Self Portrait

It's been a while since I did a self portrait, 12 months in fact.

Self Portrait
Watercolour and 6B pencil on Bockingford paper.

I sat down this evening wondereing if I could just roll off a quick painting, when a self portrait came to mind. The only stipulation that I gave myself, was that it must be a realatively quick study. I grabbed hold of a smallish watercolour pad and a thick 6B pencil and started work straight away. Very quick measurements were used in the drawing stage, and I thought that I would use the pencil to embellish the dark areas, so that I could keep the paintwork light. In fact, some of my work has looked very restrained of late, so now came another stipulation - it has to be loose and fresh as possible.

I used quite a bit of water on the paper, and dropped slightly darker colours into the fleshtones as I went along on this one. As the pencilwork was so dark, I didn't use much dark coloured paint at all.


Overall, I am really pleased with this - the likeness is not too bad, and it has opened up my work a lot - my tight work has been broken I think. The only downside of using the heavy lead pencil, was that the paint wouldn't cover the pencil lines at all much, just rolling off on globules, but hey, it doesn't matter does it? All good experience.

Time taken; 75 minutes.

A Trip Back in Time

1960's Panda car: watercolour

Last September whilst holdaying in Gloucestershire, we visited Littledean Jail. This is no longer in use as a jail, but now harbours the most extensive collection of memorabillia I have ever seen, especially stage and screen items. Among the many things on display that caught my eye, was a lifesize Spiderman, Darth Vader and a rather sexy looking Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. The walls were almost totally obscured by photographs and trivia of 20th Century celebrities many of whom are now departed.

My encounter with Spiderman!

One of the the things that really turned me off however, was a real stuffed calf with two heads! There were many other gruesome exhibits on display, which by time we had finished looking round, got to be a little bit much of a muchness, and it was with much relief that on stepping outside into the back yard we noticed the Quadraphenia Collection housed in one of the outbuildings. Having spent my teenage years in the 1960's era, this was right up my street! The whole collection was based around the film about mods. The place was filled with lambretta scooters, covered in spotlights and mirrors, parkas, badges and lots of photos from the film. I could associate myself with all this, being a mod myself at that time, having a Lambretta, the latest fashions etc., but I never actually possesed a parka.

Quadraphenia Display

In the yard outside stood a marvelous classic car - a police Panda car from the same era. A Morris Minor, fitted with what was then a high tech police radio, but now looked very antiquated! In fact, everthing about this car looked antiquated, but very nostalgic.

The painting was done rather quickly - I just wanted to get a feel for this lovely old car. Nevertheless, my attempt is fairly accurate I think and was quite a pleasure to do. The windscreen was a bit of a challenge, I have never painted one of these before, the different amounts of reflected light made it tricky to make out the interior. I just tried to paint what I could actually see.

Quadraphenia Display at Littledean Jail.

After the Break

Back in the 1960's, when I passed my driving test, my licence duly arrived through the post. On inspection, I noticed that the expiry date was 2012. "Two thousand and twelve" I exclaimed, "that's a lifetime away!". Well I suppose it was, with me being only 19 at the time. But time has a nasty habit of passing you by or catching you out or playing tricks with your mind.

Now it's 2011 and that licence is about to expire. But where has all that time gone? I know that since being 19, I have got married, had kids, had grandchildren, spent so much time working, had two allotments, spent countless hours doing DIY on two houses, took thousands of photographs etc. The only thing I haven't done enough of is painting, but by 'eck, I intend to continue my quest to change that!

After a lengthy break from painting due to Christmas and New Year activities, as well as struggling to fight off three very bad colds in succession, I've done my first painting for 2011. Oh, happy New Year to all of you by the way! This was a portrait, but I'll post that another time, as just before Christmas I managed to find time to do a painting of two lovely young girls who belong to Debbie and Simon, who very kindly invited us over for Christmas. The painting was a present for our hosts, who saved us from a very plain stop-at-home Yuletide, and also for enabling us not to miss seeing our grandchildren, as they and their mum and dad had also been invited over some time earlier.

The pictures below show the painting at two earlier stages, but alas, time has played tricks on my mind as I have aged over the years, resulting in me completely forgetting to photograph the finished work, which is now many miles away in East Anglia! Oh well, you will just have to judge my work from what you see here.

I now find it easier to work with a photograph on my laptop in front of me these days. This has the added bonus that I can listen to music and even half watch a DVD at the same time! (Kylie Minogue in this instance) I don't however, have Facebook open at the same time now, as friends start distracting me with IM's. It's bad enough when the phone rings during painting, when often all I feel like saying to the person on the other end is, "You're stopping me from painting" LOL!

I wonder what all of you do, if anything while you are painting?

Pepepochi brings out the adventurous side of me.

Watercolour on 300gsm 140lb (9x12in)

Those that read this blog will know that I've mentioned before that I am totally addicted to Julia Kay's Portrait Party on Flickr.


In a previous post  (Done to Death)  I mentioned how I wish to improve my work and in this watercolour painting I have tried to bear in mind my words, i.e. loose washes, minimum layering, dropping in other colours while still wet, and to find a good balance between detail and impression.


I am fairly pleased with the work. Some of it's faults have been to the advantage of the finished work, like oversized eyes and watercolour not taking so well to parts of the paper where my hand has lain. A new technique I am trying is to add reflected colour as in the background here.


Isn't it lovely to have this medium at our disposal, to delve into and to explore it's capabilities. Watercolour is just so ..... amazing!

Acey Thompson

I think this is the last watercolour portrait I want to do for a while, as my other painting projects are falling way behind now. Anyway, this is Acey Thompson - my latest work for JK's portrait party on Flickr. I've done her as a WIP here.


In the first picture you can see that I've laid down the first wash for skin tones, eyes and lips. All the edges of this layer were softened, as this is a beautiful young lady and I wanted to keep the complexion fairly soft.
In the second picture, I've added another skin tone layer and extra darkening in the shaded area of the face. The lips to have been darken and shaped, as have the pupils and eyes.
In the last picture, it is all brought together by the addition of hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, as well as the dress. Like most people, I do find it difficult to know when to stop - there's nothing worse than fiddling with a painting, but examination of the photo and checking your work, there is always that little bit of detail that is begging to be attended to, but it has to be small at this stage, as there is a very real danger of overworking it.


I'm really pleased with the likeness on this one - I think my freehand drawing has come along in leaps and bounds over recent months, but I am not happy with the hair - I'm pretty useless with hair for some reason. Maybe one day I will crack it. You can see the source photo here:
Acey Thompson
If you want to comment on this work, say what you think and don't worry if it is criticism , as I do not offend so easily these days!

Painting for a Cause

Both my wife and my daughter-in-law will be celebrating a birthday this Sunday, and of course the same old question crops up "What on earth shall I buy for a present"! Well I managed to come up with something for my wife - eventually, and it came through the post this morning with just two days to go.
As for my daughter-in-law, I'd been thinking for some time before I thought "Why don't I do her a painting?". I mean, I've been doing quite a lot these past few months and my style and technique has improved a lot (I think?), so what shall I paint? A portrait of the two grandchildren would be nice, but I've got to get a reasonably good likeness, otherwise my offering would likely be tossed in the bin the moment my back is turned!

With only a few days to go, I set about the work. A couple of hours saw the drawings finished, and two or three more saw the paintings done. I was reasonably pleased with the likeness for Thomas, who's eyes I turned downwards a little as he was looking up in the photo, but William's proved more tricky. The lips, nose and eyes just didn't look right, so my best (and most honest) critic - my wife - helped me pinpoint the errors somewhat. While not being able to draw herself, she has a keen eye for detail and a remarkable knack of seeing where the lines are going wrong. Just for good measure, I took the painting along to art class for my tutor to look at too, and she came up with much the same advice as my wife.


With a little bit of 'lifting off' and trimming and shading here and there, the likeness improved somewhat, though some things still niggle me a little.


So that's it then, framed and all wrapped ready to go on Sunday. I just hopes she likes it, and it doesn't get consigned to the back of the cupboard or top shelf gathering dust!

A Lighthearted Break...

image: watercolour and pigment pen on cartridge paper

After the last session at evening class, I got really fed-up with painting, getting bogged down in the seriousness of so much tiny detail. I replied to Sandra's comment that I needed to do something a little more lighthearted and fun to bring me out of it, so I set my camera to multi shoot mode and did a few mug-shots pulling funny faces at the camera! Some of the resultant pics turned out highly amusing - well to me anyway, and I picked one to do a quick pen and wash sketch, and here is the result.


Taking around an hour to complete, I couldn't help but smile as my paintbrush (one large one only - you all know I hate fine detail) gently flitted across the paper, and boy did this do me good! My wife took one look at the finished result and said "That's terrible!"


What! Is my thinking wrong? I thought it was funny. Oh well, here it is for all to see.

image: me being silly. Original shots 640x480 b/w multi-shot mode, 16 chosen from 50

contrast boosted and grid put together with Paint Shop Pro.