Nasir

Nasir. Pen and oil pastels on cartridge paper.

OK, just one more of these pen and oil pastel works, before I get serious again with watercolour. I nearly didn't buy these pastels thinking that I wouldn't use them. Now I'm glad I did, because it allowed me a brief foray into another media and I've loved it!

Again here, I've done an extremely fast outline of the character in ink before applying the oil pastels, and again not worrying too much about keeping within the lines - after all, we never stick rigidly to road markings when we are driving do we? This medium is fantastically fast, a little over half an hour to do this. I smudged the colours in places to blend more subtle light changes and two or several colours together, but for texture (as in the sweater), I've used the pastel sideways on lightly.

For Father's day, my daughter bought me a couple of watercolour painting technique books to study, so I am itching to get back to this medium, and try out some new methods in what is my very favourite method of painting.

Bath, England

Bath, Somerset
Oil Pastel and ink pen on Bristol Board A3

It's been a while since I posted here I know, but I have been busy on a large project, which I'll tell you about some other time.


On a trip to Bath in Somerset recently, I was just in awe of the abundance of Romanesque architecture on every street. Our trip was fleeting, but we have promised ourselves to go back again and spend some more time there, just to try to take everything in.

This is my first foray into oil pastels, and I have to say that it is a very exciting medium. I've tried to keep my work quick and spontaneous, starting first with an ink sketch. Some of the scale is a little adrift, but I just wanted to get the general shapes of the figures and buildings rather than being too accurate.

There are 36 colours in this box, and they are a joy to use, even more so, as I picked the box up second hand at our local car boot sale last weekend for £2 - what a bargain. I think that £2 is going to give me a lot of pleasure!

The last Painting?

Gloucester Docks

This is my last painting - well, the last one I will be doing in the art class because I quit!

The thing is, I don't think I am gaining any extra knowledge there. It's time I think to look for new horizons and maybe try another tutor to see if I can progress any more. At the moment, I feel that the work I am doing at class, could just as well be done at home, so this is the end of another chapter in my painting life.

The painting is of one of the warehouses at Gloucester Docks. The old docks have taken on a transformation over recent years, many of the huge warehouses have now been turned into art and craft studios and coffee houses etc.
The painting took quite some time to complete, more hours than I am comfortable with really. Even now, I am not that happy with it, and think I took on too much with all those windows - there are 60 of them. The next work of art is going to be something quick and simple I think, to give me a break and preserve my sanity!

Luligirl for JKPP

Luligirl for JKPP a photo by Frank B10 on Flickr.

Much as I love watercolour painting, sometimes a desire comes over me to just get a pencil and draw. In this case, it's portraiture again. For some reason, I've always had trouble getting long hair to look realistic, maybe it's because of the long continual strokes needed - I don't know. This time, I think I am getting somewhere near.

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.

Art Class 2: Pointless

Watercolour: Pig's Puzzle

It's been a while since I blogged about the art class projects. There have already been four meetings, I missed one because of a family mini drama, and the other three have been taken up on one project. In this first assignment, we were simply told to cut images from magazines and stick them on an A3 piece of paper to form a collage. Then, using a 4x6 inch frame, move it around the collage to find the best segment, then square up the framed section onto A3 size watercolour paper, effectively enlarging the image by around five times.

My initial reaction was why bother? I know I have said in the past that it was good to see the tutor give us all the same project, because it gave us all the advantage of seeing how everyone else goes about the same task, and see their different interpretations of the same subject. But this time I think our tutor has lost the plot. Firstly, it was extremely long winded to find enough cuttings to fill an A3 piece of paper. In fact I gave up after covering about two thirds of it, in any case I just could not see the point. Why not just cover the 4x6 then enlarge it and save ourselves all that trouble?

Collage of magazine clips

Anyway, I have gone along with the project to give it a chance to grow on me, even though I thought the whole thing was pointless. On the collage photo you can see the red rectangle, which although there were numerous permutations that I could have chosen, was the section I decided to paint. Our tutor did say that we could do endless paintings from the one collage, simply by moving the rectangle around, but just doing this one had me pretty fed up by the end, so there was no chance of me ever doing another!

The finished painting looks like something, well not exactly abstract, more like something of a riddle for the viewer I guess. The pig was everybodies favourite - he does have a nice smiling face, and I like the sundial and probably the gargoyle, but to me, this whole thing is a bit of mish-mash. I haven't really enjoyed the project, but I suppose I've gained a little more knowledge in the art of watercolour painting in doing it. Maybe you the reader will see something in this that escapes my way of thinking, but  if something comes up like this next time though, I think I'll give it a miss!

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.