On Creating with Paint

Commissioned Border Collie Portrait

2012-01-23T20:09:00.000+10:00

Finally I am a bit more comfortable with my foot and able to sit for longer periods of time at my working desk.
So I have been working hard on the portraits and have only a few more to do to have this stack of commissions done.
It has been and still is challenging, fun and sweet.

This is the latest work, a "pink" border collie.

Now I have 2 more black&white Border to do and a little sweet dog. Plus another one, a new one already lined up.

In the meantime I have ordered a new paper to try out. It's called Fisher400, created by Britisch painter Tim Fisher.
What I have seen and understood from reading some reports by artist using the paper one can get more sharpness and edge work onto this paper, which is difficult to do with the Hahnemuehle Velour paper. An added bonus is that erasing on the Fisher paper is possible as opposed to not possible at on with the Hahnemuhle paper.
It will be interesting what I can do with this paper.

New Pastel Portrait of Tri Colour Border Collie

2011-12-27T19:53:00.000+10:00

Ah, so where have I been all this time???
Nursing a broken foot!!! Rolled my foot, broke it and damaged some muscles and tendons. Getting better now, but still hobbling along like a duck.
Luckily it is good enough now to be able to sit at my working desk, and thus I have been able to complete the first of the 9 commissions.

In the meantime I have been reading: reaceived a beautiful book by Joseph Sulkowski, http://www.josephsulkowski.com/, he paints beautiful animal portraits in oils and I am studying him hoping to improve my own work.
Also I watched a newly released DVD from Roze Frantzen, she is really something else. Please do have a look at her work: http://oldcityhallgallery.com/
Her teaching is great and insights wonderful. I learned so much in such a short and compressed lesson. But what a treasure she is to the art world.
She has really inspired me again to work even harder and to follow my passion and dream.

I finished the portrait of this little Border Collie today. Althoug knowing me I wil probably adjust things here and there before it leaves my studio.
What really gets to me is eventhough I work from photo's, not all dogs live nearby for me to go and see them, they are here and present when I start on their portrait. Some are a little busy other so relaxed and calm, and all of them have things to add to their portrait.
That is whst I love so much about the work I do. The wonderful interaction, the love and excitement from both them and me. It is humbling.

Enough of that; here he is: Tashi

Dream's Portrait Wip

2011-11-08T10:20:00.002+10:00

Studying dog portraits is foremost on my mind these days and I can spend a lot of time looking through books with collections of old masters and modern day painters who created beautiful dog portraits/ paintings of dogs.
I also spend time looking through images on the internet of portraits of animals and I am learning fast.
For me there is a big difference between creating a pastel sketch of a dog and creating a portrait in oil paints. I really want my oil paitings to have a more painterly feel and look to them which is what I am studying now.
In the meantime I practicing what I learn on Dream's portrait.
This is no easy task because it was already so far advanced, but I am never the one to not keep trying and working on a piece so I proceeded with it, stayed with it and I feel it looks a bit better now.
The darks are sunk in and need some work; the face needs a bit more work around the nose, to make the stop more pronounced and the eyes and around the eyes will get more attention. Overall, though, it is more to my satisfaction.

Dream's Rose

2011-11-01T16:25:00.000+10:00

A few days after Dream's passing I bought a beautiful bouquet of White, with a smidgen of creme, Roses for her.
Usually roses don't last longer than 2 days here in my home. Often I praise myself lucky if they don't dropped their heads the instant they are put into the vase.
So obviously I do not buy roses that often anymore.
However: these white roses, did not only last more than 48 hours, they opened up, developed, and became more and more beautiful with each day passing. There were 3 roses close together that seemed to belong together, one in particular was stunning with a most amazing innner glow. As soon I noticed this I called it "My Dream Rose".
When those 3 were still going strong last Thursday I decided I really had to paint them. I made some sketches and took a fair amount of photos, just in case, and started the painting using my pastels on a velour paper.
On Sunday I was almost finished, little bits here and there still to do but the majority was done. And in that instant the roses were done as well. They dropped their little heads, went limp and went to sleep. They lasted 2 whole weeks!!!!

I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make a 'work in progress' of this painting and took photos after every hour (or so) of work. My idea was to put them up here as a kind of tutorial, and I may still do that as well. But when I was talking with my brother he suggested I make a Animation.gif of the process, which is what I am now trying to rap my head around. It would be nice if I could get that done.

In the meantime I'll post the end result:
Here is "Dream's Rose" Pastel on Velour Paper.

Border Collie Pastel

2011-10-26T17:46:00.001+10:00

The last of the current commisions was finished today.
This a young one, eager and allert.
He did not like being plastered onto the paper though. Gave me some hard times.

Pastels used: mainly Girault with some pastel pencils.
Surface: again the beautiful velour Hahnemuhuehle pastel paper.
Such a wonderful combination.

Kearbey:

Border Collie Charlie

2011-10-24T20:02:00.000+10:00

It is two weeks ago today that my little Dream Lady died.
It is still very raw but I know that she is in peace, she is happy, safe and without pain. I know she is together with her soul mate Mister and the two of them are running happy and free again. She has left me giving me the biggest gift I have ever received.
I will love her forever. She was my sweetest, most loving little girl.

Then I received a commission for a Border Collie named Charlie. Charlie is in the same place where Dream and Mister are. It is know as the "Rainbow Bridge".
Having just lost my Dream I could imagine how important Charlie had been to and for her people and thus I wanted to create the best possible work I could do with the reference photos they had.
I finished it today.
Now fingers crossed they like it.

Charlie Brown:

Border Collie Dream, Portrait in progress

2011-10-05T19:26:00.004+10:00

Today was the third day I worked on Dream's portrait.

Last week I got totally bogged down on her nose. I simply could not get it to sit properly on her face.
It wasn't until late one evening when without much light I could very clearly see the values and shapes without any details or detractions. Very quicly I was able to put the little button on the end of her nose, making it look like it belonged there.
I was able to make her nose turn properly and appear more 3 dimensional as well: I really am working hard to the impression of being able to put my hand around her nose; and head of course.
It looks a lot better to my mind any way.

At some stage I realised her left leg was not in the right position which I adjusted, better, now the back ground needs adusting as well.
A bit more work on the coat, but still only early days there.
There is still a lot more to do but so far I am happy with the progress

Portrait of Miss Dream

2011-09-29T17:19:00.001+10:00

Finally today I was able to do some work on the portrait of Miss Dream, my little old Border Collie girl. 12 1/2 years old and still goign strong.

It is difficult to get her to sit for a good photo, or just near me when I paint so I can have the direct reference so I have the best photo possible and check in on my progress by going over to her and looking at her.
Training the memory this way in a big way.
I believe it used to be a great practice in the art schools of the old days. It really is a great exercise.

I worked on this painting, a small one, on and off today and this is where I will have to leave it. Clean the palette and brushes and hopefully will get back to it again tomorrow.

It has some glare but alas:

Border Terrier Portrait

2011-09-27T16:40:00.001+10:00

Ah. Yes!!!

The last of the commissions for the big event this weekend was finished today. Done.
Tomorrow I will take some good photo's for my archive and web site.
It is a relief to have been able to get them all done, all 6 of them in such a short time span.

I received another commission but that one is no rush so I can relax a little.

The next few steps will be to finish the portrait I have sitting of my easel, the one of my little girl Dream. That one is an oil portrait. I am looking forward to it.

So here is the latest: a little Border Terrier. Hope you like. And I really hope the owners of all the portraits will be happy when they receive them.

Raffle

2011-09-21T19:47:00.003+10:00

I was asked to give a portrait as a prize for a raffle. I said yes.
It took a little while before I received the photo's, looking at them really inspired me so I went to work quickly.
It is a portrait of a beautiful Koolie girl. Keep fingers crossed her owner will like it.

Here she is:

commission portraits

2011-09-21T19:36:00.004+10:00

These last few weeks have been full on studying dog anatomy, studying old masters dog portraits and what ever I could get my hands on that would help me understand the structure of the dog face.
It has paid off. I feel a lot more comfortable now locating the land marks and building the face around it.
What has surprised me enormously is the lack of any decent drawing instructions for dog faces. There is so much on the market these days about human anotomy, the basic structure, the basic divides, (for artists), lots of information on human structures through sculptors but harldy anything on the dog. A lot of information is to be found about the horse amongst others, a quick look around the net provided me with more information than I knew what to do with. But not so about the Dog. An animal most of have either in the home or is living next door.
Isn't that just interesting....
Luckily I found some good information for me. More on that later.

But for now: here are some sketches/ commissions done after and during all that study.
I hope the owners will like them.

Little Border Collie portrait in pastel

2011-08-07T10:29:00.005+10:00

Yes that little Border Collie was a fun challenge.
I was asked to do sketches, not full paintings so really had to adust my working methods. It took a little doing but I did get there in the end.
She was fun to do with that lovely back lighting and the fire sparking around her. I hope the portrait does complement her nature.

Portrait of black dog

2011-08-07T10:18:00.003+10:00

I was asked to do some portrait sketches for the dog club near me.
The first one was of a funny little Border Collie. The second of a nice black KelpieX.
Silly me for got to take some shots of the sketch before handing it over. So I had to take a photo with it in the frame, behind glass. Not the best of pictures.
Learned another lesson...... Stop, don't rush.

While working on this black dog I made a few more sketches, trying various methods and various different papers, knowing I would get a lot more pure black dogs.
The ref photo was not a good one and I realised quickly that I needed to do something about my knowledge of animal anatomy if i were going to make decent paintings of dogs from lesser photo's. So I ordered some books and DVD's and am learning fast.

Here is the Kelpie behind glass:

Pastel portrait of Peter II

2011-07-08T09:33:00.005+10:00

Over the last few days I have worked a little more here and there on this portrait. I did not like the back ground so started by re-working that part.
Then worked a little more on the face, trying to give him a more gentle look.
So now I need to work a bit more on the hair again, on the ear and left eye.
Slowly it's growing and getting more pleasing, to my eye.

I have ordered some beautiful Girault pastels. Hopefully they will be here next week.
I am very exited to trying them out and interested to see how they can help me improve my work.

Update on the painting:

A New Pastel Portrait

2011-06-27T20:02:00.004+10:00

This my latest work on my new Hahnemuele paper. Still trying it out and still trying to find out the best possible way to work with it.
It is so soft and nice to work with. Soooooooo gentle on the hands, read finger tips. I do tend to blend a lot.
I could not really get the photo to look like it does in real life, but that may be partly due to my monitor. It's a bit too chromatic in the reds of the face and too washed out in the blues of the shirt. But alas this is it.
"Peter" in Pastel.

Now for some fun: Oils for the next few days.......

An Aussie Puppy on Velour paper

2011-06-15T13:55:00.003+10:00

While working on the Wolf pup, the mail delivered the Hahnemuele Velour Pastel paper I had ordered.
It felt beautiful, so unlike anything I had ever felt in pastel paper. Needless to say I was very eager to give it a try.
Saturday I did a few little bit-sers on a test piece.
Sunday I went for it with a portrait of a litte Aussie puppy. The puppy belongs to Karen M. in the Netherlands. She also runs a dog training school and has heaps of Aussies at home. Lucky girl!!!!
This a portrait of her little girl Grace on the H. Velour paper. Just a quick, very simple little sketch and I can see the enormous potential for my work on this paper.
I am happy.

So here is the quick sketch of Grace:

Some more Dog plus Wolf pastel paintings

2011-06-15T13:30:00.004+10:00

These last few weeks have been pretty interesting on the dog front.
Both boys needed medical attention, and still do, which slowed my painting process down somewhat. Yep, understatement of the year.
It was so scary and worrying watching our Sammy being so unwell that everything else just fell away.
He is doing okay for now, not good by all means, but seems stable, which is what we are aiming for.

So since the peace returned to the house I was able to work again.
I was asked by the lady who runs the doggy aqua centre if I were willing to do the pet portraits for their dog club. It's a special award for gaining an x-amount of points in the training/agility.

So I started doing some sketches in the style she wanted. It's so different from my own working style that it took some doing to but I was getting somewhere.
Then the same lady asked if I wanted to donate a painting for a raffle for the dog club. Off course I would do that.
Initally I was going to do a pet, but then thought the better of it, after all it's no fun receiving a painting of a Border Collie if you have a Dachshound and can't stand 'them black and white things'.
So I thought about doing a wolf portrait, which then became a wolf pup portrait.
After mentioning this to the lady who asked for the donation she could not stop laughing for the idea was not to donate a painting as such but, I would paint the portrait of the pet of the person who'd won the raffle.... Haha. Funny.
Never the less I was geared up for doing the painting so I proceeded with it. If it would turn out okay I would give it, otherwise it would be just the pet portrait.

Before starting that one though, I wanted to first finish off the new portrait I was working on. Another one of our Mister. That one flew out of my hands onto the paper. No struggle, no work, just pure in the zone and pure joy. It felt so good to work on. I was very happy with the end result.

This is the end result:

Then it was on to the Wolf pup. It was fun doing.
Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the finished portrait. The picture here is of the stage prior to working it to the finish.
It was the morning I was to bring all the work, including my other portraits as show pieces, to the club house and I did not want to leave it too late. I had to go past the framer's to pick up the portraits that had been framed for me that week.
So I was running a bit and forgot to take the last photo.
It's an impression though.

The pup:

Pastel work in progress: Mister

2011-03-07T19:50:00.004+10:00

The thought came to me the other day how nice it would be to have paintings of all off my dogs done in a similar style, same size and framed in the same way.
I had one of Sam done in pastel; I did one of Riv also in pastel but the two old ones I had of Mister and Dream ust did not match up so I decided to do them in pastel as well.
I used the same paper for Sam and Riv and decided to go for that one for Dream and Mister as well. Now I have my fingers crossed the framer will be able to match the frames, and has not run out of the one I used for Sam...

This is the one of Mister I working on at the moment. About half to 2/3 along the way.

Border Collie Portrait in Pastel

2011-02-23T21:03:00.003+10:00

Back again,
The roses are finished. I will try to take a good photograph of the painting when I have the opportunity.
In the meantime I have worked on a portrait of a lady I did a while ago in oils, this time in pastel. A picture will follow as soon as I have taken one with the adjusted back ground.
Then last week I started working in a "studio" space nearby where I can work in Oils. Since it has been some time I worked in that medium I spent the first few days reworking old paintings, ust to get the hands moving again, getting the colour mixing up to speed again and getting in the swing again body wise. It was really wonderful to be able to work without any interruptions, apart from the self induced ones. Heaven comes close I'd say!!!
The last few days had been really hot and homid and I opted to stay at home and work in pastels, in this case a little portrait of my little young Border Collie "Rivett". I call him River, or Rivs, or Rivvy. He is the most adorable little pup with the most gorgeous almond eyes.
I hope I have done him justice.
Not quite finished but almost there.
Here he is:

latest work in progess

2010-12-20T18:43:00.005+10:00

I have not had a lot time to actively work on my art progress lately.
Luckily, I have had the odd moments here and there to work on my latest roses, still working in pastel.
Why pastel?: well, for me at the moment becasue I can get things done quickly and put it all down without having to worry about hard edges caused by dried up paint,or by unusable paint on my palette..
Also it is really nice to have the hands working on the piece, blending with the fingers as I go along, holding the pigments sticks, it really does feel very nice.
One drawback: when in the middle of a painting session you simple have to hold yourself back from cuddling the dogs. Especially so when working with darks.....

I have had some time studing with Quang Ho the last few weeks. Quang has made 3 painting video's, a still life, a figure in the interior and about painting principles, called "The Nuts & Bolts of Painting". Eventhough he prodiced the last one last I viewed it first and am really happy that I did becasue after watching that one the other two made so much more sense and were so much more clear and educational.
I have to say after watching the "Nuts & Bolts" I felt myself being raised to yet another level of paintintg, understanding about what makes a good painting and understanding what to look at and what to look for. It's one fo the better ones I have seen on the principles of painting.
I thank Quang for all his effort, hard work and energy producing those wonderful videos.

I had already started painting this piece when I received the videos but tried to incorporate some of the teachings of Quang, there where possible. Being done in Pastel it is very hard to start again without taking out a new sheet of paper. So I did what I could.
I have hardly touched the right hand flower, especially in the pink area which obviously still needs a lot of work done. When viewing this one in just black and white you can see where I need to work on the values. It's very noticable actually where I need to work the values.
However: this is where it stands at the moment.... Okay the picture is not very accurate: it is not that high in chroma... I really need to learn how to take good photo's of my art work.

Roses in Pastel

2010-10-19T19:40:00.004+10:00

Ah yes, time to post again.
Painting has been very slow lately. Physically I have been hindered a fair bit by back problems which made standing and painting an impossiblility. And I like to stand when I paint especially working with pastels.
I was able to do a little bit of work with my oil paints and have a lovely rose going now. Hopefully I'll get back to that one really soon.

While not being able to work as I'd like to I have taken the time to study some wonderful painters of this moment and previous times.
One young painter that inspires me a lot is Ignat Ignatov. Have a look at some of his earlier works, it's just beautiful, but so is his work he is producing now. And not only does he paint beautiful work he also makes his own frames. The most beautiful frames I have ever seen. He is an inspiration.

Anyway, just before doing my back in I was painting some roses in pastel and here are two I put aside for the time being. Do they need more work. The 3rd one in the series probably does. But I'll let it go for just a bit longer and see how I feel about it when I get back to the pastels again.

Rose in Pastel

2010-07-21T20:02:00.004+10:00

It was time to go back to a big love of mine: Roses.
First one close to being finished.
I let it sit for a litle while but I don't think I won't be doing much further on it.
The colours are not quite accurate: photo/painting. I'll try that again with a different lighting.
Who knows maybe one day I'll get the hang of taking good photo's.
In the meantime, close to faithful "Peace rose in pastel"

new pastel portraits

2010-06-11T20:17:00.005+10:00

It surely has been a very long, long time since I have written anything here.
Busy, Life, Dogs, you name it.
Luckily I have had time to study and work on some pieces as well.
A few weeks ago ago I decided to enter a local art competition. I had exactly 2 weeks to paint and frame my entries. My goal was to enter two portraits: one of a young man and one of my dog Sam. Well Sam made it to the competition. The young man did not fair too well after I continued from the point where I had left him to start on Sam's portrait.
Both portraits were done in pastel.
And right now I am working on a portrait in oils for another competition next month. Not much to show yet being only in the starting fase. I did my sketches, value study and just finshed a colour study. Next stage will be getting the real thing started......

Here is Sam's Portrait:

And this the youngs man's portrait:

Another thing I really have to do is get my pastels organised.
While painting the portrait of the young man I so often got frustrated missing the correct colour values or chroma. Argggg. Luckily with the help of Marie's Pastel Book I know which ones to order. Knowing which brand will suit me best makes it even easier. Now I have to find some time to sit down with the book and make a list.
But first the oil portrait.

Sam update

2010-01-21T19:53:00.005+10:00

Rahina's comments on Sam's portrait made me ralise I had not shown the little extra work I had put into his portrait.
Most of the work lately has been concentrated on keepeing the boys (dogs) from killing eachother. That became a 24 hours a day job.
At some stage I jokingly said that my days felt like driving on a freeway around Mount Vesuvius, constantly having to drive at a 100km an hour, dodging heavy traffic with 3 ADD children in the back seat, knowing Mount Vesuvius was about to burst again any moment...................
Luckily it is a lot better now and we are making great progress.

Here is a update on Sam's portrait.
Hopefully I will be able to finish it soon!

Oil Portrait of my Sam

2009-12-10T15:00:00.006+10:00

It has been pretty chaotic around here lately with too little chance to do anything much at the easel.
However when I did have that chance I worked a bit on a portrait I started last year during the workshop with Clayton Beck. It is getting better, especially the drawing part. At least now the girl looks like she does in real life. Lucky I took some good photo's during the sitting.

Just for fun and for something completely different for a moment but mainly because he was taking up so much of my time already I felt the urge to do a portrait of Sam. The first attempt was not very satisfactory so I scraped it all off and started again.
This is the second attempt at the stage where I had to abandon my easel again.
Now I am hoping for some spare and rare moments so I can get back into it again.

charcoal portrait

2009-11-01T14:40:00.005+10:00

Today I was so inspired by this beautiful charcoal portrait by Alexei Harlamoff that I just needed to do a drawing.

Unfortunately the paper I chose to work on did not take the materials I wished to work with very well and the result I was after did not happen. The paper was fighting me every step of the way.
So I gave up the battle, took out my Derwent charcoal pencils and continued slowly.
I am happy with it at this stage. Will spray it with some fixative and work on it a more when I have the change.

Landscape 3

2009-09-20T15:19:00.005+10:00

I did actually manage to get to the easel the other day, it was for about 1/2 hour only but it was great.
Luckily I has some paint still on my palette that I could use and quickly went to work while my "blokies" were sleeping.
It's not much and still in progress. It needs a fair deal more of work on the left and the forground.
One thing that bothers me most at the moment is that it does not have a clear focal point. I need to work on that.
But at least I was able to work a little.
On my desk I have a few books I desperately want to get to:
The new book by David A. Leffel. Called "Self-Portraits". So far I have only been able to look at the reproductions of the paintings and they are top class. The close-ups are brilliant and there is even a 2 page demonstration of how he works a portrait. A wonderful feast for the eyes. Now I want to read the text and for that I need time.
However the reproductions in this book alone are already worth getting it. Wonderful.
Another book is an old one "the Art of Fredrik McCubbin" which talks about the artist's journey showing a lot of McCubbins older work. I received catalogue that accompanies the exhibition that runs in Canberra now which mainly shows his later work which is a lot more impressionistic and on which he used far brighter colours. I like both his older and later work. But that's just me.
Two other little books are waiting my attention:
One by Edgar Payne called Compostition of Outdoor Painting. Which could be of great assistance to me in my guest for producing better landscape paintings.
And another by Philip de Laszlo, on how to paint the portrait. De Laszlo; one of favourite painters. I love his work. It is so nice to see how he works. The text and photo's from this book is available for download which I did a few years back, but there is nothing better than to actually hold the book in your hands and feel the energy from it. Tony Pro, a marvellous painter recomments the text for anyone wanting to paint portraits and he actually helped me finding this little old book on E-bay. Thanks again Tony.

And this is the little landscape I managed to work on: Yep still so much to learn

Why I did not get to the easel

2009-09-20T14:39:00.006+10:00

We have a new addition to the family which has taken a lot of my time away from the easel and mainly everything else.
He flew in from Perth 2 weeks ago and was pretty unwell the first week, doing great now and growing. We call him Rivett.

Dream is finally paying some attention to him, her motto "if I ignore it it isn't here", but he is here and he does go to her for plays.
Luckily for Dream, while she is still recovering from her knee operation, Rivett has another little friend to play with. Little in years, for he is only 51/2 months old. He is called Shyam, or Sam for short. He has grown so fast and so big, you could almost hear him grow. He is the softest, most gentle pup I have ever come across, our Sam. He is just a beautiful darling.

Sam at 4.5 months

Sam at 5.5 months

But he is also 18kilos heavy and Rivett was only 3.5kilos upon arrival and not too strong so it was necessary to keep them apart for most of the time and only together under strict supervision. That caused some hard work.
However, Rivett is so much stronger now and really eager to play with Sam. So I let them. Today they finally played to the point that Sam actually walked away from the little one to have a rest under my desk in my studio. He is still here now.

This what I had the other day and it shows some proportions at the same time. How gorgious is that:

In the meantime my studio looks like a bom has gone of in it. I have books and magazines piled up on my desk, waiting to be read, I have a palette with old paint laying on my work table with paint tubes scattered around it.
I have puppy toys overy where on the floor.
But loving every minute of it.

P.S. Two-Tone: now you have the picture you were asking for... Sort of.

Not amused

2009-08-31T11:11:00.003+10:00

This act of mine did not amuse my husband. Not at all.
Good thing is the Queensland sun does make it grow back pretty fast.
It felt good though
Hahaha.

Another landscape in progress

2009-08-31T10:36:00.004+10:00

It has been some time since I posted. So much has happened, life seems to fly past.
I have not been able to work in my studio as often as I would have liked. However the reasons stopping me were mainly good and pleasant.
So no complaining. Also time away form the easel isn't too bad, it did give me time to evaluate and think/feel about where I want to go with my work. What do I wish my work to look like? What do I wish to portray, tell, show?
Have I really managed to create my own handwriting?
I know the direction I wish to go and that is very helpfull already. It will most likely take some experiementing before I can make it look half decent but I am eager to give it a try and very exited to see what will come out of it.
This little painting of the cliffs I started some time ago and managed to return to yesterday. This will be as far as I am going to take it for the moment as I am just too eager to get some other work started.
Next week we will have a little 8 week old Border Collie Puppy racing through the house which will be the end of my painting again for some time.
So I want to get as much done as possible now.

Portrait sketch in pastel and charcoal

2009-05-14T15:53:00.009+10:00

Life has changed enormously since Mister died. My life has changed. My innner life has changed to an extend hardly explanable in words.
It takes some time to get past the rawness of the pain and it feels like a huge effort to do even the most minimal of tasks.
It will get easier I know but in the meantime I just have to take it easy and look after Dream, Peter and myself more then even before.

I did pick up some materials occasionally and did a few quick sketches.
This first one was started with just charcoal to which I later added with pastels pencils.
For this one I did use a photo reference, albeit a pretty lousy one.

The secone one I started when trying a sample of a Pan-Pastel I received a little while back.
It is done without any references and may not be anatomically correct, but I was more interested in this new pastel product then anything else. I did add some bits here and there with my Derwent pastel pencils but did not touch it much after that.

The result of this little sketch was an order for more Pan-Pastels, I did like it that much. The order was delivered today.
These little pans look just so beautiful. They feel so soft, are so lovely to work with. I feel inspired by them. Funny, but I really do.

So now I will get myself organised and do some experiments with them.

These experiments will also carry me into an area which may finally shed some light on the question that has been in my head since I watched "The Power of Art" by Simon Schama.
Especially the episodes on Rembrandt, Turner and Rothko made me very emotional Since then returning to just simply making beautiful pictures seemed impossible.
I started searching within myself to what it really is that I wish to show and say through these paintings.
I feel I am getting closer to be able to put it into words.
The works I am going to do over the next few weeks may help me becoming even more clear on it.
My dear Swedish friend and I have had many discussions about finding the voice of the soul. He was and is struggling really hard with this. Now after the "Power of Art" I really understand him for now I am feeling this as well. Not just knowing it with the head but feeling this question and struggle with my whole being.

It will be an interesting time, but one thing I am certain of: My Mister will be here to guide me and to urge me to listen even harder to my inner voice.

landscapes

2009-05-14T14:18:00.008+10:00

During the months of February, March and April we did some trips with our new caravan. Yes, both dogs were with us all the time.
It was so much fun.
I thought I would have some time doing some sketching and painting and took a lot of materials with me.
However, apart from one little charcoal sketch one evening I did not get to do anything. Yes I managed to sneak in some time to do some reading but that was about it.
Back home I tried my hand on a little landscape:

We are planning to take a lot more trips with the caravan and offcourse there will be time at some stage where I will be able to do some painting.
I knew I had to look at all those materials I had been travelling with and knew Ineeded to minimize on them. Limiting the amount of paints I would take along seemed like a start.
But, the question was, which paints was I going to take?
I did some study into plein-air paintings and the tools the artists who made them used.
I kept coming back to Scott Christensen.
He started by using just a few colours: Red, Blue, Yellow and White and mixed all his other colours from those, including his black. For convenience sake he then had a paint company called Vasari paints make and tube those often used mixes for him.
I decided to try and mix the colours he used with just the red, blue and yellow and discussed the possibility of getting the closeness of those to the tubes from Vasari with a friend whom I knew had those Vasari colours.
Here is my chart:

I had some of the Vasari colours and really liked them so with my own feelings about them and Jim's comments I decided to get the pre-mixed range.

While waiting for them arrive I worked a little more into that sunset I painted a while back. Just a little, nothing muxh exciting.

The Vasari's arrived while I was still pretty ill so it took a little while to test them.
In fact the only thing I have done so far is put some patches of the colours on the chart near the mixes I had made that matched them closely.
I was pleased to see how really close I had managed to get to the Vasari's with my own mixes. Pretty good.
However I did this on the day I realised that Mister was ill and I have not done much in the way of paiting since.

This rose was the painting I had been working on that Saturday day, It had been on and off my easel for some time and it was time to let that one go.
Maybe one day I will touch it up but for now I will put it in a frame as it is. It reminds me of Mister as it is now.
It is very soft and subtle in real life but for reason it is a very difficult one to take photo's off.

One thing I noticed in most of my paintings is the lack of diversity, range in values which needs working on and practicing with.
This will be next step in my learning process.

My sweet "Mister"

2009-05-10T10:02:00.004+10:00

About 2 weeks ago the medication I was given to fight of a very nast chest/lung infection (side effect of the flu) which bordered a pneumonia, started to take effect. The fever went down a little and I became a little clearer in the head.
Thats when I realised and in a way intuitively knew that my dear friend, my big love, Mister was not well at all.
I had seen him scratching his belly but had thought it was probably to do with his skin healing from the infection he got during our little trip to Coffs Harbour. He had been eaten by sand flies which had given him big nasty infected hotspots.
I had noticed a blood spot in the outer corner of his eye but had put that down to maybe a tress point, a burst blood vain. He seemed a lot less energetic but again I had linked that to the skin problems and the medication he had been given for it.

BUT

when I rolled him on his back to check his belly, his usually pink skin was red, blood red, and black as if he had blood right under the surface of his skin.
This did not look good at all.
The spot ran from mid chest to belly button. I was gravely worried and raced to the weekend clinic with him.
It only took the vet one look at him to tell me he had massive internal bleedings and they would have to run some test to find out why.
The blood test told us that is was not caused by poisoning and we knew he had not suffered a trauma nor had been in an accident. They decided to keep him to run more test and give him a blood transfusion if needed. He was severely anemic by that stage from the massive amount of blood loss.
The vet rang around 23.30: the bleeding had been caused by ruptered tumors!! Hemangiosarcoma, a very aggressive cancer that spreads through the blood system, forming an ever increasing net work, attacking everything. Plus it goes on pretty much undetectable.
They had found massive amounts of tumors almost everywhere in his body: his spleen, liver, heart and lungs, they were ruptering one after the other. Operating on him was out of the question. There was absolutely nothing they could do for him anymore.

So we brought him around 01.00 in the morning and looked after him as good as we possibly could.

He died a few days later, 3 months short of his 11th birthday.
The day before my own birthday.

I love him so much. I miss him so much.
The house is so quiet without him.
He was my biggest friend, my great, sweet love and my wisest teacher.

Going back to an earlier portrait sketch

2009-01-20T19:12:00.005+10:00

When I felt my interest level towards the rose was dropping, I realised that it would be much better to go on to something rather different for a while.
Pushing on without the motivation needed would surely have damaged the work. So The rose is of to the side for the moment.
I decided to work on the portrait sketch I did as an speed exercise just prior to taking Clayton Beck's portrait workshop.
So far I have worked on the drawing issues and worked some colour into the skin and background.
Keeping my colour mixtures realy simple with just a handful of colours keeps the flesh looking fresh and the overall work much more unified. Also it is much easier to work with then with a full 24 colour palette.
I worked out prior to beginning what colour sense I wanted this painting to have and opted for a cool feel to this work. Now I just have to keep working it up until I am happy with the overall look.

This is the portrait after a little more work:

Another Portrait an Rose Update

2009-01-16T13:56:00.009+10:00

I did not have a lot of time to paint this week but the little I did manage to do gave me great pleasure.
Having taken the decission to not let "Must Have perfect technique" block me from freely painting and enjoying the process I was able to do some good work and enjoyed it immensly.

Yes ofcourse technique is very important but it is not the end all or be all. There are other very important aspects to making good paintings.
I realise that I have been staring myself blind on the realition of good technique and that it did not help me at all. So back to square One and on with the job.

Update on Portrait exercise

2009-01-05T20:44:00.004+10:00

The new year 2009 has started and I just know it is going to be a very good year.
Personally and Creatively this year is about to become the Best ever.
I have not been able to do a lot of painting but the time I had I spend reading and studying. Apart from looking after the very sore Mister dog. He ended up with gangrene but luckily I was in time to prevent him from loosing his leg or worse!!

When I did ge to the easel I had a good time and felt pretty good about it.
This is a quick update on the portrait in progress.
Just a few alterations and fixing some drawing issues plus a little change to the background.

Portrait work and Last entry for 2008

2008-12-31T19:41:00.004+10:00

I hope every one had a wonderful Christmas and is getting ready to see out the 2008 year.

Eventhough tough these festive days are wonderful they do eat time getting everything ready and making the home look beautiful & inviting.
On top of that my big "Mister" dog had undergone knee surgery just before Christmas which caused problems that needed attention. Looking after him almost 24 hours a day to make sure he would not injure himself while recovering from the operation took up most of my time.

However there were also lots of moments of reflection which came to a peak the other day when I pressed for the answer as to what was blocking me from doing my work and serious painting. I did get the answer!!
I won't go into detail but suffice it to say it is pretty much related to a person I did a portrait workshop with just under two years ago.
I now also know how to deal with it and will be back to my normal self and painting like a mad(wo)man soon.

I did manage to get a little bit of painting done, "Little" meaning just a very short period, during which I worked a little on that portrait which now has become an exercise portrait, one that I now use to try out different things.
This is what that looks like now:

The shadow side is still pretty much in its raw state and there are some nasty drawing issues but I was happy to get some work done. I also noticed that the overall work is becoming soft edged again which means I am loosing some of my internal sharp edges again.
Isn't it marvellous to see how our work can show the internal state we are in?!

I also worked a little bit more on that rose with the close up view point. It now has a background in a much higher value but lower chroma which instantly made the rose look much better. It still needs a lot more tweaking before I will be happy with that one.

However 2009 is about to start and it is going to be a wonderful year in every which way possible.

So on that note I would like to wish all of you A Very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

The Use of Colour and Colour mixing complements

2008-12-22T17:54:00.006+10:00

It has been a fair while since I wrote anything on my page.
Reason for this is that I have been very busy with my study into colour and how to work this properly into my paintings and thus creating more lively, read less dead, paintings.
I can get very disappointed after a days work to see that the image on my easel looks pretty lifeless and Nothing like the image in my head.
My studies took me to reading a wonderful book by Walter Sargent "The enjoyment and Use of Color" published by Dover Publications. It is a very interesting read, lots of explanations about how colour comes to be and how it can be used, plus lots of exercises to put his theroy in practice.
So far I have only been able to de some of the exercises and put some to use in a rose painting I am working on.
This little book was mentioned and recommended in "The New Munsell Student Color Set" by Jim Long and Joy Turner Luke. A Must read for everyone interested in Munsell's colour theory.
Some of the ideas presented in the books I tried to work into this little painting, it's very fuzzy and blurred and I will try to take a better picture after I have done some work on it.

While working on this little painting it became obvious that the oil paints I was working with were not really mixing complements and the colours created from ixing them were not the ones I was after.
Now ofcourse I could have judged the colours with the Munsell chips and premixed them that way, but this painting is so tiny that it seemed easier to just mix the desired colour on the fly, so to speak. The truth was far removed from this thought.

SO my search into oil paints mixing complements was on in ful.
It had been on my mind for a little while since trying to create a better background for the double rose painting I am still working on.
The colour I added, which was supposed to be it's visual complement, screamed with the colour of the roses. Plus it made the bottom rose colour look awful.
I changed it by added a lot of other colours into this background to make it look acceptable. It's still not good but I left it alone for the moment until I do know which would be the best combination to make all the colours in this painting sparkle.

This is the painting that started the search mission:

Slowly, slowly I am getting more life and sparkle into it.
The top rose is the furthest developped at this stage. The bottom rose needs a lot more work.
But I need to ge the background to work with roses, and the roses with the background. SO the search continues.

I went to the site run by David Briggs www.huevaluechroma.com.
There he explains so clearly what colour is, does and comes to be that it was a perfect match and follow up from the Sargent book I am still reading.
The advantage of David's site is the visuals. The book is mainly text and just a few colour plates.
It's really worth while spending a little time there.
David is coming to Brisbane in January to give a 4-day workshop on color. I'd love to go but at this stage I am not sure if I can get away from home during that time.
I do think his course is very valuable and worth every second spent on it.
For my Australian reader, if you are interested in this course you can find more details on both David's site and on www.brisbaneartistsacademe.com.au
The BAC has a lot of good workshops and courses. Worth checking out.

In the meantime Graydon Parrish is going to run some Munsell exercises on Rational Painting forum.
I already had the gray's, the value chart, the spheres and cubes but had not gotten to the 5YR's yet so that was another job for this last week. I painted the cubes and chart and put 2 layers of gesso on the spheres I picked up on Saturday.
I may be able to paint them in tomorrow.

My search for the good, interesting, use of and workings of colour continues.

New Idea Pastel Study

2008-11-04T19:35:00.003+10:00

Just prior to my hospital visit I had been seriously looking at improving my work in order to make the pictures look like paintings instead of overworked photgraphs.
My search lead me to various painters; one who resonate with me a lot at this time is Nicolai Fechin. It's not just his work but his being, his personality, the why he painted and why he painted the way he did.
One work that jumped at me the other day is called "the Princess". It's a beautiful painting done mainly in blues and purles with a touch of yellow here and there.
It very much inspired me to try something in that style. Not being too well yet I decided to use my pastels. Simply because they are so easy to use, you can pick them up and put them down again whenever needed. There are no worries about having to walk away, leaving paint to dry on the palette, and getting hard edges or funny patches on the painting when painting with oils. Also working with the pastels gives me an idea of what I can do when painting something similar in oils later. It helps taking the guessing away.

So this here painting is done in just a few colours, using a large amount of pastel sticks though.
It's very different to my usual style but I have to admit that I do like it.

Hospital stay

2008-10-22T08:48:00.002+10:00

Over the past few months I couldn't help notice that I have a few very steady visitors to my blog.
First of all I wish to take this opportunity to that you for taking the time to follow me along in this sometimes very frustrating endeavour in creating better paintings. I appreciate it very much.

This post is directed to all of you but it will obviously have nothing to with creating beauty with paint. Take of the T in paint and you get what I will be talking about. Yep, Pain!
I was taken by abulance (of all things) to hospital very early Friday morning arriving at the emergy department at 6AM, with what turned out to be a nasty embedded 9mm kidney stone.
A transfer to another hospital later that was needed to have an urologist at my bedside. I was operated on late Monday afternoon and was able to return home Tuesday midday, from where I am writing this now. It's not finished yet, and I am not recovered yet, so no painting for a little while.

I will however, whenever I can, write a little about the people that are helping me becoming a better painter. And I may take the time to update the links list, it could do with some additions.

I do appreciate all you visits and I hope to be able to show some work again soon.

Thank you all.
Anneke

Beautiful skin tones

2008-10-15T20:57:00.004+10:00

These last few weeks I have been searching and studying how I can improve the skin tones in my portraits.
Every time when I return to a work in progress, after having been reasonably satisfied with the work so far I can not help but think how utterly boring and dead it looks. It became quite depressing really.
So I searched for and looked at numerous works of painters I admire in order to get a glimps of how they may have gotten there so I could incorporate this into my work as well.
A very dear friend of mine is helping me enormously, giving information and advice.
Finally yesterday it clicked and I managed to get something on canvas that inspired me still today. For starters I applied the paint much thicker than I usually do which gave me lovely juicy paint to work with. The difference that "little" change made.
My friend also adviced me on how to make a really nice ground to paint on which I had planned on trying today. It did not happen unfortunately because other things got in the way. Cleaning out and reorganising the studio was one of the distractions.
Hopefully I will get a chance tomorrow.
And here are the links to the paintings that really inspire me. Such beautiful work, such beautiful skin.

This one is for Helene Knoop, I really like her self portraits.
http://www.heleneknoop.com/

This one is for Maria Kreyn. http://www.creativeportfolio.org/mariakreyn/
Enjoy

The head study continues

2008-10-09T14:59:00.009+10:00

The last session on this head study was done at night using a "day-light tube".
It does give plenty of light to work with, however, upon looking at my work in daylight the following morning I noticed that the light had cast a blue-ish light on everything and the painting looked odd.
So I sat with it for a little while re-assessing the situation and which path to follow. Staying with the blues and purples, going more chromatic or going back to my original plan on trying to create a realistically looking head.
I opted to go back to my original plan and started painting, making sure to stay away from some of the colours I had used the night before which had created the strange look.
I managed to do the light side of the face and decided to continue the following day with the same light.
Yesterday I continued on the dark side of the face, and worked on the neck and shirt until the light changed again. It was difficult to get a good photo but this one will do as it reasonably represents the stage the painting is at.

More to do which will hopefully be tomorrow, again only with daylight.

Revisiting Two Portrait Wips, a head study and a rose study

2008-10-07T07:30:00.011+10:00

Both of those paintings have been on and off my easel for some time now.
The portrait of the woman I had scaped back to the initial underpainting and had turned the canvas facing the wall.
The painting of the roses had been on my large easel for some time and was a prime victim for a colour exercise. The more I looked at it as it was the flatter it started to look and it really needed something done to it. So I took some of the premixed tube colours I wish to eliminate from my oils collection and that seemed quiete okay for the job.
There are still some colour misses in the areas, some concerning value, most concerning chroma. That is really pretty hard to control and requires a lot of brush milage.
For the head study I used some of my own Munsell pre-mixes, plus a few additions of colours that were on the palette for the roses.
Still more to do.
Oh, and I do apologize for the shadow on the hair cast by the easel.

A Flower Portrait in Oil Colours

2008-09-29T20:42:00.007+10:00

For something completely different for a change and seeing how I can fuse the Munsell colour system and free colour work together I started this rose painting.
A quick block in with the major colours on day one and on day two, yesterday, I worked quietely on the centre.
The main centre has this mystic of what may be hidden deep within, behind the overlapping multi-coloured petals. I am just slowly working on this one feeling me way around and feeling how to emphasise that mystic that I am feeling when looking at this flower.

And a close up:

I used Munsell to judge the colours of the centre of the rose which would help me as a guide and a base upon which I could judge the other colours. I have not used Munsell for the cooler sections and at this stage do not intend to for I want to see how far I can get judging those other colours against the base ones.

Clayton Beck III Portrait Workshop

2008-09-29T19:44:00.018+10:00

From Thursday September 18th until Tuesday September 23 I was a participant in Clayton's Portrait workshop. 6 Days of painting from a life model. Heaven.
I do not get to paint from life models that often so that part was sure bliss.
The only model I have found in these parts of the woods is myself. And really painting a self-portrait really is not as easy as it sounds.
When painting one needs to step away from the easel all the time to judge what's gone onto the canvas, compared with what one is painting. As soon as you step away from the canvas, and mirrors used to paint yourself, everything changes and it becomes rather difficult to compare, judge, squint and the like.
So painting with models was a real pleasure.

The main focus during the workshop remained on light and shadow. As in: What of the model is in shadow, what is in the light. Squint to see the shapes of light and dark etc. We had 2 set-ups; one with cool tube light and one with hot spot light. The models would be with us all day but change sides after lunch. We would stay at our easel throughout the day and swapped the following day. Thus painting one day of hot light and one day of cool light.

The first day started with Clayton doing a demonstration in the cool light set-up. We had a lovely Canadian girl Nell sitting for us and it was great to see her appearing on the canvas.
This is the demo after about 3 hours.

After lunch it was our time to paint and this was as far I as got before having to race out to get to the bus in time to get my connecting train home. (I had opted to commute instead of trying to dogde trafic at peak hour.)

The second day we painted both morning and afternoon focussing on Light and Shadow, with the models changing spots after lunch.

Of all the work I did during those 6 days I believe the painting from the morning of that second day was the strongest. I worked uninterrupted and freely, completely in the "zone" and even managed to get a decent like-ness.

In the afternoon I just happened to go for a more monochrome work.
At some stage the light shinging on my canvas made it impossible to see past the glare. Luckily I had brought my French easel and got tip the canvas al the way forward, with me painting in a more or less upside down manner. Oh what Fun.

On the way home that second day the train driver sounded like he could have come from India.
My thoughts trailed of and I was thinking how interesting it would be to be painting people from different cultures during this workshop. I do like the people from India, I think they have an inner grace and beauty about them that one does not see too often.
You can just imagine my surprise to see that our models for day 3 were from India.

Again on day 3 we were painting Light and Shadow.
I was in the cool-light section of the room again and while our groupd of 9 were painting Simon, Clayton was painting along on the other side of the room in the hot light where the girl was.

This is my effort for the morning painting Simon:

And the girl in the afternoon, whose name I unfortunately did not get:

And the little miniature Clayton painted of her that morning:

On the morning of day 4 Clayton did a demonstration of Haley.
The set-up was in the cool area again and he had slightly changed the position of the tube lights. We were still focussing on Shadow and Light.

It was way past lunch time when we had a break after which we could try our hand on the models again. That day the models did not swap places, with Haley staying on the cool side and the brought in model, a friend of one of the girls sitting for us on the warm side. We started very late and I needed to get out early to get the train which runs a different time schedule during the weekends.
I felt that with a bit more time I could have done something really nice with this lady. She had never sat before, was under a hot spot light while the temperature had risen quite nicely to above 30 degrees C. She did so well.

During the afternoon Clayton set himself up again to do another sketch of Haley, this time in monochrome Transparent Oxide Red (Rembrandt Oils) He could not finish it that afternoon and was asked by Haley to finish it of later that night.
This is what he finished with:

On day 5 I was in the Cool-light section again and the morning started with Ross

Followed in the afternoon by this lady, whose name I did not get.

I had hoped that I could have more time with her somehow, somewhere, so it was a delight to see her again the morning of the last and 6th day. Unfortunately I was in the same painting spot and had to adjust myself.

We were all set up and painting time had started when it appeared that Clayton had set up his easel again to paint along.
He had the model set up in the hot light wearing the Akubra hat he had bought and really liked.
I did not get a photo of that painting.

I was painting and doing okay, then all the people from our side of the room started moving to where Clayton was painting leaving just myself and one other participant painting this nice lady. I had hoped that I would have been able to have her for one more day.Unfortuanetely I was not in the same position for we had to swapp around again but there was something about her that really made me want to paint her.
Lunch break was very late, and by the time we were to start the afternoon session I really did not feel well and having come in by car I decided to pack up and go while I was still safe to be behind the wheel.

It was quite an experience and I enjoyed being with such a nice group of people, 21 in total, and all of them very enthusiastic about their endeavours. It was wonderfullto paint from life models and learning so much from them.
It was good.
I did not come away with the best paintings I'd ever done but I never expected that to happen. Afterall how much can you do in such a short period of time when you are still learning. I am pleased though with what I managed to do and what I learned from it.

First of the quick Sketches in Oils

2008-09-09T20:12:00.007+10:00

I promissed myself to get some speed up painting portraits/head studies by setting myself a limited timeframe during which I need to get the head on canvas. This is part of getting myself ready for the workshop with Claytong Beck next week. The workshop is 6 days during which we will paint at least 2 heads per day. Now I do not paint that fast, so I'd better learn to speed things up a bit.
I spend 1 1/2 hours last night getting the drawing correct and even though I promissed myself to get on with it and start another one I did get back to it this morning to add a few touches I thought were needed.
Now I will not touch it anymore. Although I would not let this out of my studio as is and it is by far not finished.
Just exercising.....
I did use my new camera to shoot the painting. This weekend I spend quite some time with this great tool and am learning so much by just doing. This one is not the best yet but compared to the first ones I took of my paintings, it's a 1000% better.

Okay Oil Sketch 1:

Now I will clean the palette and get ready for the next one.

The Old Bearded One

2008-09-06T16:42:00.007+10:00

The Old Geezer (as my good friend calls him) received some attention from me this week.
I needed to practice the palette set out for the up coming portrait course with Clayton and this sketch was still waiting. What better place to get cranking.
I was pretty pleased se see ow easy it has become for me now to quickly mix the appropriate colours, in hue, value and chroma. The works with the Munsell system did pay off to no end.
The only issue I had initially was with Terra Rosa from W&N, it is such a strong colour that one really has to stop and pay attention when 'dipping' into the paint nut. An ordinary "lick" of the brush through the paint easily destroys any colour mix on the palette. Just a tiny little bit on the tip of the brush is often more than sufficient.
All the other colours were easy to handle.

I tried to take a decent photo but we had some really wet whether which kept it rather darkish throughout the days. Now I have received a very nice present and am working on the ins and outs of it. When ready my next photo will be coming from the Canon Eos 450d. What a beautiful camera that one is. The quick photo's I took with it were really stunning in their clearity, sharpness and colour. Beautiful.
Now I have to figure out how to take a decent photo of a flat and shiny surface as a painting.

So here is the old geezer, more work to do and updates to follow and seconly where I left him last month:

Portrait Painting in pastels stage 4

2008-08-31T19:40:00.005+10:00

I did not get back to this painting until last night.
All sorts of incidentals plus some flu symptoms kept me in the couch for most of the time this week. When I did feel up to it I grabbed my pastel sticks and pencils and continued working on the face, the hair and the jacket.
This is the stage I will have to leave it for a little while because I really have to get ready for this workshop I am doing with Clayton Beck. It's just 18 days away but I do not have 18 days of practice and his palette is rather different than what I have been using lately so I really need to get a move on.
As I said to my dear Swedish friend today: I rather not spend a tremendous of time mixing the right colour while the poser is falling asleep. So I am clearing the pastels away from my working area and set up the the Clayton B. Palette again. Last time I worked on it I managed to get as far as getting the paint tubes out and getting their Munsell notations onto a colour wheel I had made earlier this year.
Having a colour wheel and the Munsell notations is very helpful because you only have to look at where abouts on the wheel the tube-colours are you are working with are, to have an indication of what colour you would arrive at when mixing them.
The colours I am working with during the workshop are mainly high chroma ones, cadmium mainly with chromas 14-13-16 , this is a portrait workshop, and knowing that flesh tones hardly ever exceed chroma 6 it means a lot of mixing to lower these chroma's. I will take take my neutrals along, I may want to pamper myself a little.
Anyway back to the pastel painting. This is how I am leaving it at this stage.
I am tempted to work some more on the background but will leave it untill after the workshop. Also I know there are some minor issues I need to work on like the ear for instance, and the for her right cheek. But again I may just leave all of it until after the workshop.
Stage4:

And in case you may wonder: The model is Michelle Ryan, an actor from the UK who plays the Bionic Woman.
I used a reference photo from the newspaper to start with though I did find a slightly better photo on the net just before starting on this latest stage.
Now I am going to put the pastels to sleep for a little while and start practicing with the workshop palette.

Pastel Portrait Stage3

2008-08-24T15:36:00.004+10:00

Instead of working on the face some more I decided it would be a better idea to first put in some background, some indication of the jacket and some of the real darks in the hair.
With that mainly in place it made judging of where the changes were needed in the face a lot easier. I stood way back looking at it for some time and also looked at it through a mirror.
There, were I could see definite changes were needed I adjusted the face and continued working some more around the mouth and eyes.
This is as far as I will be able to go today. Luckily it is a pastel painting which makes leaving it and coming back to it very simple and easy.

So here is stage 3:

Pastel Portrait Sketch WIP

2008-08-23T19:39:00.004+10:00

Finally back in the studio.
These last few weeks have been taken up by organising the tax returns first and looking after my husband, who needed urgent surgery, this last week.
Eventhough I was a bit sore and tired I tremendously enjoyed being in my space again and looking for that special feeling to take control of me when I am fully into the creative zone.
Kwowing I did not have a lot of time I took the a reference photo that I had been going before the admin took a hold of me, and just started sketching.
There was no urgency this time, no other feeling than just letting it happen.
I used a watercolour paper which I had prepared some time ago with Graydon's special paper size. The base colour a lightish pinkish/brownish colour (now I know Graydon is going to have a fit.....
This is the sketch quick start with just 2 colours and a litle blending:

Then I went for the pastels and with hardly any blending other then with the sticks themselves I got to this point before I had to stop.
After I had taken the pictures I went back to quickly adjust the mouth.
Looking at the drawing through the studio glass doors (similar to looking through a mirror) I noticed that I need to lower the value of the right eye a fair bit. It jumps out now and should not be, being in shadow. Another section is the lower law area that is too high in value as well.
Also there is no back ground as yet so I have some work to do there as well.

But that will be stage 3 and probaly tomorrow. The light is not good enough to work in now, and I want to start again with really fresh eyes. Tomorrow it is.

The last update on the second sketch and a new project

2008-07-31T15:59:00.006+10:00

This is the last photo of this sketch for the time being.
Why?
Well after I took the photo's of this stage Icontinued working on it to correct a few areas I was not too happy about. Instead of making things better though it became worse and worse.
I knew, and know 100% certain now, that I should have stopped when the light changed but I was in such a painting mood that I kept going until just before my husband came home. That was around 22.00. Before turning the lights of though I, again, corrected a few little things, this time with my finger.
This morning when I looked at what I had produced I could not help but crinch; it looked awful.
I should have listenend to myself. Turn this one with it's face against the wall and do something different. Then start on this one again fresh this morning.
I did learn a major lesson from this though and truth be told; I do like lessons like this. I am grateful for them.

However the end result; After working on it until about lunch time, I decided it was not going to get anywhere so: I scraped everything off the canvas. Cleaned my palette and put the sketch away.
Maybe one day I'll get back to it.

Now it's time to start something totally different.
I am booked in for a workshop here near my home town with Clayton Beck III. He's travelling all the way from The States to teach a one week workshop in September!
I am soooooo looking forward to this. I am hoping with his guidance and instructions to be able to put a sketch done faster and with more gusto.
To get myself familiar with the colours he wishes us to use during the workshop,I am planning to set out the palette he uses and just do a few sketches with these colours. I will still have my Munsell Book near me to make good colour decissions

This new project does mean that I will also leave the sketch of the bearded man alone for a while as well.

So on to the next project.

Sketch Up-Date

2008-07-24T13:31:00.004+10:00

It's been a very interesting week with a lot of things happening. Not a lot of painting though.
However, the occurances into my life right now are nothing short of amazing and one the concepts that I came to understand very quickly is that I do not have to rush. There is enough time to do what I wish to do.

I am content by how the sketch is developping but offcourse I must work it a lot further before I can be satisfied. Nevertheless, I feel that I am making big progress steps.

Again, last night, I was working in a lighting situation by which I could not really see the colours I was working with. They were close to what I wanted to work with though [although not as chromatic as in this picture] and since I was more concerned in building the form anyway it did not really matter much to me. I think the form is coming along okay.
Now I will concentrate more on further sculpting with correct colours.

New Sketch

2008-07-21T07:34:00.006+10:00

When I started working on the bearded man again it did not go very well at all, so a scraped off the paint and blurred much of his eye and decided to let it rest and dry before getting back to it. Because of the blurryness of the sketch it is very difficult to take decent photo's. I tried to ake some outside which imprived the overall look slightly but nothting much to write home about.

Then while the bearded one was drying, I thought I'd start another sketch. However at the time I started I was not really in the "zone" and was too overly concerned with the placement of the featurtes. So overly concerned in fact that I started drawing with the incorrect colours with this as the result. The features are now reasoably well in place, on the left side of the painting I scraped some paint away and blurred the remaining sections.
So taking pictures of this one was as difficult, if not more, as the bearded one.

My overall feeling of the two sketches is that, although not very pretty to say the least, a lot better than any quick sketches I have done, and much better already overall than the paintings I did up to a year ago.
This is very promissing and encouraging.

When I started playing the piano again, after not having touched one for over 23 years, I was very keen on getting to play songs quickly again. So I practiced a lot which meant the people around me really had wear double earplugs to survive the attack on their ear drums. They come and sit with me now when I play.
Encouraged by my growth I wanted to see how far I could get playing Rachmaninov and Lists' Campanella. All I could laughingly say was "More training required"!
I did not feel upset of defeated by it at all and that is the attitude I wish to bring to my easel as well from now on.
Simply and non-judgementally: More Training required.

Portrait Sketch Wip part3

2008-07-16T12:25:00.005+10:00

Last night I had a little time to apply bit more colour to the man's face.
I am now going to concentrate a bit more on the expression in his eyes especially of course his right one, and get some edges going.
But so far so good.
These are not really super pictures of the sketches, but that is operator's error!!

Portrait sketch WIP part2

2008-07-15T09:30:00.004+10:00

Last night I worked a little more on my bearded man sketch, even though I knew I should leave it till today for my light was not good nor was my eye-sight.
However I just couldn't resist the urge to paint and went for it.
The result is not as good as it good have been with better light, the colours are off, but certrainly not as chromatic in certain places as this photo shows.
The drawing itself is getting better and I will work on the colours some more later on.
Still so far I am not complaining, working with the Munsell set up has really made things a lot easier.

Portrait Work in Process with Munsell Palette

2008-07-12T22:22:00.003+10:00

Finally, after months of studying Munsell and mixing paints according to the Munsell notations; drawing to better understand the planes and forms and reading/studying and watching painting demonstrations by well known and respected artist, I finally set out my palette with the colours I decided to use for the portrait study I had chosen to do.

The main colours here are 5YR to the left, and 7.5R to the right with Neutrals and BG and a few additional ones in the middle.

Then this evening I started the actual painting. I was a little nervous, apprehensive, because it had been a while since I had painted and I was afraid that all the studying may have been in vain and I had not improved at all.
But when I stopped after just on 2 hours later I was actually quite excited and encouraged by the result. It is only a start, a WIP but to me it is very promissing. I have not been able to this well in such a short period of time before starting with Munsell and yes I am well pleased.

Here is the WIP after tonights effort

With the palette set up and ready to go I will be able to get into it again tomorrow and continue the process. Where is this going to take me.
I love it.

Munsell Notations and Pastel Multi-Brand Color Chart Book

2008-07-09T21:05:00.005+10:00

Since receiving the Pastel Multi-Brand Color Chart book I spoke about earlier, I have been cross-checking both Marie’s and my findings.
I was absolutely stunned by the accuracy of the Munsell Notations Marie had obtained with the colour checker and software she used. They were really spot on and in some cases much better than my own eyes.
So I took the time to re-label my pastels and re-arrange them in the various boxes I have to store them in. I opted for the lay-out in the picture for the ease with which I can find what I want to use in a painting. They are not laid out according to the Munsell Notation per se, but close to.
I had them arranged differently before but this lay-out is far easier to use, giving the fact that I certainly do not own every single colour in the Munsell Book in pastel and have to make do at times.
Now with all the pastels in order I can select those colours I want, put them in a separate “working” box and get on with the painting at hand, without having to search for the next best colour.
How easy has this Munsell system made it, and what a great tool both Munsell and Mary’s Pastel book are.
I feel grateful to both of them.

Pastels Multi-Brand Colour Chart a brilliant Guide

2008-06-24T19:07:00.005+10:00

Last year on the Rational Painting art forum I had a discussion with a lady about the difficulties one faces trying to get all the pastels colours needed for I once's needs. Getting all the colours in oils is quite simple really: one mixes the pigments out of the tube. With pastels it is different, the sticks come premixed and only subtle blending of various pastels on paper surfaces can lead to the desired effect. Unless ofcourse you have all the colours required which means owning hundreds of sticks.
Most pastels come in sets and the chances of getting just the right colour sticks is pretty slim. Trying to get just the right one from "open stock" is not so easy either and trying to get the colours needed by visiting an art supply store does not mean you come home with the correct colours. Often one ends up with dubbles, tripples and completely wrong colours. It can and does become an expensive exercise to say the least.
In my conversations with Marie I learned that she was seriously working on creating a reference book for pastels based on the Munsell system. This was great news since I was already working with the Munsell system with the oil colours and was referring in this way to my needs for certain pastels.
Late last week I was honoured with a copy of the finished book “Multi-Brand Color Chart Pastels”.

It is mind blowing to realise that Marie has taken all the available "open stock" pastel sticks from 25 Pastel brands(!!!) and one by one taking their Munsell notations using a spectrophotometer and conversion software. She compiled lists of every single stick per brand with the brands name and the Munsell notation.

Then using the Munsell colour book layout she placed all the sticks in their respective places.
On the first few pages of the book she describes the workings of colour according to Munsell; ie hue/value/chroma, how to use the book, and gives the characteristics of the various brands she tested.
The next 40- odd pages are taken up by the colour charts on the right hand side and the munsell data for the sticks on the left hand side.
The last few pages are indexes of all the brands and their sticks with indication on which page to find them.

This book differs to the big Munsell book in that the charts are not indexed as 2.5R/5R/7.5R/10R etc but in “Flights” from Flight 1 to Flight 40. The theory behind this is that Munsell created a 100 step colour wheel starting with Red at 0 finishing with Purple Red.
So Flight1 for example goes from Hue 1.3 to 3.7 which translate as being page 2.5R.
Per flight she had taken the Value from 1 to 9, with 9 being lightest and Chroma from 0.1 to 16.
Each “chip” is called a “step”. So Flight1 1/05 is called Step1, and Flight1 9/4 Step75.
On the page left hand side she has made colomns: the steps; the pastel sticks that falls into that step and their Munsell Notations in Hue/ Chroma/ Value. The difference there being that she notes the Chroma before the Value so the notation would read for instance: H2.5/Ch3.3/V4.5 or H2.3/Ch10.8/V5.9 That was a bit confusing in the beginning but I soon got used to it.

What she has done with this book for pastels is what we at RP are trying to get done for oil colours. The main difference of course is that in order to paint a realistic picture in pastels you need hundreds of sticks. There are thousands of sticks available from many different brands, knowing which ones to get to make a palette suitable for your type of paintings can be head-ache material and prove to be a very costly business.
This book shows you exactly which stick from which brand to get for your choice of colour; it makes it very easy to see which colours one already has, where the biggest gaps are that need filling and which brand carries those colours.
It takes all the guessing about out of the equation. One look at the pages and the answers are there.
And then, no longer having to fight one’s way through colour choices, good or bad, leaves one with more time and energy to concentrate on other very important parts of the picture making.
I find this to be a wonderful guide for anyone working with pastels and can highly recommend it.
More on the book is here: http://www.huechroval.com/
Thank you Marie for your time, energy and dedication you put into project.

Quick sketch in pencil

2008-06-24T07:43:00.005+10:00

While uploading some pictures into my computer last night I took the time to do a quick sketch in pencil on watercolour paper. The model here is from the a painting done by Morgan Weistling on his latest dvd "Painting for the impatient".
I got realy inspired to do more drawings again after reading through Susan Lyon's book "Visions & Voyages" which has a few of her absolutely beautiful drawings.
I realise more and more that in order to create well with paintone has to be able to first of all create well with pencil, charcoal and the like. For realy painting with oil colours is realy drawing with paint.
And I have to admit the more drawings I have under my belt the better they become, the easier it becomes to see the planes, the values, the edges etcetera. I believe once the drawing skills are firmly in place going the next step to colours is so much easier.
I have a long road ahead of me, but I can see improvements with every new drawing which inspires me to go on.

A few more Drawings

2008-06-09T19:35:00.007+10:00

It has been a little while since I blogged. So much goes on in a day and I really do believe that we need to be able to extent our daily hours to at least 36 hours per day, probably even more.
I am just thinking of all the extra work I could do, all the books I could read. I still have a few meters of books to go through and somehow there never seems to be enough time so sit quietly and read them.
Most of the books are big and heavy an thus need to be down on the table, I couldn't even contemplate taken them to bed and read. Alas. such is life I quess.
I have not had the time, not energy to do any painting at all lately, but I have no worries because I know that when I do get the time again it will be just so sweet.
However, in the meantime I am brushing up(for the lack of a better word, or is it wishful thinking??) on my drawing skills.

The first drawing was a test with charcoal on a new type of drawing-paper. It was a chear pleasure to work with.

The second drawing was done on ordinary newspaper, but with a pastel stick that I had made myself. That was fun, not only making the stick but working with it as well. The structure of the stick is in between a soft stick and hard stick or pastel pencil. It has a very easy feel to it and is very nice to work with.

The third drawing is made on a paper with a specially prepared surface. At some stage on the Rational Painting forum was a discussion about drawing paper. Graydon mentioned how he prepeares his drawing paper which looked pretty easy so I decided to give it a try.
The paper itself is smooth (hot pressed) watercolour paper, the surface is a mix of pumice gel, acrylic medium 'matt' and some drops of acrylic paint for toning. The result is a very nice easy to work paper with a nice tooth and tone.
I used some pastels pencils to work with and a kneedable eraser, soft cloth for blending and a few "q"-tips.
The drawing itself was done from imagination, I had no reference material for this one at all, and just wanted to see how far I could get with just using my knowledge of anatomy, structure, light fall and the like.
The photo is not the best but it does give some idea of the work. Eventhough it is not nearly finished I have taken it as far as I wish to. It was a test piece afterall.

Now it is really time to put all this practicing on drawing and paint mixing into a decent piece of work with either pastels or oils.
Hopefully the time and energy I need to get it going will present itself to me soon.
In the meantime I just keep on studying all the wonderful done by brilliant painters old and new, and practice my drawing skills.

Painting Close-ups and what they can reveil

2008-04-10T08:33:00.007+10:00

A good painter friend brought up a very interesting point about close-ups of paintings.
He said: I just took a close up of the painting on my easel, and it is remarkable how cool the paint handling looks in a zoomed in format.
My point is also, that it is so easy to be fooled by the close up's we see in art books, or images on the net. A "normal" brush stroke can look so enigmatic and diverse in a large format."
To illustrate his point he showed me a picture of a painting he is working on at the moment and a large close up of just a tiny little section of it.
What he showed was indeed a marvellous piece of brushmanship that resembled a Rembrandt style. Had I not seen the work in progress it would have been easy for me to assume to rest of the painting looked just like that close-up.

In the light of this,I had another look at two quick portrait studies I did in pastels in preparation to portraits in oils of this lovely young couple. The studies were not too bad considering it was done prior studying Munsell and also prior to getting a decent set of pastels in flesh tones. However taking a close-up of sections that stood out to me as much better than the rest could fool someone in thinking the rest of the study was similarly done.
Here are the close-ups of the study I did of the young lady.

It is interesting isn't it?

However I must say that there is of doubt of course that close-ups of paintings from 'our' masters do also serve to show the brilliance of a painter overall.

It does make me look at close-ups with a slightly different mind set, and eyes.
With Thanks for the thought provoking subject to my friend.
A.

On Instructions and getting organised

2008-04-07T07:49:00.003+10:00

Holy Moly Times passes by too fast these days.
So much has happened in these last few weeks, although it hasn’t been a particularly productive time on the painting side, a lot of these happenings were still directly related to my art.

I made more Munsell charts but with specific paints this time; made some video’s on mixing and tubing paint with Munsell in mind; I made charts for my pastel pencils and Nu-Pastel sticks; re-organised my soft pastel following the Munsell lay-out; made some storage boxes for my Munsell tubes; also managed to read through some of my art books ; followed discussions on the art forums and some very good blogs (this one for instance from Enzie Shahmiri http://world-market-portraits.blogspot.com/is well worth visiting) and found the time to watch/study other painters.

I also sat through some really good instructional videos by some very clever painters, like Morgan Weistling, Richard Schmid, Daniel Greene, Scott Christensen, Liu Huihan, Zhaoming Wu just to name a few.
Just watching those painters at work brings great inspiration and idea’s while at the same time learning more about drawing properly, values, shapes, lighting, and painting techniques as in brush application.

At this stage in my development as a painter I can still use all the help and instructions I can get. It is interesting though that whenever I am ready to step up to next level just the right type of instruction falls into my lap.

The video from M.Weistling for instance had a series of very interesting side-steps. One of them was a demo of a quick portrait sketch in only 5 values. He showed how he created a study with just 4 colours using only 3 values in the light and 2 values in the dark. Brilliant. The whole video is worth getting just for that demo only.

Another brilliant piece of instruction is the self published book from Mr. Apollo Dorian. An A4 size book just under 2 cm thick absolutely jam-packed with instructions on properly rendering light, planes, shapes and the like; instructions on how to properly apply colour for which he uses the Munsell/Reilly systems. How to draw figures, how to see the planes in the head and that is just a very small overview of what is in this book.

It is a real treasure and the cost of this full instructional book makes it well within most people’s reach. It is so worth having.
Mr Dorian does not operate or even own a computer and the only way to get the book is by sending a cheque to his postal address. Don’t forget to add a little note requesting the book and of course where he needs to send it to. Knowing Mr Dorian he will make sure to book is send on the same day he receives the cheque. He is a very punctual man.

On the practical side of art I have been playing around a little with that charcoal drawing I had posted here earlier.

My husband and I have bought a caravan (oh yes!!) and will be taking short trips as soon as we take delivery of it. It is being built as we speak. Once my husband retires we will be going on long trips around the country and I will be able to take a bit more in the way of supplies, even oil paints .

So for the time being while on the short trips it is obviously easier to work in pastels and watercolour. And taking the limited “studio” space in consideration, I have to really cut down on the supplies I take along.

With this drawing I have been testing out the various pastel pencils, sticks and soft pastels to see which ones would suit my needs best. I will do some other pieces to get a nice limited set together.

The picture shown here is not the best; My camera is being repaired and I used my mobile phone for this occasion. It does not really matter that much for it is a testing piece anyway.
The paper I chose to do drawing on is great for charcoal but pretty lousy for pastels. It fills up so fast that you can hardly work into it. The piece is at that stage now. I could do a little more work on the head dress and the back ground but that is not what I was aiming for here so I’ll leave that part. I may be able to do a little more work on the face but it would probably be more productive if I would start another head on decent pastel paper.
So that will be my next project.

Lost Paintings from Rob Howard's Art Boot Camp Portrait Course

2008-03-05T10:03:00.008+10:00

Reflecting on life in general and my art progress a little bit these last few days, I couldn’t help but travelling back to year ago, for almost to the day I went on this wonderful trip. First stop was Holland where I had not been since 1997 when my brother got married, and a big part of my family I had not seen since then.
I was with them for just over 2 weeks and had a wonderful time. It was bitterly cold most of the time which of course I was not used to anymore; having spent the last 9 years in sunny Queensland, but it was enjoyable getting dressed in layers and heavy coats again. Oh yes, I had a ball, it was great.
Then I flew on to Boston in the USA, from where I went to Haverhill, where I was scheduled for a 4day portrait course, aka Art Boot Camp, with Rob Howard from Studio Products.
It was an interesting time, I worked hard but was unfortunately, severely hindered by a nice dose of jet-lag plus trigeminal neuralgia, the latter causing me to have blurred vision most of the time and severe headaches. But I struggled on and it was all good. I learned a great deal from Rob’s assistant Victor, who guided us all the time during those 4 days and would come up with some really good pointers.
I had one more day in Haverhill after the course, during which I was going to meet up with Rob and Victor again, organise some products to take home and properly discuss the issue with a medium called “ The Studio Products Spray-Medium” which had gone really funny and which looked to have been from a bad batch, plus I wanted to discuss the dispatch of the paintings I had done during the course a bit more detailed.
The paintings were still too wet to be packed up and flown home with me so Rob promised to send them as soon as they were dry.
However, neither Rob nor Victor showed up that next day and I could not reach Rob on any of the phone numbers I had which was rather disappointing.
Over the next months I regularly inquired after my paintings and was always told that he would take care of them. When inquiring after them again, I was told they had been moved with all the other stuff to the new Studio location and would be sent as soon as they got organised.
And then; last December I was told that the paintings had been send to me as soon as they were dry about a month or so after the course, that being late April (!!!???) and that the Australian postal system must be to blame for not getting them to me.
A new bottle of Spray Medium had gone the same way, and is apparently also lost in the Aussie post system.

What really puzzles me though is that, apart from the Munsell book, no order I have ever placed with Studio Products or any other overseas company, nor any of the parcels my family sent me ever went missing, no matter which postal service was used. And they were always promptly delivered by our very friendly posties. Hmmm.

I have posted my paintings here, for sure, they are not particularly master pieces, but hey, they are mine, I worked hard on them and it would be nice to look at them in another 20 years from now and see the improvements I made since then. Right??
So if anyone recognises them, has seen them, or has found a parcel with my name on it that looks like it could contain some paintings, please let me know.
Of course the same applies for the bottle of Spray Medium, if you find a parcel from Studio Products with my name on it and the description “artist materials” please let me know, send me an e-mail or give me a call.

I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks

Notes On Colour wheels and sketches

2008-02-19T16:07:00.007+10:00

Not a lot of paint mixing since my last post, but I made some colour charts again after receiving some new paints that I had ordered a while back.
Funny thing is that after having done so many mixes I feel instinctively which paints will be usefull to me and which I can by-pass all together.
I do seem to run out of white at the most inappropriate time though. This may call for investing in a fair amount of dry pigment so I can make white whenever needed. I am thinking of getting some good quality dry pigments as a base set and am doing some research into that area at the moment.
A few days ago a lady (Linda) on the Rational Painting forum mentioned a great blog from James Geurney. Thee are some reat posts on colour and the use thereof in paintings. He talks about Masking a colour wheel to get a specific selection of colours to work with in a particular painting. Brilliant stuf.
So I created a colour wheel on the computer, using a document,which I had on file, with the correct Munsell notations translated into RBG. I used the notation for Value 5.
Now I am proceding with making various "masks" and do some test works.
I have a feeling that suddenly, since the rational Painting forum started a lot more freedom and peace has settled on us all, and with it al lot of vary good sites and information are coming to light. It is really good to see.

Apart from working on my knowledge of colour I also try to gain a bigger knowledge of proper drawing and anatomy of the human and animal body.
I had some problems with drawing profiles so am working on those at the moment, here is a quick copy I did of a drawing by John S. Sargent. It's in pencil and that does not let itself photograph easily. A little ajustment in Photoshop, but it does loose some of the softness of the pencil marks.

To bring my general knowledge up a level I dived into a nice big, heavey book on Rembrandt by Gary Schwartz. Great read. Beautifull reproductions. Well worth it's price.

And in between all this and looking after the household, I composed a list of 83 Art books which I have offered for sale on ABEBooks. The next list will have a lot of New Age and "Self Help" books I have not touched in years.
I bought a few of my books, second hand, through Abe, Alibris and Amazon, and maybe I can return the favour. Because I am such a freak when it comes to books, 99.9% of them are in brand spanking new condition. That would surely please someone.

Munsell Challenge

2008-02-01T06:43:00.001+10:00

I really enjoy a good challenge and last night I had one.
Still working on the mixes for the rose painting; My aim was to mix a 5R 5/6.
I had used all the previous mixes in the 5R serie so I started a fresh new one with a big blob of neutral grey. Then I grabbed a tube which read "Iam a 5R 2/8" and added a little of this colour to my neutral. Oh, dear. It became a lovely 2.5RP 6/6. That's what happens when one does go by impulse and not check any colour charts. And this was not exactly the colour I needed right now.
I did not want to tube this colour nor did I want to waste the mix so I had to go from this lovely bright "purple pink" to a more darker red.

After a bit of calculating I took tube colours that I figured would bring me back to a 5R and a little mixing showed I was almost spot on. Needed a little more pink in the mix so got the initial 5R tube again and got it just right.
I do love it. It's fun and very educational.

More Munsell Colour mixes

2008-01-28T19:51:00.002+10:00

In between my last post and today I have mixed and tubed another, oh I'd say, 125 colours.
I have done 2 sets of flesh colours plus their corresponding reds and blue-greens; a new set of Greys/Neutrals, plus a range of greens and blues.
Mixing the blue-greens;greens; and Neutrals got rid of all but 1 of my Cennini/SP greys and verdaccio's, one less thing to remind me of a very, not to say extremely disappointing experience. Still it served it's purpose I guess. And the tubes did come in handy for the mixes I wanted to make. But how tremendously off the Munsell scale both products are.
A bit about my mixing process: I start with a particular colour I want to mix and tube, make a big batch to fill a 50ml and a 20ml tube with and use the remainder to mix the next colour. After having done the range I need I move on to another hue and "calculate" how to get there with the remaining mixture on the mixing table.

What you see here is a small amount of a mix plus some tube colours that I used to make that mix. From here I need to find out what to use to create the next colour, and where the calculation comes in.
Say I have a 7.5RP mix and need to make a 5R same value and chroma; there are 3 steps between those two colours, so I need to go another 3 steps further to a 2.5YR which once added to the 7.5RP mix should give the 5R. Sometimes this would give me grief for the mix would not be quite right. I'd be close but not good enough and it would take some hard work to get it just right.
Yes, I am very critical and a perfectionist. They say I am my own worst critic. Alas.

Yesterday I took some time deciding on which colours to use for this flower painting. It has been on my easel for time now and it's time to get back to it and finish it. I had used the Munsell colour notation software for the start of this painting but realised very quickly that the print out and the screen colours differt and with the book now I could see that neither of them were correct according to the chips. So I needed to do some re-mixing, to get the painting to proceed properly.
This will be a practice piece in the sense of getting the correct mixtures, applying them properly and put to practice the knowledge I have gained from the discussions on the Painting Forum.
I have a few more mixtures to go before I can move to the canvas, plus I ran out of whites so I have no way of mixing the light ones, until I replenish my supplies. Hopefully the local art store has had some paints brought in for I took their last white the other day. I have a few whites ordered but that may take some what longer to get here. If I can not get a white tomorrow I will order it in from interstate which will take some more dayes as well. Such is life.
I will mix some darks in the mean time and some additional colours for the background.
Let see what tomorroww brings.

Munsell Notation Files

2008-01-19T05:19:00.001+10:00

Last night I spent some valuable paint mixing and tubing time trying to work out how to add the Munsell Files to this blog. And failed.
I also tried to upload them on the Rational Painting forum, to no avail. In the end Dave C. came to the rescue by creating proper links for the files and uploading them. It is just such a pleasure working with the people over at RP. The are all so generous with their time and knowledge,they are happy to be able to help where ever possible. It certainly has restored my faith in the inherent goodness of (wo)men.

I do not like to load people up with work I can do myself so I kept searching for a way to upload files, using URL's and think I may have found it through a website that creates URL's for your files.
I have just created them for the Oils and Pastel files and am going to try it out now:

The Munsell Notation Oils File:
http://www.hddweb.com/98042/Oil_Colour_File.doc

The Munsell Notations Pastel File:
http://www.hddweb.com/98042/Pastel_colour_File.doc

Copy the www.hddweb etc. into your browser and I believe it may work this time.

Munsell Colour Book

2008-01-18T16:28:00.001+10:00

Through great generosity of two good painter friends I received the Big Munsell Book the day before Christmas.
It made it the best Christmas Present ever.
Little story behind this statement; the initial Munsell book I ordered got lost during it's travel process and has disappeared into thin air.
Upon realising the aimlessness of my efforts to getting the book here and knowing how much I would benefit from having it, my friend Rich initated a plan to get one out to me, and my good friend Graydon organised the rest; getting it for me and shipping it out to me.
And yes it arrived on Christmas Eve day. I do not know if he did it on pupose, but this book did become a very precious present.

Since then I have been working hard getting the Munsell notations on all my paints; even the ones I most likely would not use anymore. I created a document for them, printed it, cut it into the correct Munsell sections and placed them in the book to the left side to the corresponding Hue page.
Then I did the same with all my pastels.
I also placed the paints according to their Munsell notation in the drawers but still have to re-aline the pastels. That's because I went into mixing and tubing flesh colours, 7.5YR and 5YR, using paints I wanted to get rid of. It was much fun and a huge learning experience.

I did hit a wall though, when trying to mix a 7.5YR 5/3,: for a day and a half I had chocolate on my mixing table and just could not get this hue. It became 7.5YR 4/3 or 3/3 no matter what I did. I was getting tired of having this chocolate mix, I do not even like chocolate, and was ready to just scoop the whole lot in a big container and get on with something else. I persevered a little more and again had another 4/3, so this time I just tubed it. Then I had another 3/3 and tubed that too. The rest I scooped together mixed white through it and walked away.
When I came back a few hours later I mixed in a little more gray and had a perfect 7.5YR 5/3. I just stood there staring at it for moment but then quickly tubed it and cleaned my table. No more chocolate for a while. Into the another hue for a while.

Both Graydon and Richard were so right when they said that once you start working with the big book all accumulated knowledge just makes sense, hue shift for instance becomes reality instead of just theory, it right in front of your eyes and makes it so easy to work with.

A big personal eye opener was my difficulty judging and also mixing dark (value 2-3/ Chroma 2-3) hues correctly. That means I really have to train my eyes on that level.

Now I am going to find out how to post the .doc and.pdf files for Munsell Notations, for those interested.
And then back to mixing some more paints.

NewYear's Eve work

2008-01-01T19:49:00.001+10:00

We did not Party into the New Year, Peter had a very early start and went to bed; after which I started this drawing. With this drawing I wanted see how well I could do getting the copy done, without drawing aids like the proportional divider. It was not quite correct but not to bad either, much better than it used to be using just my eyes.
Anyway; I stopped just after midnight when the fire-works upset the dogs and came to me for comfort. So, you could say I set the trend for the coming new year.
It is going to be a good one. I know it.
Happy New Year to you all, May God's brush be with you.

A little more work on sketch

2007-12-24T21:09:00.001+10:00

As always Christmas Eve day and evening were interesting to say the least.
Did my last bit of shopping at 08.00AM and found the car park already full, minus a few spots. Increable.
Did some work around the house and finally got around to getting the Christmas decoration up and put dinner on the table.
Back in front of the drawing. I work some more on the dark side, picked some hight-lights and re-worked the background a little.
Still heaps more to do, but so far so good.
Well my Christmas Eve is done, a few more hours and we'll dit down for Christmas breakfast.
Merry Christmas.

A drawing wip

2007-12-23T19:40:00.001+10:00

A few more days to Christmas.
My brother told me they were ice-skating. Wonderful. It's been a long time since I was on skates. I do miss it, it is just a great feeling, cold for sure, but so much fun.
We are in the midst of summer and it looks like a standard tropical summer this year. Humidity in the 80% temps around the 30C.'s and rain.
I did a bit of drawing today, this time I used a small photo, and the Carder proportional divider. I was amazed at times how of my eyes were in regard to the with of the face, I was okay with the right side (my right side) but was too narrow for the left side. Could it be because that side is in the light and not too clearly defined? I wonder.
This is where I got to today. I used three pastel pencils, grey to black and a charcoal block for the background, and an old t-shirt for some softening and blending.

sunset update

2007-12-20T21:39:00.001+10:00

It's been rather hectic around here lately and thus not a lot of time to paint, however I did manage to get a little bit more paint on this sunset sketch.
My conclusion so far: I should heed my husband's advice and stick to my portraits and flowers.
A landscape artist I am not. But at least one can try.

Sunset sketch

2007-12-07T19:19:00.001+10:00

The mail is rather slow at the moment, maybe because it is nearing Christmas and a lot is being send around the globe.
It does mean that I have not received any of the materials I ordered; they were send though so will get here at some stage. However, without the empty paint tubes and some of the ordred paints I could not continue my paint mixing and tubing work. Sad indeed, since I had such a marvellous time with it.
I had only three empty tubes left over from my original batch and tubed them with very low chroma flesh colour, with which I painted a few cubes as well.
Luckily the DVD set I ordered from Mark Carder did get here and it had some very interesting, insightful and helpful points. I really like the measuring tool which he calls proportional divider, it seems like a very useful tool. The other is a little colour checker, small tool, big help. Very usefull in getting the correct colours and for by-passing the incorrect colour measures of our own eyes.
I am planning on doing a very simple "cream" coloured pot with lid, following Mr Carder's instructions on the set up, lightning, colour mixing and colour application, and adding my knowledge of the Munsell system into this. I am very interested in what the result may be.

In the meantime I have been playing around a bit making a few more colour swatches, incorporating some of the Amber medium this time. Amber realy does give the colour that extra punch and dept.

I have started this sunset picture with a few idea's in mind:
A composition using the information in Jay Hambridge book; I chose a 2.8944 ratio.
Colour mixing with Munsell in mind, and incorporating the Amber medium.
I "blocked" in the main shapes a few days ago. Let painting dry and gave it a quick sunbath. I then added a few more colours, but did not get very far in that session, time wise. I let it dry, no sun, so no sun backing. Today I added a little bit more colour and will have to let it dry again, before I can move on again.
I must say; I found the Amber medium a total pleasure to work with, and like to thank Mr J. Groves for making and supplying it.

Hopefully the mail will deliver my supplies next week, keep fingers crossed.
In the meantime I will do some little stil-life and try to get further with this sunset.

A quick sketch

2007-12-02T09:59:00.001+10:00

Last night tried to get the sound on my computer to work again by updating a few programs. This took forever but in the end I did manage to get the sound back and could finally, properly, watch Zhaoming Wu's new DVD. I had received it earlier this week but without sound makes for an awkward instruction time.

While waiting for the downloads and installations I tried my new Derwent Tinted Charcoal set. Beautiful pencils to work with, and such beautiful colours.
I doodled a little and went on to draw this eye with a few different grey values. No model, just from imagination.
Drawing is such a joy, for me it's relaxing/ calming/ mind stilling. It's a wonerful way to spend time.
I really have to do it more.

Action with Munsell

2007-11-26T15:07:00.001+10:00

While re-creating an fair amount of colour charts my order of Williamsburg paints arrived. Big tubes of Flake White and Black Roman Earth, amongst them.
With them I started mixing all the Munsell Grays from V2 to V9 and tubed them as I went along. I ended up with an extra tube for the V4-V5-V6 but that did not bother me for I figured I'd be using a lot of that value.
When that was all done I moved to the other side of my studio, sat down at my table and continued the excersise by painting 10 foam balls; 10 wooden cubes, 10 wooden cylinders, and 10 wooden chips from white to black with all the Values in between.
It was a messy job at times but the most satisfying one I have done for a very long time.

The next step is to mix, tube and paint some flesh colours.
All set and ready to go.

Back to Work

2007-10-27T20:21:00.000+10:00

It has been almost a month since I posted here. Time does fly.
I have create again, but without brushes. This last month I worked on creating files on an Accountants program called MYOB. Simular to what I used while in Holland but not quite the same, so a lot of searching and trying went into this set up. But I have done it. 3 years of our personal data has been recorded plus 3 years of our Super went in. Now I am ready to print/send the info to our Accountant so he lodge this year tax return. From now on I can just add the data and at the end of the year print it, instead of spending days going through all our paperwork and writing it down longhand. This will save me so much time.
My laptop went down last weekend, and I lost a few days trying to get it up again to no avail, and I ended up sharing the main computer again.

In the meantime I have done a lot of reading on our new art forum. So much good information out there and such a positive, uplifting energy.
Often it seems that people are on the same wave-lenght about one issue or the other.
One little instance that involved me directly was my idea of charting all my tubes of paint, so that when finally my Munsell book arrives I can label them with the appropriate notations. So then the next day I read about the same idea on the forum, and some members have already posted some notations.
I find it quite remarkable how when the energy is allowed to flow, ideas just come in and often the same idea with more than one person. That's the universe at work.

So now I can finally start my work again.
The charts and my neutrals are on the top of my list at the moment. Right underneath there are some interesting Munsell excersises.
And then I will attempt another portrait of my little 4-legged girl, Dream, using the knowledge gained from all this.

So nothing much to show for as this stage, unless of course it would be a financial print out. That however, would be more fit for another blog.

2 Web-site concepts

2007-09-29T07:36:00.000+10:00

Having done the first website and published it, I decided to create another one quite different in appearance. The work was much faster the second time around and I published that one as well. I have some changes and additions to make in both which I will tend to when I have some more time to spare. But so far so good.
I like both and will have a great time deciding which one to make my official site. Then register my Name and have it properly launched.
For these two sites I used Homestead's site building pages and opted for a Trial run.

I am interested in getting some feedback on them, so if you're visiting and feel like commenting please do, I love to read your thoughts.

First concept: http://hstrial-jnewman8.homestead.com
Second concept: http://hstrial-anewman5.homestead.com

My official webiste is now: http://www.annekenewman-fineart.com

Website creation

2007-09-27T08:15:00.000+10:00

The last few days I spent glued to my screen, creating a Web-site.
I may not be a very good painter yet, but I figured that creating it now, while I had some spare time, was better than trying to race through it later with no time for it at all.
I do love creating, alsways have, always will.
It was, and still is, not always with paint and brushes though: For a long time I wanted to be a fashion designer and even attended a fashion design school for some time. I loved to create beautiful new clothings, first on paper with any kind of medium I felt like, which would be followed by creating a pattern; scouting for the best possible fabric to suite the design and than of course putting it all together. I used to make anything and everything from underwear to overcoats. Still love it.
When we moved from Holland to Australia I created our gardens, again first designing them on paper then reading through all the books in search for the most pleasant combinations of trees, scrubs, flowers and the like. This was then followed by digging, planting, mulching; you know the "fun" labour work.
After moveing again, this time interstate, I decided to do a course in Interior Design and Decoration and get a diploma. That was fun. It really was.
Apart from all that lovely work I create "master pieces" for the inner man on a daily basis.

Okay, so my site is almost ready for launch. A few little things left to do, one of is writing a little story about myself: I was thinking of starting with something like this: "Anneke, world reknown artist, represented in galleries, musea and private collections all over the globe.............." (hmm) maybe I should just keep it simple and more truthful instead, ha.
There are not a lot pieces on the site just yet; some old and some somewhat newer ones. I will upgrade when new work is ready for posting.
As soon as the web is up I'll add a link to it here.

2007-09-24T18:27:00.000+10:00

First post.

It's a bit scary, but I'll write my way through the nerves.

Why did I start a blog?
It seems an excellent idea to get in touch with kindred spirits.
And it's a good jump start while getting a web-site up an running.

It allows to me talk a bit about my motivations to create, my struggles to create properly and my quest to getting proper information with regard to dealing with the principles of painting. I am talking about techniques to good paint application, proper uses of the flat space into which to place the subject, understanding the tools I am working with: pigments, mediums, brushes, surfaces.

And then one of the most intriquing parts: A solid understanding of colour. Colour being a result of combining Value, Hue and Chroma. How to mix the colours properly, how to apply them onto the surface in order to create the 3D illusion, and to show the subject in it's proper space.

There is so much to making a good solid piece of work.

And unfortunately there are many opinions about the "right" way and the "wrong" way. However, the more I searched, learned and experienced I did find out what held true and which was simply an opinion.