Memories

This is the (nearly) finished result. I have since smoothed the face and arms a little.

The limited palette gave a problem with the shadows, and I was dying to use another colour, but stuck with it. The end result is a little muddy in my opinion.

Still it meets the brief and was well received in the final class today.

Memories

Oops -I nearly forgot to post this, before carrying on. After class I have added some more washes to the sails and her blouse.

The brief was to select three images from a variety provided; one each in the category of person, scene and still life. The aim is to construct a painting and the challenge is to unify the three different elements.

Here I have physically overlapped the three elements and tried to merge the outdoors with the indoor scene. To help pull it together a limited palette is being used - raw sienna, shakhnazaskaya red and french ultramarine blue. A very light wash of raw sienna was put over the whole sheet after the drawing had been completed.

I have until next Wednesday to finish this off. Let's hope it turns out OK.

The Cornfield

This is how it turned out. There is an element of cheating here, because I went to the National Gallery on Monday and spent a long time looking at the original. It has far more autumn colours and less green than the printed reproduction suggests. Also I was able to identify some of the elements that confused me before.

Quite well received at college, although I do concede that the dog is awful. Given more time I would have washed it out and repainted him.

The Cornfield

This is the result of class last Wednesday. The brief was to take Constable's "Cornfield" as a reference and reproduce it, using as many different watercolour techniques as possible. It is only part finished, but Wet in Wet was used for the sky, Wax Resist for the reflections in the pond, Masking Fluid for the silver birch on the left. Not bad for 1.5 hours - Mr C must have taken weeks!

The homework is to finish this off, adding to the list of techniques used. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Apologies to Constable!

Multi Viewpoint Still Life

This is how it turned out. It was very difficult to handle the shadows effectively, as they did not necessarily fall in this direction when the item was viewed. In making the composition the light falls from the left, and the shadows at the base of the jug and the bottle should have been darker. That might have helped the bottle stand out more.

Still it was quite well received on WC and very well received in class.

Multi-View Still Life

I have decided that I should use this Blog to record the results of my weekly classes. In the main the results are disappointing, although "View in a Teapot" was painted in class. Perhaps it is because I am experimenting more and thrashing about trying to establish what my own style really is.

This was quite a fun exercise. Everybody brought something in from home and it was placed on a centre table, with very little attempt to set up a still life. You then had the opportunity to paint what you wanted, and after approximately 30 mins the table was rotated through 90 degrees and you were able to add to, or overlap, with new items. It was rotated a total of three times.

This is very much in the tutor's style of painting, and I must admit I quite like the composition.

The assignment for the half term is to produce a finished piece based on this study. Lucky I took the digital camera with me!

A shadow of my former self

I selected this from a list of titles for the homwework assignment last week. The image was found in the reference library on WC.

Hopefully, the work on the shadows has improved on this one, with much more colour being used. We'll see how it is received at college tomorrow.