20th September '11

Today I re-found my love of paint (the actual medium not the Microsoft software).
I have a stack of canvases and limited experience with painting, thus a lack of confidence in painting straight onto the canvas.
After sketching the design onto the first canvas with graphite pencil, which then proceeded to get muddied up in first layer of paint I was... somewhat unimpressed with my skills.
This evening I tried drawing the design for the second canvas on with a pale coloured marker. Worked a charm! Managed to block out all the colour and work in some detail in about an hour.

I love the way you can mix colours as you go, so you very easily get lots of subtle shades in with out spending ages colour matching. I have to remember to mix enough paint when filling in blocks though, so I don't end up getting half way through a section and running out and not quite being able to reproduce the same shade.

The above sketch in fact has nothing to do with my painting endeavors and is just something I've recently added to the increasing pile of sketches :S

7th September '11

The days are shorter, colder and wetter. British Summertime is coming to an end.
I also found some pencil drawings today that I'd forgotten I had... I think I should try finishing something once in a while... but I get distracted by other work or a new idea.
I've also run out of paper... Luckily I love paper shopping.

11th Aug '11

I'm exhausted. I can't wait for my holiday in a week. Still a load of work to do before then.

Here's some colours. The red are going to be a pain to balance to the right shades post scanning. Just this small preview has made the lower flowers a lot more red than they are on paper. Oh well that's an exercise yet to come.

2nd August '11

I find men difficult to draw. They always come out too effeminate, which isn't what I want men to look like.
Also men and flowers aren't a particularly effective combination.

28th July '11

I was very much hoping I could finish this tonight, but I think it still needs a couple of hours to polish it off. Unfortunately I wont be able to work on it over the weekend and I need a good night's sleep now before I can complete the week.
Hopefully on Monday I'll be able to get it finished, and work on some new stuff in the mean time.

26th July '11

Another WIP sketch.
Think I need to fatten this deer up a bit :)

21st July '11

Midweek visits mean I've not had time to do much colour work, so here's another part sketch.
In other news it is very rainy. Good old British Summertime...

19th July '11

This is a sketch.

14th July '11

Not sure it was a good idea to start colouring the clouds with the single angry cloud right in the middle of the picture... but don't worry little cloud, soon you'll have more little cloud friends to keep you company.

12th July '11

Wow, been a month since I last posted. Guess I have been busy.

But here is my finished frog. Might come back to tidy a little, but lots of other stuff to do and I'm happy with it as is.
Original is Water-based ink, water-soluble pencils and bombay ink on A3(ish) watercolour paper.