The Painted Book...

Started work on a new piece today. This is a test for the next series I want to do… Basically I’m planning on making a series of paintings based on familiar stories (eg Red Riding Hood) and linking all these separate story paintings together with an on-going narrative (the story of an artist meeting the characters in the paintings, by painting them…)This will then be presented as an exhibition and as a book… Am also experimenting today with some video of the painting as it develops…hopefully it’ll work… :)

Whispering to the Wind I - part 3

Artweeks, week 1, is all up and running now & having finished getting prepared for that, I’m back to painting…I’ve applied the Gold Leaf to the dandelions and finished painting Aimee’s face, just her hand left to paint now.
I’m really pleased with the way this one has come together, the balance between the quality of the finish, the overall design, the depth of the story & the time to produce it all feels right. I’m really keen to continue a series along these lines…Hopefully they’ll go down well at the Gallery :)

Dreams 01 - Finished

I’ve finished ‘Dreams 01’, just working over the flesh, sharpening things up, adding more contrast etc. I’m really glad I settled on keeping it grey rather than flesh coloured I don’t think it would be half as interesting if I hadn’t done it this way.
I’ve also started a new piece today of two sheep…I’ve sealed the drawing with acrylic, so you can’t really see it that clearly in a photo, so I haven’t bothered posting it yet. I’m going to paint the sheep in grey, the sky in blue and everything else in gold, so it’ll be another experiment to see how far I can push things but it feels like I’m getting close to a style I can run with now :)
Once again many thanks to Mary for posing for the ‘Dreams’ painting, and Jack and Mary for ‘Awake’ hope you like them…more to follow :)

Progress...

I made a little more progress on a couple of these pieces the other day. ‘Awake’ has been carved to sharpen up the gold lines. ‘The House’ has been gilded. Finally, I’ve started on the background for ‘Dreams_01’, it’ll need another coat to build up some of the darker areas and I’ve decided leave the figure in black and white rather than colour it, so that’ll need some tidying up and then it’ll be done. :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 02

More work on the “Dreams 01” painting today, I’ve worked in more detail and contrast, there are still some highlights etc to go in, but it needs to dry for a while now :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 01

I’ve been doing some work on this first painting from the “Jack and his friends” modelling session today. The aim is to fuse the recent gold experiments with a more ‘finished’ piece of painting. If it all works out I’ll be using the techniques I’m exploring here along with the first gold experiments (the man with a dog one in particular) to produce a series of paintings.
As you can see I’ve applied the gold and am currently working on the under painting. I’ve painted the mid tones and next I need to balance these as I start pushing the highlights and shadows to increase the contrast. As I do this I’ll begin to sharpen the details and then it’ll need to dry before the colour is glazed over the top…then I can start on the gold over painting :)
The painting is (currently) called “Dreams 01” and the model is Mary.

The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - Carving

A bit quiet on the art front lately, but have been doing a little work on this linocut so thought I’d post some progress…

The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - first block

Here’s the next lino design. It’s called “The girl who could read flowers”. I drew the original design for this way back in 2007 and it got put to one side because of the number of colours I was going to need to print. I’ve reworked it a little and think I can get the effect I want in 5 prints so I’ve transferred the design onto a new block and it’s a now all ready to be carved.

In The Forest

Here’s a final print. Lots of detail in this one so it took a long time to carve, but I think the end result has been worth it…I now find myself wanting to order some much larger lino blocks and make things even more complex lol ;) I think I’ll do a few more at this scale first though. Would be nice to get a small set together for Artweeks…Anyway, hopefully this is an image people will find both beautiful and curious…make of it what you will :)

In The Forest - first colour print

Here’s the first colour print, bad photo, but it’s too dark and snowy to go out and take a good one. This now needs a couple of days to dry and then I can print the black over the top and that’ll be this one done :)

In The Forest - test print

Finished the first block, here’s a test print which I’ve then transferred to the second block and then marked up. Once this one is all cut we’ll be ready for printing.

Mirrors and wine...

I’m about half way across the lino block now, nothing wildly exciting to post, but I thought I’d take this snap to show the way I’m using a mirror as I’m carving. When I transferred the original design to the lino block it was reversed. By standing a mirror up and looking at my drawing in that, I can see exactly what I should be cutting. As this design is quite detailed this is proving essential, whenever I come to a fiddly bit, I’m checking the drawing in the mirror…then I take a sip of wine… ;)

Other news… Didn’t progress any further in the Little Xmas competition alas, but am looking forward to going to see the exhibition. Had a look around the gallery and studios when I dropped off the picture and both are lovely…would love a studio like one of those…:)…if you’re in that neck of the woods, go take a look…better yet, go and buy something…well done to the winners, very well deserved and a really excellent selection of work across the board :)

In theory tomorrow will be a “Pear” painting day…if so, I’ll post at various stages again so we can see how things develop….positively one hopes :)

And finally, I’m going to change the settings on this blog so you can comment without a Google account. Since installing the ‘Lijit Wijit’ I’ve been fascinated to see where all these people looking at the blog come from…so if you’ve been lurking there in the background, post a comment and say hi….that means you in particular Matthew ;)

In the Forest - first carve

Also started cutting the first ‘In the Forest’ lino block today. I’ve done one of the wolves and a couple of trees. Very intricate so it’s taken quite a while…and I now have very sore fingers…still, no pain, no gain. Carving is going well though and I think I’m getting some nice lines…as always we’ll have to wait for the first print to see if that’s actually the case. :)

In The Forest - marking up 1st lino block

I transferred the ‘In The Forest’ design onto the first lino block this evening. I’ve traced the original drawing and then rubbed that onto the block, then I’ve gone over this with a permanent marker. The combination of the rubbing and thick(ish) tip of the marker means the original sharpness of the drawing has been lost…but very thin lines and fiddly areas have also been removed (or blurred to a mess), so next I shall go over the drawing with a white chinagraph pencil to sharpen things up and fix any confusing areas…hopefully what I then have, will carve well…time will tell :)

In the Forest

Some more work on this lino design today, currently titled “In the Forest”. The next stage will be to transfer this onto the lino block and then start cutting, I’ve left lots of the lines too fine in this drawing, I’ll cut them thicker and then probably do a couple of test prints as I refine them. There’s also a lot of variety of shading in this drawing, particularly the background trees and I did wonder about making those a separate colour to get that depth in the final prints. But I want this to have a very oppressive feeling so I’m going to cut everything you see here as black. The figure, creatures and grass will then have a colour pass, with the background and birch trees remaining white…hope that makes sense ;)

Some work on the next lino design

Have been working on this second lino idea from Wales tonight…while enjoying the Scorpions on Spotify and a couple of glasses of wine...and cider...and scotch…very nearly a perfect evening :) Anyway, it’s starting to come together, still quite a bit to workout on the creatures (wolves/tigers, whatever they are :)) and then a general tidy up will be needed, but all in all good progress :)

Back to Black...and Red...

Did some work on this one today...using oils now rather than acrylics...not much to say other than that...off to the pub now :)

Finished...some...

Here’s a final print, I’ve finished about half of them today, need to wait for the second colours to dry before finishing the other half.

I’m really pleased with the way they’ve come out. I think I’ve struck a good balance between a clean print and one that allows the nature of lino to show through, so all the prints have a nice individual feel to them.

Print of second cut

Finished the second cut today and did a quick print on the yellow prints…looks promising so far…

Marking up for second cut...

Have marked up the colour block for its second cut. Will start on that now…