Lemon Parade

Preparations

This is the finished experimental blue painting ( approx 60cm x 40cm)

This week I'm continuing with preparing a painting that has been commissioned by friends. I started preparing earlier this year, firstly working out colour combinations, and presently am editing ideas for what will feature in it. It has been a very enjoyable process and am looking forward to seeing what develops in the next couple of weeks.

Blue painting

This weekend I've started a new painting, using acrylic paints. Until recently, I've predominantly used oil paints and I've found the transition difficult. I've found it hard to achieve the intensity of colour that I can get from oil paints. So, in order to try and work out how to get the best out of acrylics, I'm doing a series of paintings based on single colour ranges, beginning with green blues.

Winter weather

Drawings and watercolour sketches of the winter weather.

Watercolours

This week I've continued to sketch with watercolours, though on a slightly larger scale. These sketches are roughly 20cm x15cm.

Watercolours

A while ago I bought a variety of A1 sheets of watercolour and cut them into small pieces, roughly 8 x 10 cm. ( These are a handy portable size that can be slipped into a notepad and carried about easily). I've always found watercolour very difficult to use effectively and decided to start using the medium to make quick colour sketches with. It has been a beneficial exercise - the small scale and need for speed, sketching the outdoors, forces you to make quick decisions and avoids over analysing what colour to use. The results are rough but are a great shorthand for memory and useful as ideas for larger paintings.

Preparing canvas

Getting ready to start a new batch of paintings. I have pieces of linen just the right size to fit old stretcher bars and have been preparing the linen canvas for priming. My cat decided to assist in this process.

The Colonel is a sizeable cat - over 6 kilos, so I had to wait for him to finish his display.

Drawing and sketches

I've continued with small scale sketches, dividing the pages of my A6 notepad in two and working quickly with either graphite or black colouring pencil (the dimensions of each drawing are approx 8cm x 7cm)

Drawing and sketches

Recently, I've been concentrating on drawing and I've found this book by Jeffery Camp very helpful indeed:

It has all sorts of ideas to stimulate varied approaches to drawing and also refers to many artists and their work.

Following a mention of Constable's tiny sketches, I found a fantastic page-by-page view of one of Constable's sketch books on the V & A website. Here's a link to it: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/galleries/display/constable/index.html

Inspired by this, I divided the pages of my A6 notebook, so that it's the same size as Constable's drawings and have been doing quick sketches outside. Alas, not the wonderful standard of Constable but am enjoying the attempt!