong wind in a portrait painting. It's based on a photo of my brothers girlfriend taken while they were visiting the Falklands last year, on a very windy day (50+ knots). Soft pastels on 30X40 beige pastelmat. 

 Rough sketch of the idea in neocolour crayon

Finished pastel painting.

I'm finding it interesting that as my painting develop I'm tending towards a post impressionist style, it's not intentional, just seems to be the way I 'need' to go.

Winter Sunrise

Overlooking Hill Cove to Keppel Island (I think) from above the bottom settlement, soft pastels on Ingres paper. This is based on a photo I took facing into the sun a couple of hours after sunrise, the under exposure of most of the photo gave a sunrise feel to it so I worked it into a sunrise scene. Taken on an absolutely stonking winters day, take a look at this album: Mt Donald

Ref photo:

Painting:

Didn't rate the Ingres paper much, too soft, too textured and I found the tooth deteriorated quite fast, think I've been spoiled by using pastelmat. A poor photo of the painting too I find, maybe something about the texture of the paper messes up my camera...like black fur does.

General Jackson

My Dads basset hound, polychronos coloured pencils on white cartridge pad.
Interesting going back to coloured pencils after working with pastels for a while, oddly reassuring in some way even though they impose far more limits than pastels. It's noticable how you cannot get the quick results with this medium compared to pastels as well, you've got to work at it with pencils. This little drawing took over 2 hours.


Unlike work I've done before this came out exactly as I imagined it would. Working on this has emphasised, for me, the value of short pencil strokes and patience when trying to achieve a nice 'fur' look.

Some old stuff

A few old bits and pieces from when I started drawing again.

Glass of water, Graphite on white paper (a good exercise in observation is a glass of water, draw what you see not what you know is there), and flowerpot, pastels on white paper, just a quick doodle I did when I first dug out my old pastels.















This is a little pastel sketch of a photo I took in a building in Vienna, back when I took it I had it in mind that it would make a good subject for a painting so I had a crack at it.
Sketch of Boom as a pup, Conte on white cartridge pad.
....and Boom again, biro portrait (interesting using biro like that, no room for any correction at all)