Noah's Ark

This was an interesting spin off from the Bruce portrait. A christening present for a little boy called Noah.

It measures approx. 13" by 9" and was painted with Atelier Interactive Acrylics on Daler Rownet Aquarelle 300 gsm NOT paper. Let's hope Noah approves.

Mono printed cards

This was fun at the Sky Blue drop in session yesterday. Printing cards with acrylic paint transferred from acetate. It took all morning to produce these two, and they are only A6 size. Not likely to be a profitable enterprise I fear. Still no two will ever be the same.

Peacock

This was fun. Following a tutorial from a text book to paint this peacock. It proved rather more difficult than I thought.

He measures approx. 14" by 14" and was painted with Atelier Interactive acrylics on Daler Rowney canvas board.

Bruce - an update

Bruce was revealed to his owner yesterday. She seemed to be pleased with the painting -  a great relief.

Thank you Andrea for providing such an interesting sitter, and for your great reaction to the painting. It made my day.

On to the next one.

Bruce

Meet Bruce. His owner won a pet portrait in a silent auction in aid of the Tickled Pink charity. This is the final product and he measures  12" by 8" and was painted with Conte hard pastel on Sennelier pastel card.

I do hope that the owner is pleased with it.

Out of interest these are these stages in Bruce's development:

This is the reference photograph chosen from the selection provided.

This is the initial sketch in burnt sienna Conte crayon. It is important to have this right. Can you spot the deliberate mistake?

This is the underpainting. With a "white" coat it is particularly important to introduce other colours to ensure that the finished painting does not look flat. There is an old adage in portrait painting that it is dangerous to achieve a likeness too early in the process - probably because you can then loose it again before the end. No danger of that here!

Now the final colours have been blocked in, and that deliberate error corrected - Bruce's neck was too long in the initial sketch. He looked a little like a llama.

We are nearly there now.  

The finished product.

Levada Walk

Another fun session this morning at Sky Blue. We looked at the work of Ann Blockley.

This landscape is inspired by the beautiful scenery of Madeira, and was painted with St Petersburg White Nights watercolour paints on Daler & Rowney Aquafine 300gsm paper. It measures approx 11.5" by 7.5".