Category Archives: art

White cat painting.

white cat paintingGhost

Sharon Hurst did a demo of this painting of  white cat  (Ghost) over on Artist Demo Days on facebook.  Using salt on the watercolour background is very effective.  The turquoise colour doesn’t show up well though on this photograph.  It was fun to do although I may have made Ghost a bit jowly.

Physalis and poppy heads mixed media painting.

Practising with some texture in this painting using sand mixed into acrylic paint.  This was painted using the techniques from  Alison Board’s first book ‘A beginners guide to watercolour with mixed media’.  I love this book as it it gives you lots of ideas and easy to understand instructions and I like Alison’s lively, loose painting style.  I used dried fern, fennel,  and acer leaves dropped into the wet background and left to dry.  There is also some lifting out, using a leafy stencil and a magic sponge eraser, and some messy splattering and dripping.  The camera hasn’t quite picked up on some of the subtle shading so it looks much better in real life.

Owl mixed media painting

I am a big fab of Alison Board, so whenever I get the chance I watch her demos on Artist Demo Days on facebook, or on her own web page, then sometimes I have a  go myself.  However this one is from one of her workshops on the SAA site.  I used watercolour, gouache, brusho,  conte crayons and a fine liner pen.  Alison used a photo of Boo, a little owl, which has such a lovely face, and I love the splashy loose techniques she uses.

Puffin watercolour

I have been checking out the Artist Demo Days on facebook and love the demos and chit chat about painting.   This is one of Ali Boards demos of a puffin I did yesterday in order to  get a looser approach to painting.  It isn’t quite right but I am getting there.

Shimmering dragonfly on black paper.

It has been a while since I had my paints out and this is the first attempt using black watercolour paper.  Alison Board was doing a demo for SAA so I followed along with that  (more or less).  This is a mixed media piece, and I really like the shimmery Rembrandt watercolour for the wings.   You can’t really tell from this photo but the mount is quite green so it brings out the greens of the background even more.

Anchor and butterfly sketch.

Duddingston Kirk are holding an event in early January 2020 called – a time of hope and new beginnings – contemplating , poetry, prose, paintings, photographs as well as  performances of music, song and story telling.  I decided to google symbols of hope and came up with the idea of an anchor, which used to be an early Christian symbol, and a butterfly, a symbol of hope.  Using Prisma pencils I made a sketch, and I also used a few stamps.  I didn’t like the background as it was a bit scratchy looking despite me trying to smooth it using Sansador.  Anyhow I took a photo of it, cropped it, then mucked around with the image in photoshop to give it a bit of a border/vignette. This is my first version, it looks like a tattoo and I am just not sure….I may change it before I send it in to exhibit.

Pen and wash practice

I have been having a go at a tutorial in Paint magazine by Sue Williams of a pen and wash scene.  The camera hasn’t picked up the colour all that well, but having said that I could have added a bit more colour in the grassy areas.  I am not sure whether I should keep going with it and add more colour to the foreground or just leave it be?  I think I will leave it for now and I can always go back to it if I want to later.